On the morning of the 21st of April, 1836, Houston, with his army of seven hundred Texans, and Santa Anna, with his army of more than twice that number of Mexicans, were encamped within a mile of each other near the banks of Buffalo Bayou.  
97
The country was in a wild panic. Men, women, and children were fleeing before the very rumor of Santa Anna’s approach, as in the pioneer days they had not fled before the tomahawks of the Comanches.
 
Houston’s slow retreat[26] (begun on March 13), from Gonzales to the Colorado, from the Colorado to various points on the Brazos, with the enemy close upon his rear, had filled the stoutest hearts with doubt and alarm. After more than two months of suspense charged with the terrible episodes of San Patricio, Refugio, the Alamo, and Goliad, and the burning of San Felipe, Gonzales, and Harrisburg, the people began to ask of each other what would be the end.
 
Here at last, on an open field and in a fair fight, the question was about to be answered.
 
Santa Anna, after the fall of the Alamo, was filled with vain glory. He called himself the Napoleon of the West, and looked upon the Texan “rebels” as already conquered and suppliant at his feet. From his headquarters at San Antonio he directed his army to possess the country and to shoot every man taken with a gun in his hand. One division, under General Gaona, was ordered to Nacogdoches; General Urrea, after the battle of Colita, was ordered to sweep the coast from Victoria to Anahuac with his division; the central division, under Generals Sesma and Filisola, followed Houston almost step by step in his retreat. Santa Anna himself accompanied this division.
 
98
On the 15th of April, believing that Houston was at last in his power, the Mexican commander-in-chief left his main army on the Brazos and marched, with about one thousand men, to Harrisburg, where he hoped to capture President Burnet and the members of his cabinet. He found Harrisburg deserted; whereupon he set fire to the town, and hurried to New Washington. From there, after burning the straggling village, he intended to move on to Lynch’s Ferry (now Lynchburg) at the junction of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River. His plan was to pursue the government officials to Galveston, whither they had retreated, make them prisoners, and so end the war. While his troops were in line for the ferry (April 20) he was startled by the arrival of a scout who reported the approach of Houston with his entire command. Santa Anna, thus cut off from his army, was taken completely by surprise.
 
This was the moment Houston had so long awaited.
 
“We need not talk,” he said to Rusk, the Secretary of War, who was with the army. “You think we ought to fight, and I think so, too.”
 
 
Deaf Smith.
 
99
The rising sun of April 21 looked down bright and glowing upon the two hostile camps. The Texans were in a grove of moss-hung live oaks; in front of them a rolling prairie, gay with spring flowers, stretched away to the marshy bottom lands of the San Jacinto River; behind them Buffalo Bayou rolled its dark waters to Galveston Bay. The “Twin Sisters,” two small cannon presented to the Republic by the citizens of Cincinnati, were planted on the rising ground before the camp. They were flanked on either side by the infantry. The cavalry, under the command of Mirabeau B. Lamar, was placed in the rear.
 
 
Battlefield of San Jacinto.
 
Santa Anna’s camp also faced the prairie, but it had directly in the rear the oozy, grass-grown San Jacinto marsh.
 
The day before (20th) when the ground was first occupied by the two armies, there had been some skirmishing. But this morning passed in a quiet, which was broken only by the arrival of General Cos at the enemy’s camp with a reinforcement of five hundred men.
 
Toward noon a profound silence fell upon the Mexican camp. The men, officers and soldiers, from Santa Anna to the humblest private, were taking their siesta (afternoon nap).
 
Meantime, General Houston, after a short consultation with his officers, sent ............