Remember…
March 6, 1836: 189 Texian and Tejano defenders died defending the Alamo after a thirteen day siege. Some 600 Mexican soldiers perished in storming its walls.
On March 5, day twelve of the siege, Santa Anna announced an assault for the following day. This sudden declaration stunned his officers. The enemy's walls were crumbling. No Texan relief column had appeared. When the provisions ran out, surrender would remain the rebels' only option. There was simply no valid military justification for the costly attack on a stronghold bristling with cannons. But ignoring these reasonable objections, Santa Anna stubbornly insisted on storming the Alamo.
I believe Santa Anna's army only had 12 lb. Napoleon cannon's which weren't sufficient in range, again I believe, to knock down the walls of the mission. From what I know the idea that the walls were crumbling isn't accurate, except in-so-far as they were crumbling before the bombardment. What the bombardment did accomplish was keeping the rebels from sleeping. Sadly, the larger siege artillery was to arrive the next day. This probably would have convinced the defenders to surrender.
As fool-hardy and unnecessary as the assault seems to have been, I'm led to believe that it almost was pulled off successfully. When the bombardment ended, the Texians fell asleep, almost to the man. The Mexican columns were able to get very close to the walls before an overly zealous soldier yelled "Viva Santa Anna!" A chorus of these cheers erupted and woke up the defenders on the wall, who were then able to fire off canister shot (read: nails, horse shoes, & scrap metal) into the exposed soldados.
The Mexicans, momentarily hesitated, regrouped and stormed the meager walls quickly. The bulk of the fighting then occurred in the Long Barracks. It's interesting to note that there was some heated debate as to whether the Long Barracks or the trademark mission should be preserved. The battle began at around 5:00 AM in the morning and was over by 6:30 AM. All Texian fighters were killed, six hundered of Santa Anna's 1800 men also died.
The Mexican army demonstrated no lack of competence, operating beyond support in territory with primitive communications.
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The defenders of the Alamo willingly placed themselves in harm's way to protect their country. Death was a risk they accepted, but it was never their aim. Torn by internal discord, the provisional government failed to deliver on its promise to provide relief, and Travis and his command paid the cost of that dereliction.
The battle, while heroic, was a tragedy that could have been avoided. As many as 900 men died where none needed die at all. Never-the-less this is a fascinating point in history, where it would have been so easy for a few small changes to drastically reconfigure our modern world. Had the siege, and therefore delay of the Centralist Army, not taken place it is quite probable that Santa Anna could have thrown the American settlers out on their asses. Had that happened Texas would have remained a part of Mexico. I don't think it takes too great a leap of imagination to consider that Mexico holds its western territories, then the US western expansion doesn't happen and the US remains a one coast country. So it's not hard to see that had the choices of a few men been slightly different our world would be drastically different. I find this endlessly fascinating.
And yes, I realize I'm over a week late on the anniversary, but for some reason I always think the battle was later in the month, hence I thought I had plenty of time to comment on it.