The Infamous Prisoner Lecture by James Bevill at The Bryan Museum

This presentation tells the little known story of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna during his eight-month incarceration in Texas. This followed his defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. It was unusual for a head-of-state to lead men into battle – even more so for one to be captured and taken as a prisoner of war.

The chain of events which took place afterwards – an agreement to withdraw troops, the Treaty of Velasco, his guarantee of safe passage home on a Texas warship, its repudiation, a lynch mob, a second confinement followed by a bizarre plot to free him – all led to the President of the Mexican Republic being held as a prisoner of war in Brazoria County for most of the summer of 1836.

This remarkable footnote in Texas history has now been expanded to tell the final chapter about Santa Anna’s disastrous military campaign in Texas