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Post by Jake on Jan 22, 2008 12:51:34 GMT -5
Wow, thank, Gregg. Like everyone else says, what a wonderful little piece of treasure -- why hasn't this been used by anyone?
So Sanchez got the actual troop arrangements wrong. We have his own statements indicating he was in the column under Cos, and he got the companies that were with him under Cos correct, so presumably he was mistaken about the others because he got wrong information about who was where -- it appears that he never saw the Santa Anna order. His journal entry for the 5th says "it is said that his Excellency [Santa Anna] favored the assault ... the assault has been decided upon," but makes no mention of Santa Anna's specific orders, other than "General Cos commands the first column, he has ordered me to be at the head..." He apparently had to reconstruct the other columns (erroneously) on his own.
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Post by Jake on Jan 18, 2008 14:11:41 GMT -5
The San Luis journal is in the Castaneda papers at the Center for Am Hist in Austin -- I spose someone might have made a copy of the Alamo stuff for the DRT...
My wife and I hope to spend a day or two in Austin at the CAH and the State Library, so I hope to be able to find the SLO journal while there. If I do get copies, and the DRT doesn't have them, I'll post them to everyone.
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Post by Jake on Jan 16, 2008 15:21:08 GMT -5
Tom and Stuart: here's the whole quote. You can see that the point he's referring to is the big cannon position at about the center of the north wall (although it had three embrasures, according to Labastida, and therefore had three cannon rather than two), so the line he's describing seems to run from that one to one of the others, either the northwest corner or his position marked on the northeast corner of the north wall that wasn't really there. But the point is this line runs at right angles to what I would think of as the line of attack, and along the wall itself.
G. Bateria de dos cañones llamada por los Mejicanos fortin de Terán, colocada sobre la muralla al alto de once pies de bara mejica: la muralla hera del grueso de dos pies, y reforzada p[o]r fuera con empalizada y emmedio tierra quedó con el espesór de cinco pies. Por el dicho punto y por la linea que corre acia el medio de la otra bateria asalto el S[eño]r Coronel Duque con su Batallon de Toluca...
G. Battery of two cannon, called the “Fortín de Terán” by the Mexicans, located against the wall with a height of 10.1 feet, using the length of the Mexican vara. The wall was 1.8 feet thick, and reinforced on the outside with a palisade, with earth between, with a total thickness of 4.6 feet. At the said point and on a line that ran toward the middle of the other battery [on the northwest corner] attacked Colonel Duque with his Battalion of Toluca...
So you see why I'm thinking it means the "line of defense," i.e., the wall. And yes, Stuart, if that was the interpretation, then "along" would work better in English -- it would be referring to the section of wall where Duque carried out his attack.
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Post by Jake on Jan 16, 2008 12:40:16 GMT -5
Keep in mind that what I'm talking about here is a change to the distribution of troops after Santa Anna issued his original order of March 5. I suggested in the AJ article where I discussed this that Filisola and DLP both simply described the assault using SA's order as though it was followed literally, while SN gave the actual final distribution.
Documentation that might contradict Sanchez's picture of things is Hansen p. 372, where Sesma mentions those who he was commending for their actions:
"The ones that had distinguished themselves are: Don Juan Morales, Colonel and the commander of the San Luis battalion; The Second Lieutenants of the cazadores (light infantry), from the Matamoros battalion, S. Alonso Gonzales and Don Jose Maria Souza, then to the accredited valor of this leader. And to the gallantry of the two cited officers they were able in a few moments to entirely reduced [sic] the enemy remaining at the fortification of the Alamo." This is not a very good translation, leaving us unsure of who is doing what, but it could be argued that this was saying that the cazadores of the Matamoros battalion were with Morales as Santa Anna's order said they were to be, rather than on the east side as SN said. However, since the document as translated does not say that in so many words, we're left unsure whether Sesma's document disproves SN's description or not.
The other possible disproof of SN's description is Hansen p. 442, where as Wolf says, Hansen just summarizes the San Luis Potosi journal: "The document goes on to list the various columns, the commanders, and the sides against which the assault was made -- basically the same type of information in the attack order of Santa Anna." Talk about ambiguous: "basically" lets us suspect some unknown amount of variation, and "the same type of information" means only that it was a list of who attacked where, without Hansen making any commitment to the idea that the exact same troops in the exact same columns was actually listed. Sure, you'd think that if there were significant differences in who went where, Hansen would probably point this out -- but with the weasling in the phrases, who knows? Clearly this document needs tracking down in the Castaneda papers and the Spanish text extracted.
Also (Bruce, note this), on Hansen p. 441 in the San Luis Potosi journal, under Feb. 25 is the remark that "During the night, construction was taken to protect the line that had been made at La Villita, at the orders of Colonel Morales." This sounds like a reference to the La Villita earthworks, and is another use of the word "line" to indicate defenses. It probably has some relationship to the defensive positions set up south of the Alamo on Feb 25 as described by Filisola, Hansen pp. 388-89.
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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 18:13:29 GMT -5
To help out here, following is the Spanish and my translation of the portions of the indexes of the two Sanchez maps that give his idea of who attacked where: The lettered designations are from the Ayudantia map of ca. 1836-1839, while the numbered designations are from the “Aguayo” Map of 1840. B. Puerta principal: la tomó el dia del asalto el Señor Coronel D[o]n Juan Morales, acompañado del de igual clase D[o]n José Miñon, con su Batallon el activo de S n Luis Potosí.
B. Main gateway. Colonel Juan Morales took it on the day of the assault, accompanied by José Miñón of the same rank, with the active battalion of San Luis Potosí.
1. Puerta principal fuí tomada en el dia del asalto por los Señores Coroneles D[o]n Juan Morales y D[o]n José Miñon con cerca de 300 hombres del Batallón activo de Sn Luis Potosi.
1. Main gate that was taken on the day of the assault by the Colonels Juan Morales and José Miñón with about 300 men of the Active Battalion of San Luis Potosí.
H. Por este punto, llamado fortin de condelle ... intento el asalto el Señor General D[o]n Martin Perfecto de Cos con la 1.ra columna de ataque compuesta de cazadores y fucileros de Aldama y de cien fucileros del activo de Sn Luis...
H. Through this point, called the “Fortín de Condelle,” ... General Martín Perfecto de Cos attempted to assault with the first column of attack, composed of the chasseurs and musketeers of the Aldama and one hundred musketeers of the active batallion of San Luis...
18. Bateria llamada de Condelles por este punto asalto el S[eño]r General Cos con 200 hombres de Aldama y 100 de Sn Luis...
18. Battery called “de Condelles;” at this point General Cos attacked with 200 men of the Aldama and 100 of San Luis...
F. Barracas para la tropa, y corral, para caballos, por el cual asaltó y entró con los Batallones Matamoros y Ximenez el Señor Coronel del 1.ro D[o]n Jose Maria Romero.
F. Barracks for the troops, and corral for the horses, through which attacked and entered, with the Matamoros and Ximénez battalions, Colonel José María Romero of the first [named].
25. Por los puntos señalados con estos numeros atacaron y entraron al fuerte los SS[eñores] Coroneles Duque y Romero mandados por el S[eñor] Co[ronel] Amador con cerca de 500 hombres de Zapadores y Toluca, Duque fué herido de metrallas antes de entrar.
25. At the points indicated by this number, the Colonels Duque and Romero, under the command of Colonel Amador, with about 500 men of the Zapadores and Toluca, attacked and entered the fort; Duque was wounded by grape-shot before entering.
G. ... Por el dicho punto y por la linea que corre acia el medio de la otra bateria asalto el S[eño]r Coronel Duque con su Batallon de Toluca, y por habersido herido continuo el Asalto el S[eñor] G[ene]ral Castrillon y entro al fuerte con Toluca y Zapadores.
G. ... At the said point and on the line that ran toward the middle of the other battery [on the northwest corner] attacked Colonel Duque with his Battalion of Toluca, and because he was wounded, General Castrillón continued the assault and entered the fort with the Toluca and Zapadores.
That statement under G about "la linea," that may actually be a military jargon phrase that would translate as "the wall" -- but I couldn't be sure, so I left it in its more or less literal form as "the line."
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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 16:06:11 GMT -5
Wolf: yeah, I thought I had a great thing when I worked out what Sanchez was saying, but then I began to find these little references in circumstances that I couldn't really dismiss that suggested that the original Santa Anna order was actually followed -- so I've come to believe that Sanchez got it wrong... but why did he get it wrong? What happened that caused him to think the distribution he describes was what was going on?
And thanks for that ref. to the Battalion journal -- I had missed that one.
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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 12:03:31 GMT -5
An unnoticed aspect of Sanchez-Navarro's information about the attack on March 6 is his listing of what forces attacked where, which affects what numbers we assign to the attack on a given point.
The Santa Anna order of March 5 listed the four columns of attack and the reserves. 1. General Martín Perfecto de Cos would command the first column, with General Juan V. Amador, of Santa Anna’s general staff located with the reserves at the northeastern battery as his second and the permanent Aldama battalion and three companies of the San Luis battalion as his troops. 2. The second column would be under the command of Colonel Francisco Duque, with General Manuel Fernández Castrillón as his second, also on the general staff with the reserves, and his troops the active battalion of Toluca and the other three companies of the San Luis battalion. 3. Column three would be commanded by Colonel José María Romero, seconded by Colonel Mariano Salas, and made up of the permanent battalions of Matamoros and Jiménez. 4. The fourth column would be lead by Colonel Juan Morales, seconded by Colonel José Miñón, and would consist of the cazador companies of the permanent battalions of Matamoros and Jiménez, and the active company of San Luis. The reserve would consist of the Zapadores battalion and the five grenadier companies from the other five battalions. 5. Nominally the reserves were under the command of General Santa Anna, but they would be assembled by Colonel Agustín Amat, who would “lead them also to wherever shall be indicated.”
Lindley argued that this order was subject to change, and had no necessary relationship to what happened on March 6. In fact he was quick to toss it out when it got in the way of a new theory he proposed based on his misreading of Sesma’s report: “... the commanders of the first, second and fourth columns were changed sometime after the March 5 order was written...” Although I think Lindley’s suggested changes are mistaken, Sanchez-Navarro did list things differently:
1. Sánchez says that the first column under Cos consisted of 200 cazadores and musketeers of the Aldama battalion and 100 musketeers of the San Luis. 2. Duque commanded the second column (in which Peña served as his aide), made up of the Toluca battalion. Differing from the Santa Anna order of March 5, the other companies of the San Lucas Battalion were not in the second column. Sánchez adds that Duque was wounded near the northeast corner, and General Castrillón and the Zapadores from the reserve joined the Toluca battalion and continued the effort to climb the wall; at this point there were about 500 men in the column, counting the Zapadores. 3. General Romero’s third column consisted of the Matamoros and Jiménez battalions, as the Santa Anna order said. 4. The fourth column, under Morales, attacked the south wall. Sánchez says that Morales’s men were the remaining 300 men of the active battalion of San Luis (who originally were to have been on the north wall with Duque) rather than the originally-planned cazadores of the Matamoros, Jiménez, and San Luis battalions. This means that the cazadores of the Matamoros and Jiménez battalions presumably remained with their battalions and attacked the east side in the third column. 5. The reserves, said Sánchez, were in the northeastern battery, and consisted of the Zapadores and grenadiers of the other battalions, just as Santa Anna’s order of March 5 says.
The problem with Sanchez's statements about who actually went where is that I think it's Sesma who mentions some components of companies at the southwest corner that matches the Santa Anna order and does not match the Sanchez list. I'll find that (I think it's in Hansen) if someone else doesn't first, and give you the statement tonight.
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Post by Jake on Jan 9, 2008 16:16:54 GMT -5
Woops -- I checked my calculations in one of my files, and find that I figured this north wall to be about 4.25 feet high, based on my calculations of how much dirt they had to work with.
It works out like this: wall about 4.25 feet high, no firing step, and about a 6-foot wide strip south of the wall between it and the ditch. The ditch was about 3.5 feet deep at its deepest point, and served as the area where the troops could step back down and be below the fire of the enemy, with the floor of the trench 7.75 feet below the top of the wall.
The circular trench we found outside the corner itself supplied enough earth to make the low gun platform inside the corner and an earthen embankment outside the corner between the wall and the circular trench.
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Post by Jake on Jan 9, 2008 12:58:19 GMT -5
That northern courtyard defensive position was not a strong one, as Labastida showed it, at least -- one cannon (en barbette again) and the rest shoulder arms; along the north side a very low wall, just under five feet; and really dependent on a bunch of people with loaded weapons being there and awake.
A tempting target for assault if you have the men to do it -- 4 3/4 feet is low enough you can go right over if you're motivated, and it had no trench on the outside, just apparently an earthen rampart packed against the outside of the wall, so you could approach at a full run.
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Post by Jake on Jan 8, 2008 10:57:41 GMT -5
I've been planning on being there, but now I find that the Texas State Historical conference is in Corpus Christi, not Austin as I thought, and I'm sort of supposed to give a paper.
Right now, a) I don't know if I'm giving a paper yet -- still waiting for final approval or something; b) if I give it, I don't know when or on what day; c) it takes a while to get from CC to the Alamo City. So if at all possible, I'll be there for some part of the festivities, and I gotta get a copy of Mark's book, with an incriminating signature on it, so my life is as complicated as always.
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 13:10:56 GMT -5
Concerning Lee's work -- Mentioned somewhere in all the labyrinth of topics here is that he showed windows in the east end wall of the Low Barracks. But I haven't seen mentioned that he shows an entire second floor to the building. Look closely at the north face as he has it drawn, and you see two levels of rows of windows, one at ground floor level and one at second floor level. I have to suppose these are an error -- the building was never that tall.
As to the arched opening in the south transept of the church ... so far as I can determine, the existence of that can't be proved earlier than the first drawing that shows it, sometime in the 1840s or so. No reference to such an opening in any of the colonial documents, and I'll bet there's no clearly identifyable reference to it in the Battle documents. So, far as we can know, it could have been created in the period of 1836-early 1840s.
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Post by Jake on Jan 8, 2008 11:38:09 GMT -5
Good promo, Mark -- make 'em tune in!
Now all you need is a few sponsors and we'll have a show.
Glen, I was just figuring we needed to get a wider worldview than just Labastida. In fact, there's a curious exercise one can do, where you take Jameson's letter, the Labastida map, and the SN map, and work out (in Jameson's case, approximate) where the various activity spots are they indicate in their indices, and see if anything makes sense, shows continuity, change, whatever. I wrote up something on this, somewhere ... I'll dig around and find it.
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Post by Jake on Jan 6, 2008 0:41:43 GMT -5
Glenn (from God -- catchy title; or perhaps it should be "not-God"?): I see both here and in the Labastida map thread your interest in the S-N maps and information, and I know Mark has a strong interest in his depictions. We can shift over to discussing/arguing about S-N if you would be interested - lots of stuff to go over there, including some curious things that make me wonder where he got some of his ideas. I think I've recovered from being ripped apart by Lindley when I insisted on thinking there was some truth to S-N, his maps and his writing -- in spite of Mark's accusations that I think so little of him. I think I'll stick in a smiley -- be contemporary!
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 15:16:59 GMT -5
Well, I was going to avoid the whole thing, but I have to say that I don't believe in the gun position covering the gate. Why? Gee, because it isn't on the Labastida map, that's why (big surprise that I would use that, huh?). However, I'd buy it as the place where the tambour guns were pulled back to when they abandoned that position and slammed the gate.
And now you hear me muttering the infantryman's prayer of thanks for incoming artillery fire. "For what we are about to receive, oh Lord ..."
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 11:45:15 GMT -5
My ;father always said the best way to handle a brawl in a bar is to yell, "Why don't you and him fight!."
Ok, so the tambour has been settled for now with two alternative favorite structures. But keep in mind what Stuart was more or less saying: the strength of the defenses we assume or interpret for the tambour has a strong effect on how we see the broad flow of the fight for the whole south end. I argue the tambour was barbette, but note the southwest corner is also a barbette, equally exposed to incoming fire, although raised somewhat more -- actually, that might well expose the crew even more. And presumably the stone house outside the southwest corner (apparently left standing because the Mexican Army never got around to knocking it down, one of the various things they left unfinished. Mark, you estimated somewhere in all these various topics that they actually finished only about 70% of the fortification work? I think that agrees with my reconstruction of the actual man-days and volumetrics of the process) both blocked the field of fire of the cannon on this corner, whatever it was, as well as fire from the tambour. So plenty of cover using both the house and ditch.
If the tambour was weak, with only light guns (I think of that as 9 pounds or less) in barbette, then a strike at the tambour could result in the guns being pulled back through the gate, allowing the tambour to be taken and then requiring that the assault here shift to the corner itself. If the tambour is stronger, with stockade walls and embrasures, then the attack, if not immediately successful through stealth, would be pushed off west in the same way the shifting around happened at the north end.
Each of these scenarios suggests parameters for the nature of the defense and attack, that we could block out in general terms. This is the best sort of informed speculation, given, as Mark says, the real thinness of documentation.
What was it about the attack that generated two narratives for the north side, from DLP and Sanchez, but nothing from the south? Some sort of check-point? "Can't write? South wall."
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