Goliad Campaign - The Massacre

The Massacre

The Texians were marched back to Goliad and held as prisoners at Fort Defiance, each believing that they were going to be set free in a matter of weeks. Knowing the prisoners' probable fate, General Urrea departed Goliad, leaving command to Colonel Jose Nicolas de la Portilla, and later writing to Santa Anna to ask for clemency for the Texians. Urrea wrote in his diary that he "...wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility." On March 26, 1836, 19:00, Portilla received orders from Santa Anna in triplicate to execute the prisoners. At around 8 a.m. on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, Colonel Portilla had the able bodied of 342 Texians marched out of Fort Defiance into three columns on the Bexar Road, San Patricio Road, and the Victoria Road.

Once the columns reached their selected location, the Mexican soldados formed into two ranks on one side of the captives. The Texians were then fired on at point-blank range only a few hundred yards from the fort. The wounded and dying were then clubbed and stabbed. Those who survived the initial volley were run down by the Mexican cavalry. Fannin's men wounded in the Battle of Coleto were shot or bayoneted where they lay, inside the presidio.

Colonel Fannin was the last to be executed, after seeing his men butchered. He was taken by Mexican soldiers to the courtyard located in front of the chapel along the north wall, blindfolded, and seated in a chair due to his leg wound received in battle. Before his execution he made three requests. He asked for his personal possessions to be sent to his family, to be shot in his heart and not his face, and that he be given a Christian burial. His personal possessions were taken by Mexican soldiers, he was shot in the face, and Fannin's body was burned along with the many other Texians who died that day.

Twenty-eight Texians managed to escape by feigning death and other means. Three known survivors escaped to Houston's army and participated in the Battle of San Jacinto. In some accounts of the Goliad Massacre, a Mexican woman, Francisca (Francita, Panchita or Pancheta) Alavez, sometimes referred to by other names (Alvarez or Alavesco), rescued about 20 Texian soldiers and became known as "The Angel of Goliad." Other people known to have rescued some prisoners were: Juan Holzinger (saved two German Texians captured among Capt. Amon B. King's men and at Victoria he saved twenty-six of Lt. Col. William Ward's troops by claiming to need them to transport cannons across the San Antonio River), Colonel Garay, Father Maloney (also referred as Molloy), Urrea's wife and an unnamed girl.