Here's another thing....
...did Santa Anna WANT the defenders to slip out of the Alamo?
...we don't know how many defenders died at the Alamo because people were still getting IN after the siege began, notwithstanding a couple of thousand Mexican troops in town by then. Could have been about 160 active defenders, could have been a bit shy of 250, depending on who's after-action report you read.
IOW the Mexican dragnet, if there was one, was remarkably porous.
Jose Antonio Navarro was a lifelong Bexar resident, one of three Tejanos who actually signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, and one of those few Tejanos who successfully weathered the advent of large-scale American immigration into Texas in the following decades.
Navarro was in Washington-on-the-Brazos during the siege, but presumably on his return on would hear the local Tejanos' take on the events at the Alamo to a degree most Anglo observers might not.
Ten years later, in 1846, Navarro was quoted by Josiah Gregg of "Commerce of the Prairies" fame....
http://www.kancoll.org/books/gregg/Not long after my arrival in San Antonio de Bexar I visited Don Jose Antonio Navarro..... He instanced, in particular, the affair at the Alamo, where 180 odd men undertook to defend it against several thousand. He asserted that Santa Anna at all times left the eastern side of the fortification free, in hopes the Texans would escape - preferring to let them go in peace to a victory over them which he knew would be costlyWith all due respect to Don Navarro (IF he was quoted correctly), it would make sense for Santa Anna to have them try to escape so as to make killing or executing them far easier than it turned out to be.
Santa Anna was still waiting at Bexar for his the rest of his force to complete that arduous 600-mile trek to San Antonio anyway, no loss to him really in pausing to besiege.
IF the Alamo defenders had tried to make a break for it, they could potentially have been caught and surrounded in open country, exactly as happened two weeks later to twice as many Americans trapped by half as many Mexicans on the open prairie outside of Goliad.
Yet, on March 4th, tho the Alamo defenders are low on food and ammunition, and even tho the north wall has already been breached by just the light Mexican field-pieces on hand and with heavier cannon due to arrive the very next week, Santa Anna shocks his generals by suddenly calling for a meeting to plan an assault for March 6th.
Why? Maybe because 120 miles to the south at San Patricio and Agua Dulce, his potential rival and political enemy Urrea has just won two near-brilliant strikes on the American invaders and their Tejano allies.
Sounds plausible, only thing is AFAIK we don't have written corroboration from those Mexican officers on the scene the way we do for other Alamo occurrences.
Birdwatcher
