Santa Anna, faced with the successes gained…

Santa Anna, faced with the successes gained by the Texas revolutionaries at Bexar and at the Battle of Goliad and the victorious skirmish of the Grass Fight, decides to take the counteroffensive.

General Cos informs Santa Anna of the situation in Texas, and the general proceeds to advance north with his Army of Operations, a force of about six thousand.

Having gathered in San Luis Potosí, the army soon marches across the deserts of Mexico during the worst winter recorded in that region.

The army suffers hundreds of casualties but marches forward, arriving in Texas months before it had been expected.

Santa Anna's initial objective is Bexar, the political and military center of Texas.

His arrival here on February 23 marks the second time he has occupied the town, the first being in 1813 after the Battle of the Medina River, in which Santa Anna had been engaged as a junior officer in the Spanish Army; the anti-Royalist prisoners at San Antonio had been massacred.

As at Zacatecas in 1835, Santa Anna will extend no quarter to the Texans barricaded inside the Alamo mission.