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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 11, 2012 11:20:30 GMT -5
Not saying it couldn't be, Rich, just that it doesn't have to mean that considering the crown of your head is the top back part. Plus, someone getting the top of their head blown off right next to you would probably be memorable no matter where the shot came from. Jim Amen. I can think of two related incidents. First, Bloody Knife being shot in the head at Little Big Horn, his blood and brains being splattered all over Reno's face. No idea how clearly Reno remembered details about that, other than his panic (of course, he was reportedly boozing prior to this battle). Second, the JFK assassination. Many photos, films and eye witnesses to that, yet the debate rages on as to where the bullets came from which way JFK's head jerked, how many shots, how many shooters.
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Post by Herb on Feb 11, 2012 12:50:08 GMT -5
I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts. Jim I think, we'd be making a serious mistake if we assume that because the Alamo Church was the last position to fall that it was some kind of citadel or last bastion. Sesma, along with Sanchez-Navarro, and DLP all make a pretty clear case that the Alamo Church was the last postion to fall - not because of strength, but becasue of Santa Anna's tactical plan. Sesma, especially makes clear that the plan was to push as many of the defenders to exit the compound to the SE into the waiting arms of the cavalry. Very clearly for this plan to succeed, the Church area of the compound could not be attacked until the final minutes for this was the "Golden Bridge" to perceived survival. Another clue into the Mexican thought process is that either S-N or DLP identified Morale's objective as the Main Gate. This is a critical piece of evidence, if the Church was feared as a Citadel, Morales would have been charged with quickly seizing it to prevent the defenders from rushing to this point to reinforce it. Instead Morales is tasked for seizing one of the points of egress increasing the pressure on the defenders to move to the SE. Finally, there is the evidence of the compound itself, defenders on the North and West Walls, and in the corrals had far more viable ways to gain the Long Barracks, and the Long Barracks had the fields of fire to dominate the Compound. AS S-N says this is the true Citadel of the Alamo, and if the Texians had properly prepared it, the added cost to the Mexican Army could have been extreme. The important thing in all this was that the Alamo Church did not fall last by reason of strength, but because of the design of the Mexican plan.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 11, 2012 13:21:01 GMT -5
And, in any case, my guess is that there were few Texians left to man such a last bastion by the time it would have come into play. Those who had rushed to meet the surge at the north wall were either dead, in the Long Barrack, or on their way out of the fort altogether, only to face Sesma's lancers. It doesn't mean that there might not have been somewhere up behind the church's west wall to shoot from. If S-N's vista is correct in showing the picketed area with the flag, one or more Texians might have made it up there and got off a shot or two. I'm not well versed in the military aspects of such fortifications, but I also wonder what purpose firing platforms on the west side of the church would serve, other than firing into your own fort? If covering the abates/palisade area, that already seemed well defended or fortified and, in any case, firing platforms along the south side of the church would seem more suited.
My impression is that the emphasis was on defending the walls from outside attack and the Alamo garrison was too small to even do that adequately. Fortifying and manning an area designed to direct fire into the fort (rather than without) was something they could't afford. So, whether or not there were firing platforms along the church's west wall, who was there to man them as the action wound down on March 6?
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Post by garyzaboly on Feb 11, 2012 15:09:31 GMT -5
Come on, Gary, it's still early! ;D I've been taken to task for using Potter so many times I'm just waiting for others to weigh in. I think there's a lot of value in comparing Potter's accounts (In fact, I've spent a long time working on an article that shows the evolution of Potter's thought and compares and contrasts the accounts...maybe someday I'll finish it). He was obviously a guy who was looking for the truth and wasn't driven by any agenda, so I hold his work in high regard, problematic though parts of it might be. I'm probably like Doc in that my primary interest isn't in the physical compound, though I do find the discussions fascinating. (Sometimes...other times my eyes glaze over. But one factor that might bear discussing is the idea of the church as a citadel, of sorts. I think that a lot of these accounts tend to treat the church as such (Nunez, for example), and Sanchez Navarro's plat, arguably, shows the church as almost a castle "keep," a detail that, again, arguably, could be reinforced by the castle-like appearance of his vista. I think, however, that a strong case can be made that if anything was close to a citadel in the compound, it was the long barracks. I know that the church area was the last to fall, and that the abatis and the ability to deliver infilading fire along the palisade and in the Campo Santo area made the church a formidable obstacle. It was in the long barracks, however, that the Mexicans were reportedly met with the most fierce resistance. I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts. Jim Jim, Our boy (haha) Sanchez-Navarro clearly noted in one of his keys, in describing the long convento building: This building was serviceable; because of its construction and because it was united to the Church, it formed a "high cavalier," and the strongest position of the fort. If the enemy had made a second line of defense of this, it would have been very difficult to drive them out or take it from them.In other words, he is indeed saying that it should have been equipped as a true citadel, as you note, although beyond what the Texians did---viz., just raising parpets within the rooms and digging ditches. Had they somehow fortified them with cannaon, the Mexican troops in the compound would have been in for a lot of harrassment. The Alamo church is referred to as a "citadel" sometimes, although in most cases long after the battle. Long barracks notwithstanding, the church remained the most imposing building.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 11, 2012 15:39:28 GMT -5
I've never understood the purpose of the ditches inside the Long Barrack. Did the Texians dig up the floors and build ditches below ground level from which they were able to fire into the plaza? What I recall of the battle descriptions indicates that, whatever their purpose, they backfired on the Texians once the Mexican blew their way into the building, when the defenders found themselves trapped in those ditches, and largely immobilized, making easy targets for Mexican bayonets. How far off am I on this? As I say, it's a feature of the defenses I've never clearly understood.
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Post by garyzaboly on Feb 11, 2012 15:46:46 GMT -5
I've never understood the purpose of the ditches inside the Long Barrack. Did the Texians dig up the floors and build ditches below ground level from which they were able to fire into the plaza? What I recall of the battle descriptions indicates that, whatever their purpose, they backfired on the Texians once the Mexican blew their way into the building, when the defenders found themselves trapped in those ditches, and largely immobilized, making easy targets for Mexican bayonets. How far off am I on this? As I say, it's a feature of the defenses I've never clearly understood. Yes, that's one feature found in several accounts, and each one gives us a slightly different slant on their purpose: According to Sanchez-Navarro, they were "ditches made [by the colonists] inside the houses in order to protect themselves from injury by the grenades and artillery shot," and he shows them on his plans. De la Pena confirmed this when he wrote, "They had bolted and reinforced the doors, but in order to form trenches they had excavated some places inside that were now a hindrance to them." Reuben M. Potter, from accounts he had gathered on his own beginning in 1836, described these interior defenses: "most of those doors [of the soldiers' quarters] had within a semicircular parapet for the use of marksmen, composed of a double curtain of hides, upheld by stakes and filled in with rammed earth."
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 11, 2012 15:59:43 GMT -5
So the ditches may have resulted from digging up enough dirt to fill the "double curtain" of staked hides. The defenders could fire from behind such a parapet, but at whom? If the doors were bolted & reinforced, had they punched some kind of openings/loopholes in the walls of the Long Barrack through which to fire?
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Post by garyzaboly on Feb 11, 2012 16:10:22 GMT -5
So the ditches may have resulted from digging up enough dirt to fill the "double curtain" of staked hides. The defenders could fire from behind such a parapet, but at whom? If the doors were bolted & reinforced, had they punched some kind of openings/loopholes in the walls of the Long Barrack through which to fire? Somewhere I have a fourth notation stating that these parapets were built behind the windows as well. Loopholes had to figure into this kind of defense, unless the windows themselves were opened.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 11, 2012 16:24:13 GMT -5
Long a bit of a mystery to me and remains unclear, but this is probably as close as we'll get. Ironic, in that there may have been more tough fighting in that building than anywhere else in the fort; I think quite a few defenders died there and it was a major spot in the battle. Adina de Zavala also thought so, which is why she fought so hard to preserve the place.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Feb 11, 2012 17:44:25 GMT -5
In trying to understand the defenses in the Long Barrack, I have concluded that there were two different forms of protection in these rooms and each is being described by different witnesses. Thus, my scenario would be that they are both right. That some rooms had semicircular breastworks of hides inside OPEN doorways. This provided one big loophole that allowed firing in quite a panorama pattern, depending on where the rifleman was standing behind the breastwork. Fellas on the right end shooting left out the door and vise versa -- therefore a veritable fan of fire coming from the door and covering a lot of the area in front. Contrarily, the rooms that had barrable doors were simply provided with trenches on the inside for bivuac and protection from exploding shells ("200" or them) when the doors were open -- and somewhat of a last-ditch ( ;D) protection when the doors were blown in. With the confusion of battle, I am sure that different details caught the memory of various eye-witnesses that morning. Whatever each soldado had to deal with directly, that is what he remembered. We expect everybody who was there to remember everything about the fort, when I'm sure they had far more pressing things to think about.
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Post by Jim Boylston on Feb 11, 2012 19:46:59 GMT -5
The most reasonable explanation to me is that the entrenchments primarily provided fill dirt for the hides, then were repurposed, maybe for sleeping and cover. As the Mexican report says, though, that would not have been a good place to be when the room was stormed.
Jim
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Post by Rich Curilla on Feb 11, 2012 22:43:16 GMT -5
As the Mexican report says, though, that would not have been a good place to be when the room was stormed. Jim I remember having that exact feeling when I went out to the Dripping Springs set before filming began, and Michael Corenblith walked me through the plan for the long barrack backwards camera move as the Mexicans were bursting in. Funny how you can be aware of something (the trenches in the L.B.) most of your life but never really "feel" the problem until you stand there looking at them.
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Post by davidpenrod on Feb 12, 2012 0:26:56 GMT -5
Although I disagree with Gary's perspective on the whole of SN's sketch, particularly the location from which SN drew it, I think his analysis of the church facade's parapet is spot on. The familiar parapet line as depicted by Fulton, Falconer, Bolleart, Maverick, Eastman, etc., is the result of Andrade's picks and crowbars after San Jacinto. During the siege, however, the parapet line was basically flat. This is a classic case I think of the evidence staring us in the face and not seeing it. That is until Gary "saw" it. When I read his analysis in the other thread it hit me like a thunderbolt.
I dont know if any of you folks have ever watched masons at work, but when you build a stone or brick structure, you dont raise one wall at a time. You build all the walls simultaneously, laying down one course of stone or brick at a time - except for the corners which are kept 3 to 5 courses higher in brick and 1 or 2 in stone than the span of the wall in between.
That's what would have happened in the case of the Alamo church, the masons would have kept the height of the baptistry's south wall parapet in line with its western wall (the facade side). There would have been no "dip" or "saddle" in the parapet line between the southwest corner of the church and the right-side, upper level niche.
The corner joining the two may have been slightly higher, but basically the southwest corner of the church would have been flat.
Using this rationale, it appears that Andrade's men may also have knocked down the parapet of the baptistry's eastern wall and a short portion of the parapet of the nave's south side as well - between the baptistry and the first buttress.
Although the consensus view today is that the confessional's parapet was also scooped liked the baptistry, together forming a pair of horns, one each on either side of the church face, I dont think there ever was a horn on the north side or that Andrade knocked it down. Falconer et. al. depict this side of the facade as basically flat and at the same height as its north side.
I may be wrong about this, and Gary can correct me, but I dont think the parapet of the confessional was fortified to the same extent as the baptistry - if at all. The field of fire available to riflemen stationed there was limited to the interior of the fort - basically the southside of the plaza. You couldnt engage enemy troops outside the perimeter.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Feb 12, 2012 10:38:05 GMT -5
Let's take another look at the 1837 sketch by George W. Fulton, the earliest post-battle image we have. The top of the church looks more "even," or less damaged than in later images by Eastman, et al., which were done a decade or so after the battle. If we give Fulton the same leeway that we are giving S-N, we may conclude that increasing amounts of destruction of the church took place as time passed after the battle. First, no one seems to have treated the Alamo as anything special in that period. No efforts were made to preserve it or even note the fact the battle had taken place there. Within a relatively short time, it was taken over, and made over, by the U.S. army. Later it became a grocery store and was used for other commercial enterprises. In short, no one seemed very concerned with the Alamo or its preservation. It is entirely probable that there was gradual destruction, after Andrade did whatever he did, by vandals, by locals who simply wanted stone from the Alamo to build their own structures (which is what happened to the Colosseum in Rome), hence the loose stones on the ground in front of the Alamo in the 1840s drawings. Why would they still be lying around a decade after Andrade's dismantling? Or maybe even sold as souvenirs to tourists. There are lots of ways an ignored building deteriorates.
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Post by Herb on Feb 12, 2012 12:16:15 GMT -5
Funny, Allen, I was looking at my copy of this drawing, this morning thinking the exact same thing!
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