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Post by jrboddie on Jul 22, 2010 19:05:31 GMT -5
The New York Herald's translation of Almonte's journal includes the cryptic sentence "I was robbed by my soldiers" in concluding the entry for the day of the battle. What could this mean? A transcription/translation error? Or did someone take the property (valued at $3000) that he was entrusted with when occupying Bexar?
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jul 22, 2010 22:02:35 GMT -5
I've often wondered that myself. As I recall, Santa Anna had given his soldier the right to plunder anything they found in the Alamo as an incentive. Perhaps some soldiers who were in the camp during the attack took the opportunity to pilfer some of Almonte's belongings during his absence. As aide-de-camp to Santa Anna, he would have been with him during the assault and the aftermath. Just a guess.
Allen
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Post by garyzaboly on Jul 24, 2010 16:12:13 GMT -5
The New York Herald's translation of Almonte's journal includes the cryptic sentence "I was robbed by my soldiers" in concluding the entry for the day of the battle. What could this mean? A transcription/translation error? Or did someone take the property (valued at $3000) that he was entrusted with when occupying Bexar? Consider that a good number of Santa Anna's troops were convicts---thieves, perhaps even murderers, etc.--- who had been promised their freedom if they joined the campaign. There's the old saying, a tiger never changes its stripes. The available accounts agree that the post-battle looting was something of a frenzy.
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Post by garyzaboly on Jul 24, 2010 16:14:26 GMT -5
I would assume that Almonte is telling us that he was PERSONALLY robbed during the post-battle madness. A lifted purse of money---perhaps one of his weapons (sword?). Sounds like a very close encounter.
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Post by Herb on Jul 25, 2010 2:03:14 GMT -5
I would assume that Almonte is telling us that he was PERSONALLY robbed during the post-battle madness. A lifted purse of money---perhaps one of his weapons (sword?). Sounds like a very close encounter. You know that's what I've always assumed, but Allen's point is one I never thought about. I think it's a rather safe assumption, that the grenadier battalion was serving as the HQs guard/ security force. With them serving as the reserve for the assualt - who was securing the HQ's baggage? Other units left their untrained men in their respective camps and they would have been responsible for securing their units baggage, but there would have been no untrained grenadiers. Could some bold theif have simply pilfered some of the staff officers baggage during the battle?
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Post by garyzaboly on Jul 25, 2010 5:19:50 GMT -5
Santa Anna and most of his commanders were lodged in town; the generalissimo even kept closely guarded in a room the stores the Texians had left behind, and sold them to the army at inflated prices (which a number of his officers later complained about).
If Almonte's baggage had been pilfered in town, how would he have known his soldiers did it? Why not also accuse the very poor citizens of Bexar? Because there is no other report of such behind-the-scenes thievery, I would still lean towards the "personal," in-the-field robbery, during the teeth-gnashing wildness of the looting frenzy.
But of course it remains a mystery, like all the other mysteries we discuss here!
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jul 25, 2010 9:12:06 GMT -5
That's a good point, Gary, unless we assume that the presence of soldiers in the camp or around officers' quarters would have dissuaded townsmen from attempting such looting. As you say, the rather cryptic Almonte leaves us another mystery.
Allen
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Post by garyzaboly on Jul 25, 2010 15:09:39 GMT -5
That's a good point, Gary, unless we assume that the presence of soldiers in the camp or around officers' quarters would have dissuaded townsmen from attempting such looting. As you say, the rather cryptic Almonte leaves us another mystery. Allen Allen, the thread had me looking for verification one way or another today. In one article summarizing her recollections, Mrs. Dickinson noted that "Wolff" was bayonetted in her quarters by soldados, despite his begging for mercy. She adds, Almonte "drove the bloodthirsty Mexicans from her room." Sounds like quite a violent, angry scene. Could the soldados have robbed Almonte during such a scene, daring him to stop them? Other accounts have soldados breaking into rooms and specifically asking, "where is the money?!" Joe noted that Captain Barragan seemed to be the only officer who had any control over the soldiers---at least in that sector where Joe was. What's very disappointing about Almonte is the terseness of his March 6 entry. For such a watershed moment in Mexican military history, he leaves behind very little in the way of documentation.
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Post by stuart on Jul 26, 2010 0:53:49 GMT -5
What's very disappointing about Almonte is the terseness of his March 6 entry. For such a watershed moment in Mexican military history, he leaves behind very little in the way of documentation. Perhaps the personal humiliation had something to do with it: "I was robbed by my soldiers"
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Post by garyzaboly on Jul 26, 2010 4:33:06 GMT -5
What's very disappointing about Almonte is the terseness of his March 6 entry. For such a watershed moment in Mexican military history, he leaves behind very little in the way of documentation. Perhaps the personal humiliation had something to do with it: "I was robbed by my soldiers" He never mentions anywhere inhis journal the awful fate of the wounded, the lack of a Mexican army medical staff, the scarcity of housing for the suffering, etc. But that he "was robbed" is very important for him to note.
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Post by stuart on Jul 26, 2010 13:13:23 GMT -5
That's what I mean, there's so much he could have recorded, like de La Pena, good bad and otherwise, but instead the only thing that mattered was his personal misfortune.
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Post by tmdreb on Jul 26, 2010 19:47:56 GMT -5
Almonte was no stranger to battles and their aftermath. What was probably the most shocking event to him on this day was that his own soldiers had robbed him. That was an unexpected twist.
I'm in the camp that his belongings were pilfered while he was away. I just don't see soldados mugging a senior officer with the expectation of getting away with it.
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Post by garyzaboly on Jul 27, 2010 13:59:34 GMT -5
One thing to consider in all this: the only accounts we have of the situation back at Almonte's quarters---which were also Santa Anna's---during the battle were given by Almonte's cook, Ben. After he gave Santa Anna and Almonte coffee, the two officers went off to begin the assault. Ben tells us that he stayed in the house, and looked through a window at the lights and explosions of the battle. There WAS something of a generally clear line of sight from the north-facing windows of the Yturri House, where headquarters was, to the hill upon which the Alamo sat, to the east. One assumes that if Almonte bedded in a room of the house, his property was there. If the soldados guarding the place robbed it, there is no mention of it anywhere else, and Ben certainly didn't mention it. So I still lean on Almonte being robbed---he doesn't really say what he was robbed of---during the battle or its immediate aftermath. In the madness that prevailed in the compound that morning, soldados were ripping clothing and other things from noncombatants, from baggage and drawers, and firing at times so wildly that some of their own men and officers were in peril. It was still dark, smoky, and frenzied enough for an angry, fired-up fusilier or grenadier to rip off an officer's sash, or purse, or whatever, and run off, unrecognized, and with impunity.
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Post by stuart on Jul 27, 2010 16:04:13 GMT -5
Perhaps he had his trousers round his ankles at the time
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Post by Allen Wiener on Jul 27, 2010 19:47:08 GMT -5
I think that was in the Marx Bros. film "Duck Soup," a genuine classic war film.
Gary - I also wondered what he could have had on him during the battle, or in its immediate aftermath, when he was most likely in the compound, that was worth robbing? But, as you say, there was a kind of frenzy and adrenaline-fueled hysteria that drove many of the soldiers to simply play smash-and-grab. It was dark and smokey and they may not have known who they were robbing. They burst in on Juana Alsbury, too, and demanded to know where her money and husband were; she told them she had neither. I wonder who got Bowie's knife.
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