Bellaire and the Battle at San Jacinto
Occurring right here on the once open prairies where Bellaire now rises was a seemingly small event. However, it was of such a titanic reversal of fortune as to result in absolute victory at San Jacinto. This footnote in history may indeed be as much responsible for the independence of Texas as the bloody triumph itself.
All Texans emerge from the womb with that epic tale burned into their DNA. On the afternoon of April 21st, 1836, Sam Houston led the out numbered Texian army in a valiant surprise attack against Emperor Santa Anna and his battle-hardened troops. Long after the wane of smoke and fire from combat, Houston’s charge at San Jacinto would ring in the annals of Texas freedom. But few really know why General Houston chose the time and place he did to turn and fight.
In the six weeks following the devastating defeat at the Alamo in San Antonio de Bexar, Sam Houston employed the less than revered tactic of advancing to the rear–meaning he continually retreated eastward from Santa Anna’s forces. This tactic was mainly due to the simple fact that Houston’s mostly volunteer army wasn’t ready to fight. They were not regular soldiers and discipline was in short supply–as was information. Houston assumed that Santa Anna followed with multiple cannon and an army rumored to equal between 5,000 and 7,000 men, nearly the same force unleashed on the Alamo. Even a strength half as much was more than a match for Houston’s 800 or 900 men, an ill-supplied band, many of whom were malnourished and suffering from other ailments.
Thus it was on April 18th, as Houston led his fugitive army into the swampy bayou country that the shroud of darkness and defeat hung low over Texas. He found Harrisburg, then the proclaimed capital of Texas, burned to cinders by the Mexican Army. Fortunately, the interim revolutionary government fled to the north days before the enemy’s arrival.
Not knowing the location of the Mexican army, Houston dispatched his finest scout and spy, Erastus Smith, better known as "Deaf" Smith because he was hearing impaired. Along with Henry Karnes, Smith led a scouting party southwest from the Buffalo Bayou toward the uninhabited prairie in search of the enemy.
Heading northeast on an intercept course was Captain Miguel Bachillar and two escorts. Bachillar rode hard from Mexico City with letters of praise to the Emperor for his deeds of glory at the Alamo and Goliad. Along the way at Fort Bend, Bachillar encountered General Filisola, who added communiqués he had earlier received from Santa Anna, as well as new ones in response.
While detailed accounts of the actual Smith-Bachillar encounter are non-existent, it’s not hard to extrapolate what occurred. About 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon on the 18th, Deaf Smith and Karnes emerged from the cover of oaks and pines, heading southwest onto the prairie. Imagine their excitement at seeing the dust trail from riders off in the distance. They lit out to get a closer look, and as soon as they were in range to see the imperial uniforms of Captain Bachillar and his men, some kind of skirmish surely ensued. You can picture a galloping chase as riders exchange pistol fire from their single-shot flintlocks. Perhaps Smith simply ran them down, and they fell into hand-to-hand combat with Smith besting Bachillar, who would have surrendered at the tip of Smith’s cutlass. How ever it happened, it happened right about the intersection of Bellaire Boulevard and Second Street.
Here is where the tide of independence turned. Bachillar’s dispatches revealed to Sam Houston that Santa Anna’s forces numbered only about1,500 men with a single cannon; that Santa Anna himself was in command, his location where Buffalo Bayou met the San Jacinto River; the location and progress of reinforcements (most being a day or so away); and Santa Anna’s intent to ensnare Houston at the Trinity River.
This intelligence was a godsend to Houston. But it was the reading of those letters of praise for Santa Anna’s slaughter of their fellow Texians at the Alamo and Goliad, compounded by the fact that Bachillar carried the letters in a saddlebag bearing the name William Barret Travis, that so inflamed Houston’s freedom fighters as to whip them into a frenzy.
Indeed, Santa Anna’s own account of the event stated that the capture of the courier was "no less a cause" for the Texian victory. Further, he admitted that, "From the dispatches, [the enemy] learned everything it desired; and, coming out from uncertainty that was making it retreat to the Trinity, it gained new courage."
Historians and the principals by their accounts all agree, had Deaf Smith not acquired the information he did by intercepting the courier on the prairie of Bellaire, Houston would have delayed his action, giving Santa Anna time to reinforce and to set his trap at the Trinity. General Sam Houston would have been soundly defeated and all of his men butchered, leaving a remote and bloody field of unknown graves remembered only as a small reference to a put-down insurrection.
Even though history gives little notice to this significant courier capture, it is remembered here in Bellaire, where it occurred, and noted with an historical marker at the esplanade crossing for Second Street at Bellaire Boulevard.
Map courtesy rootsweb.com; enhancements (tints and Bellaire locator) by Duane Tillis, Examiner Newspaper Group.
Copyright 2006 by David Falloure
