POSTSCRIPT: Do Americans Have an Interest in Who Governs Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts?

Remembering Byron in Greece, Travis at the Alamo, Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba, and Ambrose Bierce in Mexico: Reflections on history written in an ironic tone.

Postscript and Clarification: I originally wrote the following post in an ironic tone. Reviewing reader comments, I realize that I should have made this clearer. To clarify: I believe that Byron, Travis, Roosevelt, and Ambrose Bierce were all suffering from 19th century romantic nationalism. As Byron himself ultimately understood, his misadventure in Greece was comically absurd. Travis obviously should have ditched the Alamo and lived to fight another day with Houston. William Randolph Hearst produced the worst kind of jingoistic Yellow Journalism, and Teddy Roosevelt was being a ridiculous showman. The character Peyton Farquhar in “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was a fool who hanged for it. The author of the story, Ambrose Bierce, “went to Mexico to die,” just like Fuentes wrote. Obviously, Americans have no real interest in who governs Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts. Please read my original post below in light of this clarification.

As a proud native Texan, my heart swelled with pride the first time I read William Barret Travis’s letter that he wrote from the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, addressed to “the People of Texas and All Americans in the World.”

Commandancy of the The Alamo

Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World-

Fellow Citizens & compatriots-

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna - I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man - The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken - I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls - I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch - The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & 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 & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country - Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis.

Lt. Col.comdt.

P. S. The Lord is on our side - When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn - We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis

At the time Travis sent his letter, the commander-in-chief of the Texas Republican Army, Sam Houston, was negotiating a treaty with Cherokee Indians who inhabited the northeast region of the territory and was unable to respond in time with reinforcements.

When I was a kid visiting the Alamo for the first time, I wondered if, had I been of fighting age at the time, I would have gone to the Alamo to join Travis. He, a young man of 26, knew that his refusal to surrender meant certain death. Would I have been prepared to die for the Alamo to keep it out of the hands of the vainglorious Santa Anna?

On a recent visit to San Antonio, I was surprised by how desolate the downtown area was at night. I drifted over to the Hotel Menger for a drink at the bar where Teddy Roosevelt recruited local cowboys for his valiant expedition to liberate Cuba from the Spanish in 1898. I found the place strangely empty.

The following photo is of Teddy and his Rough Riders at the top of San Juan Hill, which they had just successfully stormed.

Teddy was inspired by the reporting from Cuba of William Randolph Hearst’s New York World. Hearst’s crack reporters told “horrific tales of female prisoners, executions, valiant rebels fighting, and starving women and children.” Hearst then blamed the Spanish for sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor without presenting any evidence. Indications that the vessel exploded from accidental fire in the coal bunker were ignored.

Going back in time, another great adventure was Lord Byron’s attempt to liberate Greece from Ottoman rule in 1824. Wikipedia provides a pretty good summary:

By the end of March 1824, the so-called "Byron brigade" of 30 philhellene officers and about 200 men had been formed, paid for entirely by Byron. Leadership of the Greek cause in the Roumeli region was divided between two rival leaders: a former Klepht (bandit), Odysseas Androutsos; and a wealthy Phanariot Prince, Alexandros Mavrokordatos. Byron used his prestige to attempt to persuade the two rival leaders to come together to focus on defeating the Ottomans.^.

At the same time, other leaders of the Greek factions like Petrobey Mavromichalis and Theodoros Kolokotronis wrote letters to Byron telling him to disregard all of the Roumeliot leaders and to come to their respective areas in the Peloponnese. This drove Byron to distraction; he complained that the Greeks were hopelessly disunited and spent more time feuding with each other than trying to win independence.

Byron's friend Edward John Trelawny had aligned himself with Androutsos, who ruled Athens, and was now pressing for Byron to break with Mavrokordatos in favour of backing the rival Androutsos. Androutsos, having won over Trelawny to his cause, was now anxious to persuade Byron to put his wealth behind his claim to be the leader of Greece. Byron wrote with disgust about how one of the Greek captains, former Klepht Georgios Karaiskakis, attacked Missolonghi on 3 April 1824 with some 150 men supported by the Souliotes as he was unhappy with Mavrokordatos's leadership, which led to a brief bout of inter-Greek fighting before Karaiskakis was chased away by 6 April.

While Greece was ultimately liberated from the Ottomans by the combined forces of Great Britain, Russia, and France, the “Byron brigade” achieved nothing and Byron died of a fever in Missolonghi at the age of thirty-six. The concluding lines of his poem about swimming across the Hellespont captured the spirit of his young and romantic death.

Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you!

He lost his labour, I my jest;

For he was drown'd, and I've the ague.

Another great story is that of the American writer Ambrose Bierce going to Mexico, perhaps to join Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army, in 1913. Especially stylish was the fact that Bierce was 71-years-old.

The adventure inspired Carlos Fuentes to write his novel The Old Gringo with its refrain, “The old gringo came to Mexico to die.” The pointless, romantic death of Peyton Farquhar in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” seemed to presage Bierce’s death 24 years later.

Zelensky is now calling upon America and the nations of western Europe to aid him in expelling the Russian aggressors from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts.

I sense an adventure in the offing for young American men.