Come and Take It! The Gonzalez Cannon

[Jim McDougall]

In looking further at this small artillery piece from Gonzalez termed the esmeril, I looked into the Battle of Velasco June 25,1832. In this the Texians defeated a Mexican force who had built a small log stockade on the Brazos river. It mentions a small 'swivel' gun, and this seems to be the gun brought to Gonzalez by the Texian militia.

I was wondering why this was mounted on a relatively large wheeled carraige, and it would seem likely it might have been for better position in aiming as it was to be mobile and not fixed in position.

Why would such a small gun have been such a deterrent? As the Texians did not have ammunition, they cut up horseshoes, nails etc. to be fired a langrage, which can do terrible damage fired into a mass of men. That followed by musket fire would have had notable effect. The OTHER gun, a six pounder was fired twice, and also it would seem with langrage.

I found that three other esmerils were from the Alamo (again the Gonzalez one never made it). Apparently one of the Alamo esmerils was British made.

In the march to San Antonio and the Alamo, a conflict along the way became the Concepcion battle, where a six pounder known as the 'Gonzalez cannon' was fired. The imprecise references often used in these accounts note a 'four' pounder when referring to the Gonzalez cannon, but the evidence shows it was indeed a six pounder. There is a record of 121 balls , six pounder made for this gun in late October 1835.