“Hell, yes. How do we get out, after we done pinned Santa Anna down? You thought of that, Billy boy?”
Travis shrugged. “There is an element of grave risk, of course. Ord, where’s the document, the message you wrote up for me? Ah, thank you.” Travis cleared his throat. “Here’s what I’m sending on to General Houston.” He read: “Commandancy of the Alamo, February 24, 1836… are you sure of the date, Ord?”
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Ord said.
“Never mind—if you’re wrong we can change it later. ‘To the People of Texas and all Americans in the World. Fellow Freemen and Compatriots! I am besieged with a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment for many hours but have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded surrender at discretion; otherwise, the garrison is to be put to the sword, if taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly over the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character—’” He paused, frowning. “This language seems pretty old-fashioned, Ord–”
“Oh, no, sir. That’s exactly right,” Ord murmured.
“‘…To come to our aid with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his honor or that of his homeland. VICTORY OR DEATH!’”
Travis stopped reading, looked up. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Ord breathed. “The greatest words of defiance ever written in the English tongue—and so much more literate than that chap at Bastogne.”
“You mean to send that?” Jim gasped.
The man called Davey was holding his head in his hands.
“You object, Colonel Bowie?” Travis asked icily.
“Oh, cut that ‘colonel’ stuff, Bill,” Bowie said. “It’s only a National Guard title, and I like ‘Jim’ better, even though I am a pretty important man. Damn right I have an objection! Why, that message is almost aggressive. You’d think we wanted to fight Santa Anna! You want us to be marked down as warmongers? It’ll give us trouble when we get to the negotiation table–”
Travis’s head turned. “Colonel Crockett?”
“What Jim says goes for me, too. And this: I’d change that part about all Americans, et cetera. You don’t want anybody to think we think we’re better than the Mexicans. After all, Americans are a minority in the world. Why not make it ‘all men who love security?’ That’d have worldwide appeal–”
“Oh, Crockett,” Travis hissed.
Crockett stood up. “Don’t use that tone of voice to me, Billy Travis! That piece of paper you got don’t make you no better’n us. I ran for Congress twice, and won. I know what the people want–”
“What the people want doesn’t mean a damn right now,” Travis said harshly. “Don’t you realize the tyrant is at the gates?”
Crockett rolled his eyes heavenward. “Never thought I’d hear a good American say that! Billy, you’ll never run for office–”
Bowie held up a hand, cutting into Crockett’s talk. “All right, Davey. Hold up. You ain’t runnin’ for Congress now. Bill, the main thing I don’t like in your whole message is that part about victory or death. That’s got to go. Don’t ask us to sell that to the troops!”
Travis closed his eyes briefly. “Boys, listen. We don’t have to tell the men about this. They don’t need to know the real story until it’s too late for them to get out. And then we shall cover ourselves with such glory that none of us shall ever be forgotten. Americans are the best fighters in the world when they are trapped. They teach this in the Foot School back on the Chatahoochee. And if we die, to die for one’s country is sweet–”
“Hell with that,” Crockett drawled. “I don’t mind dyin’, but not for these big landowners like Jim Bowie here. I just been thinkin’—I don’t own nothing in Texas.”
“I resent that,” Bowie shouted. “You know very well I volunteered, after I sent my wife off to Acapulco to be with her family.” With an effort, he calmed himself. “Look, Travis. I have some reputation as a fighting man—you know I lived through the gang wars back home. It’s obvious this Alamo place is indefensible, even if we had a thousand men.”
“But we must delay Santa Anna at all costs–”
Bowie took out a fine, dark Mexican cigar and whittled at it with his blade. Then he lit it, saying around it, “All right, let’s all calm down. Nothing a group of good men can’t settle around a table. Now listen. I got in with this revolution at first because I thought old Emperor Iturbide would listen to reason and lower taxes. But nothin’s worked out, because hotheads like you, Travis, queered the deal. All this yammerin’ about liberty! Mexico is a Republic, under an emperor, not some kind of democracy, and we can’t change that. Let’s talk some sense before it’s too late. We’re all too old and too smart to be wavin’ the flag like it’s the Fourth of July. Sooner or later, we’re goin’ to have to sit down and talk with the Mexicans. And like Davey said, I own a million hectares, and I’ve always paid minimum wage, and my wife’s folks are way up there in the Imperial Government of the Republic of Mexico. That means I got influence in all the votin’ groups, includin’ the American Immigrant, since I’m a minority group member myself. I think I can talk to Santa Anna, and even to old Iturbide. If we sign a treaty now with Santa Anna, acknowledge the law of the land, I think our lives and property rights will be respected.” He cocked an eye toward Crockett.
“Makes sense, Jim. That’s the way we do it in Congress. Compromise, everybody happy. We never allowed ourselves to be led nowhere we didn’t want to go, I can tell you! And Bill, you got to admit that we’re in a better bargaining position if we’re out in the open, than if old Santa Anna’s got us penned up in this old Alamo.”
“Ord,” Travis said despairingly. “Ord, you understand. Help me! Make them listen!”
Ord moved into the candlelight, his lean face sweating. “Gentlemen, this is all wrong! It doesn’t happen this way–”
Crockett sneered, “Who asked you, Ord? I’ll bet you ain’t even got a poll tax!”
Decisively, Bowie said, “We’re free men, Travis, and we won’t be led around like cattle. How about it, Davey? Think you could handle the rear guard, if we try to move out of here?”
“Hell, yes! Just so we’re movin’!”
“O.K. Put it to a vote of the men outside. Do we stay, and maybe get croaked, or do we fall back and conserve our strength until we need it? Take care of it, eh, Davey?”
Crockett picked up his guitar and went outside.
Travis roared, “This is insubordination! Treason!” He drew his saber, but Bowie took it from him and broke it in two. Then the big man pulled his knife.
“Stay back, Ord. The Alamo isn’t worth the bones of a Britainer, either.”
“Colonel Bowie, please,” Ord cried. “You don’t understand! You must defend the Alamo! This is the turning point in the winning of the west! If Houston is beaten, Texas will never join the Union! There will be no Mexican War. No California, no nation stretching from sea to shining sea! This is the Americans’ manifest destiny. You are the hope of the future… you will save the world from Hitler, from Bolshevism–”
“Crazy as a hoot owl,” Bowie said sadly. “Ord, you and Travis got to look at it both ways. We ain’t all in the right in this war—we Americans got our faults, too.”
“But you are free men,” Ord whispered. “Vulgar, opinionated, brutal, but free! You are still better than the breed who kneels to tyranny–”
Crockett came in. “O.K., Jim.”
“How’d it go?”
“Fifty-one percent for hightailin’ it right now.”
Bowie smiled. “That’s a flat majority. Let’s make tracks.”
“Comin’, Bill?” Crockett asked. “You’re O.K., but you just don’t k
now how to be one of the boys. You got to learn that no dog is better’n any other.”
“No,” Travis croaked hoarsely. “I stay. Stay or go, we shall all die like dogs, anyway. Boys, for the last time! Don’t reveal our weakness to the enemy–”
“What weakness? We’re stronger than them. Americans could whip the Mexicans any day, if we wanted to. But the thing to do is make ’em talk, not fight. So long, Bill.”
The two big men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in breaking through the Mexican lines.
Inside the chapel, John Ord’s mouth hung slackly. He muttered, “Am I insane? It didn’t happen this way—it couldn’t! The books can’t be that wrong–”
In the candlelight, Travis hung his head. “We tried, John. Perhaps it was a forlorn hope at best. Even if we had defeated Santa Anna, or delayed him, I do not think the Indian Nations would have let Houston get help from the United States.”
Ord continued his dazed muttering, hardly hearing.
“We need a contiguous frontier with Texas,” Travis continued slowly, just above a whisper. “But we Americans have never broken a treaty with the Indians, and pray God we never shall. We aren’t like the Mexicans, always pushing, always grabbing off New Mexico, Arizona, California. We aren’t colonial oppressors, thank God! No, it wouldn’t have worked out, even if we American immigrants had secured our rights in Texas–” He lifted a short, heavy, percussion pistol in his hand and cocked it. “I hate to say it, but perhaps if we hadn’t taken Paine and Jefferson so seriously—if we could only have paid lip service, and done what we really wanted to do, in our hearts… no matter. I won’t live to see our final disgrace.”
He put the pistol to his head and blew out his brains.
Ord was still gibbering when the Mexican cavalry stormed into the old mission, pulling down the flag and seizing him, dragging him before the resplendent little general in green and gold.
Since he was the only prisoner, Santa Anna questioned Ord carefully. When the sharp point of a bayonet had been thrust half an inch into his stomach, the Britainer seemed to come around. When he started speaking, and the Mexicans realized he was English, it went better with him. Ord was obviously mad, it seemed to Santa Anna, but since he spoke English and seemed educated, he could be useful. Santa Anna didn’t mind the raving; he understood all about Napoleon’s detention camps and what they had done to Britainers over there. In fact, Santa Anna was thinking of setting up a couple of those camps himself. When they had milked Ord dry, they threw him on a horse and took him along.
Thus John Ord had an excellent view of the battlefield when Santa Anna’s cannon broke the American lines south of the Trinity. Unable to get his men across to safety, Sam Houston died leading the last, desperate charge against the Mexican regulars. After that, the American survivors were too tired to run from the cavalry that pinned them against the flooding river. Most of them died there. Santa Anna expressed complete indifference to what happened to the Texans’ women and children.
Mexican soldiers found Jim Bowie hiding in a hut, wearing a plain linen tunic and pretending to be a civilian. They would not have discovered his identity had not some of the Texan women whom the cavalry had captured cried out, “Colonel Bowie—Colonel Bowie!” as he was led into the Mexican camp.
He was hauled before Santa Anna, and Ord was summoned to watch. “Well, Don Jaime,” Santa Anna remarked, “You have been a foolish man. I promised your wife’s uncle to send you to Acapulco safely, though of course your lands are forfeit. You understand we must have lands for the veterans’ program when this campaign is over–” Santa Anna smiled then. “Besides, since Ord here has told me how instrumental you were in the abandonment of the Alamo, I think the emperor will agree to mercy in your case. You know, Don Jaime, your compatriots had me worried back there. The Alamo might have been a tough nut to crack… pues, no matter.”
And since Santa Anna had always been broadminded, not objecting to light skin or immigrant background, he invited Bowie to dinner that night.
Santa Anna turned to Ord. “But if we could catch this rascally war criminal, Crockett… however, I fear he has escaped us. He slipped over the river with a fake passport, and the Indians have interned him.”
“Si, Señor Presidente,” Ord said dully.
“Please, don’t call me that,” Santa Anna cried, looking around. “True, many of us officers have political ambitions, but Emperor Iturbide is old and vain. It could mean my head–”
Suddenly, Ord’s head was erect, and the old, clear light was in his blue eyes. “Now I understand!” he shouted. “I thought Travis was raving back there, before he shot himself—and your talk of the emperor! American respect for Indian rights! Jeffersonian form of government! Oh, those ponces who peddled me that X-4-A—the track jumper! I’m not back in my own past. I’ve jumped the time track—I’m back in a screaming alternate!
“Please not so loud, Señor Ord.” Santa Anna sighed. “Now, we must shoot a few more American officers, of course. I regret this, you understand, and I shall no doubt be much criticized in French Canada and Russia, where there are still civilized values. But we must establish the Republic of the Empire once and for all upon this continent, that aristocratic tyranny shall not perish from the earth. Of course, as an Englishman, you understand perfectly, Señor Ord.”
“Of course, Excellency,” Ord said.
“There are soft hearts—soft heads, I say—in Mexico who cry for civil rights for the Americans. But I must make sure that Mexican dominance is never again threatened north of the Rio Grande.”
“Seguro, Excellency,” Ord said, suddenly. If the bloody X-4-A had jumped the track, there was no getting back, none at all. He was stuck here. Ord’s blue eyes narrowed. “After all, it… it is manifest destiny that the Latin peoples of North America meet at the center of the continent. Canada and Mexico shall share the Mississippi.”
Santa Anna’s dark eyes glowed. “You say what I have often thought. You are a man of vision, and much sense. You realize the Indios must go, whether they were here first or not. I think I will make you my secretary, with the rank of captain.”
“Gracias, Excellency.”
“Now, let us write my communiqué to the capital, Capitán Ord. We must describe how the American abandonment of the Alamo allowed me to press the traitor Houston so closely he had no chance to maneuver his men into the trap he sought. Ay, Capitán, it is a cardinal principle of the Anglo-Saxons, to get themselves into a trap from which they must fight their way out. This I never let them do, which is why I succeed where others fail… you said something, Capitán?”
“Si, Excellency. I said, I shall title our communique: ‘Remember the Alamo,’” Ord said, standing at attention.
“Bueno! You have a gift for words. Indeed, if ever we feel the gringos are too much for us, your words shall once again remind us of the truth!” Santa Anna smiled. “I think I shall make you a major. You have indeed coined a phrase which shall live in history forever!”
Valhalla For Hire, by Lee Brainard
Editor’s Introduction
There is a certain fascination to mercenary armies, from Xenophon’s Ten Thousand to Mad Mike Hoare’s Fifth Commando in Katanga. Of course, the classic era of mercenaries was at the end of the Middle Ages.
Italy in the fourteenth century saw endless war, between Pisa and Florence, Venice and Genoa, Milan and Verona, and nearly all permutations and combinations of the above as alliances shifted like smoke. It was the great era of the condottieri, mercenary captains who made war pay; or tried to. Not all were successful. The greatest captain of his time was Carmagnola, who in 1432 was lured from his camp to Venice by a delusive message, and suddenly executed by his employers for treason suspected but never proved. The Venetians impartially did the same for their doges: Marino Faliero was executed because the Council
suspected he was plotting to use mercenaries to make himself a tyrant. That had certainly been done before, as the della Scala and Sforza families would do in the future.
C.W.C. Oman in his Art of War in the Middle Ages (the big two-volume history, not the short essay of the same title) says of one mercenary captain:
“Of the foreign condottieri John Hawkwood was not only the most famous but by far the most respectable—virtuoso not only in Machiavelli’s sense but according to all military standards of his day. He never broke his oath; he was in 1364 the only captain of the Pisans whom the Florentines could not bribe. He carried out his contracts with rigorous probity, and he never sold his employer of the moment… Mercenaries of rival bands, who fell into his hands in the course of business, could always count on a quick release and a moderate ransom. It is no wonder that his Florentine patrons regarded him as a paragon of virtue and placed his figure on horseback over the southwest portal of their Duomo.”
In fact the story is more interesting: Hawkwood was called to save the city of Florence, which he did. Part of his payment was that a marble statue of Hawkwood on horseback would be erected in the cathedral. When the battle was won, the thrifty Florentines instead had painted a mural of a statue; it is this that Oman refers to, and it can be seen to this day.
Machiavelli, that most astute observer, also says;
“Condottieri are either capable persons or they are not; if they are clever you cannot rely on them, for they will be scheming for their own exaltation, either by falling on you, their employer, or else by molesting other states, whom you have no interest in provoking. If they are not clever, on the other hand, they will lose for you a battle and ruin you. And if you say that any commander, mercenary or no, may do that, the answer is that both a prince and a republic had better work for themselves. The prince had better be his own commander in chief, and the republic had better set its own citizens over its army. If they prove inefficient, they can be changed, and if efficient they can be prevented by law from getting too much power. History proves that only princes and warlike republics make great conquests; mercenary armies have brought nothing but loss in the end. And it is much harder for an over-great citizen to master an armed people than a people who have mercenary soldiers only.”
There Will Be War Volume VII Page 31