HISTORIAN ROBERT H. THONHOFF TO SPOKE ON THE BATTLE OF MEDINA, THE BLOODIEST BATTLE EVER FOUGHT ON TEXAS SOIL 

Georgetown, TX – On Saturday, August 12 Robert H. Thonhoff, author, Spanish Texas Historian, and four-time winner of the prestigious La Bahia award presented a talk on the Battle of Medina, the bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil. This battle took place almost 25 years before the Battle of the Alamo, about 20 miles south of San Antonio, between the Texan republican forces of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition under Gen. José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois and a Spanish royalist army under Gen. Joaquín de Arredondo.  

The Battle of Medina occurred on August 18, 1813 and of the estimated 1,400 members of the Republic of Texas force, less than 100 escaped alive. The Spanish royalist army lost only fifty-five men in this battle. Presently, neither the Medina battlefield nor the unmarked mass graves of the republican soldiers have been archeologically confirmed. Because of the mystery surrounding the battlefield, it has become known as the “Forgotten Battlefield of Texas”. Some of the Battle of Medina participants were sons of American revolutionaries, some fought with Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812, and some went on to participate in the second Texas Revolution in 1835-36. 

• Robert H. Thonhoff write-up on the Handbook of Texas Online page

• The History of Texas: Battle of Medina

• The Battle of Medina - Taken from Capt. Gaines on the Sabine in 1835
  (see 3 sections down)

• Battle of Medina - El Encinal de Medina 1813
  (see 4 sections down)