ly Texian rifles had reduced to little more than
half its original numbers, capitulated. After laying down their arms,
they were allowed to retire beyond the Rio Grande. Forty-eight pieces of
cannon, four thousand muskets, and a quantity of military stores, fell
into the hands of the Texians, whose total loss amounted to six men
dead, and twenty-nine wounded.

After two or three weeks' sojourn at St Antonio, it was determined to
advance upon Matamoras; and on the 30th December the volunteers set out,
leaving a small detachment to garrison the Alamo. The advancing column
was commanded by Colonel Johnson; but its real leader, although he
declined accepting a definite command, was Colonel Grant, a Scotchman,
who had formerly held a commission in a Highland regiment, but had now
been for many years resident in Mexico. On reaching the little fort of
Goliad, near the town of La Bahia, which had a short time previously
been taken by a few Texians under Demmit, they halted, intending to wait
for reinforcements. A company of Kentuckians, and some other small
parties, joined them, making up their strength to about six hundred men;
but they were still obliged to wait for ammunition, and as the troops
began to get impatient, their leaders marched them to Refugio, a small
town and ruinous fort, about thirty miles further on. Here, in the
latter days of January 1836, General Houston, commander-in-chief of the
Texian forces, suddenly and unexpectedly appeared amongst them. He
assembled the troops, harangued them, and deprecated the proposed
expedition to Matamoras as useless, that town being without the proposed
limits of the republic. Nevertheless, so great was the impatience of
inaction, that two detachments, together about seventy men, marched by
different roads towards the Rio Grande, under command of Grant and
Johnson. Their example might probably have been followed by others, had
not the arrival of some strong reinforcements from the United States
caused various changes in the plan of campaign. The fresh troops
consisted of Colonel Fanning's free corps, the Georgia battalion under
Major Ward, and the Red Rovers, from Alabama, under Doctor Shackleford.
Fanning's and Ward's men, and the Greys, retired to Goliad, and set
actively to work to improve and strengthen the fortifications; whilst
Colonel Grant, whose chief failing appears to have been over-confidence,
continued with a handful of followers his advance to the Rio Grande,
pr