PART ONE
TOWARDS
INDEPENDENCE
Chapter 1
The Travis Line
LOUIS “MOSES” ROSE watched as his Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis, stared at his pitiful army: barely 250 men, most poorly clad, ammunition dwindling, powder scarce, food almost gone. Surrounding them outside all four walls of the Alamo stood a Mexican army of 6,000, officers with resplendent, multi-colored uniforms, and seemingly unlimited supplies of ammunition and food. Rose listened as Travis told his men, “My choice is to stay in this fort and die for my country!” Rose stared as Travis drew a line in the sand with his sword and challenged his men to cross it . . . and die with him.
It was Saturday, March 5, 1836, a half mile from San Antonio, Texas, about two hours before sunset, on the twelfth and next-to-last day of the Siege of the Alamo.
MOMENTS EARLIER, Travis had been checking the crumbling North Wall when silence jolted him to attention – the almost two week, almost nonstop, deafening bombardment by enemy artillery had suddenly ceased. A yelp of joy from his men at the big cannon brought Travis on the run in time to see Mexican soldiers withdrawing from their positions, already out of range to fire or be fired upon.
Seizing this rare moment of freedom from combat, Travis assembled his men, shoulder to shoulder, placing himself in front of the center, facing them. He stood silent for a few moments, overcome by anguish. Leaning on his rifle, Moses Rose studied his leader’s tormented face.
“My brave companions . . . our fate is sealed,” Travis began and quickly unburdened himself. “Within a very few days – perhaps a very few hours – we must all be in eternity . . . . This is our certain doom.” As Travis paused to compose himself, Rose betrayed no emotion, unlike the men around him who whispered: “But isn’t help coming?” “Isn’t Colonel Fannin coming?”
Unable to read or write, Rose’s custom was first to listen and memorize, only later to digest and react. So he listened as Travis resumed his account, confessing to having unwittingly deceived his men as he himself had been deceived.
Offers of help were promised, Travis reminded his troops, but none came – except the 32 heroic men from Gonzalez! (A weak cheer went up.) Colonel Fannin, he related, had not responded to his many calls for help. Ammunition is perilously low, he added, mournfully. We are hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded by thousands of Mexican troops, and – here he paused again, almost unable to say the words – thus “we . . . must . . . die!”
A gasp was heard up and down the line. The possibility of death was an everyday affair for these adventurers; the certainty of death was an unwelcome stranger. All eyes were on Travis. What do we do?
We die gloriously! Travis answered their look. “When at last they shall storm our fortress,” Travis’ eyes flashed, “let us kill them as they come! Kill them as they scale our walls! Kill them as they leap within! KILL them as they raise their weapons and as they use them! KILL them as they kill our companions! And continue to KILL them as long as one of us shall remain alive!”
Cheers erupted, louder and louder, as Travis, louder and louder, roared the word “KILL!” Kill them we will, thought Rose, and then we will all die. But he cheered also.
Explaining the need for their sacrifice, Travis told his men: We must buy time so that “our countrymen at home can meet [the Mexicans] on fair terms, cut them up, expel them from the country, and thus establish their own independence . . . .” Our reward, said he, if one was necessary, will be everlasting immortality: “Our memory will be gratefully cherished by posterity till all history shall be erased and all noble deeds shall be forgotten.”
“But,” offered Travis, “I leave every man to his own choice.” Surrender (Never! shouted Micajah Autry of Tennessee), attempt an escape (No! cried James Bonham of South Carolina) or die here with me (silence).
At once Travis drew his sword from its sheath and held it in the air, staring at the forged metal as if it was Excalibur, pulled from its prison of stone by the future King Arthur. Then, walking till he faced the man furthest to his right, Travis, with the point of his sword, began to draw a line in the sand and slowly continued the line until he reached the last man to his left. Then, with a flourish, he replaced the sword in its sheath and positioned himself once again in the middle of the rank – the line in the sand a vast chasm, separating the leader from his men.
No one spoke . . . or breathed.
Travis lowered his voice to a whisper, as he proclaimed: “I now want every man who is determined to stay here and die with me to come across this line.” Then he shouted: “Who will be the first? March!”
Tapley Holland from Ohio leaped the line almost before the words were out of Travis’ mouth, booming, “I am ready to die for my country!” The others paused for but an instant until a blacksmith from Missouri silently walked across the line carrying his long rifle. Then a lawyer from Kentucky, followed by a doctor from Pennsylvania, a hatter from New York, a poet from North Carolina, a jockey from Arkansas. Following them were farmers and ranchers from almost all of the 27 states that in 1836 made up the United States of America. Joining them were volunteers from across the sea: from Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The average age of the men inside the Alamo was 29, a lifetime ahead of them, but seemingly without a care they crossed the line to certain death.
Next crossed the thirteen members of the Tennessee Company of Mounted Volunteers, mostly dressed in buckskin and fur cap – but only after an imperceptible signal from their leader, Davy Crockett. The famous Indian fighter, bear hunter and former U.S. Congressman, who described himself as nothing more than a “high private” in this noble cause, nodded his assent and majestically sauntered across the Line with his Tennessee boys.
Crossing next was Colonel James Bowie, famous for his exploits with the “Bowie” knife and joint commander with Travis until he took ill and became bedridden. Bowie, who had been brought out on a cot from his sick room, called out: “Boys, I am not able to go to you, but I wish some of you would be so kind as to remove my cot over there.” And four men instantly ran to the cot and, each lifting a corner, carried it and their Colonel across the Line. Bowie’s men crossed after him.
Thus encouraged, others who were injured were helped or hobbled across the Line.
Their fate now set, those who were soon to die were euphoric, pounding each other on the back and shoulders, shouting curses at the enemy, and making patriotic speeches for their cause. Freed of worldly cares, only immortality awaited them.
The baptism of death had turned into a raucous party, until, reminding them that there had been a choice after all – they observed that one lone man had not crossed. The bedlam turned to silence as they stared across the Line at Louis Rose, nicknamed “Moses” because at 51 he was the oldest among them.
Rose had stood until every man but he had crossed the Line. Then he sank upon the ground, covered his face, and yielded to his own reflections. For a time he was unconscious of what was transpiring around him.
Rose then lifted himself to his full height and stared at his comrades, his best friends, virtually his only friends, all here in the Alamo Plaza, all on the other side of the Line – all staring at him . . . staring at him because until this moment they had assumed he was one of them: As volatile for independence as they, he’d risked his life in battle after battle fighting for Texas. And he certainly looked like one of them in buckskin breeches, homemade Texas Jean jacket and broad-brimmed sombrero, a long gun and knife at his side.
But he was not crossing the Line.
Why not?
Rose wondered also.
Rose stared at them until they became a blur and then returned to his thoughts. Now was his time to reflect on Travis’ rhetorical flourishes – words which, perhaps only to Rose, had offered a true choice: Surrender, Escape or Die!
As Rose stood alone, all eyes from the other side of the Line upon him, he nervously fingered in his pocket his lucky memento – an 1813 European coin with the face of Napoléon Bonaparte. With his other hand he stroked the handle of his trusted “Bowie knife.”
AT THAT MOMENT Rose was two men: One, a Frenchman, a former French soldier, a fighter for the French Empire – Napoléon’s man, the follower of a deliberate and imaginative military genius. The other Rose was an American*, a Texan, an early fighter in the battle for independence – Jim Bowie’s man, headstrong and impulsive. The two men named Moses Rose stood in one pair of Indian moccasins. The Texan pulled at the heart of the man; the Frenchman held his reason. Paralyzed with indecision, he stared at the Travis Line. Alone.
The men of Travis’ army surely thought Rose mad as they watched him stare at a small coin, held between his thumb and second finger, raised to the sky to peer at. It was the face of Napoléon that Rose looked to for guidance, 21 years after his Emperor’s final defeat. Should I die with my friends, the wild Texans? Must I follow this enfant terrible, the 27-year-old Travis, who talks about dying for “honor and country” and signs his letters “Victory or Death!”?
What would Napoléon do? What did Napoléon do? He fought against great odds but retreated when outnumbered or outgunned. He surrendered when there could be no victory, only death. And then he rose and fought again and again and again, as long as it was possible. To offer one’s life in vain, as a monument to posterity, was not Napoléonic, not the esprit of the French soldier.
Momentary peace came over Rose as he returned the coin to his pocket. A French soldier does not throw away his life without hope of survival.
I am no coward! Rose reassured himself, as he looked over at the men on the other side of the Line, all of whom by now considered him one. I came to fight in Texas by choice. I was not conscripted. But a French soldier does not die in vain, Napoléon had taught him.