The reports of the Alamo slaughter terrified the people of Gonzales. They were panic-stricken by the general belief that Santa Anna next would sweep eastward with his well-trained army, in a drive to wipe the rebellious Texans from the face of the earth.
Then began the exodus of frantic colonists known to Texas history as the “Runaway Scrape.” Men, women and children packed what belongings they could take in wagons and carts, on horseback, or on their own backs, and fled their homes in terror across the rain soaked country ... all moving eastward toward the Louisiana border to escape the wrath of the bloodthirsty Santa Anna.
General Houston, realizing that his few hundred green troops were no match for the well-drilled hordes from Mexico, evacuated Gonzales and had the rear guard put the town to the torch. The Texans crossed the Colorado River on the 17th at Jesse Burnam’s, and camped there for two days. Then the army resumed its march down the east bank to Benjamin Beason’s crossing, some twenty miles below, near the present town of Columbus. Camp was pitched at Beason’s on the 20th.
Had the retreating column been fifty miles farther south, the troops might have heard the distant rumble and crackle of gunfire. On March 19, Colonel James Walker Fannin Jr., commanding about 450 volunteers withdrawing from Goliad toward Victoria, was defeated in battle on Coleto Creek by General Jose Urrea’s forces of 1200 infantry and 700 cavalry. Fannin surrendered. On Palm Sunday, March 27, he and 352 of his men were marched out on the roads near Goliad and brutally shot down, by order of Santa Anna.
Flushed with their Alamo victory, the Mexican forces were following the colonists. Houston’s scouts reported that General Ramirez y Sesma and General Adrian Woll were on the west side of the Colorado with approximately 725 troops and General Eugenio Tolsa with 600. By this time recruits and reinforcements had increased Houston’s army to a strength estimated as high as 1200.
The chilling news of Fannin’s defeat, reaching the Texas forces on March 25, impelled many to leave the ranks, to remove their families beyond the Sabine. Those remaining clamored for action, but Houston decided to continue his retreat. On the 26th, keeping his own counsel, he marched his army five miles. On the 27th the column reached the timbers of the Brazos River bottoms, and on the 28th arrived at San Felipe de Austin, on the west bank of the Brazos. On the 29th the army marched six miles up the river in a driving rain, and camped on Mill Creek. On the 30th after a fatiguing tramp of nine miles, the army reached a place across the river from “Bernardo,” on one of the plantations of the wealthy Jared E. Groce, and there camped and drilled for nearly a fortnight.[1]