John C. Duval's Escape from Goliad
The man in front of me was shot dead, and in falling he knocked me down.
John C. Duval
In the annals of warfare it’s doubtful any clash of arms hasn’t produced atrocities beyond the just killing between combatants—jus ad bellum (justice toward war). War crimes, whether concealed or uncovered, committed by an individual solider or on the orders of a commander, are part and parcel of the battlefield. In an effort to keep warriors from becoming mere murderers, rules of engagement are established. Before international laws like the Geneva Convention or the formation of the League of Nations or the United Nations, combatants were expected to adhere to civil combat. Soldiers of civilized nations were disciplined and trained and were counted on to conduct themselves as professionals—the law of armed combat—not as barbarians or savages.
At the time of the Texas Revolution, from 1835 to 1836, nations fought under the law of armed combat, with the assumption that combatants be treated as fellow soldiers with rights granted to all civilized men. That was certainly the law Texian Colonel James W. Fannin Jr. operated under when on March 20, 1836, he surrendered his 370 men to Mexican General José de Urrea and was marched to Goliad.1 It was also the law General Urrea operated under. His commanding officer, however, Antonio López de Santa Anna, operated under a different law, the congressional decree of December 30, 1835, which stated that captured armed rebels be executed as pirates.
Urrea knew this law and was ordered to carry out its requirements just a month earlier when Francis W. Johnson’s Texians were captured at San Patricio on February 27. Though technically legal, Urrea viewed the law as immoral and unjust, and had no stomach for such bloodletting. He disobeyed the order and treated Johnson’s men as prisoners of war, sending them to Matamoros and asking Santa Anna’s pardon for his insubordination.
A month later, Urrea’s stomach still churned when it came to executing prisoners, so negotiated terms of surrender with Fannin. According to the document he signed, Fannin assumed the wounded, along with himself, would be “treated with all possible consideration upon the surrender of all their arms.” Fannin also believed “The whole detachment shall be treated as prisoners of war and placed at the disposition of the supreme government.” The prisoners were led to believe they would be paroled to New Orleans in ten days. But Urrea wasn’t so sanguine. To the statement of surrender Urrea appended this note:
When the white flag was raised by the enemy, I made it known to their officer that I could not grant any other terms than a surrender at discretion, without any other condition, and this was agreed to through the officers stated above; the other petitions which the subscribers of this surrender make will not be granted. I told them this, and it was agreed to. I must not, nor can I, grant anything else.
Urrea admitted later that though the Texians surrendered at discretion “They doubtless surrendered confident that Mexican generosity would not make their surrender useless, for under any other circumstances they would have sold their lives dearly, fighting to the last.” Despite the December 30 law, Urrea hoped Santa Anna would demonstrate mercy and show leniency. It was a fool’s hope. On March 26, 1836, Colonel Nicolás de la Portilla, who had been put in charge of the prisoners after Urrea left Goliad for Victoria, received a direct order from Santa Anna:
I am informed that there have been sent to you by General Urrea two hundred and thirty four prisoners. . . . As the supreme government has ordered that all foreigners taken with arms in their hands, making war upon the nation, shall be treated as pirates, I have been surprised that the circular of the said government has not been fully complied with in this particular. I therefore order that you should give immediate effect to the said ordinance in respect to all those foreigners who have yielded to the force of arms, having had the audacity to come and insult the republic, to devastate with fire and sword, as has been the case in Goliad, causing vast detriment to our citizens, in a word, shedding the precious blood of Mexican citizens, whose only crime has been their fidelity to their country. I trust that, in reply to this, you will inform me that public vengeance has been satisfied by the punishment of such detestable delinquents.2
Early the next morning, March 27, Palm Sunday, the prisoners were divided into three groups and marched from the Goliad mission and shot. Three hundred and forty-two men were killed. Twenty-eight escaped, including John Duval who wrote the following account of the Goliad massacre.3
After our surrender we were marched back to Goliad, escorted by a large detachment of cavalry, and there confined within the walls surrounding the old mission.
[. . .]
The morning of the sixth day after our return to Goliad, whether the Mexicans suspected we intended to rise upon the guard, or whether they merely wished to render our situation as uncomfortable as possible, I know not, but at any rate from that time we were confined in the mission, where we were so crowded we had hardly room to lie down at night. Our rations, too, about that time, had been reduced to five ounces of fresh beef a day, which we had to cook in the best way we could and eat without salt.
Although, thus closely confined and half starved, no personal indignity was ever offered to us to my knowledge, except on two occasions. Once a Mexican soldier pricked one of our men with his bayonet, because he did not walk quite fast enough to suit him, whereupon he turned and knocked the Mexican down with his fist. I fully expected to see him roughly handled for this “overt act,” but the officer in command of the guard, who saw the affair, came up to him and, patting him on the shoulder, told him he was “muy bravo,” and that he had served the soldier exactly right. At another time one of our men was complaining about his rations to the officer of the guard, who ordered one of the soldiers to collect a quantity of bones and other offal lying around, and throwing them on the ground before the man, said, “There, eat as much as you want—good enough for Gringoes and heretics.”
[. . .]
On the morning of the 27th of March, a Mexican officer came to us and ordered us to get ready for a march. He told us we were to be liberated on parole and that arrangements had been made to send us to New Orleans on board of vessels then at Capano. This, you may be sure, was joyful news to us, and we lost no time in making preparations to leave our uncomfortable quarters. When all was ready we were formed into three divisions and marched out under a strong guard. As we passed by some Mexican women who were standing near the main entrance of the fort, I heard them say “pobrecitos” (poor fellows), but the incident at the time made but little impression on my mind.
One of our divisions was taken down the road leading to the lower ford of the river, one upon the road to San Patricio, and the division to which my company was attached, along the road leading to San Antonio. A strong guard accompanied us, marching in double file on both sides of our column. It occurred to me that this division of our men into three squads, and marching us off three directions, was rather a singular maneuver, but still I had no suspicion of the foul play intended us.
When about half a mile above town, a halt was made and the guard on the side next the river filed around the opposite side. Hardly had this maneuver been executed when I heard a heavy firing of musketry in the directions taken by the other two divisions. Someone near me exclaimed, “Boys! They are going to shoot us!” and at the same instant I heard the clicking of musket locks all along the Mexican line. I turned to look, and as I did so, the Mexicans fired upon us, killing probably one hundred out of one hundred and fifty men in the division.
We were in double file and I was in the rear rank. The man in front of me was shot dead, and in falling he knocked me down. I did not get up for a moment, and when I rose to my feet, I found that the whole Mexican line had charged over me, and were in hot pursuit of those who had not been shot and who were fleeing towards the river about five hundred yards distant. I followed on after them, for I knew that escape in any other direction (all open prairie) would be impossible, and I had nearly reached the river before it became necessary to make my way through the Mexican line ahead. As I did so, one of the soldiers charged upon me with his bayonet (his gun I suppose being empty). As he drew his musket back to make a lunge at me, one of our men coming from another direction, ran between us, and the bayonet was driven through his body. The blow was given with such force, that in falling, the man probably wrenched or twisted the bayonet in such a way as to prevent the Mexican from withdrawing it immediately. I saw him put his foot upon the man, and make an ineffectual attempt to extricate the bayonet from his body. One look satisfied me, as I was somewhat in a hurry just then, and I hastened to the bank of the river and plunged in.
The river at that point was deep and swift, but not wide, and being a good swimmer, I soon gained the opposite bank, untouched by any of the bullets that were pattering in the water around my head. But here I met with an unexpected difficulty. The bank on that side was so steep I found it was impossible to climb it, and I continued to swim down the river until I came to where a grapevine hung from the bough of a leaning tree nearly to the surface of the water. This I caught hold of and was climbing up it hand-over-hand, sailor fashion, when a Mexican on the opposite bank fired at me with his escopeta, and with so true an aim, that he cut the vine in two just above my head, and down I came into the water again. I then saw on about a hundred yards further, when I came to a place where the bank was not quite so steep, and with some difficulty I managed to clamber up.
Above the bank on the north side of the river there was a stand of trees, “several hundred yards in width,” where Duval hid. He spotted Mexican lancers patrolling the prairie. He was soon joined by John C. Holliday and Samuel F. Brown. The three waited among the trees. When another group of escapees bolted from cover further up the river the lancers ran them down and ran them through. While they were robbing the bodies of the murdered, Duval and the others broke from the trees into a ravine, which soon gave way to the open field. The lancers, having returned to their original position, never saw the three men. At some point in their flight, Duval, Holliday, and Brown separated. Duval evaded capture for thirty-eight days. He was discovered by one of Sam Houston’s men in an abandoned cabin cooking discarded corn.
Those who didn’t die in the initial volley were summarily shot or bayoneted. After the execution, the bodies were burned on pyres, their remains left exposed to weather, vultures, and coyotes. On June 3, 1836, General Thomas J. Rusk, pursuing the retreating General Vicente Filisolá, passed through Goliad. He ordered the remains of the dead buried with military honors.
James Fannin was executed alone, apart from his men. Brought to the center of the courtyard in the Goliad mission and made to sit on a bench, he gave his watch and money to the officer in charge of his execution and requested he not be shot in the head, but in the breast. Fannin asked for a Christian burial. His request fell on a hardened heart. He was shot in the head, his body stripped and thrown on the pyre with his men.
Note and Source:
1 The 370 men included all of Fannin’s command after the battle of Coleto Creek, as well as the command of William Ward of the Georgia Battalion who surrendered on March 22, 1836.
2 Terms of the Urrea-Fannin surrender, Urrea’s note and statement of what the Texians understood at the time, as well as Santa Anna’s execution order are quoted in H. W. Brands, Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence—and Changed America (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 395, 396, 399.
3 John Crittenden Duval, Early Times in Texas (Austin: H. P. N. Gammel & Co., Publishing, 1892), 49, 51–52, 53–55. Duval’s narrative first appeared in serial form in Burke’s Weekly (1867).
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Dios y Tejas.
Santa Anna was an officer, but he wasn’t a gentleman. His execution of the combatant survivors at the Alamo and his execution of the Goliad survivors disturbed many of his officers.
What an appalling way to treat those poor soldiers! Santa Ana definitely didn't behave like an officer & a gentleman! What an amazing account, respect to Mr Duval! 🙌