Recently I blogged about my visit to Langtry Texas (Home of
the Jersey Lilly) and the Alamo…
I was critical of those sites… A friend suggested that it
might not be a good idea to be seen driving about Texas in the near future… Texas takes its history, and its icons
seriously, and I may have take a sacrilegious stance against Texas history,
Texas culture, and the great state of Texas…
That was not my intent… I was simply speaking about how, the
two sites, especially the Alamo, left me disappointed.
The story of the Alamo is spectacular, worthy of veneration. 186 or 187 or maybe 200 something men, made a
stand in the old mission, now fortress, in the revolution which eventually, in
part through their efforts resulted in an independent Republic of Texas, then,
later in the State of Texas…
Much like the Spartans at Thermopylae, they stood against an
army they could not hope to defeat, buying time for the forces of the Texas
revolutionaries, and died. Texas eventually triumphed over the Mexican
army lead by Santa Anna… The story is told that, because they had the time to
prepare, at the cost of the Alamo, and the men who fought there, the Texans eventually won independence, but
history suggests that no preparations were made while the battle was being
fought. Such are the facts, behind the legend...
Today the site is a shrine, a place of worship, but it isn’t
a historical site… they lose the history, the story while waving flags…
So what really happened?
The Texans converted the former Spanish mission to a fortress, with
cannon and walls and men with guns…
It was a large fortress, and there were not enough defenders
to man the parameter. This was in the
era of the single shot muzzle loading rifle…
The British Army, well trained could get off 3 shots a minute… but 3 minutes didn’t allow time to aim… two
shots a minute was more likely… At the
time most rifles (assuming they were rifles, some were sooth bore) were
effective at 200 to 300 yards… It is likely that some of the defenders of the
Alamo had Kentucky long guns, with longer range…
The Mexican army numbered 1,500 or so men… Assuming the Mexican solders could cover the
300 yards in about 2 minutes, (and some of their lines were much closer, maybe 100 yards off) in that time the best the Texans could hope to do
was fire something like 600 bullets… (200 men three bullets each)
assuming each killed or disabled a Mexican solder, and each hit a unique Mexican
solder, all (defenders) were at the place,the wall, where the
Mexicans were attacking (leaving the rest of the fortification undefended) if successful, theere would be 900 Mexicans left at the walls of the fortress, attacking
the fortress, overwhelming the fortress. It was not a battle they
(the Texans) could hope to win. It is a simple math
problem… The defenders of the Alamo
could not have fired enough bullets to kill enough of the Mexican army to make
a difference…
In the Mexican view these were revolutionaries, who had come
from another country and were trying to steal their land… It is not surprising
that they executed the surviving combatants. Any left after the attack were executed... This was not a war crime... it was simple justice.
Back to the battle, the Mexicans breached the walls (overwhelming
numbers of Mexican solders), they captured the cannons, they turned the cannon
towards the barracks, shooting the length of the barracks… The Mexican cavalry was
cutting down the men in the open courtyard…Such was the battle fought at the Alamo…
We look to stories, to movies… John Wayne fought and died at
the Alamo… at least in the movies…
The Alamo, today, does not tell the story of the battle… a
bloody nasty battle… They have converted what was a ruble filled church to a sanctuary... a temple to the hero...
So, instead, today, we get brass plaques, flags, and a plaza… audio tours, photos to be purchased later, tee shirts and guards dressed like Texas Rangers...
The men who died here deserve more than a
gift shop.
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