But what was happening at the chapel where the men from Uvalde County had taken terrible toll of the enemy as he came charging through the breached gates? Who was it who cried for mercy inside those bullet-peppered walls? Who was so gripped by terror that he screamed like a cur until the cough of a gun chopped off the ugly sounds?

Santa Anna had his victory at the cost of one-third of his fighting forces. He had taken command of a building which the priests had surrendered to the wind and the rats forty-two years earlier. And he had supplied Texas with the war cry;


Soon there would not be one Mexican soldier alive north of the Rio Grande, and the victor of the Battle of the Alamo would spend much of the remainder of his life in exile before dying in disgrace.

“Remember the Alamo!”

Texas did.