Welcome to a new history of old San Antonio.

Episode 19, the fall of San Antonio.

I'm Brandon Seale.

I'm my city of San Antonio

Tonight I'm looking at your lovely life

Juan Sagan had fought longer and harder for Texas than any man alive

And now they called him a traitor

How quickly people seemed to forget that it was he who had first ridden to the aid of his fellow Mexican Federalists in Kuala in 1835.

He who had returned to warn Texans of General Kosa's imminent arrival.

He who had provisioned both the siege of bear and the Alamo defenders from his own ranch.

He who had made perhaps the last failed attempt to relieve the Alamo.

He who had covered the evacuation of the Anglo settlers ahead of Santa Ana's advance.

He who had led the left wing at the Battle of San Jacinto.

He who had escorted the remnants of the Centralist Army out of Texas with only a few dozen men.

He who had defended the new republic's tenuous border for its first three years with virtually no money and only volunteers.

And he who had prevented that same republic from burning San Antonio to the ground entirely. In spite of all that,

his fellow San Antonioans, his friends, now seemed more inclined to believe the whisper campaign

of an invading Mexican general than the track record of Texas' most conspicuous patriot.

Couldn't they see it for the ploy that it was by a vengeful Santa Ana to sow dissension between

Tejanos and Anglos? Were they ignorant of the links to which Mexico was willing to go to pry off San Antonio from the new Texian nation?

Texians had recaptured San Antonio in June of 1836, under forces led by Juan Sagin,

but just three months later, a Mexican cavalry unit rode in and briefly captured the town.

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