Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna

Antonio de Padua Maria Severino Lopez de Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron (1791-1876) was a Mexican political and military leader in the early 19th century. From 1833 to 1855, he served as President on eleven separate occasions. In 1855 his final administration ended in a coup d'etat and he fled the country, going into exile for the second time of his career. He was tried and convicted of treason in absentia but returned to Mexico in 1874 following a general amnesty to live out the remainder of his life in quiet retirement.

Throughout his career, Santa Anna had a mixed relationship with the United States, brutally attempting to suppress the Texas Revolution of 1836, in which many Americans took part, and commanding Mexican armies in the field during the Mexican War in 1846-48. However, at other times he cultivated good relations with the US, spent parts of both his exiles in US territory, and on at least one occasion seized power in Mexico City with American support.

Santa Anna in "Lee at the Alamo"
In 1836, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna commanded Mexican forces beseiging the Alamo in San Antonio. He defeated a small Texan garrison, seized the damaged fortress, and massacred the defenders.

In 1861, the Alamo had been repaired and renovated by US Major E.B. Babbitt and was serving as a quartermaster depot for the Department of Texas, now a state of the United States which was attempting to secede and illegally seize Federal property. When the commander of the department, Robert E. Lee, contemplated attempting to stand seige against Benjamin McCulloch's Texan militia in the Alamo, he feared that, despite the improvements the Army Corps of Engineers had made, it would once again fall in the end.