Traditional Muzzleloading Association
The Center of Camp => People of the Times => Topic started by: Craig Tx on August 18, 2025, 11:59:27 AM
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8/18/1813: Guti?rrez-Magee expedition squashed in bloodiest Texas battle
On this day in 1813, the Spaniards defeated a would-be Texas republic in the bloodiest action ever fought on Texas soil.
The battle of Medina ended the filibustering efforts of the Guti?rrez-Magee expedition. The expedition collided with the Spanish royalist army twenty miles south of San Antonio in an oak forest then called el Encinal de Medina. The republican force of 1,400 men was under the command of Gen. Jos? Alvarez de Toledo y Dubois. The royalist army of some 1,830 men was commanded by Gen. Joaqu?n de Arredondo and included the young Lt. Antonio L?pez de Santa Anna. On the morning of August 18, royalist scouts lured the republican army into an ambush. A four-hour slaughter ensued. Only 100 of the defeated republican army survived, whereas Arredondo lost only fifty-five men. The dead royalists were buried the next day on the way to San Antonio. The bodies of the fallen republicans were left to lie where they fell for nine years. The first governor of the Mexican state of Texas ordered a detachment of soldiers to gather the bones and give them an honorable burial under an oak tree growing on the battlefield.
8/18/1824: Mexican Congress passes colonization law
On this day in 1824, the Mexican Congress passed a national colonization law.
This law, and the state law of Coahuila and Texas passed the following year, became the basis of all colonization contracts affecting Texas, with the exception of that of Stephen F. Austin. Among the members of the congressional committee that drafted the legislation was Erasmo Segu?n, the father of Juan N. Segu?n. In effect, the national law surrendered to the states authority to set up regulations to dispose of unappropriated lands within their limits for colonization, subject to certain limitations, but reserved the right to stop immigration from particular nations in the interest of national security. Six years later the federal government invoked this reservation in forbidding the settlement in Texas of emigrants from the United States; the resulting Law of April 6, 1830, helped touch off the Texas Revolution.