Military
7
In 1836, about 350 volunteer soldiers fighting for Texas independence battled a larger Mexican force on the open prairie at this site on March 19. Surrounded and facing inevitable defeat, Texian commander Colonel James Walker Fannin surrendered, believing his men would be treated as prisoners of war. Under orders from Mexican President General Santa Anna to execute enemy combatants as pirates, the Mexican army took Fannin and his men to Goliad and shot them on Palm Sunday, March 27, with only a handful escaping. The executions, together with the earlier fall of the Alamo on March 6, galvanized support for independence, and Texians, rallying to the cry “Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad,” went on to defeat Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.
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Texas · United States
