Battle of Gonzales
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Battle of Gonzales trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Battle of Gonzales was barely a battle. On a single morning in 1835, a crowd of Texas settlers and a detachment of Mexican cavalry traded a few volleys over one small cannon, and almost nobody was hurt. Yet that brief standoff is remembered as the first fight of the Texas Revolution, and the flag raised that morning is still one of the most recognisable in America. This quiz covers the whole story: why the cannon was in Gonzales in the first place, how the settlers stalled for time, who led each side, what happened in the dark before the shooting started, and where the town's volunteers turned up later in the war. The opening questions are the easy, surprising ones, and the later rounds reach the officers, laws and politics behind the quarrel. It suits Texas history students revising for a test, teachers who want a ready-made classroom round, and anyone who has seen the famous cannon flag and wondered where it came from.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Gonzales skirmish became known as the Texas version of which American Revolution battle?
Lexington
Lexington gave Gonzales its nickname, the Lexington of Texas, because both small clashes turned a quarrel into a war. News of the fight drew American adventurers to Texas.
Q 02The only Texian casualty at the Battle of Gonzales was a rider thrown from his panicked horse, who suffered what?
A bloody nose
A bloody nose was the full Texian casualty list for the revolution's opening battle. The horse bolted when Mexican soldiers began firing into the dark.
Q 03As Texians crept toward the Mexican camp near Gonzales around 3 a.m., what alerted the soldiers to their approach?
A barking dog
A barking dog ruined the surprise, and the Mexican soldiers began firing into the night. The Texians then hid among thick trees until dawn.
Q 04While waiting for dawn before the Battle of Gonzales, some Texians raided a nearby field and snacked on what?
Watermelon
Watermelon was the pre-battle snack, eaten while the men hid in the trees after the first gunfire. The real fighting did not begin until about 6 a.m.
Q 05Which defiant words appeared with a painted cannon on the homemade flag Texians raised at Gonzales in 1835?
Come and Take It
Come and Take It dared Mexican troops to seize the borrowed cannon pictured on the banner. They rode home without it.
Q 06Which Texian general ordered Gonzales burned in March 1836 to keep it out of the Mexican army's hands?
Sam Houston
Sam Houston torched the town where the revolution began, then retreated east with its widows and orphans. He had just learned there that the Alamo had fallen.
Q 07An unproven tradition says the Gonzales battle flag of 1835 was cut from which silk garment?
A wedding dress
A wedding dress is the cherished legend, but it has never been proven. Another account credits a committee of five officers, using cloth donated by the women of the town.
Q 08The Gonzales flag's motto echoes a defiant reply attributed to which ancient Spartan king?
Leonidas
Leonidas reportedly answered Persia's demand for Spartan weapons with the Greek phrase molon labe. Texians reused the dare some 2,300 years later.
Q 09What name honours the Gonzales volunteers who slipped through Mexican lines into the besieged Alamo on March 1, 1836?
The Immortal 32
The Immortal 32 are remembered as the only reinforcements to reach the Alamo during the siege, and every one of them died there five days later.
Q 10Nine days after the Battle of Gonzales, volunteers there unanimously elected which colonist as their commander?
Stephen F. Austin
Stephen F. Austin had no formal military training, yet the volunteers chose him unanimously. He marched them out the next day to besiege the Mexican garrison.
Q 11Mexican cavalry sent for the Gonzales cannon were stalled on the west bank of which swift river?
The Guadalupe
The Guadalupe was shut on purpose: settlers had removed the ferry and every boat before the cavalry arrived. The soldiers camped 300 yards back on high ground.
Q 12Volunteers at Gonzales elected which Fayette settler, a veteran militia leader, to command them in the 1835 battle?
John Henry Moore
John Henry Moore first came to Texas as a teenage runaway, fleeing college to avoid studying Latin. At Gonzales he called the war council that voted to attack.
Q 13Which Mexican lieutenant led 100 cavalrymen to Gonzales with orders to retrieve the cannon without a fight if possible?
Francisco de Castañeda
Q 21The burning of Gonzales in March 1836 helped set off which famous episode of the Texas Revolution?
The Runaway Scrape
The Runaway Scrape swelled as the families of Gonzales, many newly widowed by the Alamo, fled east and towns farther on emptied too. It ended only with the Texian victory in April.
Q 22What nickname honours the Gonzales men who stalled Mexican cavalry at the river until reinforcements arrived?
The Old Eighteen
The Old Eighteen held the river crossing while riders fetched help from nearby settlements. Several of them later died defending the Alamo.
Q 23In 1778 an American colonel gave the Gonzales flag's famous reply to a British surrender demand in which state?
Georgia
Francisco de Castañeda privately sympathised with the rebels, telling their commander he was a federalist himself. Eight months later he surrendered his own troops to the Texan officer Juan Seguín.
Q 14The Texians at Gonzales said they no longer recognised the government of which Mexican president and general?
Santa Anna
Santa Anna had turned Mexico toward centralist rule, and several Mexican states revolted in 1835. Gonzales itself had declared loyalty to him earlier that year.
Q 15The Gonzales colony asked Mexican authorities for a cannon in 1831 to deter frequent raids by which people?
Comanche
Comanche raids continued after the colony made peace with two other tribes in 1827. Unable to spare troops, the region's political chief sent a cannon instead.
Q 16Which empresario, a former Missouri sheriff, founded the colony whose capital was Gonzales and requested its cannon?
Green DeWitt
Green DeWitt died in Mexico months before the battle, probably of cholera, so he never saw the cannon he requested become a symbol. A Texas county now bears his name.
Q 17The 100 Mexican soldiers sent to seize the Gonzales cannon belonged to which class of mounted troops?
Dragoons
Dragoons could fight mounted or on foot, but at Gonzales their horses could not manoeuvre among the trees, so a counterattack by 40 riders fizzled.
Q 18With no cannonballs on hand before the Battle of Gonzales, what did the Texians gather to load their cannon?
Metal scraps
Metal scraps went down the barrel in place of proper ammunition. The gun was fired just twice before the Mexican troops rode away.
Q 19A small iron cannon displayed in Gonzales was rediscovered in 1936 after which natural event exposed it near a creek?
A flood
A flood uncovered the gun a century after Texians abandoned it on the march west, when its crude carriage failed. Whether it is the true disputed cannon is still argued.
Q 20Which Alamo survivor, widow of a Gonzales artillery officer, brought news of the fort's fall to the town in March 1836?
Susanna Dickinson
Susanna Dickinson arrived with her infant daughter, and wailing filled the town: Gonzales had sent dozens of its men to die in the Alamo.
Georgia's Fort Morris was crude and outnumbered, yet Colonel John McIntosh's bluff worked and the British withdrew. The state later gave him a sword engraved with the phrase.
Q 24The town of Gonzales was named in 1825 for Rafael Gonzales, who then held which office in Mexico?
State governor
State governor Rafael Gonzales headed Coahuila y Tejas, the Mexican state that then included Texas. The first town site was abandoned after raids and rebuilt in 1827.
Q 25One week after Gonzales, Texians won the revolution's second skirmish by storming a presidio at which settlement?
Goliad
Goliad fell in about half an hour after Texians chopped through a door with axes borrowed from townspeople. The win cut the Mexican army in Texas off from the coast.
Q 26After the Gonzales skirmish, the outnumbered Mexican cavalry withdrew to their garrison in which Texas town?
San Antonio
San Antonio was where the cavalry had set out five days earlier and where the Texian army soon followed. By the end of 1835 no Mexican troops remained in Texas.
Q 27The official order to return the Gonzales cannon was addressed to Andrew Ponton, who held which town office?
Alcalde
Alcalde was the Spanish title for a town's chief magistrate, combining judge and mayor. Ponton voted with the majority to keep the cannon and sent riders for help.
Q 28Gonzales militia captain Albert Martin later carried which Alamo commander's famous plea for help out of the fort?
William B. Travis
William B. Travis addressed his letter to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world. Martin rode it to Gonzales, then returned to die at the Alamo.
Q 29At the Gonzales parley, the Texian commander said his men stayed loyal to which document Mexico's ruler had scrapped?
The 1824 Constitution
The 1824 Constitution had given Mexico's states a federal system, and defending it let the rebels claim to be loyal citizens. Open calls for independence came later.
Q 30What weather set in around midnight and slowed the Texians' night march toward the Mexican camp outside Gonzales?
Thick fog
Thick fog delayed the attackers until about 3 a.m. and later hid their numbers, so the Mexican soldiers could not tell how many men surrounded them.