292 REVERSES OF INSURGENTS MORELOS SHOT. character and resources rising with every new danger, difficulty or loss. But the die was cast. Oaxaca was recaptured by the royalists on the 28th of March, 1814. Miguel Bravo died at Puebla on the scaffold; Galeana fell in battle; and the Congress was driven from Chilpanzingo to the forest of Apatzingo, where, on the 22d of October, 1814, it enacted the constitution which bears the name of its wild birth-place. From this temporary refuge the insurgents resolved to cross the country by rapid marches to Tehuacan in the province of Puebla, where Mier y Teran had gathered a considerable force, which Morelos imagined would become the nucleus of an overwhelming army, as soon as he joined them. But his hopes were not destined to be realized. He had advanced as far as Tesmaluca, when the Indians of the village betrayed his slender forces to General Concha, who fell upon them, on the 5th of November, 1815, in the narrow gorge of a mountain road. The assault was from the rear; so that Morelos, ordering Nocalas Bravo to hasten his march with the main body of the army as an escort for the illstared congress, resolved to fight the royalists until he placed the national legislature out of danger. "My life" said he is of little consequence, provided congress be saved: my race was run when I saw an independent government established!" The brave soldier-priest, with fifty men, maintained the pass against Concha, until only one trooper was left beside him. So furious was his personal bearing, during this mortal conflict, that the royalists feared to advance until he was bereft of all support. When finally captured, he was stripped, chained, treated with the most shameless cruelty, and carried back to Tesmaluca. Concha, however, was less cruel than his men. He received the rebel chief politely, and despatched him to the capital for trial. Crowds of eager citizens flocked to see the celebrated partizan warrior who had so long held the Spanish forces at bay. But his doom was sealed; and, on the 22d of December, 1815, Concha removed him to the hospital of San Cristoval. After dining with the general, and thanking him for his kindness, he walked to the rear of the building, where, kneeling down, he bound a handkerchief over his eyes and uttering the simple ejaculation, "Lord, if I have done well, thou knowest it; if ill, to thy infinite mercy I commend my soul," he gave the fatal signal to the soldiers who were drawn up to shoot him. - CHAPTER III. 1816-1821. APODACA VICEROY. SPANISH CONSTITUTION OF 1812 PROCLAIMCONDITION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY. MINA LANDS AT SOTO LA MARINA LOS REMEDIOS HIS EF GUERILLAS HE IS SHOT. ESTABLISH VICTORIA FORTS TORRES ABSOLUTISM. ITURBIDE PROMULGATES THE PLAN OF IGUA LA ARMY OF THE THREE GUARANTIES. DON JUAN RUIZ DE APODACA, CONDE DEL VENADITO, LXI. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN. 1816-1821. WITH the death of Morelos the hopes of the insurgents were crushed and their efforts paralized. This extraordinary man, so fertile in resources, and blending in himself the mingled power of priest and general, had secured the confidence of the masses, who found among his officers, none upon whom they could rally with perfect reliance. Besides this, the congress which had been conducted safely to Tehuacan by Bravo, was summarily dissolved by General Teran, who considered it an "inconvenient appendage of a camp. We cannot but regard this act of the general as unwise at a moment, when the insurgents lost such a commander as Morelos. By the dissolution of the congress the nation abandoned another point of reunion; and from that moment, the cause began to fail in all parts of the country. The CONSTITUTION, sanctioned by the Cortes in 1812, had, meanwhile, been proclaimed in Mexico, on the 29th of September of that year; and, whilst the people felt somewhat freer under it, they were enabled, by the liberty of the press, which lasted sixtysix days, to expend their new-born patriotism on paper instead of 294 CONDITION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY. in battles. These popular excitements, served to sustain the spirits of the people, notwithstanding the losses of the army; so that when Apodaca, assumed the reins of the viceroyalty in 1816, the country was still republican at heart, though all the insurgent generals were either captured or hidden in the wilderness, whilst their disbanded forces, in most instances, had accepted the indulto, or pardon, proffered for their return to allegiance. The remaining officers of Morelos spread themselves over the country, as there was no longer any centre of action; and each of them, occupying a different district, managed, for a while. to support revolutionary fervor throughout the neighborhood. "Guerrero occupied the west coast, where he maintained himself until the year 1821, when he joined Iturbide. Rayon commanded in the vicinity of Tlalpujahua, where he successively maintained two fortified camps on the Cerro del Gallo, and on Coporo. Teran held the district of Tehuacan, in Puebla. Bravo was a wanderer throughout the country. The Bajio was tyrannized over by the Padre Torres, while Guadalupe Victoria occupied the important province of Vera Cruz. " 1 The chief spite of the royalists, -who hunted these republican heroes, among the forests and mountain fastnesses of Mexico, as the Covenanters had been hunted in Scotland, seems to have fallen upon the last named of these patriot generals. Victoria's haunt was chiefly in the passes near the Puente del Rey, now the Puente Nacional, or National bridge, on the road leading from the port of Vera Cruz to the capital. He was prepared to act either with a large force of guerillas, or, with a simple body guard; and, knowing the country perfectly, he was enabled to descend from his fastnesses among the rocks, and thus to cut off, almost entirely, all communication between the coast and the metropolis. At length, superior forces were sent to pursue him with relentless fury. His men gradually deserted when the villages that formerly supplied them with food refused further contributions. Efforts were made to seduce him from his principles and to ensure his loyalty. But he refused the rank and rewards offered by the viceroy as the price of his submission. At length he found himself alone in his resistance, in the midst of countrymen, who, if they would no longer fight under his banner, were too faithful to betray him. Yet he would not abandon the cause, but, taking his sword and a small stock of raiment, departed for the mountains, where he I Ward vol. i, 221. VICTORIA MINA LANDS AT SOTO LA MARINA. 295 wandered for thirty months, living on the fruits of the forest and gnawing the bones of dead animals found in their recesses. Nor did he emerge from this impenetrable concealment, until two faithful Indians, whom he had known in prosperous days, sought him out with great difficulty, and, communicating the joyous intelligence of the revolution of 1821, brought him back once more to their villages where he was received with enthusiastic reverence as a patriot raised from the dead. When discovered by the Indians he was worn to a skeleton, covered with hair, and clad in a tattered. wrapper; but, amid all his distresses and losses, he had preserved and treasured his loyalty to the cause of liberty and his untarnished sword! Meanwhile another actor in this revolutionary army had appeared upon the stage. This was XAVIER MINA, a guerilla chief of old Spain, who fled from his country, in consequence of the unfortunate effort to organize an outbreak in favor of the Cortes, at Pampeluna, after the dissolution of that assembly by the king. He landed on the coast of Mexico at Soto la Marina with a brave band of foreigners, chiefly North Americans, on the 15th of April, 1817. His forces amounted to only three hundred and fifty-nine men, including officers, of whom fifty-one deserted before he marched into the interior. Leaving one hundred of these soldiers at Soto la Marina under the command of Major Sarda, he attempted with the remainder, to join the independents in the heart of the country. Mina pressed onwards successfully, defeating several royalist parties, until he reached Sombrero, whence he sallied forth upon numerous expeditions, one of which was against the fortified hacienda or plantation of the Marques of Jaral, a creole nobleman, from which the inhabitants and the owner fled at his approach. His troops sacked this wealthy establishment, and Mina transferred to the public chest one hundred and forty thousand dollars, found concealed in the house. This nobleman, it is true, had given in his adhesion to the royal cause and fortified his dwelling against the insurgents who hitherto refrained from attacking him. Nevertheless, the unprovoked blow of an independent leader against a native of the country, and especially against a man whose extensive farming operations concentrated the interests of so large a laboring class, was not calculated to inspire confidence in Mina among the masses of the people. Whilst the guerilla chief was thus pursuing his way successfully in the heart of the country, and receiving occasional reinforcements from the natives, the garrison he left at Soto la Marina fell into the 296 HIS EFFORTS LOS REMEDIOS GUERILLAS. hands of Spanish levies, two thousand of whom surrounded the slender band. Notwithstanding the inequality of forces between the assailants and the besieged, the royalists were unable to take the place by storm; but, after repeated repulses, General Arredondo proposed terms which were accepted by Major Sarda, the independent commander. It is scarcely necessary to say that this condition was not fulfilled by the Spaniards, who sent the capitulated garrison in irons, by a circuitous journey, to the sickly Castle of San Juan de Ulua at Vera Cruz, whence some of the unfortunate wretches were marched into the interior whilst others were despatched across the sea to the dungeons of Cadiz, Melilla and Ceuta. This was a severe blow to Mina, who nevertheless was unparalized by it but continued active in the vicinity of Sombrero to which he retreated after an illjudged attempt upon the town of Leon, where the number of his troops was considerably diminished. Sombrero was invested, soon after, by a force of three thousand five hundred and forty soldiers, under Don Pascual Liñan, who had been appointed Field Marshal, by Apodaca, and despatched to the Bajio. This siege was ultimately successful on the part of the royalists. The fresh supplies promised to Mina did not arrive. Colonel Young, his second in command, died in repulsing an assault; and, upon the garrison's attempting to evacuate the town, under Colonel Bradburn, on the night of the 19th of August, the enemy fell upon the independents with such vigor that but fifty of Mina's whole corps escaped. "No quarter," says Ward, "was given in the field, and the unfortunate wretches who had been left in the hospital wounded, were by Liñan's orders, carried or dragged along the ground from their beds to the square where they were stripped and shot!" Mina, as a last resort, threw himself into the fort of Los Remedios, a natural fortification on the lofty mountain chain rising out of the plains of the Bajio between Silao and Penjamo, separated from the rest by precipices, and deep ravines. Liñan's army sat down before Remedios on the 27th of August. Mina left the town so as to assail the army from without by his guerillas, whilst the garrison kept the main body engaged with the fort. During this period he formed the project of attacking the town of Guanajuato, which, in fact, he accomplished; yet, after his troops had penetrated the heart of the city, their courage failed and they retreated before the loyalists who rallied after the panic created by the unexpected assault at nightfall. On retreating from Guanajuato, our partizan warrior took the road to the Rancho del Vena |
