The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #59418 Message #2484593
Posted By: Little Hawk
04-Nov-08 - 12:21 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Subject: RE: BS: The Mother of all BS threads
Goodness sakes! What melodrama.
While the defence of the Alamo was indeed very courageous and they inflicted great numbers of casualties on the Mexicans...there is no need to call the one man who left a "coward". He was a man with a family, and he showed very good judgement (plus a good deal of courage) in attempting to slip out through the Mexican encirclement...not an easy thing to do. He might very well have died in the attempt (they would certainly have killed him if they caught him), but he made it.
He was not a coward. Like all the others at the fortress he was offered a clear and honorable choice by Travis:
1. stay and face certain death in a battle that cannot be won
2. or slip out now while you still can and take your chances with the Mexicans
Either choice was entirely honorable, and that's why Travis offered those 2 choices. To stay was bravado...or it was defiance...or it was sheer fatalism...or it was simply an unwillingness to show any form of supposed weakness before the others.
I put it to you that that is itself a common form of cowardice. It's the fear of what the others may think! That was one of the things that got a lot of young Japanese soldiers killed uselessly and unnecessarily in WWII. Don't you think that man's family were glad he got out alive to return to them? Would they rather he died under the Mexican bayonets? I don't think so, unless they were complete idiots.
There is no reason to disparage either the man who left or the men who stayed. They both took an honorable choice, and they both faced the frightening consequences. There was no easy way out of that situation, because Santa Ana had the place surrounded, and he had sworn to kill all its occupants.
As for the battle, it did not rage all day and all night fer Chrissake. The final assault came by surprise in the wee hours of the morning before dawn, and it was over by the time the sun was up. It was a relatively brief, desperate fight in the pre-dawn darkness. The Texicans did indeed inflict very heavy losses on the Mexicans...and both sides showed tremendous courage in the battle. The Mexicans took very heavy losses for two reasons:
1. They were assaulting a fortified position with massed infantry...which makes a superb target for rifles and cannons.
2. Many of the Texicans were quite experienced sharpshooters (people with hunting experience) and they were armed with good long distance rifles. This enabled them to kill a lot of Mexicans before the walls were scaled.
Santa Ana was reckless with his men. He didn't need to expose them in that fashion. He could have simply besieged the fort and starved it out and negotiated a surrender, but he was an impatient and arrogant man....and he obviously didn't really give a damn about the lives of his own soldiers. His autocratic incompetence throughout the campaign was what secured the Texan victory.