Sam Houston defeated the Mexican Army at San Jacinto
Many textbooks still assert that the Texians defeated the Mexican army at San Jacinto. That they did not do. The contingent that the vengeful rebels crushed along the banks of Buffalo Bayou was but a tiny contingent of a much larger Mexican army. Forces under generals Filisola and Urrea were still a threat and around nightfall on April 21, Houston revealed his justifiable fear of an attack. His shattered ankle was causing him enormous pain. While the general was waiting for Dr. Nicholas Labadie to treat his wound, Texian soldiers were rounding up prisoners. When Houston observed a herd of captives approaching the Texian camp he “threw up his hands and exclaimed: ‘All is lost! All is lost! My God, all is lost!’” This scene convinced veteran Amasa Turner that “when the general first saw . . . the Mexicans on the prairie he thought it was Filisola’s column coming from the Brazos.”
On April 23, news of Santa Anna’s defeat and capture reached Filisola at Old Fort on the Brazos River. On April 25, Filisola called a council of war. Urrea and other generals present agreed that the army should retire below the Colorado River and attempt to establish communications with the Mexican government. At that juncture, the movement was a strategic withdrawal. Filisola had every intention of continuing the campaign after the army had regrouped and refitted.
Yet, what awaited the Mexican soldados was worse than anything they had experienced. During the march, rain began to fall. By the time they reached the San Bernard River bottom the boggy ground made any kind of travel nearly impossible. The Mexicans recalled the area the “Mar de Lodo”―the Sea of Mud. Men sank to their knees; each step became an ordeal. They began to jettison everything that weighed them down: shells, round shot, canister. Some even tossed their muskets. To make matter worse, many came down with dysentery. The Mar de Lodo sapped what morale the army had left. Filisola always maintained that it was not the rebels who defeated the once proud Army of Operations, but the “inclemency of the season . . . made still more unattractive by the rigor of the climate and the character of the land.” Consequently, Filisola retreated not to Victoria, but across the Rio Grande. Many in the army condemned his actions but there was little doubt he had made the prudent decision. The bedraggled soldados who stumbled home in defeat took some degree of solace that it had not been the Texians who had laid them low, but rather the land of Texas itself.