Could the Texans have held the Alamo?

[BrainGlutton]

Oh, and I just gotta add this bit from Book VIII, 'cause it’s just too kewl to leave out:

The Texan pickets, poised on the cool ground
beyond the fortress walls, gazed up in wonder
at armies of the stars. There was no sound
in all the dark and dormant planet under
those glimmers, bright as rainbows after thunder.
The prairie wind, an intermittent breeze,
blew from the effervescing galaxies.

Above the silhouette of Bexar’s church
the tranquil blue stars of Centaurus gleamed;
beyond that glint, stormers began to surge
across a log stockade. Onward they streamed,
two-legged reptile warriors, redeemed
in battle, when they rendered up their lives
as tributes to their queen and all her hives.

Another war was starting, in a void
a million galaxies away, due east
of Bexar through Bootes. Strikes destroyed
a satellite, but not till it released
a swarm of missiles, black and smooth. They teased
their rivals by a gas globe’s amber glow,
some cratering an ice moon’s rigid snow,

some thistling soundlessly. While robots fought
three worlds away, in bunkers far below
their polities their masters watched as dot
chased phantom dot. Their agitation showed;
on leopard-colored slugs the tendrils glowed
red with anxiety. Which rival side
would own their homeworld, proxies would decide.

At just that moment, on a fissured moon
beneath a crescent knotted by faint storms,
a stone-walled city by a farmed lagoon
was taken. Standards wobbled as the swarms
advanced down ramps of glass. The trilled alarms
of nurses were too late; by axes held
in mandibles, the squeaking grubs were felled.

That massacre continued, fifty times
the Milky Way’s diameter away
from earth, through Draco. Where the ecliptic climbs
from Taurus through the Twins, the death of day
brought an armistice in another fray,
permitting flight by exiles, quadrupeds
whose fingered antlers grew from mouthless heads.

The frightened calves were clicking, soothed by strokes
from pliant horns. Most here were cows, or bulls
too old to fight. A crowded wagon’s spokes
sank mired in the mud; the slaves tucked in their gills
and hoisted. Clicks of panic greeeted hulls
of sleek dirigibles, soft antlers bristled
and clenched as volleys flashed and rockets whistled –

all this, west of the sleeping Alamo,
above the skyline’s fringe of sable brake.
The starlit Texan sentries could not know
that war balloons were veering round to rake
those refugees, just then; the light would take
a billion years to reach earth from that star.
That morning, half of heaven was at war.

And finally, from Book IX:

Our lady of annihilation, show
the seed of good within the pulp of pain,
the weal to grow from healing of this woe.
The arms of rival armies on the plain
of Rhodes, transmuted, rose above the main;
so may a new colossus stand and glow
beside the warless Gulf of Mexico,

saying: Let others, Yank, debase the proud
and dominate the destitute and weak.
Your fate’s to touch the planets, pierce the shroud
of secret nature, teach the tongue you speak
to sing with all the flair of the antique,
and make, with mongrel bronze, a blended race
matching its metal model in its grace.

[smiling_bandit]

@Little Nemo

But in order to be a part of a plan it has to be part of a plan. Sam Houston wasn’t basing any plans around the defense of the Alamo - he had in fact told the defenders to abandon the Alamo and was probably unaware it was still be defended at the time the battle was going on.

I didn’t say it was part of an official plan or a good plan. Just that this was pretty common practice and may have been what the defenders were after.

[HubZilla]

Thanks all, very informative. Looks like it was a hopeless cause, unless the Texans had evacuated the Alamo. Were the Mexican losses that extreme that a sensible military would’ve called off the assault?

600 losses out of a force of 6000 appears very significant. To that affect, could the Texans have “held out”, figuring most generals (more sensible than Santa Anna) would think the cost was too high and quit funnelling in troops?

Held out != victory, mind you. Doubtless, the end would’ve been the same.

[Siam_Sam]

I’m sure I remember being taught in school (in Texas) that Travis had gone to San Antonio with instructions to destroy the Alamo so the Mexicans could not use it and that he decided it was worth defending instead. But they never said why he made that decision. And it doesn’t read that way in the Wikipedia entry. Does anyone else know of this?

[BMalion]

@Bridget Burke

…By the way–I don’t think there’s any way the Texans (whatever you choose to call them) could have won the Battle of the Alamo.

What if they’d had a ninja?

[Little_Nemo]

I’m sure I remember being taught in school (in Texas) that Travis had gone to San Antonio with instructions to destroy the Alamo so the Mexicans could not use it and that he decided it was worth defending instead. But they never said why he made that decision. And it doesn’t read that way in the Wikipedia entry. Does anyone else know of this?

I’m guessing but it may have been a false sense of security. The Texans weren’t military professionals and may not have been making a realistic appraisal of the situation. On the surface, staying together inside a fort with a bunch of cannons probably seemed like a better idea than making a run for it.

[dropzone]

BG, that is the kewlest thing I’ve ever seen. I MUST have that book! It goes to show that even the dumbest idea can sound noble when put into iambic pentameter. I mean, look at “The Iliad.” (researching) Oops! That was in dactylic hexameter, the most horrifyingly awkward meter EVAH!

[Zoe]

You can call them Texans or Texians. Truth is you could call 32 of them Tennesseans. Even Sam Houston was from back up here.

After the slaughter at the Alamo, James K. Polk challenged every state to raise 2,800 men to fight in the Mexican War. 30,000 Tennesseans showed up to fight. That’s when they earned the nickname the Tennessee “Volunteers.”

Go Vols.

[tomndebb]

Polk presided over the 1846 War on Mexico. Was he really involved (ten years earlier) in calling for some sort of revenge for the Alamo?

(I have also seen the claim that the nickname originated during the War of 1812, based on the good turnout of a call or volunteers to follow Andrew Jackson to New Orleans; I have no idea which story might be correct.)

[smiling_bandit]

[QUOTE=HubZilla]
Thanks all, very informative. Looks like it was a hopeless cause, unless the Texans had evacuated the Alamo. Were the Mexican losses that extreme that a sensible military would’ve called off the assault?

[quote]

Maybe. Santa Anna could have possibly left a guard detail to kill anyone ocming out, which would have left them with the starve-or-surrender options. But he also may have wanted to keep the place from being a threat to his rear. He certainly attaked it weakly and wasted time and manpower.

Aside from which, his military record is so-so. He was competant but not brilliant; a better politician than a commander. Texas actually only separated from Mexico after Santa Anna declared himself dictator, and the man was a walking disaster for his country.

[Czarcasm]

@BMalion

What if they’d had a ninja?

What a stupid suggestion.
They would have needed Batman.

[Clothahump]

One of the major issues the defenders had to put up with was the actual structure of the walls. There was no crennalation to speak of, so when they fired at the Mexicans, they had to expose their bodies to do so. This was passingly okay while they were sniping at the Mexicans at a distance, but once the overwhelming charge started and the enemy got within firing range of their weapons, the Texans started getting shot and had to fall back from the walls. And once the north wall was breached, it was all over with.

[Siam_Sam]

@tomndebb

Polk presided over the 1846 War on Mexico. Was he really involved (ten years earlier) in calling for some sort of revenge for the Alamo?

(I have also seen the claim that the nickname originated during the War of 1812, based on the good turnout of a call or volunteers to follow Andrew Jackson to New Orleans; I have no idea which story might be correct.)

Yes, those were 10 years apart. My understanding of the Mexican War is that Texas said the border was the Rio Grande (still called the Rio Bravo in Mexico), while Mexico said it was the Brazos River farther inside Texas. After it became a state, Washington was burning the midnight oil trying to figure out how to get its hands on the Southwest, when Santa Ana crossed the Rio Grande to make good Mexico’s claim in that area. Voila! The US had a sudden excuse for war. Had nothing to do with the Alamo itself.