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intendant had fortified himself. Here was captured a treasure worth nearly five millions of dollars, consisting of the gold, silver, mercury, and valuables of the royal treasury, and all the personal riches of the Spaniards, who had shut themselves up with the intendant. The Indians, after the action was over, behaved with the utmost cruelty, putting to death every European that fell into their hands. On the morning after the action, there was not a single house left standing that had belonged to a European. Hidalgo made no attempt to restrain them, either because he desired to have them commit themselves beyond the possibility of pardon, or because he was powerless to restrain the first outbreaks of a ferocity which had lain so long dormant. During his stay at Guanaxuato he established a mint, and cast the bells, which he had captured, into cannon. The treasures he had taken made his movement a matter of dread to the royalists, and his standard a rallying point for all adventurers and revolutionary partiTwo days before the insurrection in Dolores, a new viceroy, Don Francisco Xavier Venegas, had been installed. He was a man of great abilities, and the measures he took to put down Hidalgo's movements were well calculated to effect that object. On the 10th of October, the revolutionary chief moved from Guadalaxara, and captured Valladolid. On the 19th he left that city, and on the 28th, with fifty thousand men, reached Toluca, a town within twelve lagues of the capital. Venegas had assembled a force of seven thousand men, which he disposed of in the most advantageous manner for the defence of the town. A corps of observation was stationed on the Toluca road, under the command of Colonel Truxillo, assisted by Don Augustin Iturbide, then a lieutenant in the Mexican service.

sans.

Hidalgo defeated this corps on the 30th of October, at Las Cruces, and it was expected that he would immediately advance upon the capital; but, for various reasons, he thought proper to retreat. His Indians were totally undisciplined, and since he had seen them cut down by hundreds at Las Cruces, in the sage endeavour to stop the cannons' mouths of the enemy with their straw hats, he had no hope of their being able to face for a moment the batteries which, he was well aware, Venegas would raise for the support of the capital. His whol. army was but an undisciplined rabble; ammunition was very scarce, and Calleja, who was leading a body of troops against him from San Luis Potosi, was daily expected to fall upon his rear.

Hidalgo soon fell in with the advanced guard of Calleja's army, and both parties prepared for the battle, in the plains of Aculco, November 7th, 1810. Calleja was extremely anxious about the result of this meeting. as the greater part of his army was composed of

creole regiments, who, he feared, would fraternize with their opponents. Such would probably have been the case had it not been for the disorderly manner in which the followers of Hidalgo dispersed, in the very beginning of hostile movements, and commenced firing at random against all who came within their reach. This exasperated the creoles, who now pressed eagerly forward, and speedily decided the fate of the day. From this time until 1821, the creoles were the chief support of the Spanish power, and the inveterate enemies of the insurgents. Had the soldiers of Hidalgo been at all disciplined, or the conduct and measures of Calleja less mollifying and skilful, the creoles would have embraced the other side of the question, and the war of independence would have been ended at once. Escaping with his general officers from the bloody field of Aculco, Hidalgo collected as many of the fugitives as he could, and retreated to Valladolid. Allende, his second in command, retreated on Granaxuato, whither he was pursued by Calleja. He immediately evacuated the place, when the people flew to the fort, in which Hidalgo had formerly left two hundred and forty-nine Europeans as prisoners, and massacred them all. The blood had not ceased to flow from their dead bodies, ere Calleja was at the gate, and he commenced the work of retaliation by ordering his troops to give no quarter. This order was countermanded after many were slain, and a sentence of decimation was pronounced against a part of the population. Hidalgo arrived at Valladolid on the 14th of November, and allowed his followers some days of repose. Here he was joined by the advocate, Don Ignacio Lopez Rayon, whom he appointed his confidential secretary, and who afterwards took an active part in the revolution

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by establishing the Junta of Zitacuaro, the first step towards creating an independent government, and one which systematized the revolution, and gave a character of respectability to the patriot cause which it had not before possessed.

On the 24th of November, Hidalgo made a public entry into Guadalaxara, where he was soon after joined by Allende. He procured a number of cannons from San Blas, on the western coast, and though he had only twelve hundred muskets in the army, he determined to risk a battle, hoping that he would command success by his artillery. Before the battle, however, he committed deeds of cruelty which have stamped his name with an immortality of infamy. All the Europeans in Guadalaxara had been thrown into prison on his arrival there, and the number was so great that it was necessary to distribute them among the different convents. On a pretended suspicion of a conspiracy among them, he caused them to be taken out at night to the retired part of the mountains near the city, where they were butchered in cold blood by the general's creatures. He had caused eighty Spaniards to be beheaded while he was at Valladolid, but at Guadalaxara the number amounted to between seven and eight hundred.

ALLEJA at length marched

to the north, and on the 16th of January, 1811, arrived at the bridge of Calderon, sixteen leagues from Guadalaxara, where the insurgents were fortified, awaiting his approach. On the 17th a battle was fought, which terminated like that of Aculco. The Mexicans repulsed two or three attacks, in one of which the creole regiments lost their

able commander, the Conde de la Cadena; but the explosion of an ammunition wagon threw Hidalgo's ranks into disorder, and the fate of the day was soon decided. His troops had fought much better than before, however, and their loss was much less. He retreated with Allende in an orderly manner, while Rayon went back to Guadalaxara to carry off the military chest, which contained three hundred thousand dollars. They all met again at Saltillo. There it was decided that Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama, and Abasalo, should proceed to the United States to purchase arms and military stores. They were captured on the road, on the 21st of March, 1811, by the treachery of a former associate, and after a long trial, protracted to obtain from them all possible information, they were all shot. They met death with firmness.

We have been thus particular with the account of Hidalgo's rise ana fall, as the opening scene of the revolutionary drama, and be cause it shows the general character of the war. A guerilla warfare now succeeded under Rayon, Muniz, Navarrete, Serrano, Osorno, and others. Although the authority of the viceroy was acknowledged in the principal towns, the partisans were so numerous that the communication between them was unsafe, and the sentinels were lassoed at the very gates; the country was devastated, and hardly a day passed without some hostile action. Under Rayon's auspices, a central junta was established 10th September, 1811.

T Valladolid, when Hidalgo was on his march towards the city of Mexico, his army was joined by Don Jose Maria Morelos, cura of Nucupetaro, to whom Hidalgo immediately gave a commission to command in chief on the whole south-western line of coast. He accepted the commission, and set out October 10th, with five followers, armed with six old muskets. His confidence in his own resources was not misplaced. By the end of November he was at the head of a thou

sand men, whom he laboured diligently to discipline, although he was greatly in want of arms.

On the night of the 25th of January,

1811, he surprised the camp of the royalist captain, Don Francisco Paris, who commanded a numerous and well-appointed body of troops. He gained a complete victory, capturing eight hundred muskets, five pieces of artillery, a large quantity of ammunition, a considerable amount of money, and seven hundred prisoners, all of whom he treated with the greatest humanity. From this moment his progress was astonishing, and the skill with which he baffled the efforts of the divisions sent against him, soon made him the terror of the Spaniards, and the admiration of his countrymen. Jose and Antonio and Ermenegildo Galeana, the cura Matamoros, the three Bravos, and Victoria, all men of character and eminence, fought under his banner with great gallantry. The year 1811 passed in continual warfare, by which his renown so increased that Calleja marched against him with an army flushed with victory in the cam paign against Hidalgo. Morelos made a stand at Cuautla Amilipas an entirely open town, twenty-two leagues from the capital. Calleja on his way to Cuautla, drove the junta out of the town of Zitacuaro, and destroyed the place. This town was well fortified, and thei

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success in taking it inspired the royalist troops with contempt for the town of Cuautla and its defenders, and when the signal for the attack was given, they marched forward in four columns, confiding in their invincibility, and resolved to make short work of the fighting. The silence with which their approach was awaited, however, was ominous, and when Morelos, having suffered them to get within a hundred yards of his intrenchments in the plaza, opened a well-directed fire upon them, he threw them into confusion, and caused their speedy retreat. Calleja maintained the action from seven in the morning til three in the afternoon, when, after an unsuccessful attempt to draw the patriots forth by pretending to abandon his cannon, he retired to a town one league distant, leaving five hundred dead upon the field. He sent immediately to the capital for supplies of artillery, ammunition, and men. All that the magazines contained were furnished to him, and General Llano was ordered by the viceroy to join him with his whole force. Morelos, conscious that the eyes of all Mexico were turned to Cuautla, resolved to maintain it, though it was not at all defensible, according to the rules of warfare. He had a very small stock of provisions, and but little ammunition. The latter circumstance he remedied in part by economy in powder, and by buying from the people the balls, thrown into the town, at a fixed price per dozen; but the want of food terminated the siege much Sooner than it would have ended otherwise. Calleja continually bombarded him from one side, and Llano from the other; yet his men defended themselves without a symptom of faltering, enduring every suffering, with the same undaunted resolution displayed by their officers.

HE siege commmenced about the 1st of March, and at the end of April, all the advantages that had been gained were on the side of the besieged. Famine, however, was making great havoc among them. Nearly three hundred were sick in one hospital alone. A cat sold for six dollars, a lizard for two, and a dollar was cheerfully paid for a rat. A general action was brought on, one day, by a cow, which happened to stray into the space between the enemy's quarters and the town. The temptation to seize her was too great for the starving soldiers, and Morelos had great difficulty with nearly his whole remaining force in saving them from destruction.

Morelos at last determined to evacuate the place, and the skill with which he did so was not surpassed by the bravery that had so long defended it. Every preparation was made beforehand. On