Battle of Gonzales

Battle of Gonzales
Part of the Texas Revolution
Mural showing a conjectured Come and Take It flag as flown by Texians before the battle
Date October 2, 1835 Location Gonzales, Texas Result Texian victory
Belligerents
Mexico	Texian Militia Texian Army
Commanders and leaders
Francisco de Castañeda	John Henry Moore
Strength
100 cavalry	150 militia
Casualties and losses
2 killed 1 wounded	None
1 man from the Texian militia received a bloody nose from being bucked from a horse, the only casualty suffered by rebel forces

The Battle of Gonzales was the first military engagement of the Texas Revolution. It was fought near Gonzales, Texas, on October 2, 1835, between rebellious Texian settlers and a detachment of Mexican army soldiers.

In 1831, Green DeWitt asked the Mexican authorities to lend the Gonzales colonists a cannon to help protect them from frequent Comanche raids. One was supplied, on the condition that the cannon would be returned to the Mexicans on request.^[1] Over the next four years, the political situation in Mexico deteriorated, and in 1835 several states revolted. As the unrest spread, Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea, the commander of all Mexican troops in Texas, felt it unwise to leave the residents of Gonzales with a weapon and requested the return of the cannon.

When the initial request was refused, Ugartechea sent 100 dragoons to retrieve the cannon. The soldiers neared Gonzales on September 29, but the colonists used a variety of excuses to keep them from the town, while secretly sending messengers to request assistance from nearby communities. Within two days, up to 140 Texians gathered in Gonzales, all determined not to give up the cannon. On October 1, settlers voted to initiate a fight. Mexican soldiers opened fire as Texians approached their camp in the early hours of October 2. After several hours of desultory firing, the Mexican soldiers withdrew.^[2]

Although the skirmish had little military significance, it marked a clear break between the colonists and the Mexican government and is considered to have been the start of the Texas Revolution. News of the skirmish spread throughout the United States, where it was often referred to as the "Lexington of Texas".

Two cannons were used by the Texians in the fighting, the bronze six-pounder under dispute and a smaller Spanish esmeril made of iron, its caliber being a one pounder or less.^[1]

The cannon's fate is disputed. It may have been buried and rediscovered in 1936, or it may have been seized by Mexican troops after the Battle of the Alamo. A bronze six-pounder was noted as one of twenty-one large guns captured and buried by the Mexicans at the Alamo, dug up in 1852 and sent to New York in 1874 to be cast into a bell that hangs in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio; while a smaller iron gun was abandoned in a creek and uncovered by a flood in 1936, on show in the Gonzales Memorial Museum as of 2020^[update].^[1]