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Post by Jake on Feb 14, 2012 20:43:07 GMT -5
But talking about the S-N sketch from the Veramendi roof, and the problems associated with that, here's another problematic view of the Alamo. Look at the Bollaert sketch, made from the roof of the Lockmar boarding house. It was thought for a while that this was the same place as the Veramendi house, but the location of the Lockmar boarding house was on the west side of Soledad at its corner with Calle Romana, some 1100 feet north of the Veramendi building. A copy of the Bollaert drawing is in Nelson -- which page depends on the edition.
From the Lockmar location, Bollaert shouldn't have been able to see the front of the church, and yet he shows it as though he's at the Veramendi location, but the alignments of the other buildings seem to suit a more northern location better. So is it simply impossible to get a sketch of the Alamo to look right from across the river?
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What If
Feb 9, 2012 20:21:49 GMT -5
Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 20:21:49 GMT -5
I stumbled over this thread while looking for something else, but I want to stick in a what-if:
What if the defenders of the Alamo had learned from the first battle there in December, '35, so that when the Mexican Army showed up, they pulled out, let the Mexicans settle in, and began the same sniper battle again that had worked so well before? I think their mistake was to lock themselves into a fixed, fortress-warfare battle when they were a guerilla force.
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 20:12:44 GMT -5
Hey, Kevin. I was wondering if you knew about that little thing, but never thought to actually bring it up.
I've never seen any reproduction of the "plan." In fact, I may be the only one who's noticed that, or recognized it for what it is. I mentioned its existence in my AJ article, "Viva la Patria es nuestro el Alamo," where I said "The Ayudantia map on the inside cover of the second volume of the ledgers was drawn after March 6, 1836, and before November 12, 1839, when Sanchez gave up on a partly-completed second drawing, of Fort Defiance at Goliad, that was to be on the inside back cover; only the pencil layout lines and the inked-in San Antonio River were drawn, after which the end of a letter dated November 12, 1939 was written across the lines." I have it on the microfilm roll of the S-N journal, but I'm not sure I can get a reproduction off of that. I'll try that with my scanner, see what I get, sometime here.
Thing is, I don't think S-N went to La Bahia, so what was he using as the basis for the plan? And I suppose he was drawing it in because it was another victory for
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 18:31:49 GMT -5
Gary says: “Jake is insistent in pointing out that Sanchez-Navarro MUST be showing us that ruined skyline of fame, rather than a rooftop lined in places, if not in its entirety, with improvised breastworks. I wish I was as sure as he is.”
“To maintain that this represents the actual condition of the wall during the battle is asking to believe a bit too much.”
Actually, if you look through the posts on the "Altar" thread, you'll find that I don't insist any such thing. In fact, I've never said anything in support of the idea that the ragged front on the church in our earliest post battle drawings was the front at the time of the battle. The reason I haven't said any of this is because that isn't what I think.
I briefly discussed the point that in the condition the building was when work stopped, the rectangular notches at the top of the fine-carved section of the facade were open and may have looked like crenelations from a distance, but that was it, all I've said about the appearance of the building.
I think the walls of the building were flat on top, level, waiting for the next course that never came, and that the front was flat and level with the top of the fine-carved section. I think that Gary is correct, and the appearance of the building as of the first records after the battle, in the 1840s, show the results of battle and post-battle damage to it.
And I don't have the slightest problem with the idea that the Mexican or Texan defenders built defensive breastworks or crenelations of stone, adobe brick, sandbags, or whatever along parts of the top. I just don't think S-N shows such defensive works on top of the church on his drawing. Berlandier does, clearly, but that's his interpretation of what S-N drew, not what S-N drew.
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 17:57:35 GMT -5
Gary says: “Who ever said that the Sanchez-Navarro sketch was redrawn from memory? (I'd like to see documentation of that). When it was drawn onto the map it was copied from the sketch S-N made from town. Have never seen proof that the artist relied only on his memory to redraw it more carefully for the map. The map- plan may have been drawn from memory, to some degree. But unlike LaBastida (as far as we know), Sanchez-Navarro took a very active leadership role in the assault, and so his memory on a number of key points was good, and jibes with the other contemporary evidence we have.”
And his point is correct, we have no proof that the vista on the Aguayo map is anything other than a direct copy of the original. And the plan associated with it is, as Craig makes clear in his article, intended to be a plan of the same features shown on the elevation view of the vista, pretty much point for point.
But we know two things from that set of statements. The plan is a schematic, not an actual plat, if you will, of the Alamo. It does not replicate the plan of the fortress, its gun positions and salients, in anything other than a very general way, certainly far less accurately than does the Labastida plan. Sure, the Labastida plan has its problems, but mostly they are a failure to understand, or perhaps to render well, the long barracks/corrals area on the east side, and this is the result of compressing the whole thing too much, as though Labastida failed to put in two courtyards instead of one.
But with the remarks I made in earlier posts in mind, about the quality of draftsman S-N was, I think we can say his plan is not poor because he didn't have the skill to draw it -- far from it. Looking at the original in the Ayudantia volume at the CAH is very instructive - he has an excellent command of line and labeling, of scaling, layout, and inking. He began the pencil lines to lay out a plan of La Bahia inside the other cover of this volume, but didn't get beyond inking the river, for some reason, so you can see his method there, and probably, if they let you look closer, probably pencil guidelines and such for the layout of the Alamo plan.
To me the conclusion is inescapable. S-N drew an excellently drawn but very inaccurate plan of the layout of the Alamo and its defenses because he didn't have a better plan to work from. Perhaps he had a sketch plan, but it was pretty inaccurate, if so. His memory of the plan wasn't good enough to allow him to correct whatever plan he may have had, so what he produced was not a reasonable approximation of the actual plan of the Alamo.
I'd say he had some notes as to what was where, defenses-wise, and what happened in the assault. I consider his descriptions and notes to be excellent, and I agree with Gary:
“Sanchez-Navarro is the single richest contemporary source we have for minutely detailed documentation on the fortifications of the Alamo, in both written and visual terms, and how they affected the course of the battle. With his two plans (flawed as they are) and their extensive keys, along with his sketch (poorly drawn though it be), not to mention his March letter describing the battle, his diary entries, and his carefully drafted movements of Cos's column that March 6 morning, we are left with a feast of facts that are there to cull, if we only choose to carefully 'see' and understand them."
In very few places would I raise a question about what S-N says about the assault. But the plan is just the best he can remember -- presumably if he could remember better, the plan would be better. And the second plan, drawn later, is changed even from that, but not for the better, or the more accurate. So if the vista fits the plan, and the plan is from memory, what should we conclude?
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 17:15:48 GMT -5
Allen Wiener: “Regarding the 1840 S-N sketch, what was his purpose in drawing it on the map, as well as his equally familiar Alamo plat?”
Allan, Jack offered the following in the SWHQ article: “Although the Vista serves as a space filler, like the illustration of the capture of Zapata on the early ‘Arista’ map [the one I mentioned above that S-N also drew], no doubt he placed it there as a tribute to Mexico’s most redeeming and gratifying victory in the recent Texas war.” Not to mention being able to show his pride in his own participation in such an event, at this time of the family acquisition of another important piece of property.
Allen Wiener: “What is the background on the Berlandier copy, which, I believe, dates from the same period? The S-N (the copy in Nelson's book) lacks the kind of detail on the top of the church's west wall that we do see in the Berlandier. On the latter sketch, the features do look like blocks, which could represent sandbags, stones, etc. Similar features on the southwest corner also seem more clear on both sketches (where the small enclosure with the flag was constructed).”
Again, I’ll turn to the SWHQ article Jack and I wrote. This was largely my writing, since I had already done a lot of the tracing of the origins of the S-N maps and drawings. Actually, the narrative in the article is too long to put here, so I’ll say that the Berlandier copy was found in his papers. After his death in 1851, the papers were sold off, several times. John C. Ewers, in the Indians of Texas in 1830 by Jean Louis Berlandier (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969), traces how the Berlandier collection arrived at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. The original Labastida map was also in this collection, but ended up at the CAH in Austin. Berlandier apparently traced the Vista from the original Aguayo map, and that’s how it arrived in his collection. He added a note saying it was drawn from the roof of the Veramendi building by José Juan Sanchez Estrada. Also included in the Berlandier collection, and now at Yale, was a tracing of the accompanying plan of the Alamo, beside the Vista on the Aguayo map. Both were made presumably by Berlandier himself, between 1840 when the Aguayo map was drawn and 1851 when Berlandier died. He was an avid collector of information on this contentious frontier between the US and Mexico, and his collection contains a huge amount of stuff.
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 16:44:03 GMT -5
To a question over in "Altar," I said:
“I guess it was Jack and I that said he "redrew it from memory," although what we were saying was that we suspected it was a rough, quick sketch that didn't show much, and he cleaned it up and added to it from memory. Certainly it's reasonable to think that the version we see on the 1840 map is some level of redraft and improvement, since it isn't the original, and shows so many things that don't seem to have been there, and shows so many things that were there so badly.”
But no, that Jack and I originated it isn't true. I checked our discussion, and we (on p. 212 and n. 15 in the SWHQ article) cited Craig Covner's article in the Alamo Journal, “Before 1850: A New Look at the Alamo Through Art and Imagery,” part 1, 70(March, 1990):3-10. “We know that even the ‘index’ plan [on the inside cover of the Ayudantia volume] was probably produced more than two months after the battle of the Alamo, and that the ‘finished’ plan and elevation [on the Aguayo map] are a ‘set’; it’s not unreasonable therefore, to suggest that the elevation has a similar post-San Jacinto origin. The point is that when we re-examine Sanchez-Navarro’s pictures, it must be kept in mind that this is how he remembers the Alamo – we are likely seeing a reconstruction based on notes and sketches at best.” (p. 8)
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 15:29:40 GMT -5
Two quotes from the "Altar" thread:
Jim Boylston: “I don't completely dismiss SN, but he's such a poor draftsman I 'm not sure his vista is reliable other than in a general context.”
Gary Zaboly: “that Sanchez-Navarro was no fine artist need not be driven home again; but he's all we got.”
A neat point-counterpoint. Thing is, he was a good draftsman, in the literal sense. I took "mechanical drawing" in junior high, and we were taught the use of the ancient instruments, pen, compass, straight-edge, all those little bits in the mechanical drawing sets you see in museums, pretty much the same back into the 1600s if not earlier. I've still got one at home. I imagine he took a similar course at some point in school, or learned later.
After I was looking through the S-N article in SWHQ, I came back and added this: Jack found another map, other than the Aguayo map, that S-N had drawn, "what was probably the most significant map of the states bordering the Republic of Texas along the Rio Grande." Jack, who knew maps, describes it with great favor. And S-N drew all of the "Aguayo" map, including redrafting the "Estado" section from an earlier map by another map-maker. And when he's writing for the record, in his Ayudantia volumes, his handwriting is extremely good -- he probably was the guy the general would call in to write the final drafts of letters. I think we can say he was a good draftsman.
But he clearly wasn't an artist in Gary's sense of the word. And he is all we got for a view of the place pre-battle. So we need to get what we can from him.
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 15:00:57 GMT -5
Herb asks: "I know S-N was not at San Jacinto, so my long winded question is, where did S-N serve for the rest of the Texas Revolution?"
Actually, S-N's story is a fabulous one -- you don't wonder that Lindley decided the whole thing had to be a forgery, because it is really derring-do. We need a translation of the entire two-volume ledger (yes, you whiners, even the accounting stuff), and I keep thinking that would be a great project for my old age, whenever that starts. Retiring sure ain't it.
Anyway, he was one of the sons of the Sanchez family that owned pretty much all of Coahuila, and in 1840 the family made a relatively small addition to the family holdings, the hacienda of the Marques de Aguayo. But that's an answer to a later question.
I don't know what he was doing during the rest of the Texas campaign after the fall of the Alamo -- it's in his journal, but at the moment I'm working on other stuff so I can't stop to find it. I sort of feel like I remember he stayed with some of the garrison units in San Antonio, but that's pretty likely to be untrue.
Jose Juan retreated from Texas with the army after San Jacinto, and later was assigned to duty on the new northern frontier. "He ... participated in the campaign against Federalist uprisings along the Rio Grande," says Jack, and gained a reputation as an Indian fighter. Promoted to Lt. Col. in December, 1836, full col. in 1840 for his service in the Federalist campaign, attached to Gen. Mariano Arista's command. By mid-1843 he was a brigadier gen. and interim gov. of Coahuila. He fought against the US again during the Mexican war, but I don't know in what campaigns, and in 1848 became the commandant general of Coahuila, a rank and post he held until his death on June 2, 1849. More detail on this brief outline is available in the S-N article in SWHQ that Jack and I wrote, mostly contributed by Jack based on notes he made from S-N's military records that he found in the Instituto Estatal de Documentation, now in Ramos Arizpe near Saltillo.
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Post by Jake on Feb 9, 2012 14:41:27 GMT -5
Oh, man ... HH, I didn't know we had to study for this.
Can I take the position that I don't care what I said before about S-N, so I call "do-overs"?
Well, I guess not, since that wouldn't be true.
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Post by Jake on Feb 8, 2012 18:49:02 GMT -5
I don't recall, Herb -- I think Jack covered that briefly in the article on S-N we did for SWHQ, and I have a copy here, but didn't Jim just post a link to that somewhere?
Funny I hadn't read your by-line, or whatever you call it, before, at the bottom of your postings ... wish I'd said that. Anyway, I'll poke around in what I have and see what I come up with.
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Post by Jake on Feb 8, 2012 17:57:52 GMT -5
Allen, that looks like a good book -- I think I'll track it down and see what else it says. I love that kind of almost first-person description. Mahan, in describing a palisaded defense, says that generally they were tall sharpened stakes about 10.5 feet long, set into the ground about three feet, and about 3 inches apart, usually at the bottom of the defensive ditch. He doesn't mention the thing about setting them apart enough that troops would be able to squeeze between them, but we're talking about 150 years of difference in the methods of warfare, although it wouldn't be a major change. The Ottoman "palanka" sounds very much like the progenitor of the "tambour," although blockhouse defenses on wall tops probably have a different name.
In fact, as you say, not much changed over the 150 years between the two events. My trusty copy of Vauban on the arts of field fortification is here somewhere, and there's no big differences between him and Mahan or Wheeler, and those as a result of improvements in musketry and cannon.
So I want to do one more sketch cross-section of the stockade wall, showing a kind of unified reconstruction of what seemed to be going on, and then I want to start a new thread on the defenses in the cattle pen, the north courtyard of the convento.
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Post by Jake on Feb 5, 2012 18:44:20 GMT -5
David -- actually, that's a massive amount of stuff to read through quickly, so I'll give you the short version. I think I was the one who started the idea that there was a first church up at the front beside the south end of the convento (although George Nelson might argue with me on that -- maybe we both came up with it independently), and it did explain a lot. But then I decided that it was skewed somehow, I don't know, too neat or something, and realized I could explain all the details in the reports and inventories by assuming that it was all the same church, the temporary one in the granary, up until they started using the new one in the 1740s, and then it fell in, and then they rebuilt it on the same foundation -- which explains things about the present church that otherwise remain odd. I couldn't find anything to disprove this idea, and since it was the simplest, least assumptions needed sort of explanation, I went over to it.
It doesn't explain the stuff on the wall. Craig Covner insists that you can see those patterns in one of the photos as well, but it always looked to me like splotches and imagination (Rorschach architectural analysis), although going to the original negative and doing some computer enhancement might answer that one way or the other -- but I'll stay with the granary>present church foundation>rebuild on present foundation theory until more evidence or a better idea comes along.
I'm going to go back and read through your points in favor of a first church up front, and see what I think about them. I'll be back at some point.
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Post by Jake on Feb 5, 2012 17:12:32 GMT -5
There's a very long debate about the location of the first church in an old thread: alamostudies.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=alamohistory&action=display&thread=91If the general consensus is that Mark Lemon and Craig were right, then I'm shocked and horrified at the waste of all that verbiage I posted to prove them wrong. (me being shocked and horrified) And as to "apse," although the more formal meaning is "a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome," in church architecture in general, the word means "a semi-circular or polygonal termination of the main building at the liturgical east end (where the altar is), regardless of the shape of the roof ..." So that's the apse back there. And you're right, both Fulton and Bollaert show a window, well, a squarish outline, back there, and those are both are pretty much our earliest ... but nobody else shows an opening there, so ... what the hey? If there had been a window there, we'd be able to see the filled outline on the building, just like that arched opening in the south transept is still there, so someone should look.
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Post by Jake on Feb 4, 2012 17:04:45 GMT -5
While you two sort that out, let me ask: doesn't it seem strange that there was so little damage from cannon fire going either direction? All those big guns violating any reasonable safety precautions (OSHA would have a fit), and we hear virtually nothing about shot or shell destroying this or that -- well, there was the dismounting of the sw corner gun, I guess. When was that?
Anyway, in the most recent Alamo movie, one of the most memorable scenes was the night shot with shell coming in and exploding over the fortress, lighting up everything -- and I thought, we don't hear of that sort of thing doing anything ... why not? Nobody lived to tell the story? Mexican officers didn't notice, or didn't know?
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