the night of the 2d of May, between eleven and twelve o'clock, the troops were formed in the plaza. Galeana took command of the advanced guard, Morelos the centre, and the Bravos of the rear. The column moved so noiselessly that they passed unperceived between the enemy's batteries, and they were not discovered until they were putting together a bridge of hurdles, which the Indians had carried with them for the purpose of crossing a deep ravine that lay in the way. The ravine was hardly crossed when they were attacked on opposite sides by the troops of Llano and Calleja. Morelos immediately gave the signal for a general dispersion, which was so ably effected, that the Spanish troops fired for some time upon each other in mistake. Morelos marched to Izucar, then under Miguel Bravo, and here in two days he had the pleasure of being joined, according to agreement, by his dispersed soldiers. Only seventeen of all the garrison were missing. Among them, however, was Leonar lo Bravo, who was taken by the enemy. His loss was deeply regretted.

Calleja did not march into the town, till several hours after Morelos had left it; and even then with ridiculous caution, for fear of some new stratagem. When he found the town abandoned to him, he exercised the most atrocious cruelties upon the unoffending inhabitants. He returned to the capital on the 16th of May, giving a pompous account of his success, at which every one laughed. The popular appreciation of his success was well expressed by a character in a new comedy brought out at the time, at a theatre in the capital. A soldier was introduced, who came before his general and pre sented him with a turban, saying, in a most pompous manner, "Here is the turban of the Moor, whom I took prisoner." "And the Moor

himself?"

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Unfortunately, sir, he escaped." The application was palpable, and the passage was received nightly with shouts of laughter. Thus ended the siege of Cuautla, the most important military occurrence of the revolution. As soon as Morelos had recovered from the effects of a fall from his horse, on the night of the retreat, he recomluenced his career with more decided success than ever. He defeated three Spanish divisions, captured nine cannons, and an immense booty in Orizaba, stormed Oaxaca in the most daring and successful manner, and reduced Acapulco, after a siege of seven months, August, 1813. Meanwhile, he had summoned a meeting of a Mexican congress, which assembled at Chilpanzingo, in the province of Oaxaca, on the 13th of September, 1813. Its most remarkable act was the declaration of the absolute independence of Mexico. This seemed to be the culminating point of the glory of Morelos. "My race was run from the moment that I saw an independent government established," said he, at a later period, and the remark is borne out by the fact, that from that time commenced a series of reverses which only terminated with his life.

His first defeat was occasioned by the valour of Iturbide, and the error of a large body of insurgent cavalry, who came upon the battlefield in the midst of a fight, and mistook their friends for their foes, causing irretrievable confusion. He was again defeated by Colonel Iturbide, at Puruaran, January 6, 1814. In this battle, his brave lieutenant, Matamoros, was taken prisoner and shot. The insurgents retaliated upon their prisoners. One after another of the conquests of the gallant general were retaken, and action after action was lost, his officers were taken by the enemy, and executed, and the congress was driven from Chilpanzingo to the woods of Apatzingan, where, October 22, 1814, it adopted the constitution known by that name. Here, in the early part of the following year, Iturbide very nearly succeeded in surprising the congress, by a masterly forced march. With a view of placing it in safety, Morelos undertook to escort it to Tehuacan, in La Puebla, a march of sixty leagues, across a part of the country filled with royalist troops. He had only five hundred men under his command; but Teran commanded a large body of insurgents in La Puebla, and if he could join them, all might be well again. His despatches, however, were intercepted, and he was surprised, when he fancied himself beyond the reach of the enemy's lines, by two parties of royalists, who came upon him unperceived, in a mountainous part of the road. He took no measures to save himself. Don Nicolas Bravo was ordered to continue the march with the main body of the troops as an escort for the congress, while he endeavoured, with a few men, to check the advance of the Spaniards.

Most of his guard abandoned him when the action became hot; yet his desire to gain time was gratified, for the royalists did not advance to seize him until one man only was left at his side. He was at first treated with great indignity, afterwards with more kindness, and finally shot, giving the signal himself, with the same composure he had ever evinced on the field of battle, December 22, 1815. The prayer he uttered, just before his execution, is laconic and extremely affecting. "Lord, if I have done well, thou knowest it; if ill, to thy infinite mercy I commend my soul."

His friend, Don Leonardo Bravo, had suffered the same fate in 1814, an occurrence which caused the most noble exhibition of magnanimity known in Mexican history. The son of the condemned officer, Don Nicolas Bravo, gained the first victory of the Palmar, after a very severe three days' fight, August 20. He took on this occasion three hundred prisoners, whom he offered to the viceroy, Venegas, in exchange for his father. The offer was refused, and Leonardo Bravo was ordered to be immediately executed. It would uave been in accordance with the spirit of the war to retaliate; but Don Nicolas, as noble as he was brave, instantly set all his prisoners at liberty, "wishing," as he said, "to put it out of his own power to avenge on them the death of his parent, lest in the first moment of grief, the temptation should prove irresistible."

Don Nicolas Bravo greatly added to his military reputation in the following campaign, by sustaining a siege for two months, on the Cerro of Coscomatepec, and a masterly retreat when provisions utterly

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failed him, without the loss of a man. During the same year, October 18, 1813, Matamoros cut off e celebrated regiment of the Asturias, "the victors of the victors of Austerlitz," after a severe action of eight hours. But these successes weighed little against the current of disaster before noticed, and the active and enterprising Calleja, who had succeeded Venegas as viceroy, March 4, 1813, destroyed successively the armies of the insurgent chiefs.

Teran dissolved the Congress, and thus destroyed the only bond of union that existe { among them, other than their common devotion to the same cause. Notwithstanding all the advantages that had been gained in the field, however, little had been done by the viceroy towards destroying the seeds of the rebellion. Cruel and bloodthirsty though Calleja was, he was nevertheless an able politician, and knew well the truth of what he said when he wrote to the king, that "as six millions of inhabitants, decided in the cause of independence, have no need of previous consultation, each one acts, according to his means and opportunities, in favour of the project common to all; the judge, by concealing or conniving at crimes; the clergy, by advocating the justice of the cause in the confessional, and even in the pulpit; the writers, by corrupting public opinion; the women, by employing their attractions in order to seduce the royal troops; the government officer, by revealing, and thus paralyzing, the plans of his superiors; the youth, by taking arms; the old man, by giving intelligence and forwarding correspondence; and the public corporations, by setting an example of public differences with the Europeans, not one of whom they will admit as a colleague.'

The constitution adopted for Spain by the Cortes, in 1812, was also applied to Mexico and the other colonies. The legal restrictions upon the authority of the viceroy in this instrument were dispensed with; and, backed by an imposing force, Calleja laboured zealously to restore quiet. When he was succeeded in the government, in 1816, by Apodaca, the country was generally tranquil, and the new viceroy being a man of much more mildness of character, hoped to allay the whole disaffection. During the first two years of his rule, seventeen thousand of the insurgents accepted the indulto, or pardon offered by the king. Although the most important articles of the new constitution had been almost immediately suspended, it so far developed the spirit of independence that nothing could afterwards shake its nold upon the minds of the people. Out of six hundred and fifty-two elective appointments for which it provided, not one was given to a European, and the greater part were filled by avowed republicans, who were best fitted to judge leniently of the guilt of their companions, should the latter be brought under their jurisdic

acn as alcaldes, for disloyalty. These were the officers to whom Calleja so bitterly alludes in the extract just quoted; but hs successor did not so well understand the deceitful character of the apparent calm. He saw the celebrated guerilla chief, Mina, land in the country with a respectable force, and summon others to his standard, but he found that the great mass of the people remained spectators of his movements. Mina enacted his part of soldier well, but the superior power of the viceroy soon crushed his opposition, destroyed his army, and captured him. He was tried, condemned, and executed on the 11th of November, 1817. Those who still held the strongholds he had captured were successively conquered, as well as the independent Mexican chiefs; and in 1819, not one of all the insurgent leaders remained, except Guerrera, whose handful of wanderers was hardly thought worth the trouble of capture. The viceroy, therefore, wrote confidently to Spain that he would answer for the safety of Mexico without a single additional soldier being sent out, the province being again tranquil and perfectly submissive to the royal authority.

Ere long he learned his error. Mina, not more skilful as a soldier than he was ignorant as a politician, was a royalist, convinced that the independent party could never succeed in Mexico, and therefore unable to act upon its adherents: he was a Spaniard, whose national feelings prevented him from fraternizing with the natives; he committed in the commencement of his career the fatal error of seizing the money and property of a creole nobleman, who had taken no part in the war, and who was one of those for whose defence he professed