6 March in military history: Fall of the Alamo, 1836

The siege began on 23 February, when Santa Anna's army reached San Antonio de Béxar and the Texian garrison of William B. Travis and James Bowie withdrew into the Alamo; its thirteen days are told on our page for 23 February. Santa Anna overruled officers who saw no need for a costly assault and ordered the fort stormed on 6 March. Around 5 a.m. on that Sunday his troops moved against the walls in four columns. Hardin, in the Handbook of Texas, puts the assault troops at about 1,800; Santa Anna's secretary, Ramón Martínez Caro, and the American Battlefield Trust give 1,400.¹

The defenders' cannon fire threw the attackers into disorder at first, and the reserve had to be sent in. The Mexicans broke in over the north wall, where Travis was among the first to fall. The defenders fell back to the Long Barracks and the church, and the bloodiest hand-to-hand fighting took place in the rooms of the Long Barracks. Bowie, sick, was killed in his room, and the church fell last. The assault lasted about 90 minutes, and every defender died.²

Caro wrote that five men found hiding after the assault were brought before Santa Anna and killed on his orders; Hardin writes that as many as seven defenders survived the battle and were executed, and that many historians count Davy Crockett among them, though how Crockett died is still debated. Women and children in the fort were spared. The official list counts 189 defenders who died, and Caro counts 183. Estimates of the Mexican killed and wounded run from about 400 to 600. Santa Anna ordered the defenders' bodies burned. On 21 April 1836 Sam Houston's army routed him at San Jacinto. The whole story is told in our article on the Battle of the Alamo.³

6 March 1645 · 381 years ago

Jankau, 1645: a winter campaign in Bohemia

In January 1645 Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson's Swedish army entered Bohemia again. Emperor Ferdinand III gathered a new army under Field Marshal Melchior von Hatzfeldt, joined by Field Marshal Johann von Götz's troops from Hungary and a Bavarian corps under Johann von Werth; Zdeněk Munzar of the Czech Military History Institute and the historian Jiří Fidler both put it at 16,000 men. Munzar writes that it matched the Swedes in numbers, and Fidler gives Torstensson almost 17,000.⁴

Both sides were short of time. The Swedes lacked supplies and wanted to break through to Moravia, and Hatzfeldt had the Bavarians only on loan, because Bavaria needed them against the French. Hatzfeldt declined a battle offered on 27 February, but on the evening of 5 March the two armies drew up facing each other at Jankau, today Jankov, south of Prague.⁵

Götz's charge

Torstensson marched his army to the right during the night, onto the Imperial left flank, with his artillery taking position first. Götz, commanding that wing, charged at the head of his cavalry; woods and snowy hollows slowed the attack, and Swedish guns and muskets cut it to pieces. Götz was killed.⁶

The time his men bought let Hatzfeldt turn his line toward the Swedes, and in the turn Werth's Bavarian horse moved to the left. Pressed by the Swedes, the Imperials fell back to the hills north-east of Jankov.⁷

Plunder in the Swedish rear

Hatzfeldt rallied his army, with much of Götz's broken wing, and to Torstensson's surprise attacked again. Werth's Bavarian horse rode round the Swedish right wing into the rear, but there they fell on the Swedish baggage and plundered it instead of attacking the Swedish infantry.⁸

Torstensson turned part of his army on the plunderers, broke them, and then threw his whole force at Hatzfeldt's infantry, and the Imperial army broke. Hatzfeldt himself was taken prisoner. Munzar puts the Imperial loss at about 4,000 killed, wounded and missing and about as many prisoners, and the Swedish at about 1,500; Fidler estimates that each side lost a quarter or more of its men killed or badly wounded, and the Imperials another quarter as prisoners. The way to Moravia and Vienna lay open to the Swedes.⁹

Both historians end with the lesson that the Imperial general Raimondo Montecuccoli later drew from the battle: no one should go for booty until the enemy is wholly beaten.¹⁰