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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 16:10:12 GMT -5
Yes -- you could argue that the seige lasted as long as it did only because Santa Anna's larger guns were travelling slow -- had they arrived when the main army did, the seige would have been over in a day or two ... although you could also argue that Santa Anna could have taken the place any time he wanted to give the order, with troops alone (effectively) as he did.
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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 14:01:39 GMT -5
Funny that with the information from those who had fortified and defended the Alamo in October-December, '35, the Mexican Army didn't focus a couple six or nine pounders on the sections of adobe wall along the west side and just punch them down. The walls were about 3.5 or 4 feet thick, but still not particularly well braced, and should have come down without much resistance. Wonder why this wasn't done? Along with knocking down the southwestern stone house, cutting down the big pecan, and all that.
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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 13:56:34 GMT -5
Wolf: Yes, I had suspected that with the arrival of much of the main army, the cavalry situtation might put the Texans in a bad spot, guerilla-wise. OK, I'll have to change that discussion.
So it appears that we should say: If the Texans were going to try to hold Bexar, they had no real choice but to go into the Alamo -- but with the numbers they had, they had no hope of holding the place? Rick Range et al. seems fairly convinced that a better defense could have held the place, with no additional numbers -- what do we think of their argument?
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Post by Jake on Jan 15, 2008 11:35:27 GMT -5
So a shortage of horses forced them to go to a static defense, with the hope that Travis would be able to coerce military support? Travis and his predecessors pushed the Texas government into ordering a defense of Bexar without ordering sufficient manpower to do the job?
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Post by Jake on Jan 12, 2008 14:53:43 GMT -5
We've touched on the question of why the defenses were designed the way they were, without going anywhere with it. I thought I'd pick up on that idea in this thread.
Briefly, the Mexican engineers, I suggest, designed the defenses with the assumption that they were to protect against a small force of infantry irregulars, with long-range rifles and some small cannon. Their primary offensive capabilities were cannon and cavalry. Therefore, you would expect the defenses to emphasize cannon emplacements and cavalry sortie points. However, my estimates of the length of time and manpower they had suggests that the Mexican army did not finish some of the emplacements -- specifically, I figure the north wall was incomplete, not only in the embankment of earth along its outside and firing step construction on the inside, but also in the gun positions, which I suspect were intended to be barbette, but didn't get high enough, and were made into embrasured positions by cutting through the still-too-high walls.
I also suggest that the Texans would have done better to abandon the Alamo with its defenses intact and pull back into the woods, where they could return to their successful guerilla tactics, rather than being trapped into a formal exchange of fire from fixed positions, a method of engagement that put them, inexperienced as they were in this sort of warfare, at a disadvantage greater than the unequal numbers alone would have made it. I think the only reason they stayed in the Alamo was because Travis was convinced he could force Houston to reinforce him, and if this happened, the Alamo became a viable defensive position.
Attempting to take control of the army away from his superior officer -- Mutiny, a courtmartial offense, don't you think?
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Post by Jake on Jan 6, 2008 0:58:44 GMT -5
Well, we're now having the same fight on several different threads. So Mark, you're telling me Labastida isn't showing a gun position? You're saying there were no cannon there? Or are you making the same assumption I am, that these were gun positions? Your book seems to indicate you are assuming this, just like me. Only you show stockades inside the parapets. I say no evidence for this. You're accusing me of defending a tenuous position. What tenuous position is this? No embrasures on Labastida, embrasures on your model. Where is it my tenuous speculation? You can't even just say that you put embrasures on because S-N shows them and you decided to trust him on this, because you show stockades and S-N doesn't. Where is it my tenuous speculation?
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 12:30:36 GMT -5
Mark: Christmas season and everyone is out of the office except me -- they all took two weeks and my wife had to be back by Jan. 2.
Yes, I know what you mean by "ring of truth," and I accept that as a basis for "informed speculation." Use it myself, all the time.
In fact, what I was trying to get from you on the barbette argument was a statement to the effect that, no, there was no direct evidence for a stockade wall along the inside of the parapets, but S-N showed embrasures [you said that part], but the look of the structure as you work it out in your mind and begin to see what the builders had in mind, begin to figure where they're going to go next, that happens when you've become completely immersed in a question like this, especially when you're building the model, actual physical replication of the 3-D space, that this is what they intended -- you begin to see the "design intent." I'll accept "apparent design intent" as a good reason to take a position on how a place looked and was used. I think what I wanted was to clearly define where the facts ended and the informed speculation began.
For me, looking at Labastida's depiction of the south gate defenses, I go for the simplest explanation that produces the pattern he drew. You, willing to include S-N's depiction of this area, go farther. So I mis-stated where our differences lie -- in reality, they lie in our differing willingness to accept the S-N images.
It's funny for me to be receiving lectures from someone on being willing to accept evidence from S-N when not many years ago Jack Jackson and I were defending him against charges of the whole thing being forged.
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 15:11:10 GMT -5
Mark, I have to thank you for so faithfully echoing my arguments, speaking for me while I was not part of this unruly mob, and making clear where we differ and you're talking about your ideas. I feel the urge, however, to add a caution to the one you quoted, about following the evidence.
In many places among these discussions you've said something about how I have a much stronger tendency to follow Labastida than you think is healthy. Let me expand on that: Labastida's schematic has been shown by archaeology to accurately portray the defenses of the Alamo at the time of the battle -- and it's the *only* plan that has managed this.
My approach to Alamo research is not one of a "fan" -- it's simply one of the most complicated and intriguing puzzles available to an architectural historian like myself (in spite of the fact that I was at the Alamo Theater in 1956, was it?, for the world premier of "Davy Crockett"). One thing I've noticed is that Alamo studies suffer (to put it mildly) from too free a use of speculation, not enough care with evidence. So my approach to Labastida is: "assume what he shows is correct, unless you have a sound, supportable reason to differ with him." He's all we've got as a dependable source, so why casually disagree with him? He's our only trustworthy guide to areas now destroyed. It's because he's so trustworthy where we can check on him that I'm so adamant about trusting him elsewhere, where we can't.
Even our disagreement about the tambour isn't about Labastida -- we both agree to start with what he shows. Where we go after that is up to us. As to gun platforms for the stockade gun or the two he shows on the west wall, without platforms ... as you know, I think of these positions as even more schematic than his other depictions, virtually symbolic rather than representative, and I'm ok with accepting low platforms at these locations, although not altogether happy about it.
You've remarked on my willingness to use "informed speculation." When we run out of evidence, we have to make a call based on the pattern we see up to that point. That's our job, that's what the others who don't have the time or opportunity to spend so many hours on this expect of us -- and that's where informed speculation comes in. But you never do that without holding up the "Speculation!" flag (like the "Joke!" flag my relatives want me to get -- dead-pan humor doesn't work all that well these days, Steven Wright notwithstanding) -- always indicate where you move from evidence to speculation. Otherwise we'll begin to forget the difference ourselves.
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