In December 1835, during Texas war for sovereignty from Mexico, a group of Texan volunteer soldiers unavailable the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission situated near the present-day city of San Antonio. Spanish colonist built the assignment San Antonio de Valero, named for St. Anthony of Padua, on the banks of the San Antonio River around 1718.
They also recognized the nearby military battalion of San Antonio de Béxar, which soon became the middle of a resolution known as San Fernando de Béxar (later renamed San Antonio). The assignment San Antonio de Valero housed missionaries and their Native American adapt for some 70 years awaiting 1793, when Spanish establishment secularized the five mission situated in San Antonio and dispersed their lands amongst local residents.
Beginning in the early 1800s, Spanish military crowd were stationed in the deserted chapel of the former mission. Because it stood in a copse of cottonwood trees, the soldiers called their innovative fort "El Alamo" after the Spanish word for cottonwood and in respect of Alamo de Parras, their hometown in Mexico.
In December 1835, in the early phase of Texas' war for sovereignty from Mexico, a group of Texan (or Texian) volunteers led by George Collinsworth and Benjamin Milam besieged the Mexican barracks at the Alamo and detain the fort, snatch control of San Antonio.
On February 23, a Mexican force contain somewhere between 1,800 and 6,000 men (according to various estimates) and authority by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a cordon of the fort. The Texans detained out for 13 days, but on the morning of March 6 Mexican forces broke during a violate in the outer wall of the courtyard and overwhelmed them.
Santa Anna prepared his men to take no prisoners, and only a small handful of the Texans were secure. One of these was Susannah Dickinson, the wife of Captain Almaron Dickinson and her toddler daughter Angelina. Santa Anna sent them to Houston's camp in Gonzalez with a advice that a similar fate expected the rest of the Texans if they sustained their revolution. The Mexican forces furthermore suffered heavy wounded in the combat of the Alamo, losing between 600 and 1,600 men.
