Battle
As the combined Texian force prepared for battle, they sent a messenger to instruct the alcalde of the city to surrender. At 11 pm, the alcade responded that the town would remain neutral, neither surrendering nor fighting. Several of the locals did, however, supply axes to the Texian militia. The Texians divided themselves into four groups, each assigned a different approach to the presidio. In the pre-dawn hours of October 10, the Texians attacked. The lone sentinel managed to give the alarm but was immediately shot dead. The Texians quickly hacked through a door on the north wall of the fortress and ran to the interior courtyard. Hearing the commotion, the Mexican soldiers had lined the walls to defend the fort.
The Mexican soldiers opened fire, hitting Samuel McCulloch, a former slave whom George Collinsworth had freed, in the shoulder. Texians returned fire for approximately 30 minutes. During a pause in the fighting, a Texian spokesman yelled out that they would "massacre everyone of you, unless you come out immediately and surrender". The Mexican garrison immediately surrendered.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Goliad
Famous quotes containing the word battle:
“I have just read your dispatch about sore tongued and fatiegued [sic] horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietem that fatigue anything?”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster’s Fugitive-Slave Bill.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)