Runaway Scrape - Background

Background

A prelude of the Texas Revolution

The Mexican take no prisoner policy was in essence a replay of the similar no quarter given by the Spanish general and royalist Joaquín de Arredondo y Mioño, under whom Santa Anna had served as a staff officer. That counter-insurgency against the first Republic of Texas resulted in the virtual wholesale slaughter of civilians and Prisoners of War, in one of the largest repercussions ever conducted in Mexico, in an area that later became part of the United States of America .

In 1813, General José Joaquín de Arredondo's army destroyed the First Texas Republic, sometimes called the Green Flag Republic and its pro-independence movement, then being sponsored by the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition. The campaign against the Republican Army of the North reached its decisive conclusion at the Battle of Medina, the largest battle in Texas history, which saw thousands of Texian, American, Tejano, Indian, Mexican, and European soldiers killed and those captured executed. Arredondo saw in Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna an up and coming leader. Santa Anna watched as the prisoners of war and any of their families which fell into the hands of his army were executed. As an aide de camp to Arredondo, he was privy to much of the Spanish general's brutal principles of counter-insurgency which included wholesale slaughter of Mexican nationalist rebels and communities sympathetic to the revolution. The end of the campaign saw the early Texas province devastated and essentially depopulated until Austin's settlement. The ruins and narrative of the campaign left a burning imprint in the minds of the later settlers, the few survivors, and Santa Anna.

Rebellion to the dictatorial rule of Santa Anna

When Santa Anna overthrew the pro-centralist Anastasio Bustamante, he quickly began dismantling the Constitution of 1824 under the guise of liberal reform. Finally, displeased with the pace of reform and growing tumultuous countryside, Santa Anna dismissed the liberal government and declared himself Supreme Dictator of Mexico. In reply to these events several states came to the defense of the Constitution and into open rebellion against the Centralist Government, including Coahuila y Tejas, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Durango, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Yucatán, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Zacatecas. Several of these states formed their own governments, the Republic of the Rio Grande, the Republic of Yucatan, and the Republic of Texas.

Hoping to achieve a similar gory but glorious victory against various rebellions, thereby uniting the Mexican nation behind him, General Santa Anna prepared his army. He called on all Mexican rebels to surrender and join his patriotic army, and started the long march north toward Texas. As Santa Anna began his campaign to put down these rebellions he methodically devastated the individuals, families, and communities who opposed him. By the time his reign of terror made its way toward Texas, Santa Anna had a well grounded reputation for counter-insurgency brutality and massacre.