expected through their agents abroad, a corps of marines should be created and got ready for service without delay. The district in or near Red River required the establishment of municipalities, with suitable officers for the administration of justice, and the formation of a mail route to Nacogdoches. Relief was due to those who had suffered in person or property by the siege of Bexar, and to the widows and orphans of the heroic men who had fallen in defence of the rights and liberties of the people. As important and necessary steps, he submitted to the consideration of the Council the necessity of proceeding by law for the protection of the vested rights and privileges of the citizens who were settled, or who had claims to lands, within or near the settlement of the Cherokee and other Indian tribes, and the appointment of a Commissioner to act in the place of General Houston, whose military duties had withdrawn him from co-operating with his colleagues. The happiness, the liberty, nay, the very existence of the Anglo-American population in Texas being dependent on the vigorous prosecution of the war against the Mexican Centralists and Santa Anna, he urged "the immediate reduction of the town of Matamoros and its dependencies, together with all places on or near the Rio Grande," which would greatly accelerate their future operations, and enable them to carry the war into the enemy's country, or conclude an honourable and advantageous peace.

The reduction of Matamoros had been recommended to the Governor and Council (without due consideration of the difficulties to be surmounted)

by P. Dimitt, Commandant of Goliad, in a letter dated from that place on the 2nd of December, 1835. Besides the transference of hostilities to the Mexican frontier, it was proposed to secure, by the capture of Matamoros, the large revenues of the port, estimated at 100,000 dollars monthly. This town, with a population of from six to eight thousand, including a considerable number of English and American traders, was the seat of a thriving commerce with the interior of Mexico-forwarding merchandise, by means of mules, even beyond Santa Fé, and receiving in return, by the same mode of conveyance, gold and silver, coined and in bars, furs, provisions, and other valuable and useful commodities. Flushed with the successes of the late campaign, entertaining a profound contempt for the Mexicans, and tempted by the richness of the prize, the Texans rashly embarked in an undertaking for which their means were altogether inadequate, and which they could not attempt without injuriously diminishing their defensive resources. Colonel Fannin, the government agent, announced an expedition to the West, and ordered the volunteers from Bexar, Goliad, Velasco, and elsewhere, to redezvous at San Patricio, between the 24th and 27th of January, and report to the officer in command. Colonel Francis W. Johnson, who commanded at Bexar, on the retirement of General Burleson, was authorised by the government to lead the volunteers in the projected enterprise.

On the 1st of January, 200 of the volunteers stationed at Bexar had marched for Goliad, on their way to the rendezvous at San Patricio, under

the command of Colonel (Doctor) Grant. On the preceding day, a meeting of part of the garrison had been held, at which resolutions were passed, approving of Lieutenant-Colonel Neil as Commandant, in the absence of Colonel Johnson, and declaring it "highly essential that the existing army should remain in Bexar." This declaration was in condemnation of the movement against Matamoros, which stripped Bexar of two-thirds of its defenders, with the greater portion of the winter supply of ammunition, clothing, and provisions. On the 14th of January, Colonel Neil forwarded an express to the Provisional Government, intimating that a number of families were removing from Bexar, in apprehension of the advance of the Mexican army, of whose motions they could obtain no certain intelligence, owing to the want of horses. The volunteers that had engaged to serve for two or four months under Burleson or Johnson, had stipulated for monthly payment; but the money not being forthcoming, several had withdrawn, reducing the effective force under Colonel Neil to seventy-five men, which he feared would experience a farther diminution. Unless they were reinforced and victualled, it was the opinion of the Commandant that they must become an easy prey to the enemy, in case of attack. Along with this missive to the government, a requisition for aid of men and horses had been despatched to the Committee of Safety at Gonzalez. The imprudence of leaving the strongest and most important post in Texas in the condition described by Colonel Neil, is obvious. It was eventually productive of calamitous results, not compensated

by any advantages arising out of the Matamoros scheme, which was abandoned, in consequence of disagreement among the parties who had undertaken to carry it through. All the Bexar volunteers under Grant, with the exception of about fifty, left him, having heard that his object was plunder, and joined the force at Goliad, while Grant himself, who was subsequently joined by some twenty men under Johnson, proceeded on a foray for horses and cattle in the direction of Matamoros.

On the 1st of February elections were held for delegates to the General Convention, which was to meet at Washington, on the Brazos, on the 1st of March. In all the municipalities the choice of the people fell upon those candidates who were in favour of an absolute Declaration of Independence.

On the very day of the election of the delegates, the President of the Mexican Republic, General Santa Anna, set out from Saltillo, in Coahuila, for Monclova, on his route to the Rio Grande, where an army of 8,000 men, composed of the best troops of Mexico, and commanded by the most experienced officers, was to be assembled for the purpose of exterminating the rebels and driving the Anglo-Americans out of Texas. Santa Anna's confidential adviser was his aid-de-camp, Colonel Almonte, whose statistical researches in 1834 were now to be rendered available for uprooting, instead of planting, colonies. Second in command to Santa Anna, was General Vicente Filisola (by birth an Italian), a veteran of the Mexican revolution; attached to the army were also Generals Sesma, Urrea, Gaona, Tolsa, Andrade, Woll and Cos, the last of whom

violated the conditions of the first article of his capitulation at Bexar, by which he and his officers were permitted to retire with their arms and private property into the interior of the republic, "under parole of honour that they would not in any way oppose the re-establishment of the Federal Constitution of 1824." The artillery, of which there was an unusually large train, including mortars, was commanded by Colonel Ampudia; the engineer operations were directed by Colonel Luis Tola. There was an immense mass of baggage, with several thousand mules and horses for its transport; indeed all the preparations were upon a scale of grandeur that contrasted strangely with the contemptuous terms in which the heads and promoters of the expedition spoke of the people whose destruction it was intended to accomplish.* Mexican emissaries had been despatched to the north-eastern frontier of Texas, to obtain the co-operation of the Indians on both sides of the line; and remonstrances against the interference of its citizens in "a question entirely domestic" had been addressed by the Mexican minister of foreign affairs to the government of the United States. To deter the Americans from furnishing assistance to the Texans, the Mexican consul in New Orleans gave notice, by direction of the acting secretary of state, that the supreme government of Mexico had ordered the enforcement of a decree, which declared that armed foreigners landing on the coast of the republic, or invading

* According to General Filisola's account of the campaign, there was also an immense number of women in the wake of the army -“ Al immenso numero de mugeres que siguen al ejercito."

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VOL. II.

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