The life and times of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

MIGUEL HIDALGO Y COSTI^LA

By ARTHUR HOWARD NOLL

A SHORT HISTORY
OF MEXICO

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MIGUEL HIDALGO Y COSTILLA

From a rare print

The Life and Times

of

Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

ARTHUR HOWARD NOLL, LL. D.

AUTHOR OF
"A SHORT HISTORY OF MEXICO," ETC.

AND

A. PHILIP McMAHON

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1910

COPYRIGHT

BY A. C. McCLURG & Co.
1910

Published September 17, 1910

Dedicated to

yrfritoirt Jtorfirfo Sta*

with his permission

PREFACE

THE celebration this year in Mexico ot
the centennial of the Grito de Dolores
has caused those who are interested in Mex-
ican affairs to ask : What was the Grito de
Dolores? and who was Hidalgo, that he should
be called the Father of Mexican Independ-
ence? The answers to these questions that
may be obtained from general histories are
thoroughly inadequate and wholly unsatisfying
at this period, when Mexico is receiving uni-
versal attention. Such histories present Hidal-
go in the light of an insurrectionist, a fanatic
perhaps, who had the temerity to lead a re-
volt against the regularly constituted Govern-
ment of one of the Spanish dependencies in
America, and whose public career was ended
by the defeat of his cause and his own death
within a year. They fail to show any rela-
tion between his insurrectionary movement
and the establishment of a wholly factitious
Mexican Independence eleven years later ; nor
do they reveal a relationship with constitu-
tional government in Mexico, and the rise of
a self-conscious commonwealth to a respected
place among the nations of the earth. They

vi Preface

fail not only to give a satisfactory reason why
Hidalgo should be singled out from the host
of self-sacrificing heroes of the revolutionary
period of Mexican history to bear the dis-
tinctive title of "The Father of Mexican In-
dependence," but also to explain why he is
entitled to a place among the world's great
heroes who have lived and died for the cause
of human freedom.

Since this book was begun, it has come to
the knowledge of the authors that an adequate
biography of Hidalgo does not exist in his
native land, where his name is a household
word, and where the Grito de Dolores is an-
nually celebrated on the sixteenth of Septem-
ber with unbounded popular enthusiasm; and
that there is a danger of his becoming purely
a legendary character.

The following pages are written for the
purpose of furnishing a more satisfactory an-
swer to the above questions than is at present
available in this country. For a more de-
tailed account of Mexican political history
than is absolutely necessary for the setting
forth of the life of Hidalgo, the reader may
be referred to "A Short History of Mexico,"
and "From Empire to Republic,"1 which have

'Both published by A. C. McClurg & Co., Chi-
cago.

Preface vii

been freely drawn upon for the account of
the historical conditions which made the life
of Hidalgo significant. The historical works
and papers of Dr. Nicolas Leon, Gonzalez
Obregon, and other Mexican writers have also
been consulted. The late Dr. Henry Charles
Lea, author of "The Inquisition in the Spanish
Dependencies/' was not in sympathy with
Hidalgo, yet, by his account of the process
of the Holy Office against him, he has fur-
nished some valuable aids to a proper appre-
ciation of the life-work of the martyred hero.
Valuable contributions to the preparation of
this work have been made by Mr. A. Philip
McMahon, chiefly through his investigation of
a vast number of original documents relating
to Hidalgo and his times, in the possession
of Mr. W. W. Blake in the Mexican capital;
and those researches fully entitle him to ac-
knowledgment as co-author.

A. H. N.

University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, Au-
gust, 1910.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Early Years of Hidalgo ... i

II. The Cura de Dolores 21

III. The Gathering Storm 46

IV. The Grito de Dolores 64

V. Monte de las Cruces and Aculco . 84

VI. Guadalajara and Puente de Calderon 101

VII. The Closing Scene 112

VIII. The Epoch of Morelos . . . .129

IX. The Epoch of Iturbide . . . .153

X. The Independent Mexican Nation . 178

MIGUEL HIDALGO Y COSTILLA

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLY YEARS OF HIDALGO

ON the eighth of May in the year 1753,
there was born to Don Cristobal Hidal-
go y Costilla and Dona Ana Maria Gallaga,1
his wife, on the ranch of San Vicente, be-
longing to the estate of San Diego Corralejo
in the jurisdiction of Penjamo,2 Guanajuato,
a son who was destined a little more than
half a century later, by a public career extend-
ing over but a few months, to become pre-
eminent among the national heroes of Mexico,
and to acquire the title of "the Father of Mex-
ican Independence." Eight days later he was
baptized in the parish church of Cuitzeo de
los Naranjos, and received the name of

1N. Leon adds the name Mandarte to that of
Gallaga.

2Penjamo is a town in the present State of Guana-
juato, fifty miles southwest of the city of Guana-
juato, and sixty-five northwest of Morelia, the city
which formerly bore the name of Valladolid.

2 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Miguel.3 In accordance with Mexican cus-
tom derived from Spain, his name would have
been Miguel Hidalgo y Gallaga, thus showing
who was his mother as well as who was his
father. But for some reason which does not
readily appear, he elected, upon coming to ma-
ture years, to retain his father's name, Hidal-
go y Costilla, — Costilla being the family name
of Don Cristobal's mother. This does not
imply that Don Miguel's mother's family name
was unworthy of perpetuation. Dona Ana
Maria Gallaga was a native of the region
which is now included in the Mexican State
of Michoacan, and it is claimed that she was
descended from some of the most distinguished
families in Spain. The names of families
through which she claimed descent, Villa-
senor and Silva as well as Gallaga, were well
known in that region, where they possessed
large estates. Dona Ana Maria was left an
orphan at an early age, and it was probably
when she was about twenty years of age that

"In the record of Hidalgo's university degrees he
is called Miguel Antonio Gregorio. Antonio and
Gregorio seem therefore to have been baptismal
names, though nowhere else found and probably
never used by the distinguished man upon whom
they were conferred.

The Early Years of Hidalgo 3

she found a home in the family of a paternal
uncle on the ranch of San Vicente.

Don Cristobal Hidalgo was a native of the
pueblo of San Pedro Tejuipilco, in the juris-
diction of Real y Minas de Temescaltepec, in
the Intendancy of Mexico. He was of good
family, as may be inferred from his patro-
nymic, Hidalgo — hi jo de algo — (son of some-
body X which is applied to the lesser nobility
of Spain. Costilla, his mother's name, was
also that of a family of distinction. Don
Cristobal had come from the City of Mexico
as the administrador (manager) of the estate
of Corralejo, to which the San Vicente ranch
belonged. On that ranch he met Dona Ana
Maria Gallaga soon after she came to live
there, and they were married some time in
the year 1752. Miguel was their firstborn
child.

The significant fact about the parentage of
Miguel Hidalgo is that he was by birth a
Creole, as were both of his parents. In Span-
ish-American history, the term "creole" sig-
nifies one of pure Spanish blood, born, not
in Spain, but in one of the Spanish colonial
possessions. The importance of this fact will
appear later. Suffice it to say at present that
Miguel Hidalgo's inherent rights as a creole
were far less than if he had been born in

4 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Spain; in fact, scarcely more than if he had
been born a mestizo; that is to say, if his
Spanish blood had received an admixture of
the Indian.

The chief significance of the time of the
birth of Miguel Hidalgo would appear to be
this: Six years later, that is to say, in 1759,
Carlos III succeeded to the throne of Spain
and began what proved to be a beneficent
rule, not only for the Peninsular Kingdom but
also for New Spain. The viceroys of that
period were men of probity and energy; and
a visitor-general was also sent out from Spain
with full power to investigate and reform all
parts of the colonial Government. Special
privileges which had before been withheld
from the Creoles were granted to them ; and
some opportunities were accorded them for
self-government, at least in the ayuntamientos
or municipal governing boards. At all events,
they were for the first time since the Con-
quest admitted to the colleges and universi-
ties, and rendered eligible to careers at the
bar, in the Church, or in the Government.
Hence there was scarcely a creole father who
was not inspired with a sudden ambition that
his son should enter upon a distinguished ca-
reer.

There were subsequently born to Don Cris-

The Early Years of Hidalgo 5

tobal Hidalgo and Dona Ana Maria his wife,
three other sons, named respectively, Jose
Joaquin, Manuel Mariano, and Jose Maria, all
previous to the beginning of the beneficent
reign of Carlos III. Don Cristobal desired
that his two elder sons should have a career
in the church. He was of sufficient means,
and so he provided for all four of his sons
the best education that the times and the
region afforded.

After being prepared by private instruction
in the household (probably by the priest of the
neighboring parish), Miguel and Joaquin were
sent to the "Royal and Primitive" college of
San Nicolas Obispo, in Valladolid. This col-
lege was founded by the Jesuits in 1540, but
upon the expulsion of the Company of Jesus
from New Spain, in 1767, probably soon after
Hidalgo matriculated therein, it passed into
the hands of the secular clergy. In the col-
leges that were managed by the secular clergy
to prepare students for the priesthood or for
the law (the only professions requiring col-
lege training), Baron von Htimboldt, who
visited New Spain in 1803, found a curricu-
lum deplorably lacking in scientific courses,
and very antiquated as to its classical and lit-
erary branches. He bewailed what must be
the inevitable result of the creation of an

6 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

oligarchy of letters, which made all the edu-
cated men of Mexico either priests or law-
yers, and widened the breach between the
leaders and those who were to be subject to
their leadership.

It must be remarked, however, that the
schools and colleges of New Spain, while they
were under the control of the Jesuits, had
the reputation of equalling if not surpassing,
in the number and range of studies and the
standard of attainments by their officers, any-
thing then existing in English-speaking Amer-
ica; and Mexican scholars had up to that time
made distinguished achievements in several
branches of science. No doubt the name of
Hidalgo would have found a place in the list
of the savants of Mexico, had it not been or-
dained that his fame as a man of action
should overshadow the reputation to which he
was entitled as a man of thought and learn-
ing-.

All this must be borne in mind by those
who wish to comprehend the meagre accounts
given in Mexican history of Don Miguel's ca-
reer at college. We are told that he studied
philosophy and theology at Valladolid, and
that he excelled by reason of his talent, and
received from his college companions the nick-
name of "el Zorro" (the Fox), implying su-

The Early Years of Hidalgo ^

perior sagacity and shrewdness rather than
low cunning. A statement was made in the
formal accusation during his trial before the
Holy Office in 1810, that he was finally ex-
pelled from college because of a scandalous
adventure, in the course of which he was
obliged to escape at night through a window
of the college chapel; but this is clearly in-
correct in view of the fact that the record of
his graduation is extant, and of other facts
subsequently stated herein. It is certain that
he was studious, and acquired a taste for
learning far beyond the ability of the College
of San Nicolas to gratify; he pursued his
studies in subjects which it would have been
heretical for that or any other college in New
Spain to include in its curriculum.

In 1770, when Don Miguel was seventeen
years of age, he and his brother Joaquin went
up to the City of Mexico, where both received
from the Royal and Pontifical University of
Mexico the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Both
returned to Valladolid for further study.
Miguel lectured in Latin, Philosophy, and the
principles of Theology in the College of San
Nicolas, and also held the office of treasurer
of the college. Both went up again to the
City of Mexico in May, 1773 (Miguel then
being twenty years of age), and received the

8 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

degree of Bachelor in Theology. Joaquin sub-
sequently took the degree of Licenciado and
that of Doctor of Theology, and became in
1794 curate of the church of Dolores, in which
town he died in 1803.*

To receive the degree of Bachelor of Arts
at the age of seventeen and that of Bachelor
of Theology at the age of twenty does not
necessarily imply unusual precocity on the
part of Don Miguel Hidalgo. The youths of
Mexico in general mature earlier than those
of more northerly regions. And in those years
there were numbers of instances of youths of
that age taking their degrees in New England
colleges. The Latin taught in San Nicolas
College was the mediaeval ecclesiastical Latin,
not difficult to one whose native tongue was
Spanish ; the Philosophy was probably the dia-
lectics of the mediaeval schoolmen; and the
Theology probably comprised the compendium
of dogmatic theology, such as was then in
vogue in training the clergy, and whatever
else was necessary to enable a priest to say
the mass, and to perform the other offices of
the Church, particularly in the confession and

4It is also said that Miguel took the degree of
Doctor of Theology, and he is sometimes referred
to in documents as "Doctor." But we fail to find
any record of the conferring of the degree.

The Early Years of Hidalgo 9

discipline of penitents. The relation of the
college in Valladolid to the University in
Mexico is implied in the statement that the
former sent up to the latter four thousand
dollars in payment for the degrees conferred.
This was probably the tuition fees of the col-
lege less the expenses, and had to be paid to
the University before the latter would confer
degrees.

Among the twelve charges brought against
Miguel Hidalgo by the Inquisition at a later
date was one that he had not wished to take
his degree at the University, and had declared
that the faculty of that ancient institution of
learning was composed of "una cuadrilla de
ignor antes" (a pack of ignoramuses). The
charge must have been a false one, as we have
seen, but it is not improbable that it had some
foundation in fact. It is by no means uncom-
mon to find such opinions of their preceptors
expressed by undergraduates all over the
world and in all ages, and there is every rea-
son to believe that the Father of Mexican In-
dependence manifested at an early age his own
independence of formulas and of authority,
which was a chief characteristic throughout
his life.

Miguel went back to Valladolid, probably
for further study ; for in 1 774 he won a prize

io Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla

offered by the college for the best thesis on
the subject, "The True Method of Studying
Theology." In 1778 he was ordained a priest,
probably going up to the City of Mexico to
receive ordination (such is the assertion made
by some of his biographers), though there
was then a Bishop of Michoacan residing in
Valladolid, and this act may have been per-
formed there. To the details of this incident
in his career the biographers of this great man
seem to have attached but little importance,
and they have completely ignored his ordina-
tion to the diaconate. The interval between
the two ordinations, under the customs of the
Church then prevailing, may have been no
more than a single day. It was probably sub-
sequent to his taking orders that he became
Rector of the College of San Nicolas. In
1785 he presided over certain college func-
tions in Valladolid given in honor of a visit-
ing bishop. These were of the nature of de-
bates. The subject of one of the debates, was
the contents of a book by a certain Fray
Serri ; and too great intimacy with some of
Serri's books was one of the charges sub-
sequently brought against Hidalgo by the Holy
Office.

As throwing some sidelights upon the fu-
ture Father of Mexican Independence, it may

The Early Years of Hidalgo u

be mentioned that in 1779, his brother Manuel
took his degree of Bachelor of Theology ; and
in 1782 he became a licenciado in the City of
Mexico, where he married, and where he ap-
pears to have been a man of some promi-
nence. In 1807 ne was appointed an officer
of the Inquisition whose duty it was to de-
fend persons accused before the Holy Office
who were too poor to employ counsel. He
became insane three years later, which was
a time of great excitement in New Spain. To
this we shall give our attention later.

In 1780, Jose Maria Hidalgo, Don Cristo-
bal's youngest son by Dona Ana Maria, finished
his studies at the College of San Nicolas and
took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He be-
came an administrador of an hacienda near
his home. The mother of Miguel Hidalgo
died about 1770; and it is probable that Don
Cristobal married again and had by his sec-
ond wife a son named Mariano, who was
identified with the great movement which
made the name of Hidalgo famous in Mex-
ico.5

*A certain Padre Ignacio Hidalgo, also connected
with the revolutionary movements of the earlier
years of the nineteenth century, is said to have been
a nephew of Don Miguel, but it is difficult, upon a
close examination of dates, to suppose such a re-

12 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

It seems safe to infer that Hidalgo's long
residence in Valladolid as student, as teacher,
as cleric, and as Rector of the college was
not without its important influence upon his
career. The town of Valladolid was founded
by the first Viceroy of New Spain, Don An-
tonio de Mendoza, and was named after his
own birthplace in Spain. It was frequently
called Valladolid de Michoacan. It was well
located and handsomely built, having a fine
paseo and some beautiful churches. In later
periods of Mexican history, the town was
noted for its progressiveness and as a hot-
bed for the propagation of political ideas in
advance of the time. It is a significant fact

lationship to have existed ; the chances are th'at
Padre Ignacio was of a totally different family, or
even that the name Hidalgo was assumed by him.
He is said to have been taken prisoner in Norias
de Raj an in company with a number of clerical
revolutionists, and secretly executed in July, 1812.
It is most curious however, that apparently no
effort has been made to trace some relationship be-
tween Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and his namesake
Fr. Michaele Hidalgo, of the Province of San Diego,
whose Tractatus Theologicus, Canonicus, Moralis in
duplicem Constitutionem Apostolicam, etc., was pub-
lished in Mexico in 1762, and whose Compendia His-
torico, Sacro-profano, Teologico-dogmatico y Filo-
sofico-cristiano, etc., was published forty years later.

The Early Years of Hidalgo 13

that many of the heroes of the revolutionary
period were natives of Valladolid or its vi-
cinity, or were at one time resident there. It
was in commemoration of one of the greatest
of these heroes. Jose Maria Morelos (of
whose career we shall have something to re-
late in a subsequent chapter), that the name
of the town was changed in 1828 to Morelia.
One of the plazas is called the Plaza of the
Martyrs, because severaf patriots were exe-
cuted there in the revolutionary period.
When in the early part of the nineteenth cen-
tury, revolutionary movements began in Mex-
ico, Valladolid was the storm centre of more
than one of them. And the suddenness with
which suspicion rested upon Valladolid when-
ever ideas of political independence began to
spread abroad in New Spain, as the place
where such ideas were being propagated,
leads us to believe one of two things : either
Valladolid was in an atmosphere of political
freedom which influenced the habits of
thought of Miguel Hidalgo and his contem-
poraries; or else Hidalgo was of so strong
a character as to be able to impress his
thoughts upon the people of his community,
especially when he was the head of an edu-
cational institution. The latter seems the
more plausible inference, particularly as his

14 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

influence over Morelos, and Rayon, students
under him at the College of San Nicolas, is
generally recognized; though it is not un-
likely also that there was a precedent ten-
dency in Valladolid toward the receptiveness
of such ideas of government as he pro-
claimed.

But whatever doubts may be entertained re-
garding the influence of Valladolid upon the
life of Miguel Hidalgo, there can be no ques-
tion that his life was what it was largely be-
cause it was spent within a certain region in
the tablelands of the interior of Mexico.
There is no evidence that Hidalgo was ever
outside of this region until a few months be-
fore his death, when he was taken a prisoner
to Chihuahua. That final journey was the
longest he had ever taken. The region to
which this refers was known as the "Provin-
cias Internas," or interior provinces of New
Spain. It had for its axis a line drawn from
the City of Mexico northwesterly conforming
generally to the tableland of the Cordilleras.
Its chief cities, Valladolid, Queretaro, Guana-
juato, Zacatecas, and Chihuahua (the last
named being a thousand miles from the City
of Mexico) were upon this axial line, or very
near it. The name of this region was not a
mere popular title, but was officially con-

The Early Years of Hidalgo 15

f erred in 1776; and at times it implied a sep-
aration in governmental matters from the
other regions of New Spain that had their
capital in the City of Mexico. And at all
times there was the jealousy which exists be-
tween the provinces and the metropolis, by
no means a negligible feature of the social
and political conditions which were of such
importance in the events that made Hidalgo
famous.

The changes which went on in the govern-
ment of the Provincias from the time of
Hidalgo's college days until his public career
began, were frequent and confusing, and
were made in a manner altogether regard-
less of the feeling of the people. For ex-
ample, in 1776 the Provincias were put in
charge of a Commandant-General who was
directly responsible to the King of Spain.
Six years later the authority of the Viceroy
of New Spain was again extended over the
Provincias and they were divided into an
eastern, a central and a western group, each
having its own military commandant. Two
years later they were formed into two groups,
an eastern and a western. After an interval
of six years they were again consolidated
under a government distinct from that of the
Viceroy, except in the case of two or three

1 6 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

of the provinces, which were a little later
restored to his jurisdiction. In 1804 the old
arrangement of an eastern and a western dis-
trict was restored, though the order direct-
ing this was not executed until eight years
later. And with each change there was a
lack of system and complete and definite re-
organization, which left it uncertain in the
minds of the occupants of the region under
what government they were living.

And this was by no means the worst con-
fusion that resulted from the frequent and
unsystematic change of the "government
without the consent of the governed." There
was a conflict of jurisdiction even in the
times when the Government was supposed to
be consolidated under a Commandant-Gen-
eral, as was the case in the first decade of
the nineteenth century.6 The system of in-
tendencias was then in effect, by which the
officers of government were placed in links
of dependents, each on his superior. Orig-
inal judgments given at that time by officers
of the subdivisions of the territory were sub-
ject to review, — if on military subjects, by
the Commandant-General who had his seat
at Chihuahua; if on fiscal subjects, by an

'The significance of this will appear in a subse-
quent chapter.

The Early. Years of Hidalgo 17

intendente living at San Luis Potosi; if the
subject was an ecclesiastical matter, by the
Bishop of Nuevo Leon; and if it was a civil
matter, by the Audiencia of Nueva Galicia,
at Guadalajara.

To a man of Hidalgo's temper, who had
gained from a study of history and political
science some ideas of the rights of man, and
who was living in territories where this con-
fusion of government was but a single phase
of a generally oppressive system, the result
must have been foreseen. It made him early
pledge his life to the great cause of the
emancipation of his people.

The uncertainty manifested by Hidalgo's
Mexican biographers regarding his ancestors
and his own early history must seem strange
to an American reader, who has learned in
his school days details of the lives of all the
heroes of his country's history. Mexico has
by common consent accorded to Miguel
Hidalgo y Costilla a preeminence 4n the Mex-
ican Walhalla, and the title of "Father of
Mexican Independence," but has, as yet, been
able to provide no more than a meagre ac-
count of his life. An examination of the con-
ditions which prevailed in New Spain in the
latter part of the eighteenth century and the
early part of the nineteenth will partly ex-

1 8 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

plain this. New Spain and especially the
Provincias Internas were in every respect
considerably behind the United States at the
time of the Revolutionary War. To say that
Valladolid, for example, was provincial, would
but feebly express its relations to the City
of Mexico. And the City of Mexico was
provincial, and worse than provincial, com-
pared with the cities of Europe or of the
United States. The people of New Spain
had not been trained to make or to keep rec-
ords of daily events for the benefit of future
historians. Journalism was unknown to them.
The only newspaper in New Spain was the
Gaceta, published under the supervision of
the Government, which was suspicious lest
anything derogatory to the interests of the
Viceregal Court or the Church should appear
in it; and hence it was little calculated to
publish events of public interest which would
some day be invaluable as material for the
historian and biographer. There was no
such thing as public opinion, and but little,
if any, public curiosity.

Both the secular and the ecclesiastical Gov-
ernment were inquisitorial in their character
and suspicious of what went on about them.
Let some incident excite popular attention,
and it was adjudged seditious ; and not only

The Early Years of Hidalgo 19

was it at once suppressed, but all records of
it were carefully destroyed — unless it were
of such a nature that the Inquisition became
interested; then its record was carefully filed
for future reference; but the record of the
Holy Office was kept in secret so long as the
Holy Office lasted. Records were indeed
kept in parish churches, and certain vital sta-
tistics were supposed to be entered therein;
but each entry involved the payment of a
fee by the priest to the diocesan, and this dis-
couraged the keeping of complete parish rec-
ords. Such records as were made were sub-
ject to disaster and destruction from epi-
demic, climatic conditions, and revolutions.
Furthermore the people generally had grown
wary of making records of their private in-
terests, lest they should furnish information
to the Holy Office which might some time be
used to their discomfiture.

But chiefly are the records of Hidalgo's
life meagre because of the meteoric nature of
his public career. He was before the Mex-
ican public — his own people — but a few
months ; and the end came before it was sus-
pected that he was more than an insurrec-
tionist ; and of insurrectionists the country
had seen many before his time. From that
time for more than half a century, the coun-

2O Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

try was kept so busy with insurrections and
revolutions that little opportunity was of-
fered for men to gather up materials for writ-
ing history or biography. Yet as we shall
have occasion to see within the next few
pages, and anomalous as it may seem, it is
to the institution which in a measure was
the greatest destroyer of biographical ma-
terial that we owe our knowledge of the
character and of some of the incidents of
the mature life of Hidalgo.

CHAPTER II.
THE CURA DE DOLORES.

DON MIGUEL left the College of San
Nicolas, in Valladolid, some time after
1785, and was engaged in parochial work in
Colima, directly west of Valladolid and not
far from the Pacific coast. In the middle of
the nineteenth century it was a town of be-
tween fifteen thousand and twenty thousand
inhabitants. That a man of Hidalgo's broad
learning should have been relegated by the
ecclesiastical authorities to a place so remote
from the capital was due partly to the con-
stant friction between the secular and the
regular clergy. In 1793 he became curate
of the parish church in San Felipe, probably
the town which now goes by the name of
Gonzalez and is in the Mexican State of
Guanajuato. Here he spent seven years. In
1800 he abandoned parochial work, and he
spent the next three years in wandering
about the Provincias Internas in the neigh-
borhood of his native town. During these
years he frequently performed services for his
brother Don Jose Joaquin, who as we have
21

22 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

seen, was curate of the church at Dolores.
Such is the meagre record of his biographers.

These three years of apparently aimless
wandering were due to his coming under the
suspicion of the Inquisition. And it is from
records made at that time, though concealed
from the public until a comparatively recent
date, that we are permitted to gain some
knowledge of this period of his life. At the
same time we are put on our guard against
too ready an acceptance of any record made
by the Holy Office, for that body was not
overconscientious in its regard for the laws
of evidence.

The Inquisition had been established in
New Spain in 1571, under the supervision of
the Dominicans, for the express purpose of
keeping the foreigners in order and advanc-
ing the spiritual interests of the Church. It
had a career of considerable activity during
the first century and a half of its existence,
and celebrated numerous autos da fe in the
City of Mexico, where a brasero or qnemadero
occupied a public place until removed in 1771.
In the reign of Carlos III there was man-
ifested a tendency to reduce the privileges of
the Holy Office and to restrain its audacity;
consequently, it lost some of the popular awe
and respect which it had formerly inspired;

The Cura de Dolores 23

and it had been unable to recover fully its
power or to terrorize the people, under the
reactionary reign of Carlos IV, while its ef-
forts in the latter period failed not to arouse
in the populace feelings of the deepest resent-
ment.

On the sixteenth of July, 1800, a certain
teacher of philosophy in the Order of Merced,
Fray Joaquin Huesca by name, denounced
Hidalgo to the commissioner of the Inquisition
in Valladolid, for the unorthodoxy of his
teachings. A certain Fray Manuel Estrada
of the same order had heard his heterodox
utterances, and upon being summoned before
the commissioner, corroborated Huesca's tes-
timony and enlarged upon it. The commis-
sioner hastily collected some data concerning
Hidalgo's private life, and three days later
sent up the report to the Holy Office to the
effect that Hidalgo was a most learned man
who had ruined himself with gambling and
women; that he read prohibited books, and
while professor of theology, had taught from
Jansenist works. The following March the
commissioner from San Miguel el Grande sent
in a report charging Hidalgo with leading a
disorderly life, and with carrying about with
him a copy of Al Koran. A month later, how-
ever, he reported that at the Easter season

24 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

then just past, Hidalgo had reformed his
ways, and that his reformation had been wide-
ly commented upon and had aroused general
attention.

In the meantime the Holy Office had pur-
sued an investigation by its usual methods,
and had discovered that Hidalgo was develop-
ing revolutionary tendencies ; that he was ac-
customed to speak of monarchs as tyrants,
and that he cherished aspirations for political
liberty. He had little respect for the Index
Ex pur gat or ins, and was so extensively read
in current French literature that he had be-
come thoroughly imbued with French ideas,
or, as it was subsequently called, he was
afrancesado. He had, by the direct evidence
of thirteen witnesses cited before the tribunal,
been guilty of heretical utterances, sufficient
to consign him to the stake. The recommen-
dation of the fiscal of the Holy Office was that
if he was guilty he should be arrested and his
property sequestrated. But with a moderation
that was unusual to the officers of the Inquisi-
tion, the fiscal admitted that there were doubts,
and of these Hidalgo was entitled to the bene-
fit. The witnesses had been contradictory, and
the reputation of Estrada was that of a

The Cura de Dolores 25

habitual liar. The conclusive recommenda-
tion, was, therefore, that the case be suspend-
ed, and that the papers be filed for future ref-
erence. This was accordingly done.

It nowhere appears that Hidalgo had def-
inite knowledge of what was going on. The
evidence collected by the commissioners and
the fiscal was wholly ex parte and was un-
doubtedly colored by prejudice against Hidal-
go as a creole, and by jealousy of him as a
secular priest who had secured important posi-
tions and more or less desirable benefices. It
is a reasonable inference, however, that Hidal-
go knew that he was the subject of suspicion
and that he had been deprived of his living
at San Felipe by the machinations of his
enemies of the Order of Merced. The tribute
paid to his learning by his accusers may be
accepted, always remembering that "learn-
ing" is a relative term and must in this case
be applied with relation to the general condi-
tion of the clergy in New Spain at that time.
The more specific charge of his indulgence in
forbidden literature fits in so well with other
circumstances of his life as they appear to
us at this period, that we accept it as true.

With this knowledge of the character of
Hidalgo at the age of forty-seven, we can
imagine him accepting the deprivation of his

26 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

benefice with a certain amount of grim satis-
faction : taking life rather easily for a while ;
roaming about the Provincias Internas in the
neighborhood of his home; becoming ac-
quainted with the conditions which there pre-
vailed; and studying how to apply the prin-
ciples he had acquired from the prohibited
French books to what he saw about him in his
own country.

The various social classes existing among
the subjects of the Spanish King must first
have engaged his attention. There were the
Old Spaniards, as they were at that time
called, or white colonists of pure Spanish
blood and of Spanish birth, comprising the
only recognized society in the social organiza-
tion that existed in Spanish America. It was
apparently for them, and for the furtherance
of their interests, that New Spain existed. For
the latter part of the eighteenth century, es-
pecially since the accession of Carlos IV, they
alone were permitted to fill the offices in the
country; and so they might be found attached
to the viceregal court, or occupying the of-
fices of trust and profit, or engaged in what-
ever lucrative business might be pursued un-
der the Spanish commercial system (which
created monopolies, with all their attendant
evils), or working the mines on a large scale.

The Cur a de Dolores 27

Hence they were chiefly gathered in the
capital and in the larger towns of the prov-
inces. They were wealthy, arrogant, and apt
to be unscrupulous. They were firm support-
ers of Spain's unjust policy of government in
America, both civil and ecclesiastical.

In the opposite social scale were the In-
dians, the pure native races who had scarcely
been recognized as having any rights which
the Old Spaniards were bound to respect.
These were concentrated mainly in the vicinity
of the large cities of the tableland.

A third class, that to which Hidalgo him-
self belonged, was composed of Creoles.
These were regarded by the Old Spaniards in
almost the same category as the native
Indians.

There were besides these the mestizos, peo-
ple of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, often
confused with the Creoles and possessing equal
social rights with them; and a comparatively
small number of mulattoes, or mixed white
and negroes; zmibos, or Chinos, Indians and
negroes ; and some African negroes, in the
low lands adjacent to the Pacific coasts.

In a report made to the King a few years
before, the population of New Spain of five
and a quarter millions, was divided up into the
following proportions : — The Old Spaniards

28 Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo,

numbered less than ten thousand; the Creoles

two-thirds of a million: the mestizos and

v \

other half-breeds a million and a half; while
the Indians numbered two millions and a
quarter.

It was impossible, under the conditions
which then prevailed, for these various social
classes to dwell together in peace and happi-
ness. And it would have required no very
astute politician to predict that the social rev-
olution, which would occur sooner or later,
would originate among the Creoles.

Hidalgo's present relations to the ecclesi-
astical authorities awakened in him a keen ap-
preciation of the fact that upon the accession
of Carlos IV to the Spanish throne twelve
years before, the Creoles in New Spain had
begun to lose those rights and privileges they
had enjoyed under the beneficent reign of
Carlos III. He began to see that the mestizos
had rights which the Spanish government was
completely ignoring; and finally, applying the
principles derived from his prohibited books.
he grasped the idea that the Indians, the orig-
inal possessors of the soil, had been wrong-
fully deprived of their inherent rights. It was
but natural, now that he was under the sus-
picion of the ecclesiastical authorities, and to
some extent under their discipline, that he

The Cura de Dolores 29

should sympathize with the Indians, whose
rights had been so ruthlessly trampled upon,
and that he should find in the long-oppressed
native races, the opportunity to strike back at
his own personal oppressors.

Hidalgo knew the history of the slavery of
the Indians, and of the various efforts made
for the amelioration of their condition; he
knew of Las Casas, and of his lifelong efforts
to secure their freedom. He knew the numer-
ous decrees of the Spanish Consejo de las
Indias abolishing slavery, and how those de-
crees had been violated by the colonists of
New Spain. He knew of the act of Luis de
Velasco, the second Viceroy, by which one
hundred and fifty thousand Indians, held as
slaves by the Spanish colonists, had been
emancipated. He knew that upon a division
of the royal domain some time subsequently,
the Government had established a bad prec-
edent of inconsistency with its own decrees
by transferring the Indians with the soil. He
was familiar with the plea of the colonists in
seeking the revocation of any decree pro-
hibiting the making of slaves by war and for-
bidding the condemnation of the Indians as a
class solely to ignoble pursuits : that only by
the employment of slave labor could they
hope to make the country produce the ex-

30 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

orbitant taxes levied upon colonial products
by the Spanish Government.

He was assured that the Indians had capac-
ities for something better than slavery in the
mines or on the haciendas, which had been
imposed upon them by the conquistadares with
their detestable system of repartimientos and
encomiendcns, and which had been continued
to his time. His first thought was for their
industrial education. He would develop their
own industrial resources, and teach them how
to value their freedom. These were remark-
able plans to enter the mind of a Creole ec-
clesiastic in New Spain in the early years of
the nineteenth century. He would have been
fifty years ahead of his time, had he been an
Anglo-Saxon and held such ideas and formu-
lated such plans. Being what he was, he was
two centuries in advance of his age.

But Hidalgo's dreams were not alone of
social and economic reforms ; plans for poli-
tical reform began to assume shape in his
mind. Without political reforms, social and
economic reforms were impossible. And from
the prohibited books he read he had learned
in what direction to look for the cause of the
unhappiness of his people. New Spain was
governed by a Viceroy and an Audiencia, un-
der a code of laws enacted by the Consejo de

The Cum de Dolores 31

las Indias, which had little or no regard for
the real needs of the Spanish subjects in
America were involved in contradictions, and
were arbitrarily enforced. For the Spanish
subject living1 in America to obtain justice was
almost impossible. An appeal from a local
court might be carried up to the Viceroy and
might have to be submitted by him to the
Consejo de las Indias before it could be de-
termined. Hence, when the law's delays were
so great, and the final result so uncertain, it
were better to submit to a gross injustice than
to apply to a court for relief. Conditions
were made worse by the often conflicting
jurisdictions of civil, military, and ecclesias-
tical courts. And though the Inquisition was
at that time less powerful and awe-compelling
than it had been, its traditions of cruelty and
injustice had caused a deep feeling of popular
resentment, and it was still capable of annoy-
ing those who failed to win its approval.

It was due to bad government and to op-
pressive commercial laws emanating from the
Casa de Contratacion (another Spanish in-
stitution of the sixteenth century, which
sought to control the trade of the dependencies
for the sole benefit of the home government,
and reduced to a minimum the industrial pur-
suits of the Spanish subjects in America, and

32 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

the development of the rich resources of the
country) that Mexico was so backward in
civilization.

A change was in store for Don Miguel.
About the middle of January, 1803, his brother
Jose Joaquin, curate of the church of Dolores,
died; and Don Miguel, the Holy Office ap-
parently interposing no objection, succeeded
him in the living. It is as the Cur a de Dolores
that he is best known in Mexican history.
Dolores was then, as it is still, a small and in-
significant village. It was then in the In-
tendency of Guanajuato, as it is now in the
State of that name. The parish church bore
the name of Our Lady of Sorrows (Nuestra
Senora de Dolores), and as was usual
throughout New Spain, the community which
gathered about a church built by the early
missionaries took the name of the church. In
time the name of this town — shortened to
Dolores — superseded the name of the church.

The parish offered many advantages to a
priest of Hidalgo's temperament who was
nursing such projects for the amelioration of
the people as were beginning to take form in
his mind. The living was always referred to
as a desirable one. The curate's priestly ad-
ministrations were among some Spaniards
and Creoles of the village, but more largely

33

among the Indians of the neighboring hacien-
das. Hidalgo began forthwith to put into
operation his plans for the industrial improve-
ment of the latter. He taught them to cultivate
the vine, in order that they might learn what
wealth was to be obtained from the soil by
developing its natural resources. He planted
mulberry trees and cultivated the silkworm,
that he might in time develop silk manu-
facture. He taught the Indians the art of tan-
ning hides, and so enabled them to produce
leather at a much lower cost than they were
accustomed to pay for it when bought of the
Spanish merchants. He established a factory
in which he introduced better methods of
making the earthenware than the Indians had
used before the Conquest ; and he taught them
how to make better bricks than the sun-dried
adobes which they had been accustomed to
make. He was enabling them to produce
these things for their own benefit, and not for
the purpose of enriching some proud and cruel
Spaniards. In few words, he was fitting the
Indians of his neighborhood to pursue the oc-
cupations of free people rather than those of
slaves ; and his may have been the far-reach-
ing plan of making Dolores a centre of pros-
perity and wealth. It was probably because
of these industrial enterprises that Hidalgo

34 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

became involved in debt, as was alleged of
him before the Inquisition ; as a natural con-
sequence he was at the mercy of the Old
Spaniards of his vicinity, who were the prin-
cipal bankers and money-lenders of the coun-
try. However, that feeling which usually ex-
ists between the creditor and the debtor was
probably mollified in this case by the respect
which Hidalgo's learning and general char-
acter inspired. And it was doubtless partly
due to this creditor interest which the Old
Spaniards had in him that the Holy Office was
loath to decree the confiscation of his property.

But more than all, Hidalgo gained the love
and obedience of his parishioners, not by the
means employed by the average priest of New
Spain in those days, but by sympathizing with
them ; by advising and helping them. Whether
he was thus early planning to ingratiate him-
self with the Indians, so that when he had
need of them he could be assured that they
would flock to his banner and do his bidding,
is doubtful. There is no evidence before us
that he had any plans in the early days of his
life at Dolores other than for the peaceable
emancipation of the Indians, and for the
amelioration of the condition of the Creoles
and mestizos.

But events occurred which necessitated a

The Cura dc Dolores 35

change in his plan. In 1805 he made a jour-
ney to the City of Mexico chiefly for the pur-
pose of baptizing the daughter of his brother,
Jose Mariano, the licenciado. We have seen
that he had been in the city on two previous
occasions for the purpose of receiving his de-
grees from the University. That was more
than thirty years before; and it would be well
for the reader to recall what were the condi-
tions of travel from the Provincias Internas
to the capital in those days. The journey
might be made on horseback, in the rude
coaches used at that time, or by diligencia; in
any case it was usually made with compan-
ions for mutual protection, for most of the
roads were infested by robbers. But we must
imagine Don Miguel, "el Zorro," watchful of
all that was going on about him, quick to re-
ceive impressions from what he saw, and
closely observant of everything that might aid
him in his large plans for the betterment of
his people.

The time of this later visit was a signifi-
cant one. The effects of the narrow policy
of Carlos IV were more apparent in the cap-
ital than in the Provincias Internas. The dis-
content of the Creoles was manifested in many
ways. Hidalgo beheld in the Plaza Mayor
the bronze statue of Carlos IV which Mexico

36 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

still, as is stated in the inscription upon its
pedestal, "preserves solely as a work of art,"
but which no one outside of the limited circle
of Old Spaniards in New Spain could contem-
plate with love or loyalty toward that sover-
eign. On all sides were heard complaints
that the Viceroy, Iturrigaray, was robbing
Mexico to increase his own wealth and to
supply the insatiable demands of Spain; that
he was collecting an army in order to
strengthen himself in the Government; for
there were rumors from across the sea that
all was not well in Spain, and that a change
in the government there might result in
changes in New Spain. What Hidalgo learned
of ecclesiastical affairs from his associations
with the metropolitan clergy and from con-
versations with his brother must have awak-
ened in him an interest in the political situa-
tion and led to the formulation of further
plans for the good of his country.

With his mind full of his projects for the
improvement of the condition of the Indians,
he must have let drop some information on
the subject, and the result was as might have
been expected. Dolores was not so far out
of the world but that the actions of the curate,
already keenly watched by the Holy Office,
should be investigated by the secular author-

The Cura de Dolores 37

ities. He was clearly guilty of violating the
regulations of the Casa de Contratacion, which
prohibited the erection of factories in Mexico.
The cultivation of raw products which should
come into direct competition with the indus-
tries of Spain, and the planting of grapes
and vineyards were explicitly forbidden by
these regulations. Here was occasion for
drastic measures on the part of the civil
authorities. They acted with promptness,
sending officers to Dolores to cut down the
mulberry trees and grapevines.

Then reports of heresies which Hidalgo
was holding and teaching were made to the
Holy Office, and the proceedings which had
been suspended in 1801 were reopened. In
July 1807 certain priests were found who had
scandalous reports to make about the curate
of Dolores. Some of them were things they
had heard the notorious Estrada say of him in
1801. And a denunciation, secured nearly a
year later, was that made by a woman who
was accepted by the Holy Office as "of good
character, who frequented the sacraments,"
but who yet, in order to implicate Hidalgo,
acknowledged herself guilty of an evil life.
This confession should have thrown her testi-
mony entirely out of court. Again, early in
1809, another priest was found who was

38 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

anxious to inform the Holy Office as to the
character of the books that Hidalgo had in
his possession and was reading with evident
enjoyment. Curiously enough, one of these
dangerous books was by the author whose
works were discussed at the function at Val-
ladolid, held in 1785, at which Hidalgo pre-
sided and at which a noted bishop was
present.

As we now read these charges and look at
the evidence that was offered to substantiate
them, we readily decide that the former were
trivial, and the latter grossly improbable.
Under ordinary circumstances the Holy Office,
however, would have questioned neither the
gravity of the charges nor the adequacy of
the testimony by which they were substan^
tiated; it would, with little hesitancy, have
proceeded against the parish priest in the ob-
scure little country town and would have ef-
fectually silenced him. But the Holy Office
was not then what it had been. It failed to
awaken in the people the reverential fear
with which it was formerly regarded, and it
had become inert in the exercise of its osten-
sible functions. It found that Hidalgo had a
high reputation for learning, that he was
referred to as an authority on most subjects,
and that he was greatly beloved by his people.

The Cura de Dolores 39

And so long as he was content to live in his
rural parish and was a candidate for no met-
ropolitan preferment, what wisdom would
there be in bringing him to popular notice?
Perhaps his accusers, having personal reasons
for bringing Hidalgo under the ban of the
Holy Office, were not in special favor with
that tribunal. At all events, as on the previous
occasion, no action was taken by the tribunal
further than to file the papers for future ref-
erence.

By means of this file, for a long time hid-
den, but lately brought to light, we are per-
mitted to get another view of Don Miguel
Hidalgo y Costilla. And although the general
purport of the documents relating to his vari-
ous denunciations before the Holy Office is
to defame his character, he appears therein
as a singularly interesting man. He was re-
garded as of wide culture and a prodigy of
learning; and so he must have been as com-
pared with any of the priests of his time, if
it was true as was alleged, that among his
intellectual pursuits was the translating of
Racine's tragedies and Moliere's comedies.
Some of the latter he caused to be acted in
his house at Dolores. His favorite was
"Tartuffe." The Inquisition had before it evi-
dence that he read books in Latin, Greek,

4O Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Italian, and French; and these embraced a
wide range of subjects, including history,
economics and the Science of Government.

He was of a vigorous and inquiring mind,
with little reverence for authority. He gave,
his opinions freely on the books he read,
and was disposed to speak in high praise of
some which had been placed on the Index1
Expurgatorius. In the eyes of the Holy Office
his worst offence was his reading the books
containing propaganda of French revolution-
ary ideas, French liberalism, and the rights of
man.

Many Frenchmen in New Spain, naturally
partisans of the new order of thought, had!
been prosecuted by the Holy Office for athe-
ism— a convenient charge under which to
bring within the jurisdiction of the Inquisitidn
offenders against established political ideas
and institutions. This was of far greater im-
portance than the evidence that Hidalgo was
fond of music, dancing, and gaming ; and that
"his relations with women were of a char-
acter common enough with the clergy of the
period." For since 1770, when an edict of the
Inquisition ordered the immediate denuncia-
tion of any priest who should, through the
confessional, encourage ideas of disloyalty to
the temporal sovereign (and especially since

The Cura de Dolores 41

the accession of Carlos IV), the cases brought
before the Holy Office were more frequently
political than religious; and in the very years
when evidence was being collected against
Hidalgo, several Mexicans — among them two
distinguished publicists — were prosecuted for
writings evincing too ardent a spirit of
patriotism. The censorship, which was one
of the functions of the Holy Office, was in-
creased in vigor and severity to cope with the
new dangers to constituted authority which
appeared in the literature of French liberal-
ism.

In fact, Hidalgo had been profoundly influ-
enced by French ideas ever since his under-
graduate days, and was biased by them even
at that time, while the Inquisition was prepar-
ing to decide that it might postpone all action
in his case. No doubt it was moved thereto
by Jose Maria Hidalgo, who was, as we have
seen, appointed to a responsible position in the
Holy Office. Hidalgo was preparing to make
a practical application of the liberal ideas he
had imbibed, to enter the realm of politics,
and thus to incur the fiercest penalties of the
Holy Office.

He is furthermore pictured to us at this
time as fond of discussing points in theology
which the ecclesiastical authorities regarded

42 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

as settled beyond all possibility of questioning.
And the opinions he expressed on the stigmata
of St. Francis ; the handkerchief of Veronica ;
the identity of the Magi and of the penitent
thief, and the legendary lore of the church,
were enough to cause a chill of horror to
pass through the frames of the orthodox offi-
cers of the Inquisition.

In the year in which the Inquisition was col-
lating evidence of Hidalgo's intellectual activ-
ity, moral delinquencies and doctrinal heresies,
and carefully filing it where it could be readily
found when needed ; the year in which Hi-
dalgo, apparently indifferent to the efforts
being made to have him deprived of his bene-
fice, degraded from the priesthood, impris-
oned, and perhaps executed, was eluding the
vigilance of the Argus-eyed Holy Office arid
actually planning a political revolution which
would sting it into sudden and relentless activ-
ity;— in that year the affairs of New Spain
were rapidly tending to a point where a revo-
lution of some kind was inevitable. The con-
ditions were by no means similar to those
which had existed in the British Colonies
on the Atlantic coast a quarter of a century
before, or they could be more easily explained
and more readily understood. Spain had not
colonized her conquered provinces in Mexico

The Cura de Dolores 43

as England had established colonies in the re-
gions farther north, nor were the Spanish
colonists in Mexico similar to Anglo-Saxon
colonists in temper and spirit. The same dif-
ference in the method of colonization existed
between the Spaniards and the English as had
existed between the Romans and the Greeks.
The Spanish colonies were of the Roman type,
creations of the central political organization,
upheld and controlled by a power from with-
out— were in fact dependencies of the crown.
The English colonies were like the Greek set-
tlements, established by voluntary emigrants
from the mother country; they were usually
independent from the outset, retaining, as a
bond between them and the mother country,
a moral sentiment based upon the fact of their
common origin ; beginning in feebleness and
working their way by powerful struggles to
wealth and prosperity.

The English colonists, furthermore, began
their colonies with some knowledge of their
natural rights and of self-government, and
they grew in that knowledge until they could
submit to no power beyond the sea after it
had become oppressive. Then they revolted
and readily undertook the experiment of inde-
pendent government established on democratic
principles. The Spanish had been schooled

44 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

only in the necessity of obedience, and were
without the power of self-correction or self-
government. They had been so long sub-
jected by the Church and the State to abso-
lute rule, and without experience in matters
of public concern, that they were dominated
by habits of obedience and were wholly un-
prepared for independent national action.

This appears to explain why a revolt of
the people of New Spain from the oppressive
form of government under which they lived
was so long delayed, and why the purpose of
their revolt, when it came, was to secure to
themselves better government than that under
which they had been living. It explains also
why they had little thought of changing the
form of government; and it was natural that
the revolt should originate with the Creoles
who were more conscious of their rights than
were the Indians or the mestizos. A knowl-
edge of natural rights had been crushed out
of the Indians by nearly three centuries of
oppressive slavery. The Creoles, however, had
acquired some privileges under the beneficent
rule of Carlos III ; they had become eligible
to preferment in the army and in the Church,
and had been permitted some freedom in the
Ayuntamiento. Upon the death of Carlos III
and the accession of Carlos IV, in 1778, they

The Cura de Dolores 45

found that some of their privileges were be-
ing abridged and others withheld; that the
Inquisition, the Audiencia, and the viceroy
were jealous of them, and disposed to repress
them; while the Old Spanish element, which
comprised the Government or was attached to
the viceregal court, had become arrogant and
intolerant, claiming that they were in the pos-
session of rights which all others were bound
to respect. This was the assertion of a caste
principle as intolerant as that of India. It
was a favorite maxim of one of the oidores,
that "while a Manchego mule or a Castilian
cobbler remained in the country, his was the
right to rule" ; and the Ayuntamiento of Mex-
ico was insolently informed by the Audiencia
that it had no authority except over the
leperos, that is, over the rabble or lowest class
of Mexican society.

CHAPTER III.
THE GATHERING STORM.

TO the disappointment of the most astute
prophet of the latter part of the eigh-
teenth century, whose attention might have
been called to the conditions in Mexico at that
time, and who might have attempted to fore-
tell how the problems then presented were to
be solved, the opportunity for the irrepressible
conflict pending in New Spain was actually
afforded by events in Spain ; and to these our
attention must now be turned. Spain had
for many years been under the influence of
the French Revolution, and had been making
war and peace at the behest of Napoleon
Bonaparte, who was ambitious of including
Spain and a boundless empire in the New
World in his scheme of universal conquest;
and in defiance of all treaties, Napoleon pro-
ceeded in 1808, to the military occupation of
that kingdom, determined that a member of
his family should sit upon the Spanish throne.
The time for carrying out this programme
of conquest was especially propitious. Car-
los IV, since his accession to the throne in
46

The Gathering Storm 47

1788 had amply proved his unfitness to be
the ruler of the kingdom; and his heir-appar-
ent, the Prince of Asturias, was suspected of
harboring designs upon his father's life. The
virtual ruler of Spain was Manuel Godoy,
known in history as "The Prince of the
Peace," though responsible for the war then
raging between Spain and England. He was
high in favor with the King though known
to be involved in the most disgraceful scandal
with the queen, Maria Luisa of Parma. New
Spain as well as the mother country experi-
enced all the evil consequences of his de-
bauched government ; the management of af-
fairs in Mexico became worse than ever be-
fore while the so-called "Prince of the Peace"
was in power; and most of the annoying cir-
cumstances by which the Mexican people were
likely to be driven to a revolt owed their
origin to this period of misrule in Spain.

Disasters followed each other in rapid suc-
cession. In March 1808, eight thousand
French troops under Murat entered Spain
and proceeded to the capital. The royal fam-
ily contemplated flight to the Western World
as the Braganzas of Portugal had fled to
Brazil the previous year. But their flight was
checked by an insurrection which broke out
in Aranjuez, encouraged, if not actually insti-

48 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

gated by Napoleon. Godoy fell, the King
abdicated, and the Prince of Asturias was pro-
claimed king as Fernando VII. Napoleon
withheld his acknowledgment of Fernando and
induced Carlos IV to withdraw his abdication
as having been given under duress ; and then,
when it was doubtful who was the lawful
king, he offered his services as arbitrator.
Summoning the royal family to his presence
at Bayonne, he secured the abdication of both
father and son, and they thereupon became
virtual prisoners of Napoleon in France. Fer-
nando remained a captive in Valengay for
more than five years. His only knowledge of
events in Spain during that period, was de-
rived from the French newspapers. Joseph
Bonaparte was placed upon the throne of
Spain and was recognized by the Council' of
Castile, and the municipal government of
Madrid. A junta of Spanish notables in July
1808 accepted the Constitution proposed by
Napoleon. By one of the provisions, in which
we are chiefly interested, Spanish subjects in
America were to enjoy the same privileges
as those in the mother country, and were to
be represented by deputies in the Spanish
Cortes.

From the place of his captivity Fernando
issued proclamations which were quite char-

The Gathering Storm 49

acteristic of his duplicity. He had sent let-
ters to Napoleon and Joseph expressing his
satisfaction and conveying his congratulations.
His proclamation, to the Spaniards urged them
not to oppose the beneficent rule of the Bona-
partes. Another addressed to the Asturians,
urged them to assert their independence and
to refuse to submit to the perfidious enemy of
the nation who was depriving their King of
his rights. Both these proclamations had the
same effect. The first was regarded as hav-
ing been extorted from Fernando by Napo-
leon, and in all places not occupied by the
French arms, there were popular uprisings.
Valencia and Sevilla renounced all allegiance
to Joseph Bonaparte, and a junta was formed
in the latter city in the interest of Fernando
VII. It was this junta of Sevilla that prac-
tically assumed all the functions of govern-
ment and declared war with France. Eng-
land proclaimed peace with Spain and sent
an army under General Wellesley (afterwards
Duke of Wellington) to aid the Spaniards in
their war with the French invaders. The
Peninsular War, as it was called, continued
until 1814.

In the latter part of June, 1808, the course
of events in Spain became known in Mexico.
The viceroy at that time was Jose de Itur-

5O Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

rigaray who had succeeded to the viceroyal
throne five years before. Upon the breaking
out of the war between Spain and England
he had, in accordance with orders from Spain,
displayed considerable energy in putting the
country in a state of defence; and had gath-
ered the militia of New Spain in Mexico,
Puebla, Perote, Jalapa, and Vera Cruz. His
defensive measures were further stimulated
by fears of a military expedition from the
United States. The troops thus garrisoned
for the defence of the country were to a con-
siderable extent, officered by Creoles, and as
subsequently came to light, harbored not a
few who were dreaming of instituting a new
order of things in New Spain.

Iturrigaray as time went on, was accused
of being avaricious and of rapidly accumu-
lating a fortune in a manner that was repro-
bated even by the lax consciences of his time.
He was suspected of misappropriating the
public funds. The demands of the expensive
viceregal court and of the Spanish Govern-
ment were no doubt responsible for much of
his extortionate financial policy, and he was
probably, all things considered, a moderate
man compared with his predecessors of the
reactionary reign of Carlos IV. The people
of New Spain had no interest in the war

The Gathering Storm 51

which the mother country was waging at the
time; but when, in 1806, the news came of
the destruction of the fleet at Cadiz, the
Spaniards in Mexico quickly made up a purse
of thirty thousand dollars for the relief of
the widows and orphans left desolate by that
disaster. The demands made by Spain on
the American dependencies to contribute to
the expenses of maintaining a destructive war,
met, however, with loud protests and com-
plaints. And though the mines yielded about
twenty million dollars annually, yet domestic
and foreign trade languished, and the pros-
perity of New Spain was seriously threatened.
The most unpopular instance of royal inter-
ference with affairs in New Spain was the
decree of the Spanish Cortes of December,
1804, that the funds of the obras pias from
which the moneys for pious and charitable
uses were derived, should be consolidated and
sent to Spain. Unfortunately for Iturrigaray,
the duty of executing this decree devolved
upon him and he was forced to bear the gen-
eral odium thereof.

There was great excitement in the City
of Mexico extending to all classes of society
when news of the events taking place in
Spain was received. The earliest rumors
were so confused that it was not easy for the

52 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

various classes to decide at once upon the
merits of the several claimants to their al-
legiance. It would have taken some one bet-
ter skilled in political science than any one
then living in Mexico to disentangle the maze
of Spanish politics then presented to them.
It seems, however, that the Creoles were ex-
ceedingly happy in siding almost instinctively
with the legitimate Government of Spain,
which they thought resided in Fernando VII.
The Old Spaniards on the other hand, always
suspicious of the popular party, were inclined
to acknowledge Joseph Bonaparte. A par-
tisan spirit was created forthwith, and it was
accompanied by much bitterness.

On the nineteenth of July, 1808, Iturrigaray
was waited upon by the Ayuntamiento of the
City of Mexico, who represented to him, tfrat
in view of the conditions in Spain and in
the absence of the rightful King, the Viceroy
ought to maintain the Government in New
Spain, holding it independent of either France
or Spain until affairs had resumed their nor-
mal condition. Such a solution of the prob-
lems which had presented themselves was no
doubt very grateful to Iturrigaray; but it
was far from acceptable, even as a provisional
arrangement, to the Audiencia. Iturrigaray,
apparently dreading a conflict with that pow-

The Gathering Storm 53

erful court, offered to renounce the viceroy-
ship and to leave the country; but this offer
was so emphatically disapproved by the
Ayuntamiento and by his friends that he
withdrew it.

A few days later a Spanish ship brought
further news of the progress of events in
Spain, including the popular uprisings in
various parts of the country and the nu-
merous proclamations of the Spanish people
against the Napoleonic domination. These
announcements were received in Mexico with
every demonstration of joy but without heal-
ing the partisan differences. The Ayunta-
miento renewed its demand for the establish-
ment of a provisional government; but the
Viceroy, fully realizing the opposition of the
Audiencia, thought best to summon a junta
to be composed of the Audiencia, the Ayun-
tamiento, the chief officers of the Inquisition,
the Archbishop and all the prominent men of
the city, to meet and to take definite action
as to what should be done in the emergency
which had arisen.

It was a remarkable meeting that was held
in response to this summons, on the ninth
of August, especially remarkable for that time
and that country. The five members of the
Audiencia were present, although they had

54 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

previously in private protested that they
should attend only to safeguard the meeting
from any ill-advised action on the part of
the Viceroy. Iturrigaray presided, and called
upon the syndic of the Ayuntamiento, the
Licenciado Don Francisco Primo Verdad y
Ramos, to state the purpose of the assembly.
Verdad was a distinguished member of the
bar of Mexico. He made an eloquent ad-
dress, in which he propounded principles of
government far in advance of his times, and
a more definite programme for Independence
than subsequently appeared in the progress
of the struggle which he foreshadowed. After
picturing the state of affairs in Spain, he in-
sisted that under the circumstances the sov-
ereignty had returned to the people, wjio
were fully competent to decide what form of
government they should adopt, and who
should be their leader. New Spain was not
a part of old Spain but was a separate king-
dom; in all the legislation of the Consejo de
las Indias it had been so termed.

The excitement produced in the assembly
by this address was intense. The fiscal of
the Inquisition declared that Verdad's ideas
were seditious and subversive of good gov-
ernment and public order. The Inquisitor
Don Bernardo de Prado y Ovejero declared

The Gathering Storm 55

Verdad's words heretical and anathema, — a
declaration which was immediately embodied
in a formal edict denouncing the doctrine of
popular sovereignty as actual heresy. While
the excitement was at its height, the Arch-
bishop, feigning that he was suffering from
illness, excused himself and retired from the
hall. It was evident from his subsequent ac-
tion that he was a partisan of the Bonaparte
faction.

The situation in the City of Mexico was
even more complicated, when, on the thirtieth
of August, commissioners from the junta of
Sevilla arrived to urge Iturrigaray to recog-
nize the sovereignty of that junta and to place
the treasury of New Spain at its disposal.
The Viceroy called another meeting, which,
after prolonged and tedious discussion, re-
solved not to recognize the junta of Sevilla.
Proclamations were received from the junta
of Oviedo making similar demands on its
own behalf. Again Iturrigaray called a meet-
ing and declared that complete anarchy
reigned in Spain, and that in his opinion
Mexico, being a separate kingdom, as it had
been repeatedly declared in legislative enact-
ments, owed no obedience to any junta that
might be established in the kingdom of Spain.
He repeated his offer to resign tne viceroy-

56 Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla

ship. The Ayuntamiento, and most of all
the Licenciado Verdad, fearful of the conse-
quences of placing the government so unre-
servedly in the hands of the Audiencia, and
thus committing New Spain to the rule of
Bonapartes, vigorously opposed his proposi-
tion to resign; and he finally decided to form
a junta in Mexico similar to that of Sevilla
and a provisional Government. He sent,
therefore, circular letters to the Ayuntamien-
tos of other towns, announcing his purpose,
and in response to these letters, Jalapa sent
two commissioners to the City of Mexico to
represent their city in the proposed junta.
The Ayuntamiento and the Creoles of the City
of Mexico approved the theory of govern-
ment which Iturrigaray had advanced, and so
became his partisans. The Audiencia held the
theory that if there was no king in Spain, or
if it was impossible for the king to appoint
a viceroy in the place of Iturrigaray, and if
none of the juntas in Spain were recognized
in Mexico, the government of New Spain
remained in the hands of the Audiencia; and
in secret the oidores plotted with the officials
of the Inquisition and the commissioners from
the junta of Sevilla, for the overthrow of
Iturrigaray.
On the fifteenth of September — a day which

The Gathering Storm 57

in subsequent years, because of other events,
became noted in Mexican history, — the Vice-
roy was warned of a conspiracy and a plot
against his life. He gave it little attention,
for he thought that the military which he
had organized for defence against foreign in-
vasion could be counted upon to crush any
insurrection which might arise. Don Gabriel
Yermo, a rich Old Spanish merchant, had or-
ganized a body of his employes to the num-
ber of five hundred, whom he called "The
Volunteers of Fernando VII ;" had armed
them, and had them in readiness to obey the
behests of the Audiencia. Because of their
uniform, they were afterwards popularly
known as the chaqnetas. Between Yermo and
the chief of artillery of the Viceroy's army,
who furnished the guard for the viceregal
palace, there was a perfect understanding, and
everything was ready for decisive action.
The chief actors in the plot went first to the
palace of the Archbishop, where they were
exhorted to proceed to the performance of
their appointed task and received that dig-
nitary's benediction. Thence they proceeded
to the viceregal palace, where they surprised
and arrested the Viceroy, and took him to
the Inquisition. His wife, with her two sons,
was taken to the convent of San Bernardo,

58 Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla

and Iturrigaray's property was promptly
sequestrated. A few days later he and his
family were sent to Vera Cruz and imprisoned
in the fortress of San Juan Ulua until they
could be sent to Spain. Arrived in his native
country, Iturrigaray was kept in confinement
until released by an act of amnesty in 1811,
then being presented for trial before the
Consejo de las Indias for harboring treason-
able designs he was sentenced to pay three
hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars, for
malfeasance in office. He died in 1815, be-
fore the conclusion of his trial could be
reached.

The same night the Licenciado Verdad,
with five others suspected of sharing with
him his political heresies, was apprehended
and imprisoned in a dungeon of the arzobis-
pado, (the palace of the Archbishop). The
others were variously disposed of; but Ver-
dad, because he had, with a courage of which
there have been few greater examples in the
history of the Spanish-American people, pro-
claimed the sovereignty of the people in the
faces of the Audiencia, the Inquisition, and
the Archbishop, was beyond the reach of
mercy, and was reserved for a special dis-
play of the vengeance of the rulers of New
Spain. On the morning of the fourth of Oc-

The Gathering Storm 59

tober, Mexico was startled by the rumor that
the Licenciado was dead in the palace of the
Archbishop. The report was circulated that
he had died of poison, but by whose hand the
same had been administered was not alleged,
and it was left to be supposed that he was
a suicide, though this the people of Mexico
refused to believe. The particulars of his
death remained shrouded in mystery until
more than half a century later, when, under
the reform laws of the Mexican Republic,
the arzobispado was sequestrated and became
national property, and that portion which had
contained prison cells was converted into
dwelling houses. The cells were opened for
the first time to the public. In one of the
walls was found a large nail-hole. Over it
was written, "This is the hole made by the
nail upon which the Licenciado Verdad was
hanged." On the same wall were found
marks made by his hands and his feet in his
death struggle.

Thus were brought to light some of the
horrible details of the first great tragedy of
Mexican Independence. It is no doubt due to
the fact that the exact manner in which the
ecclesiastical authorities had, without trial,
executed their death sentence upon Verdad,
was so long kept from the knowledge of the

60 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

people that he failed of recognition as one of
the great heroes of the Independence of Mex-
ico, of which he is, nevertheless, acknowl-
edged as the protomartyr.

At two o'clock in the morning of the six-
teenth of September, 1808, the Archbishop,
the Audiencia, and the more prominent Old
Spaniards, met in the viceregal palace and
committed the government of New Spain to
Pedro de Garibay, who was the commander-
in-chief of the provincial army. He was
eighty years of age and had passed the great-
er part of his life in Mexico, having risen
from a lieutenancy in the provincial militia
to his present high position. He recognized
the central junta at Sevilla which was the
equivalent of recognizing Joseph Bonaparte,
and he sought by a system of bold and op-
pressive action to suppress all opposition to
its authority; he also resorted to all kinds of
extortion upon the colonists, that he might
respond to the demands of the junta of Se-
villa for money to aid in the prosecution of
the wars in Spain.

By the order of the central junta, the Arch-
bishop of Mexico, Francisco Xavier de Lizana
y Beaumont was appointed Viceroy to super-
sede Garibay in July, 1809. His partisanship
had been somewhat modified since his active

The Gathering Storm 6l

part in the deposition of Iturrigaray. This
was no doubt due to the course taken by
events in Spain; for the French drove the
central junta from Sevilla to Cadiz, where it
summoned a Cortes to convene in March,
1810. It was expressly stipulated that the
Spanish-American provinces were to be rep-
resented in this Cortes. This concession was
made too late, however, for the people of
New Spain to receive notice, and their places
in the Cortes were temporarily filled by per-
sons chosen in Spain. The junta after select-
ing a Regency of five persons to administer
the government, disappeared from public
notice.

On the twelfth of March, 1810, a decree
of the Regency was issued of which the os-
tensible object was "to furnish the inhabitants
of the extensive provinces of America all the
means necessary to promote and secure their
real happiness." It was therein declared that
Spanish subjects in America "were now
raised to the dignity of freemen" and that
"their lot no longer depended on the rule of
kings, viceroys, or governors, but would be
determined by themselves." Information of
this conciliatory action on the part of the
Regency toward New Spain, to whom they
owed much, considering the large amount of

62 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

money they had received thence, was destined
to have great influence on the chief classes of
society in the Spanish dependencies in Amer-
ica. The authority of the Old Spaniards had
already begun to decline, and the faith of
the governing class in the stability of Spanish
institutions was sadly shaken. Had there
been any harmony of opinion among them as
to what it would be best for them to do,
now that, as it appeared to them, the Gov-
ernment of Spain had been completely sub-
verted, they would themselves have pro-
claimed the independence of Mexico, sep-
arated it from Spain, and compelled the
people to submit to the same absolutism to
which they had been accustomed, only under
a different name. On the other hand, there
were those who were inclined to favor the
continuance of the central junta, which they
thought loyal to Fernando VII. Some sought
a position of neutrality, and waited to see
what ought to be done. Even the Viceroy-
Archbishop admitted to the Cortes that he
had changed his views of the political situa-
tion since the active part he had taken in
the deposition of Iturrigaray; and by many
acts and expressions he showed an inclination
favorable to the Creoles.

But the effect of this liberal action in Spain

The Gathering Storm 63

upon the Mexican people, Creoles and mesti-
zos, was most significant. The reverses sus-
tained by the Spanish army in the Peninsula
furthermore taught the Mexicans that Spain,
from a military point of view, was not in-
vincible, and that the possibility existed for
them to free themselves by a military move-
ment from the control of the Audiencia or
of a Viceroy who might become obnoxious
to them.

Lizana's career as Viceroy was brief. He
was summoned by the Regency to answer
charges brought against him that his leniency
in New Spain was breeding insurrection. The
president of the Audiencia, Don Pedro Ca-
tani, was made Viceroy ad interim, pending
the arrival in the country of Francisco Javier
Venegas, who, as a general in the Spanish
army had not been fortunate in his conduct
of the war then in progress, and could easily
be spared by the central junta for the govern-
ment of New Spain.

T

CHAPTER IV.
THE GRITO DE DOLORES.

HE spirit of independence manifested
in the City of Mexico found little
chance for expansion and growth there. But
when it spread to the Provincias Internas it
encountered conditions especially favorable to
its reception and nurture. One reason for
this was that there was a greater number of
Creoles in proportion to Old Spaniards in the
Provincias than in the capital, and they were
less directly influenced by the Audiencia and
the Inquisition. There was a larger propor-
tion of thoughtful men in the towns of the
Provincias, who, not permitting their judg-
ment to be clouded by self-interest, were
studying the political situation and seeking
the means by which they might free their
country from bad government. They deter-
mined that the tie which bound them to the
JJVUT A ff ^-Europeans must be severed. This was what
independence meant to them. It did not ex-
TJ^ press to them exactly what it did to the
AnglojSaxon. It meant no change in the sys-
tem to which they had been accustomed for

64

The Grito de Dolores 65

nearly three centuries. What they sought
was not independence of the monarch, but in-
dependence of the Europeans, French or
Spanish, who were usurping his throne.

The desire for the dawn of a better day
in New Spain, a day in which tHe various
classes would have equal rights under a better
and more equable government, took immediate
hold upon three leading classes of profes-
sional men among the Creoles of the Provin-
cias: those of the law, the Church and the
army. It was to these that careers had been
offered under the beneficent policy of Carlos
III ; and after having taken advantage of this
opportunity to rise in the world and gain po-
sitions of influence and leadership, the policy
of Carlos IV, reactionary as it was, had been
unable to reduce them to their former status.
They were the thoughtful men of their time.
They were inclined to watch the trend of
events and to deduce from what they saw,
theories of government. Hidalgo was not
alone among the Creole priests in New Spain
whose minds were turned to the political con-
ditions, and who were developing plans for
independence. It is authoritatively stated
that four-fifths of the native clergy espoused
the cause of independence in New Spain.
And the list of the names of those who at-

66 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

tained to some prominence in the struggles
of the next decade, including Jose Maria
Morelos and Mariano Matamoros, was by no
means an inconsiderable one. And this was
in spite of the censures of the Church. These
were of the secular clergy who were always
the objects of the jealousy of the regulars.

Hidalgo doubtless towered above them all
in intellectual attainments yet there were
many who were influenced by him and not a
few who had by independent processes of rea-
soning reached the same conclusions that he
had reached.

Verdad likewise was but a type of the
Creole lawyer of his time ; and so there were
in the various centres of population, in the
Provincias Internas, wherever the Creoles
were numerous, licenciados who had entered
politics through the Ayuntamientos and had
been thinking over the political situation and
forming plans for the liberation of their
country from bad and oppressive government.

And those of the profession of arms were
likewise asking themselves what they had
been called upon to fight for. They had re-
sponded cheerfully to Iturrigaray's call for
troops to protect New Spain from the incur-
sions of the English and from the aggressions
of the United States. But with the wars of

The Grito de Dolores 67

Spain with other European nations they were
not concerned ; and when the danger of Eng-
lish or American invasion had passed, and
there was pending a possibility of their being
drawn upon to replenish the diminishing
armies of Spain, or that they might be em-
ployed to support the Government of New
Spain and fight on behalf of the Old Span-
iards, against their own people, they too were

prepared to ask what constituted their coun-

. »-<vi ^
try, and if they might not adopt the cry of

"Mexico for the Mexicans."

While the army which Iturrigaray had
raised was encamped at Jalapa, there were
several young officers who were discussing
the questions of the day and the relations
which they sustained to those questions. The
visits of Iturrigaray to their garrison had
taught them many things. And when his
downfall came, they found that they were
forced to transfer their allegiance to the party
which had caused his overthrow, deposition,
and deportation. They began to dream of
and plan for independence. Among them
was a young jman, IJfnacio AllenHe by name,
who had just obtained his captaincy. He
manifested such an ardent desire for inde-
pendence that it is a mooted question whether
he or Hidalgo was the originator of the revo-

68 Miguel Hidalgo y C&stilla

lutionary plan in which both were heroes and
martyrs. It would seem from all that can
be gathered that each had knowledge of the
other's plans, and that they were in some
sort of indirect and secret communication
soon after the downfall of Iturrigaray.

Allende was born in the beautiful town of
San Miguel el Grande, near Guanajuato, in
the year 1769. In his honor the town is now
called San Miguel de Allende. His family
and his social position were of such character
that he was admitted to the army of New
Spain and obtained his captaincy in the regi-
ment of dragoons known as the Queen's regi-
ment. He served in San Luis Potosi under
General Felix Maria Calleja del Rey, against
whom he was subsequently to be opposed on
several bloody battle-fields.

The idea of independence was being fos-
tered throughout the Provincias by means of
local clubs professedly of a social and literary
character, in which, however, revolutionary
plans were being freely discussed and sturdy
patriotism was being inculcated. When and
how these originated, or how they were main-
tained without earlier attracting the attention
of the civil authorities or of the Inquisition
does not readily appear. Such a club existed
in Queretaro; and in 1808 Hidalgo became

The Grito de Dolores 69

a member of it, and thenceforth he was its
acknowledged leader, and sought to unify the
clubs of like character existing in other towns
of the Provincias with the purpose of com-
pleting his plans for a revolution.

Another club of this character existed in
Valladolid, with which Allende appears to
have had some connection. Knowledge of the
plans of this club came to one Augustin de
Iturbide. a voting mestizo officer in the militia,

" . o '

and he promptly communicated his knowledge
to the civil authorities, with the result that
most of the members were arrested and
thrown into prison. This was in September,
1809. Allende escaped detection and arrest,
though he was by no means frightened by his
perilous position or deterred from connecting
himself with the club in Queretaro. At this
time, if not earlier, he came into direct com-
munication with Hidalgo; and thus was en-
listed in the plans of Hidalgo a young man
of enthusiasm, of attractive personality and
of a good knowledge of military affairs.

It is certain that at this time there existed
in the mind of Hidalgo a distinct and definite
plan for proclaiming the Independence of
Mexico at the great fair held annually in De^
cember in San Juan de Lagos, which drew
together a large concourse of people of all

7O Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

classes and furnished an admirable opportu»
nity for inciting- a popular uprising.

The club in Queretaro had three lawyers
and four army officers among1 its members,
which is further suggestive of the appeal
which independence was making to these two
classes. The corregidor of the town, Miguel
Dominguez, if not a member of the club, se-
cretly favored it; and his wife, Josef a Maria
Ortiz de Dominguez, was in such sympathy
with its purposes that she saved it from com-
plete destruction at a critical moment, suffered
imprisonment in consequence and is accounted
the great heroine of the revolutionary period.
The grateful Republic has erected a statue to
her memory in the City of Mexico.

It is impossible to reconcile the various ac-
counts of the manner in which knowledge of
the plot of the revolutionists reached the civil
authorities. It is said that on the eleventh
of September, 1810, Aguirre, an oidor in
Guanajuato, had an intimation that certain
persons in Queretaro were plotting an insur-
rection ; but he did no more than to issue or-
ders that they should be closely watched and
immediately arrested if they were detected in
any overt treasonable act. By another ac-
count the bandmaster of an infantry regiment
in Guanajuato, after accepting a bribe from

The Grito de Dolores 71

some of the revolutionists to aid them in
some way, betrayed the plot to his superior
officer, who reported it at once to Riano, the
Intendente, on the thirteenth of September.
But the generally accepted account is that
one of the revolutionists in Queretaro, being
ill and in fear of death, sent for his priest,
that he might make his confession, and di-
vulged to him the details of the plan for the
popular uprising. That priest, in his zeal for
the royal cause, broke the seal of the confes-
sional by communicating to the authorities the
knowledge he had thus gained. At the same
time others in the revolutionary club became
panic-stricken and, either involuntarily or to
avoid disaster to themselves, disclosed the
whole plot, and the names of those who were
implicated.

What followed is more certain. Orders
were issued forthwith for the arrest of the
chief actors, — Hidalgo, Allende, Ignacio Al-
dama, and others; and the corregidor, faith-
ful to the duties of his office, proceeded to
execute the order as was required of him.
Ignacio Perez, the alcalde, resided in the
same house with the corregidor. By a pre-
concerted signal — three taps on the floor of
her room — the patriotic Josefa Maria Ortiz
informed the alcalde of the discovery of the

72 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

plot and of the arrests which had been made,
and hurried him off to San Miguel to warn
Allende, and through him, Hidalgo. Another
account, however, asserts that Allende had
intercepted the order for his own arrest and
that of Hidalgo and, mounting his horse, had
gone forthwith to Dolores. Whatever may
be the correct version of the details, it was
due to the discovery of the plot in Queretaro
that the revolution which had been planned
to begin on the eighth of December, was
started in September.

The part taken by Dona Josefa Maria Ortiz
was reported to the authorities, and the cor-
regidor and his wife were promptly ordered
to prison, the one in the convent of La Cruz,
the other in that of Santa Clara. The brave
woman suffered much by her imprisonment
and. by the confiscation of her property by
the act of the Spanish authorities, but she was
subsequently made the heroine of the Inde-
pendence of Mexico. She died in 1829, and
was buried from the Church of Santa Cata-
lina de Sena in the City of Mexico. Her
husband, after the establishment of the Mex-
ican Republic, was for a time Minister of
the Supreme Court of Justice. He survived
his wife by about a year.

Ignacio Perez bearing the message of the

The Grito de Dolores 73

Corregidora of Queretaro, hastened to San
Miguel in search of Allende, and arrived
there on the morning of the fifteenth of Sep-
tember. Allende was not there, but had
passed on to Dolores the previous day to con-
sult with Hidalgo. Perez hunted up Aldama
and consulted with him, and both determined
to proceed at once to Dolores, let the peril be
what it might.

For it must not be overlooked that orders
were out for the arrest of a large body of
revolutionists ; that some of them were al-
ready apprehended and in prison, perhaps by
that time executed ; and that the country was
filling with rumors which were likely to cause
great popular excitement. The times were
perilous indeed. The natural tendency of
those who were escaping from the danger
of arrest was to disperse, to seek safety
through flight in different directions. But
the heroes above named were actuated by
higher principles. Their lives were pledged
to a great cause; and their thought before
that of personal safety was, how to protect
their acknowledged leader, if not to save
from total destruction the cause in which
they were engaged.

The action of Aldama, in thus proposing
the concentration of the fugitive suspects, was

74 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

all the more heroic because his relations to
the revolutionary project were such that he
might easily have escaped. He was a licen-
ciado but was at that time engaged in busi-
ness in San Miguel el Grande. In consent-
ing to accompany Perez to Dolores he was
deliberately offering his allegiance to a cause
which, to all outward appearances, was liable
to immediate destruction and certain to in-
volve its followers in loss of liberty or even
of life.

Perez and Aldama met Allende as the three
reached Dolores shortly before midnight on
the fifteenth. Everyone in the little town was
sleeping. The three went directly to the bed-
chamber of Hidalgo and awakened him. He
received the message they brought him with
his characteristic coolness, showing neither
fear nor surprise.

"Senor Cura" declared Allende, "we are
caught in a trap. No human power can save
us."

With great presence of mind, Hidalgo re-
plied that the situation called for no pro-
longed discussion, but for decisive action. "I
see that we are lost," he said, "and no other
course remains to us but to go out and seize
the Gachupines." And so it was determined
to proclaim at once the revolution.

The Grito de Dolores 75

It was a heroic act on the part of Hidalgo,
a few minutes before midnight, to ring the
bell in his church tower. It was the Liberty
Bell of the Mexican Revolution. It called
Don Mariano Hidalgo,1 the domestic servants
of the cura, and others who were near at
hand, to the number of thirty in all, who evi-
dently recognized the purpose of the signal
and to whom the situation was quickly ex-
plained. At the head of the men thus gath-
ered and armed with such rude weapons as
were readily at hand, Hidalgo and Allende
and Aldama marched to the public prison,
where they found certain poor men impris-
oned, not for atrocious crimes, but for mis-
demeanors more particularly of a political
character. These they released from their
prison on condition that they should join them
in their enterprise. Next a visit was made
to the barracks of a small detachment of Al-
lende's regiment. The soldiers promptly
obeyed their officer and were made, almost
before they realized the situation, members
of a band of insurgents. The next move was
to seize and imprison the prominent Span-
iards of the pueblo, and the public employes.

Usually spoken of as Don Miguel's brother. See
page ii.

76 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

It was all done so quickly in the waning hours
of the night that there was little or no re-
sistance; and before the break of day the
surprised citizens of Dolores found themselves
at the mercy of the insurgents.

At five o'clock on Sunday, the sixteenth of
September, Hidalgo gathered his host in the
patio of the parish church of Dolores and
rang again his Liberty Bell. The priest said
mass, the worshippers being a motley crowd
of men armed with lances, machetes, pikes,
and the few weapons secured from the sol-
diers of the Queen's regiment. He then ad-
dressed his congregation in words well cal-
culated to incite them to insurrection. He
drew a picture of the evils which rested over
them ; the iniquities of the Government to
which they were subject and the advantages
of independence. His venerable appearance,
his voice and manner, and his attractive words
aroused in them the greatest enthusiasm, and
they gave a great shout, "Viva Independen-
cia! Viva America! Muera el mal gobierno!"
(Long live Independence! Long live Amer-
ica! Death to bad government!)

It was in accordance with the time-honored
custom of Latin peoples (originating in times
long antecedent to the printing press, and
when few of the people could read) that every

The Grito de Dolores 77

revolution should begin with a viva voce
proclamation. Therefore this shout, this bat-
tle-cry, was accepted as the proclamation of
the popular demands for a new order of
things. It has ever since been known as the
Grito de Dolores. (,00 Mo-vw ,

At the head of six hundred men. Hidalgo
set out at eleven o'clock that day, taking the
road to San Miguel el Grande, twenty miles
distant. Passing on the way the little town
of Atotonilco, he took from the parish church
there a banner containing a picture of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, the special guardian
saint of the Indians of Mexico ; and taking
from one of his soldiers a pike, he affixed it
thereto and adopted it as the standard of his
insurgent army.2 \Yell he knew the temper
of his men. He was appealing to the reli-
gious feeling of his six hundred emotional
people. The effect was instantaneous. The
enthusiasm of his followers increased. The
battle-cry became, "Viva Nuestra Senora de
Guadalupe! Muera mal gobierno!" (Long
live Our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad
government !)

This cry quickly changed to "Vhfa la Vir-

*For many years this banner has been preserved
in the National Museum in the City of Mexico.

78 Miguel Hidailgo 3; C&stilla

gen de Guadalupe! Mueran los Gachupines!"
and a new element was added to the crusade,
a bitter race-hatred. This dislike of the
Spaniards was shared by the Indians, who
now flocked to the standard of Hidalgo, and
who were destined to become at once the
strength and the weakness of the great move-
ment for the Independence of Mexico which
had been launched from Dolores.

At San Miguel the insurgent army enlisted
Allende's company in the Queen's legiment
stationed there and which was ready to fol-
low its captain in any enterprise. Hidalgo
was recognized as the chief of the insurrec-
tion. On the eighteenth of the month, the
army set out for Celaya, where Hidalgo ex-
perienced no little difficulty in restraining the
tendencies of his rabble army to excesses.
The houses of Europeans were pillaged by
the army, which now numbered, as is usually
asserted, fifty thousand men. Some attempt
at military organization "was made, and .to
Hidalgo was given the rank and title of Cap-
tain-General. Allende was made Lieutenant-
General.

It was decided to capture the wealthy city
of Guanajuato before advancing upon the
City of Mexico. From Celaya the army
marched about fiftv miles to the northwest

The Grito de Dolores 79

and, on the twenty-eighth of September, oc-
cupied the hacienda of Burras. From this
spot Don Mariano Abasalo and Don Ignacio
Comargo were sent as commissioners to the
Intendente Riano to demand the surrender of
the city and to offer humane terms if he would
accede. With ail our sympathies enlisted in
the cause in which the insurgent army was
engaged, we must yet admire the brave con-
duct of the Intendente of Guanajuato. He
realized the desperate situation in which he
was placed. He could not appeal to the citi-
zens at large to defend their city, for he
had found that there was a growing popular
sentiment in favor of independence, and he
knew not whom he might trust. Yet he brave-
ly returned answer to the insurgent army
that he would defend the city with his life.

He gathered the Spaniards with their
wives, families, and movable property into
the Alhondiga de Granaditas, and prepared
as well as was possible to defend this build-
ing by hastily barricading the streets leading
to .it. The Alhondiga was a large building
used for the storing of merchandise under
the Spanish colonial system of commerce. It
was therefore both warehouse and board of
trade, and was the most readily defensible
building in the city. The Intendente had

8o Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

placed there public treasure amounting to five
million dollars.

Against an army recognizing the rules of
war of civilized nations the defence of the
Alhondiga might not have been altogether
impossible; but against the savage hordes
whom Hidalgo had gathered into his army,
who were moved by a bloodthirsty hatred
of their Spanish oppressors, and who were
now frenzied by the prospects held out to
them of plunder in one of the richest cities
in the New World, a city whose wealth had
been amassed through centuries of their toil
in the mines, — the defence was an impossible
task.

Upon the return of the commissioners with
the refusal of Riano to surrender, Hidalgo
brought up his forces and at one o'clock
raided the city. The Intendente conducted
the defence of the Alhondiga in person, and
with great courage, animated by the belief
that the attacking army was in rebellion, and
that it was his duty to sustain the constituted
authorities. While the battle was raging in
the streets, about the Alhondiga, a soldier who
knew the Intendente by sight approached
Hidalgo and asked his permission to direct a
shot against him. It must be remembered
that the Intendente had issued orders for the

The Grito de Dolores 81

arrest of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama ana otner
insurgent leaders, and so we must not be sur-
prised that the permission was promptly given.
The soldier watched for the brave Spanish of-
ficer as he appeared on the housetop and by
a well-aimed shot killed him instantly.

Confusion among the defenders of the
Alhondiga resulted at once. Some clamored
for the immediate surrender of the place.
Others resolved to continue the defence.
There was no leadership, and no unity of ac-
tion. The former party raised a white flag,
whilst the others, protesting, tore it down and
prepared to sell their lives as dearly as pos-
sible. The insurgents, perceiving the confu-
sion among the defenders of the Alhondiga,
concentrated their whole force upon that
building. They tried to gain an entrance by
means of a lower gate or door, but they
found it well guarded by the citizens within.

Then occurred one of those deeds of brav-
ery which are common in the annals of Mex-
ican war, and which Mexican annalists love
to recall. To bring the attack on the Alhon-
diga to a speedy and satisfactory termination,
Hidalgo called for a volunteer who would go
under the walls and set fire to the large
wooden doors which admitted to the patio.
A young and sturdy worker in the mines

82 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

came forward and, taking up a flat stone, tied
it upon his back as a shield against missiles
that might be thrown from the walls; then,
with a torch in one hand, he crept on all
fours to the door and set it on fire. The
wide portal to the building being thus opened
the insurgents rushed into the patio. A
guard of Spanish soldiers within the building
poured a terrible fire upon them, killing a
large number. The issue of the struggle,
however, was inevitable; and when the in-
surgents took the building they put to the
sword all the Spaniards whom they found
therein. It was a terrible day for Guana-
juato.

The Alhondiga, also called the Castle
Granaditas, was erected in 1785 and is now
used as a prison. In one of the corridors is
a statue of the miner-hero, the stone on his
shoulders and the firebrand in his hand.

The insurgents took possession of the im-
mense treasure found in the building, and the
warriors rushed through the streets of the
city, sacking the houses of the Spaniards and
committing all manner of excesses. These
were continued until the rank and file of the
insurgents were glutted with robbery and re-
venge and quieted down somewhat with fa-
tigue. In vain were the efforts of Lieutenant-

The Grito de Dolores 83

General Allende and his brave officers; in
vain was the proclamation of Hidalgo, issued
on the twenty-ninth of September, imposing
severe penalties on all who committed any
kind of disorder in the captured city.

When the excesses came to an end, Hidal-
go reestablished the Ayuntamiento, composed
of Creoles who declared for the Independ-
ence. He opened the mint for the coining
of money, making the coins from the dies
which had previously been adopted for New
Spain. He established foundries for the con-
struction of cannons, and in other ways be-
gan to provide his army with means to con-
tinue the struggle for Independence.

CHAPTER V.
MONTE DE LAS CRUCES AND ACULCO.

THE whole country from Guanajuato
to the City of Mexico was by this
time aroused. The new Viceroy, Venegas,
on his journey from Vera Cruz to the cap-
ital of his territory, was informed of the sus-
picions that had been awakened of mischief
being plotted against the Government at Val-
ladolid and Queretaro in the Provincias In-
ternas; of the promptness with which his
predecessor, Catani, had dealt with the mat-
ter, and of the arrests that had been ordered.
Venegas had come to New Spain expecting
to find a turbulent people and frequent occa-
sion to put down local insurrections. He
did not regard as of very great importance
the emeute which was reported to him as
having been practically suppressed in Val-
ladolid and Queretaro. In Guadalupe he took
the oath of office as Viceroy. What would
have been his emotions, could he have fore-
seen that this suburb of his capital would
some day be called Guadalupe-Hidalgo, in
commemoration of the chief actor in events
then occurring in the Provincias Internas?
84

Monte de las Cruces and Aculco 85

Upon arriving at the City of Mexico,
Venegas proclaimed the decree of the Cortes
of March 12, 1810, and published a long list
of rewards which might be received for serv-
ices rendered to the Spanish Government.
The decree of March 12 was as we have seen,
in the main favorable to the colonists, reduc-
ing taxes and removing restrictions upon
trade. The provision made therein that the
Creoles should be equally eligible with Euro-
peans to all offices in the Church or State,
served at first to attach the Creoles in the
capital to the new Viceroy. To prevent dis-
putes as to the meaning of this provision,
the decree provided that there should be
an equal number of the two classes appointed
to the offices, and that there should be a con-
sultative junta in each province to make
nominations for the offices. The publication
of the decree was, however, quickly followed
by an appeal for twenty millions of dollars to
assist Spain in the war against Napoleon.

But the proclamation of the decree came
too late to have any effect upon the masses
in the Provincias, and the reports which
reached the Viceroy a few days later awak-
ened him to a sense of dangers which were
very real. Though to him it appeared as yet
nothing more than a local insurrection, the

86 Miguel Hidalgo y Costtila

uprising in the Provincias Internas had al-
ready assumed proportions far beyond any
insurrection that had preceded it. And when
the news came of the occupation of Guana-
juato by the insurgents, the Viceroy was thor-
oughly aroused to the dangers which threat-
ened the whole country.

He found that he had only four thousand
men available for the defence of his capital.
Manuel de la Flon, Count of Cadena, was
suposed to be at Queretaro, and Felix Maria
Calleja del Rey, at San Luis Potosi, each
with well-disciplined troops; but these points
were too far distant to afford to the thor-
oughly alarmed Viceroy that sense of security
he wished to have as to the safety of his
capital. In his extremity he applied the
spiritual weapons which were at hand. He
induced the Bishop of Michoacan to fulmi-
nate a decree of excommunication against
Hidalgo and the insurgents; and the Arch-
bishop of Mexico to confirm the same excom-
munication and to send copies to all the
churches. These decrees vigorously com-
bated the theories of government upon which
Hidalgo sought to justify his acts; and fur-
ther, they commanded the clergy to declare
from their pulpits that the purpose of the in-
surrection was, not so much to gain political

87

advantage, as for the subversion of the Holy
Catholic Religion.

Venegas then promptly recalled his con-
ciliatory proclamations and in their stead pro-
claimed a reward of ten thousand dollars for
the capture of Hidalgo and his chief military
companions, dead or alive. He also issued a
sanguinary decree that any one taken in arms
against the Government should be shot within
fifteen minutes of his capture; but offering
pardon to all who should return to their al-
legiance to Spain. He sent orders to Flon to
do his utmost to protect the towns on the
road from the Provincias Internas to the cap-
ital; and to General Calleja del Rey to follow
in pursuit of Hidalgo and crush his army at
the earliest possible moment. He thus felt
that he had done all that was in his power
to meet the military exigency that had arisen.

Hidalgo led his army out of Guanajuato
on the tenth of October and advanced toward
Valladolid, which was distant ninety-five
miles almost due south. At Acambaro he re-
viewed his troops, now numbering 80,000
men, and was proclaimed Generalissimo. Al-
lende was advanced to the rank of Captain-
General; and Aldama, Ballerza, Jimenez, and
Joaquin Arias were made Lieutenants-Gen-
eral.

88 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

At Indaparapeo there took place a meeting
which was of the greatest importance to the
cause of the Independents. Jose Maria More-
los, cura of the church at Caracao, a former
student at the college of San Nicolas in Val-
ladolid while Hidalgo was rector thereof, pre-
sented himself and petitioned that he might
accompany the army of the Independents, as
chaplain. There were already several priests
with the army besides the Generalissimo; for,
as we have seen, the cause of Independence
made an especial appeal to the oppressed and
dissatisfied secular clergy of New Spain. Hi-
dalgo listened with interest to his petition and
replied, "You will make a far better general
than chaplain." He then handed him a com-
mission as Lieutenant-General, directing him
to proceed to the regions south of the City of
Mexico, to raise troops, and then to act in ac-
cordance with instructions which would be
orally communicated. Of the results of this
meeting we shall see more in the subsequent
chapters.

It is significant that by this commission and
the accompanying instructions, Hidalgo was
extending the war beyond the borders of the
Provincias Internas and revealed the scope of
his plans as embracing the whole of New
Spain. That he had in mind at this time fur-

Monte de las Cruces and Aculco 89

ther plans for extending his operations into
the territory south of the capital is attested by
his sending two of his men, Armenta and
Lopez by name, disguised as charcoal-venders
to reconnoitre in the vicinity of Oaxaca and
report. These men were detected, captured,
and executed ; and their heads were hung up
in the street in Oaxaca where they were cap-
tured. That street to this day is known, from
this incident, as the Calle de Armenta y Lo-
pez.

Upon reaching Valladolid, Hidalgo found
the beautiful city abandoned by the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities. The citizens who re-
mained embraced the cause of Independence
and welcomed him as the liberator of the peo-
ple. From the coffers of the church he se-
cured further treasures which furnished his
army with abundant supplies ; and assuming
the functions of a political dictator he issued
proclamations abolishing- slavery and the pay-
ment of tribute by the Indians. He set out
from Valladolid on the twentieth of October
by way of Maravatio for the City of Mexico,
a distance of about a hundred and thirty-five
miles in an easterly direction.

The movement had clearly outgrown its
earlier character and had assumed the pro-
portions and the dignity of a revolution,

9O Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

though the mass of the army was still an un-
disciplined horde of savages animated by
hatred of their oppressors, the Spaniards.
With the adoption by the Indians of the war-
cry "Death to the Gachupines," the war had
become a bitter and a sanguinary race war.
And hard as Hidalgo and his able military co-
adjutor, Allende, might strive, it was impos-
sible to instil into the minds of the Indians
nobler impulses than loot and vengeance.

The leaders preferred that their hosts
should be known no longer as the army of the
Insurgents but as the army of the Independ-
ents. They subsequently called themselves
and their army Americans, in contradistinc-
tion to the Spaniards, whom they called
Europeans or Spaniards or, when in less dig-
nified mood, Gachupines.1 It was not until
several years later that the term American
finally gave place to Mexican.

It was impossible for Hidalgo and his mili-
tary coadjutors to view the movement from

'A Gachupin or Cachupin was a Spaniard resid-
ing in America. The term is of doubtful origin,
probably Indian, though a recent writer asserts that
it indicated one who wore spurs. It was always
significant of contempt, and at the time of which
we are now writing, of contempt grown to bitterest
hatred.

Monte de las Cruces and Aculco 91

the same standpoint. The former looked up-
on it as a popular uprising in defense of nat-
ural rights; the latter, as a military problem.
As yet it had for its object the establishment
of a Government in New Spain which would
accord to the people their rights. But it was
to be monarchical still, and Fernando VII was
to be recognized as King. It were folly for
the Spanish-Americans to consider any kind
of government but that of monarchy. Their
training had been to obey. They had re-
ceived no lessons, save locally, (that is to say,
in the Ayuntamientos), in self-government.
All ideas of government "of the people, by the
people, for the people" would have been con-
trary to the spirit and genius of any of the
inhabitants of the Spanish dependencies.

Could the Viceroy or the Audiencia have
taken a calm view of the situation at this
time, the history of Mexico would have been
differently written. It was the strangest of
civil wars, of fratricidal strifes, that these two
forces should be contending, ostensibly for
the supremacy of the same Spanish sovereign-
ity. Who were the loyalists, or the royalists ?
The followers of Hidalgo, or the followers of
the Viceroy ? It were easy to decide to whom
to apply the term patriots; but at this time it
was difficult to say who were the royalists,

92 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

for both claimed to be fighting to conserve the
government for Fernando VII.

On the thirtieth of October the army of
the Independents reached Monte de las Cru-
ces, within twenty-five miles of the City of
Mexico and between that city and Toluca.
There it encountered a Spanish force of three
thousand well-disciplined men — infantry, cav-
alry, and artillery, under the command of Gen-
eral Torcuato de Trujillo who had been sent
out by the Viceroy to intercept the insurgents.
Upon hastily reviewing the situation, Allende
believed it more judicious to withhold the un-
disciplined rabble and act upon the defensive.
But Hidalgo decided that by acting upon the
offensive and allowing the Indians to partici-
pate in the onslaught, they would carry the
day by their superior numbers and reckless,
savage mode of warfare; and he ordered Al-
lende to open the battle. The results justified
his opinion. The battle began at eleven o'clock.
The Independents took up their position in a
mountain pass. The artillery of the Spaniards,
stationed on a commanding hill made great
havoc in the ranks of the Independents and
they began to give way, when Allende at the
head of his old regiment of trained soldiers
charged up the mountain to dislodge the ar-
tillery, and encountered troops under the com-

Monte de las Cruces and Aculco 93

mand of Colonel Agustin de Iturbide, who
had the permission of General Trujillo to en-
gage the insurgent chief. After a terrible
hand-to-hand fight, the Independents were
masters of the field. The Spaniards were
forced to cut their way through an enveloping
line of savage warriors and to leave their
artillery to aid in the equipment of the Inde-
pendent army.

In his report of the battle, Trujillo boasted
that he had fought with the "obstinacy of
Leonidas" and had even "fired upon the bear-
ers of a flag of truce which Hidalgo sent him."
And with this total disregard of the rules of
war on the part of the Spaniards, what won-
der that the army of the Independents should
have retaliated in subsequent battles? or that
the war should have become from that time
forth one of needless barbarity? It was at a
later epoch that a plea was made by the army
of the Independents for the strict observance
by both armies of the rules of war observed
by civilized nations.

By its defeat at Monte de las Cruces, the
army of the Viceroy was completely demoral-
ized. The City of Mexico was panic-stricken
and was an open prey to the army of Hidalgo.
So great was the confusion in the capital that
the Viceroy thought at first of retiring from

94 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

the city and establishing his court in Vera
Cruz. His courage returned, however, and he
remained in the city and prepared to defend
it. And to counteract the influence of the
sacred standard of Hidalgo, and the Virgin of
Guadalupe who was the Indians' special pa-
troness, he ordered the image of the Virgin
de los Remedios, the patroness of the Span-
iards, to be brought from the church in the
mountain village of Totoltepec where it had
been kept, to the Cathedral in Mexico. There
at a solemn function, the Viceroy knelt before
it, invoked its aid, placed his baton of office
at its feet, and solemnly declared it the gen-
erala of the Spanish army.

Despite the adoption of this inanimate but
very influential Generala, the condition in
Mexico was such that there was every indica-
tion that, had Hidalgo chosen to march his
army down to the city and take possession, he
would have met with but weak resistance.
There he might have established the Govern-
ment which he had planned, to comprise a
house of legislature, the members to be popu-
larly elected and representative of the various
classes of society.

He followed the retreating army of Tru-
jillo as far as the hacienda de Cuajimalpa,
fifteen miles from the City of Mexico and in

Monte de las Cruces and Aculco 95

full view thereof. And there he faltered. He
sent to the Viceroy a demand for surrender.
The Viceroy failed to reply. Then Hidalgo in
the face of vigorous protests from Allende,
ordered a retreat toward the Provincias In-
ternas with the intention of occupying Quere-
tara

Various explanations have been offered for
this failure on the part of Hidalgo to follow
up the advantage he had secured. To some
it has seemed that he was seized with a fatal
distrust of his followers. It is said that Ve-
negas had contrived to introduce secret emis-
saries into the camps of the revolutionists,
who assured Hidalgo that the City of Mexico
was amply provided with defences and was
prepared to resist the assaults of any disorder-
ly rabble without fire-arms. It is also stated
that Hidalgo intercepted a despatch informing
him that the army of Calleja del Rey had been
put in motion from San Luis Potosi and it
seemed more prudent that he should retreat
and be nearer to his recruiting grounds.
Others averred that he dreaded witnessing in
the capital of Mexico the frightful excesses
he had seen committed by his troops in
Guanajuato. From Celaya (or as he spelled
it, Selalla) Hidalgo wrote to Morelos, ex-
plaining that the retreat after the battle of

96 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Monte de las Cruces did not signify that he
was defeated, and so it is implied that it was
possible for him to find support and to rein-
force his army only in the Provincias. There
may have been the further feeling that his
jurisdiction was strategically limited to the
Provincias.

The Independents found that they were fail-
ing in their efforts to gain accessions from the
Creoles of the towns near the capital, as they
had hoped. The Creoles, although unfriendly
to the Spaniards and ready to revolt against
their government, dreaded the savage intoler-
ance of the Indians, who comprised the nu-
merical strength of Hidalgo's army. They
were therefore ready to unite with the Span-
iards and to withstand the furious onslaughts
of the savages. Furthermore, both Creoles
and mestizos in the vicinity of the capital were
under the spell of the Church and disinclined
to brave the threats made against those who
aided the revolutionists.

The Inquisition had shaken off the indiffer-
ence with which it had received the denunci-
ation made in 1800 and in 1807, and was mani-
festing an intention of prosecuting Hidalgo to
the utmost limit of its powers. Twelve days
after the Grito de Dolores, in publishing the
news which had come to the capital of the in-

97

surrection in the Provincias Internas, the
Gaceta asserted that Hidalgo, the leader of
the insurrection, was preaching the doctrine
among the people that there is no heaven, hell,
or purgatory. The Holy Office sent this state-
ment at once to Queretaro to obtain its veri-
fication; but without waiting for a reply from
Queretaro, the papers which had previously
been filed were brought out and laid before
the calificadores with orders to report at once.
This they did, and Hidalgo was publicly ac-
cused on charges which seem to have meaning-
less names, and which failed to describe accu-
rately anything of which he could be guilty.
The Holy Office resolved, however, that as he
was surrounded by his army and could not be
arrested, he should be summoned by edict to
appear within thirty days; and in default of
his appearance before the tribunal within that
time, he should be prosecuted in rebeldia to
definitive sentence and burning in effigy, if
necessary. The edict as duly issued in October
declared that all who supported him or had
converse with him and all who did not de-
nounce him (that is formally accuse him to
the ecclesiastical authorities), and all who
favored his revolutionary projects, were guilty
of abetting heresy and were liable to the ca-
nonical penalties. The edict was posted in the

98 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

churches and circulated throughout the land
as promptly as possible.

This edict, added to the proclamations of
excommunication issued by the Bishop in the
Provincias Internas and by the archbishop
had a powerful restraining influence upon a
people who were trained to submission; it
even influenced some of the followers of Hi-
dalgo to desert his standard. It is evidence of
the intensity of the passion of those who re-
mained true to the revolutionary leader that
they were able thus to brave the censures of
the Church.

The retreat was ably conducted by Allende,
notwithstanding his bitter opposition to a re-
trograde movement. On the seventeenth of
November the retreating army met General
Calleja del Rev at San Geronimo de Aculco,
on his way from San Luis Potosi with ten*
thousand well-equipped troops (many of them
Creoles and mestizos) and with a train of ar-
tillery. Hidalgo, it is said, felt that it was im-
portant for the revolution to have time enough
to spread into other parts of New Spain ; and
and so did not seek to avoid meeting Calleja
at this point.

A bloody battle ensued. The army of Hi-
dalgo had lost many by desertion, and the war-
riors left to it were chiefly Indians, in whom

99

there was a manifest recrudescence of the
modes of warfare of their ancestors, and the
same fearlessness of death. They rushed with
their clubs upon the bayonets of the enemy and
fell in heaps. So ignorant were they of the —
effects of artillery that they rushed to the /
mouths of the cannons and attempted to stop ' *
them with their sombreros. The result of the
fierce conflict was indubitable from the be-
ginning. Discipline triumphed over disorder,
and the Independents were defeated with a
loss of all the artillery which they had won
from the Spaniards at Monte de las Cruces
and of their ammunition. Calleja boasted in
his report that Hidalgo had lost ten thousand
men ; but of these five thousand had been
put to the sword in total disregard of the
rules of war.

The remainder of the army of the Inde-
pendents retreated in reasonably good order
to Guanajuato, closely pursued by Calleja.
Hidalgo left Allende and Aldama with a
small force to defend Guanajuato, and with
the greater part of his army he passed through
Celaya and on to Valladolid. Calleja ad-
vanced rapidly, defeated Allende at the
hacienda of Marfil within a few miles of the
city, and then rushed on to the rich town
which had been the scene of Hidalgo's first

ioo Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

battle and earliest conquest. Not content
with the slaughter of the prisoners taken at
Marfil, he celebrated his victory at Aculco by
a deed which seems incredible but which is
nevertheless authenticated by his official re-
port. To punish the city for its sympathy
with the Independents, he had the inhabitants
— men, women and children, to the number
of fourteen thousand — driven to the Plaza
Mayor, and there deliberately butchered. He
congratulated himself that he had saved the
viceregal Government the expense of powder
and shot in the mode of his execution. After
this indiscriminate slaughter he executed
twenty-three prominent citizens in the Alhon-
diga, and the same day at nightfall he hanged
eighteen more in the Plaza. Mayor. Then
with a show of relenting, but with ghastly
sarcasm, he issued a general amnesty to the
inhabitants of the almost depopulated city.

The massacre at Guanajuato furnished the
Independents with additional cause for re-
volt against a Government that could tolerate
such actions. It is unfortunate, however,
that the Independents were inclined to re-
taliate and were able to manifest no better
knowledge of the laws of nations, the rules
of war, and the duties of humanity.

CHAPTER VI.
GUADALAJARA AND PUENTE DE CALDERON.

SOON after the events at Guanajuato, im-
mediately following the Grito de Dolores,
a certain Jose Antonio Torres, manager of
an important hacienda in Nueva Galicia,
raised the standard of Independence in the
vicinity of Guadalajara. With his own means
he organized a body of troops and threatened
the city. The president of the Audiencia of
Nueva Galicia gathered up what troops were
left in his garrison after the departure of
some to join the army of Calleja del Rey, re-
ceived volunteers from some of the distin-
guished families of the city, and sent out his
little army to meet the troops of Torres on
the banks of the Zocoalco. The result was
the defeat of the royalists in an almost blood-
less battle.

The Bishop of Guadalajara and the Au-
diencia were in great alarm, and the city was
in distress, all expecting a repetition of the
reign of terror which had been visited upon
Guanajuato. But something altogether dif-
ferent occurred. Torres entered the city in
the best of order and gave assurances to the
citizens that he proposed to protect their
101

IO2 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

rights and their property. Hence his cause
gained great popularity. He immediately
wrote to Hidalgo in Valladolid and Allende
in Zacatecas (whither he and Aldama had
gone after the defeat at Marfil), giving an
account of his operations, and inviting them
to come to Guadalajara which they would find
ready to support the cause of the Independ-
ents. The invitations were accepted.

Before leaving Valladolid, Hidalgo, in re-
taliation for the acts of Calleja del Rey in
Guanajuato, ordered the execution of forty-
one Spaniards in the Barranca de la Beata;
and a few days later eighteen others were
executed on the hill of Malcajete. This was
the act of a man who was not in his nature
blood-thirsty, but was wrought up to a high
nervous condition by the scenes through
which he was passing and by a contempla-'
tion of the acts of savage cruelty of his
enemies. —

Leaving Valladolid, Hidalgo marched to
•^ Guadalajara, a distance of one hundred and
sixty miles northwest, and made a triumphant
-^ entry into the city on the twenty-sixth of No-
vember. He was especially warmly received
by the clergy left in the city. A special
thanksgiving mass was celebrated in the Ca-
thedral, at which Hidalgo attended and was

Guadalajara and Puente de Calderon 103

placed in a seat of honor under a canopy,
being thus recognized as of high political po-
sition. Allende was called by him from
Zacatecas. He left Don Rafael Iriarte in
command there and reached Guadalajara on
the twelfth of December.

It must be remembered that Guadalajara
was in a different political division of Amer-
ica from the Provincias Internas or the City
of Mexico. Its government was by an Au-
diencia, distinct from that of the City of Mex-
ico, but was subject to the Viceroy. Hidal-
go's acceptance of the invitation of Torres
to take up his position in the capital of Nueva
Galicia was to some extent like making a
treaty with a neighboring State. It was for
this reason that he issued another proclama-
tion, abolishing slavery ; and he added to it
the abolition of tithes for the support of the
Church. This would have been a blow to the
regular clergy, could it have been enforced ; but
all it could do under the circumstances was to
furnish evidence of his attitude toward the
Church.

The Independents had lost in killed,
wounded, prisoners, and deserters at least
thirty thousand men, but they still had an
army of about eighty thousand, mostly undis-
ciplined and ungovernable. Retaining for

IO4 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

himself the title of Generalissimo, and assum-
ing the functions of a dictator, Hidalgo at-
tempted to organize a Government in accord-
ance with his original plans for the revolution
and appointed two Ministers for the purpose,
Don Jose Maria Chico, Minister of Grace and
Justice, and Don Ignacio Lopez Rayon, Min-
ister of State and Business or Secretary-Gen-
eral of the Independent government. He at-
tempted to send a commissioner to the United
States, to secure, if possible, sympathy and
aid from that source. But the commissioner
was intercepted and made a prisoner by the
Spaniards; and from him the Viceroy was
enabled to gain exact knowledge of Hidalgo's
military resources and plans, and with this
information was assisted to hasten his over-
throw, which was nevertheless inevitable.

The military situation at the opening of
the new year, 1811, was about this: the In-
dependents were in possession of a belt of
territory extending northeasterly from Guada-
lajara, including the towns of Saltillo under
the command of General Don Manuel Jimenez,
and Aguascalientes and Zacatecas under the
command of General Don Rafael Iriarte.
Hidalgo had adopted a principle of govern-
ment somewhat modified from that with which
he had started his uprising. The name and

Guadalajara and Puente dc C alder on 105

portrait of Fernando VII were omitted from
his banner. This did not imply that the In-
dependents had given up striving for the es-
tablishment of a kingdom, and were looking
forward to a republic. Such a form of gov-
ernment would have been altogether contrary
to the spirit and the genius of the Mexican
people. By means of printed manifestos
which he sent broadcast over the land, Hidal-
go declared that his purpose was to free Mex-
ico from the Spanish yoke and to release it
from all obligations to Spanish rulers, but
with no intention of changing the form of
government save that it was to be less abso-
lute. He began on the twentieth of Decem-
ber, 1810, the publication of a periodical en-
titled El Despertador Americano (The
American Alarmist), edited by Don Fran-
cisco Severe Malclonado, in which he set
forth his principles of government more fully
than he had previously found the means of
doing. The paper was scarcely more than a p n£
series of broadsides, but it was a bold under- ^ £ ijj&.
taking for those times and in a country in
which the Gaceta, published under the direct
control of the Government and the Church,
had previously tolerated no rivals in the field
of journalism.

He also gave attention to the accusations

106 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

made against him by the bishops and the
Holy Office, and published certain proclama-
tions which were subsequently used against
him in the process of the Inquisition. One
of these proclamations bade the people of
Mexico open their eyes and "not listen to the
seductive voices of their enemies, who un-
der the veil of religion and friendship wished
to make the natives victims of their greed."
But the principal one was that which ex-
plicitly denied the charges lodged with the
Holy Office and contained in the edict of Oc-
tober 13, 1810. In this Hidalgo showed his
powers of reasoning and no little sense of
humor; while the Inquisition showed itself
deficient in a sense of humor, by quoting his
words in its edict of January 26, 1811.

"I am accused," said he, "of denying that
there is a Hell, and of affirming that there
is one of the canonized pontiffs in that place.
How can this be consistent, to say that there
in a pontiff in hell and at the same time to
deny the existence of such a place? It is
charged against me that I follow the perverse
dogmas of Luther. At the same time I am
accused of denying the authenticity of the
sacred books (the Bible) ; if Luther deduces
his errors from these same books which he
thought inspired by God, how can I be a

Guadalajara and Puente de Calderon 107

Lutheran if I deny the authenticity of these
books?" He emphatically asserted that to
revolt against Spain and the Spanish system
was not necessarily to revolt against the Ro-
man Catholic religion.

The Government at the City of Mexico was
by no means inactive or indifferent to what
was going on in Guadalajara and in the towns
held by the Independents. The Viceroy is-
sued orders to unite all the viceregal troops
for an attack upon Guadalajara and the cap-
ture of the chief of the Independents. The
three divisions of the army then existing were
to concentrate under the command of Gen-
eral Calleja del Rey and advance forthwith
upon Guadalajara.

Calleja del Rey was not in full accord with
the Viceroy and was intensely jealous of Gen-
eral de la Cruz, who had recently come from
Spain with reinforcements to the viceregal
army. He delayed carrying out the orders
for the concentration of the army, hoping
that he alone might have the honor of being
the hero of the pending attack. Fortune fa-
vored him; for General de la Cruz, who was
in command of one wing of the army, was in-
tercepted near Zamora, between Valladolid
and Guadalajara, by one of the Independent
leaders, Ruperto Mier. Hidalgo had sent

io8 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

this officer out from Guadalajara with two
thousand soldiers to meet the approaching
royalists. He gave battle, and though in the
end defeated, he succeeded in detaining Gen-
eral de la Cruz, much to the gratification of
the commander-in -chief ; who, after taking
possession of Valladolid, was proceeding with
his forces toward Guadalajara.

A council of war was held by the Inde-
pendents in Guadalajara to decide upon the
best mode of engaging the enemy. Hidalgo
was in favor of going out to encounter the
royalists at Puente Grande. The intrepid
warrior-priest was always full of confidence
in his large army of Indians. Allende, on
the other hand, was cautious of attempting
to meet well-trained and well-equipped
troops with his undisciplined hordes of sav-
ages. The trained officers acceded to the"
opinion of Hidalgo, who seems in every in-
stance to have carried his point, and at mid-
day on the fourteenth of January, 1811, the
army of the Independents set out for the
Puente de Calderon, a bridge over the San.-
tiago River twelve leagues east of the city
of Guadalajara.

It was a curious army which took up its
position at the bridge. It was composed of
sixty thousand foot-soldiers and twenty thou-

Guadalajara and Puente de C alder on 109

sand horse. These were mostly undisciplined
and possessed a varied armory, — a few guns,
and clubs, slings, pikes, and long knives, —
weapons which their ancestors had used with
deadly effect in the battles with the conquista-
dores in the sixteenth century. They had in
their possession ninety-five cannons, all of in-
ferior quality ; some of them were of iron, or
bronze, but the others were wood and bound
with iron hoops. Calleja approached with an
army of seven thousand well-disciplined and
perfectly-armed men, and having the further
advantage of complete military organization.
Hidalgo had placed his artillery, such as it
was, in a position where, on whichever side
the attack was made, it would be in the face
of a destructive fire. The battle on the six-
teenth of January was a hot one, maintained
with extraordinary valor on both sides; but
it was without other result than to cause
Calleja del Rey to change completely his plan
of attack for the following day. Hostilities
were suspended during the night and resumed
on the morning of the seventeenth. A simul-
taneous attack was made on both flanks of
the army of the Independents by the two col-
umns into which Calleja had divided his in-
fantry. At the same time a strong detach-
ment of cavalry advanced by the right bank

no Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

of the river under cover of a battery and at-
tacked the rear guard of the Independents.
The Independents fought with their accus-
tomed energy and courage, and the tide of
battle flowed first to the one side, and then
to the other; but in the end Calleja del Rey
was victorious, chiefly because of the explo-
sion of an ammunition wagon. The flames
caught the dried grass of the battle-field, and
the wind blew the fire directly into the faces
of Hidalgo's men. The loss sustained by the
Independents was enormous, while that of
Calleja del Key's army was scarcely more
than two hundred in killed and wounded.
Among the killed on the side of the royalists
was General Manuel de Flon, Count of Ca-
dena, whose body was found three days after
the battle cut in pieces. He had fallen while
in pursuit of the Independents.

Calleja del Rey went on to Guadalajara and
was received with joy by the citizens, who
were now ready to protest their fidelity to the
Spanish Government. The Bishop and the
Audiencia of Nueva Galicia returned, jubilant
over the triumph of Calleja del Rey, who, on
his part, declared that the revolution had been
definitively quelled, and it only remained to
punish the rebels. He was joined a day or
two later by General de la Cruz, who set out

Guadalajara and Puente de C alder on in

forthwith under orders from Calleja del Rey
for the pacification of Nueva Galicia.

But Calleja del Rey was mistaken in his
estimate of the results of his victory. When
the Viceroy sent, by General de la Cruz, to
Hidalgo and his lieutenants a communication
offering them pardon if they would return
to their allegiance to the Spanish Govern-
ment, they replied, in a terse message which
showed of what spirit they were, that pardon_
was for criminals, and not for defenders of
their country.

CHAPTER VII.
THE CLOSING SCENE.

THE leaders of the Independents met in
the Hacienda del Pabellon after the
defeat at Puente de Calderon and discussed
the situation and their plans for the future.
There was no thought of abandoning the
cause. The Independents were defeated, but
not disheartened. Allende, Aldama, and
Abasalo and other lieutenants insisted that
Hidalgo should resign his position as Gen-
eralissimo and content himself with the of-
fice of Dictator or Chief. There is a pathetic
interest given to this deposition of the man
who must have been conscious of his failure
to deal with military problems, and who must
now, at fifty-eight years of age, be supplanted
by younger men. It is proof of his exalted
character that he should have consented to
the proposed new order of things without
wavering in the slightest degree in his fidelity
to the cause to which he had devoted his
latest years. By almost unanimous consent
Allende was far abler in military matters than
Hidalgo, and he was the choice of the In-
dependents for their military chief. From
Pabellon the Independents went to Aguascal-
112

The Closing Scene 113

ientes, where they united with Iriarte and
proceeded to Zacatecas. They decided to
make that city the basis of their future opera-
tions. General Don Manuel Jimenez was oc-
cupying Saltillo, and Allende determined to
go to his aid. On his way, he learned of the
victories gained by Jimenez over two Spanish
leaders who had attacked his position. This
was cheering news, but was of little perma-
nent value to the cause of the Independents.
The army of Jimenez was concentrated with
that of Allende at Zacatecas and reorganized
for further military operations.

The leaders decided to go to the United
States to solicit aid to continue their struggle
with the Spanish Government. In reaching this
decision they were reviving an interest in the
understanding which probably existed be-
tween them and the adventurous spirits of
the United States led by Colonel Aaron Burr
some years before, that the latter would come
to the assistance of the former, should they
ever strike for independence. Ignacio Al-
dama, who being a lawyer and a business
man, was deemed best qualified to serve in
the capacity of representative of the Inde-
pendents to a foreign power, was sent as
Minister Plenipotentiary to the United
States. He was accompanied by Salazar, one

ii4 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

of the many creole priests who had espoused
the cause of Independence. The two were
overtaken at Bexar, Texas; were arrested,
brought back to Monclova in the northern
province of New Spain, and both were exe-
cuted. Under date of February 3, 1811, the
Viceroy in a letter to Calleja del Key, an-
nounced that the ambassadors sent by Hidalgo
to the United States had been captured en
route by the royalists, and had died a natural
death in prison. Such was the duplicity re-
sorted to by the Government of New Spain
in times that were known to be critical.

In Saltillo, Ignacio Elizondo, a lieutenant-
colonel in the army of the Viceroy, to whom
the cause of the revolutionists seemed not so
desperate, enlisted in the army of Allende,
thinking that it offered better chances for pro-
motion. His advances were rather coldly re-
ceived by Allende who seemed suspicious of
him from the first. Shortly afterwards, Eli-
zondo met the bishop of Monterey, as the
latter was fleeing from the Independents ; and
confided to him his feeling of resentment for
the manner in which he had been received
by the Independents. "Why not return to
your former allegiance?" asked the prelate.
The two began forthwith to devise a plan by

The Closing Scene 115

which the Independents would be circum-
vented.

Hidalgo, Allende, Juan Aldama, Jimenez,
and an Independent named Santa Maria, set
out under as strong an escort of soldiers as
the circumstances permitted, for the United
States by way of Monclova. Their objective
point was New Orleans, and to reach the
frontier of the United States in the direction
of that city they had to traverse a desert
country where water was scarce. Hence the
little army was much scattered in the search
for water. This furnished the opportunity
for Elizondo to carry out his plans for the
capture of the leaders. On the twenty-first
of March the Independents fell into an am-
buscade at a place called Acatita de Bajan.
Allende fought desperately but was overcome
bv superior numbers. The leaders, including
Hidalgo, Allende, Juan Aldama, Jimenez,
Mariano Hidalgo (who had been made treas-
urer of the revolutionary army), and others
were made prisoners, and were taken to
Monclova. Thence they were sent to Chi-
huahua, in chains and under a strong mili-
tary guard. Their long journey of six hun-
dred miles over a barren country was at-
tended by many hardships and cruel treat-
ment. They were not allowed at night to

n6 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

remove their chains while they slept. It was
the longest journey Hidalgo had ever made;
and because of its hardships, added to his ex-
periences in camp and on the battle-field in
the last few months, he was much broken in
health.

Chihuahua was the seat of the Command-
ant-General of the province and whatever his
jurisdiction may have been, or by what process
of reasoning the prisoners were supposed to
be under such jurisdiction, they were pre-
sented for trial before a court-martial, on the
charge of treason. The cases of Allende, Al-
dama, Jimenez and Santa Maria were quickly
disgp_sedjof .__ They were . adjudged traitors.
and on the twenty-sixth of June, 1811, they
were shot, with their faces to the wall. The
Intendente at Chihuahua reported their exe-
cution as that of certain insignes fascinerosoS
(notable malefactors).

The trial of Hidalgo was delayed until he
could be formally degraded from the priest-
hood and so be made subject to military or
civil courts. To effect this, a delegate from
the Bishop of Durango came to Chihuahua
and performed the ceremonies of degrada-
tion. The fetters were removed from the
prisoner and he was vested again in his
priestly habit and presented before the ecclesi-

The Closing Scene 117

astical court thus provisionally instituted.
Sentence of degradation was then duly pro-
nounced. After the removal of his official
garments, fetters were again placed on the
old man and he was presented to the military
tribunal to be tried, convicted, and sentenced.
Throughout the trial he bore himself with
great dignity and with a proper pride. When
asked by what right he had rebelled against
the Government of the Viceroy, he answered
with some spirit, "With the right which every
citizen has when he "believes the country is in
danger of being lost."

Despite this effort to conform to the laws
of which they were not fully masters and
which defined the respective jurisdictions of
civil, military, and ecclesiastical courts, the
military authorities at Chihuahua were in
grave error in regard to Hidalgo, inasmuch
as his case was already before the Holy Of-
fice and that tribunal claimed exclusive juris-
diction therein. Although Chihuahua was in
a region remote from the capital and not
readily accessible, the Inquisition protested
vigorously against this interference with its
prerogatives, although in fact, its protests
were not made until two years later, when
they were of no possible avail, save to rebuke

n8 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

the military authorities for their gross indif-
ference to the rights of the Holy Office.

The Holy Office had proceeded against the
distinguished defendant in absentia, claiming
that it had evidence that Hidalgo had received
the edict of October, 1810; as indeed it had
in the answers which Hidalgo had published
thereto ; consequently the fiscal demanded that
^ ke snou^ be treated as rebelde or contuma-
cious. After some delays, legal and other-
wise, the trial began «arly in February, 1811.
<•' with the fiscal's presentation of the formal
accusation. This was in the ordinary form,
full of general terms which might or might
not be specifically applicable to the case of
Hidalgo and which were no more descriptive
of Hidalgo's offences than are the usual true
bills of the grand jury of the crimes to which
they relate. And possibly it was all summed
up in the words that accused him of being
"guilty of divine and human high treason, a
blasphemer, an implacable enemy of Chris-
tianity and the State, a wicked seducer, a las-
civious hypocrite, a cunning traitor to King
and country, pertinacious, contumacious, and
rebellious to the Holy Office," of all which
he was accused "in general and in particu-
lar." The accusation contained a .recital of
the evidence collected since 1800, and a long

The Closing Scene 1 19

statement of Hidalgo's share in the revolu-
tion, and concluded with the usual prayer that
the accused be condemned to confiscation and
"relaxation," in person if possible, otherwise in
effigy; or if the evidence be insufficient that
he be put to the torture, if attainable, in or-
der that a confession might be extorted from
him.

The accusation was received by the In-
quisitors, a copy was in due form ordered to
be served on the accused, and inasmuch as
he was absent, it was ordered that the legally
required publication be made in the halls of
the Holy Office, and record made. In due
time the proof was submitted and the evi-
dence published. A copy of this was ordered
to be given to Hidalgo, and this was also
published in the halls and duly recorded. All
the legal formalities were studiously observed,
and there was no effort made to obviate the
law's delays. The Inquisition proceeded with
its usual deliberation, and on the fourteenth
of June the case came up for hearing. The
Holy Office provided counsel for the accused
in the person of Licenciado Jose Maria
Gutierrez Rosas. It was not until August
12 that the report of the calificadores, to whom
all the evidence was submitted, was made,

I2O Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

which was practically the judgment of the
court.

It was in total disregard of all this that the
military court at Chihuahua had proceeded
against a prisoner whom it held in an ordinary
jail. The possible explanation of the failure
of the Commandant-General to send notice to
the Holy Office of the capture of Hidalgo and
the proceedings against him, was fear lest the
Holy Office might claim the prisoner as sub-
ject to its supreme and exclusive jurisdic-
tion, and demand that he be handed over to
the ecclesaistical tribunal for trial. And what
dangers might have attended his being taken
back through the recently disturbed provinces
who can imagine? Furthermore the processes
of the Inquisition were always slow and
tedious ; after Hidalgo had been tried and con-
victed and had done his penance in an autb
da fe he would have to be turned over to
the secular arm and tried and condemned in
a military court ; and no doubt the military
authorities congratulated themselves that they
were able to cooperate and hasten the inevit-
able result though their action was clearly
in contempt of the Holy Office. But all this
implied that the Holy Office was losing, the
ground it had once held in the popular regard.
The claim was subsequently made that it was

The Closing Scene 121

by royal order of May 12, 1810, that Inquisi-
torial faculties had been obtained by which
the Bishop of Durango, sub-delegating the
doctoral canon of his cathedral and thus con-
stituting him a Papal Inquisitor, had co-
operated with the Commandant-General in the
degradation of Hidalgo from the priesthood.
But even if such a principle of action were
correct, the claim was of doubtful authen-
ticity, for at the time of the alleged royal or-
der, both Fernando VII and the Pope were
pjisoners of Napoleon. Nor was there any
reason at that date for the issue of such an
order from the Spanish or the papal court,
there being no revolution in New Spain in
actual anticipation.

On the eighteenth of May, 1811, while his
trial at Chihuahua was in progress, Hidalgo
issued a manifesto from his prison addressed
"A Todo El Mundo" (to all the world),
which was long supposed by some of his par-
tisans to be a forgery published by the Span-
ish authorities for the purpose of quieting
the Mexican people; and on the tenth of
June, he wrote his supplication declaring his
full and complete submission to the Holy Of-
fice. The genuineness of this document, long
and dignified, calmly and clearly reasoned,
and manifesting full command of his theo-

122 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

logical learning, may be taken as evidence of
the genuineness of the earlier manifesto.

The two documents taken together disclose
a frame of mind which seems not altogether
incompatible with Hidalgo's character, as re-
vealed in his relations to the revolution and
by his manifestos and proclamations issued
from Guadalajara. He was, as the accusa-
tion of the Holy Office had alleged, a Chris-
tian, baptized and confirmed, and he was a
servant and devout son of the Church ; he had
served as a priest at her altars for thirty
years, and had gone into the struggle for In-
dependence with others of the creole clergy
from conscientious motives, for the relief of
his people from an oppressive and bad Gov-
ernment, and to conserve the country for
Fernando VII and the Roman Church. In
answering the accusations of the edict, he
denied that he had led an immoral life, and
he exculpated himself with much dexterity, as
in his previous published answers to the Holy
Office, from the heresies imputed to him. He
had not regarded his utterances as heretical;
yet if the Holy Office adjudged them so, he
retracted, abjured, and detested them. And
he begged to be absolved from the charge
of heresy and apostasy. He expressed the
earnest hope that he might obtain the par-

The Closing Scene 123

don and absolution that would open the gates
of heaven to him.

There appears to be a ready explanation
of the extravagance expressed in the mani-
festo of May 18 and the earnestness of his
exhortation to his followers to submit, as not
altogether inconsistent with the coolness with
which he had planned, and the reckless and
sometimes brutal energy with which he had
precipitated and sustained the revolution.
Questions of right and wrong which are apt
to escape attention in the camp or on the
battle-field may press for an answer when a
man is in prison and finds leisure for reflec-
tion; when he knows that death is not long
to be postponed ; when he feels that his cause
has been disowned of God, or when he feels
that his failure may have been due to his own
fault. Such must have been the feelings of
this exalted character, superior to the men
of his time and country, as in his prison in
Chihuahua, awaiting the end of his life, he
recalled the decrees he had issued for the
death of the enemies of his cause and the
countless lives that had been sacrificed
through his blunders. A less heroic char-
acter in such a case would have maintained
its consistency and suppressed its expression
of repentance.

124 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

r. /i

yt/cj J The end came on the thirtieth of July, 1811.
^ ~££^ At nine o'clock in die morning llidalgo wa?
taken to the corral of the Hospital Royal1 in
which he had been confined since his con-
viction, and there received a military execu-
tion. He met his death with heroism and prayed
with his last breath that Heaven would favor
the struggles of his people and secure to them
the blessings of Independence.

Hidalgo is described as a man of medium
height, round-shouldered, of dark complexion,
with gray eyes, keen and brilliant. His head,
usually inclined forward and falling upon his
chest, was bald on the forehead and crown.
With this exception he was white-haired. Al-
though vigorous, he was neither active nor
quick in his movements. He was of few
words in the ordinary affairs of life, but ani-
mated when he was engaged in argument
which he carried on in academic style. His
dress was that of the average secular clergy
of the provinces. He wore a cloak of black
woollen, knee breeches, waistcoat and jacket
of a kind of goods which comes from India

*For many years the building was used as the
Mint in Chihuahua, and Hidalgo's cell was pointed
out therein to all sight-seers. A handsome monu-
ment, a shaft surmounted by a statue of the patriot-
priest, marks the spot where he was executed.

The Closing Scene 125

and is called "rompacoche,"2 a round hat, and
he carried with him a long cane. His col-
lege nickname of El Zorro clung to him
throughout life, and is said to have faithfully
characterized him.

The execution of Hidalgo was not made
known generally throughout Mexico until
some time later. It was probably deemed
wise to avoid the popular excitement which
might have been occasioned by the event.
The Holy Office was officially kept in ignor-
ance, for obvious reasons. On the twenty-^
fifth of June, 1812, the secretary wrote to
the commissioners of the Inquisition in Chi-
huahua, reminding them of their duty under
the edict of October 13, 1810, to advise the
Holy Office of the capture of Hidalgo and of
all subsequent events relating thereto. The
commissioners should have gone to him in
his prison and urged him to make a state-
ment concerning the allegations of the edict
and whatever may have weighed on his con-
science. They should have reported to his
judges his confession, if he made any, and
any signs of repentance he may have shown.
The alcalde, the ecclesiastics, and the mili-
tary officers in Chihuahua were to be ex-

*Cf. Leon. Historia General de Mexico, P. 412.

126 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

amined as to his state of mind during his
imprisonment, so that the Holy Office might
be informed as to his penitence or impenitence
and thus be able to render justice. It was
necessary that the record of the case (secret
though it was intended to keep it) should be
complete.

In January, 1813, a reply to this letter was
received by the Holy Office, saying that
the Commandant-General ordered all action
against Hidalgo to be suspended, and would
explain why at an early date. This explana-
tion came later, together with as much in-
formation as the Commandant-General chose
to impart. On the thirteenth of March, 1813,
the fiscal reported to the Holy Office that
in all that appeared in the papers transmitted
from Chihuahua there were neither enough
merits to absolve Hidalgo's memory and fame
nor enough to condemn him; as it appeared
that he had made a general confession and had
been reconciled. The tribunal accordingly re-
ported that the case was suspended, and or-
dered that the papers be filed in their proper
place. Thus the records of the Holy Office
in the case of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla were
closed thirteen years after the case was first
opened, and nearly two years after the death
of the distinguished defendant.

The Closing Scene 127

The heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama, '
and Jimenez were brought to Guanajuato and

^ ^ *™*****o-*'"|<*»'*«** M» *v £•_ t^,

placed upon pikes at the four corners of the
Alhondiga de Graiiaditas. Thus a century
earlier the heads of traitors had been placed
upon the Tower of London. They were to
serve as a warning that a similar fate awaited
any in Mexico who chose to revolt against
the Government, the Viceroy, the Audiencia,
or the Holy Office. The effect was exactly
the opposite of what had been expected : the
ghastly heads thus exposed to view served
to remind all. who saw them that certain men
had sacrificed their lives for the cause of
the Independence of Mexico ; and this aroused
public curiosity and public opinion in Mexico
upon the subject of personal rights and the
meaning of Independence.

The heads..:\yere removed from the pikes,
in 1825, when it was supposed that what
these men had striven to attain and had
fought and died for had been accomplished
in Mexico. They were brought to the cap-
ital and buried in the apse of the great Ca-
thedral under the "Altar of the Kings." The
great church from which these men were openly
denounced, upon whose columns denunciatory
proclamations were posted, is now a building
to which all who believe in the Independence

128 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

and nationality of Mexico turn when they
seek to commemorate the martyrs; and the
Altar de los Reyes, though retaining its
ancient name, has been in the popular mind
rededicated to four martyrs, — Miguel Hidalgo
y Costilla, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and
Manuel Jimenez. Of these four the Mexican
people know far more; the life and the death
of each touch them more nearly, than did the
legendary names of Kaspar, Melchior, and
Balthazar.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE EPOCH OF MORELOS.

WITH the execution of more than thirty
other participants in Hidalgo's efforts
for the Independence of the Mexican people,
— including Chico, Minister of Justice, and
Mariano Hidalgo, Treasurer of the Army, —
the military Government at Chihuahua had
shown that the insurrection, as they were
pleased to term it, was completely suppressed.
Abasalo, who bore the title of "el Mariscal"
(Marshal) in Hidalgo's army and was cap-
tured with his chief, in some way succeeded
in saving his life, but was sent to Spain as
a prisoner and died there in confinement.8
Another participant in the revolution, Col-
onel Delgado, was apprehended at San Antonio,
Texas, was executed, and his head was stuck
on a pole at the crossing of the river between
the Alamo and the town. Still another, Ber-

'Sorne authorities state that he was an informer
at the trial of the other prisoners. It is evident
that the Mexican people have not charged him with
any such conduct, for he is numbered with the
heroes of Mexican history, and his name serves as
a place-name in several localities, where national
heroes are thus honored.

129

130 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

nardo Gutierrez, escaped and took refuge at
Natchitoches, where, some years later, he en-
gaged in an enterprise for the establishment
of a republic. This was one of the incidents
in the early history of Texas.

Had the revolution been completely sup-
pressed, and had the subsequent struggles for
Independence borne no relation to that which
resulted from the Grito de Dolores, there
would have been no reason for calling Hidal-
go the Father of Mexican Independence. But
the fact is that each subsequent effort was
an echo of the Grito. Not only that, but the
struggle which was maintained for the suc-
ceeding decade was a direct continuation of
the movement that had apparently come to
naught when Hidalgo fell into the hands of
his enemies. "The authors of these enter-
prises," said Hidalgo to Allende, when they
were at the height of their success and when
their cause appeared triumphant, "the au-
thors of these enterprises will never reap their
fruits." But he never seemed to despair of
the ultimate success of the enterprise.

And so a life of Hidalgo would be incom-
plete which closed with his death in Chi-
huahua in 1811, or which was continued no
further than to the conclusion of his case be-
fore the Holy Office. A history of the times

The Epoch of Morelos 131

of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla must of neces-
sity be continued until the cause for which •
he lived, for which he planned, for which he
fought, and for which he died, had borne
some fruits in the nationality of Mexico.
Hidalgo's mission proved to have been to
arouse his people to a sense of their rights
and to the possibility of obtaining them. The
purpose which he served was to stimulate
Mexicans to a struggle which must inevitably
result in securing to them liberty. Out of an
insurrection had developed a revolution, and
the old maxim, "Revolutions never go back-
ward," must be justified in the case of Hidal-
go and of Mexico. The revolution of 1810-
1811 had advanced too far to be crushed by
the death of the martyrs of Chihuahua. It
had survived its earliest disasters to fructify
later.

And so those Mexicans are right who, in
celebrating their separation from Spain, re-
fuse to content themselves with paying honors
to the men under whom Mexican nationality
was established, but glorify the Cura of
Dolores and bestow upon him the title of
Father of Mexican Independence.

After the arrest of Hidalgo a remnant of
the army of the Independents, consisting of
four thousand men and twenty-two pieces of

132 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

artillery, escaped the vigilance of Calleja del
Rey, and retreated to Saltillo under the com-
mand of General Don Ignacio Lopez Rayon.
Rayon was superior to Hidalgo in both mili-
tary training and in practical judgment; and
from this time forward it is characteristic of
the armies of the Independents that the sav-
age Indian element was eliminated, and the
troops were organized, trained, and disciplined
to military rule. Rayon collaborated with
Jose Maria Liceaga and took possession of
Zacatecas, where he proceeded to establish a
form of government capable of treating with
the Viceroy. He returned to the former prin-
ciples, which were fully in accord with the
spirit and genius of Spanish-American
thought; he sent a manifesto to General Cal-
leja del Rey, declaring that the purpose of
the revolution which he was maintaining was
to establish a national junta which would
conserve the rights of the Roman Catholic
church and of Fernando VII, and prevent
New Spain from falling into the hands of
the Bonapartes. It was looking forward to
an event which seemed possible, if not inevit-
able : the overthrow and expulsion of Fernan-
do VII from Spain, and the provision for him
of a throne and kingdom in America. It pre-
sented the glorious vision which might well

The Epoch of Morelos 133

inspire a Mexican patriot with ardor, of a
greater kingdom than Spain, then in its
decadence — of a vast empire which would out-
shine Spain in the most splendid epoch of her
existence.

This explanation was far from satisfactory
to the Spanish General or to the Viceroy.
The former by a military demonstration forced
Rayon out of Zacatecas to a more strategic
position, which he found near Valladolid at
a small town called Zitacuaro. This he oc-
cupied May ii, 1811. Here he organized the
junta which he had outlined in his manifesto,
calling it the "Supreme Junta de Zitacuaro."
It was composed of himself as president, and
Jose Maria Morelos, Jose Maria Liceaga, Dr.
Verduzco, and Dr. Cos. In the selection of
these five men some concession had been
made to popular sovereignty and also to the
Spanish form of municipal government ; and
an election was held in which as many land-
owners as could be collected for the purpose,
and the Ayuntamiento of Zitacuaro had par-
ticipated. Here was a body to give some
color of authority to the military opera-
tions, to regulate all the affairs of the In-
dependents, and to unite the people more
closely in opposition to the Viceroy and the
Audiencia. It recognized Fernando VII as

134 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

sovereign of Mexico and professed to govern
in his name. It claimed for itself an au-
thority in Mexico equal to that of any of the
juntas in Spain. Curiously enough, as we
may now look at it, it appears to have been
a recrudescence of the project of Iturrigaray,
and was the embodiment of the principles of
the plan which ten years later succeeded.

The basic principles of the revolution at
this period are admirably shown in a mani-
festo issued by the junta of Zitacuaro March
12, 1812. This able document, which is at-
tributed to Dr. Cos, one of the Creole clergy
who had espoused the cause of Independ-
ence, declared that Spain and America were
integral parts of one monarchy, subject to
the same King, and that these parts were
equal, and without any dependence upon or
subordination of one to the other. In her
fidelity to Fernando VII America had shown
a greater right to convoke the Cortes and to
call together representatives of the few
patriots in Spain than Spain had to call from
America, deputies to her Cortes who were
unworthy representatives of Mexico. The in-
habitants of the Peninsula had no right what-
ever, in the absence of the king, to arrogate
to themselves sovereign power over the Span-
ish dominions in the Western World. All

The Epoch of Morelos 135

orders and decrees issuing from thence were
absolutely null and void and entitled to no
respect in America. The Mexican people
were only exercising their proper and inherent
rights when they refused to submit to an ar-
bitrary foreign power. This was not treason
or any other crime. It was patriotism and
loyalty, worthy of the King's gratitude, and
of which he would undoubtedly approve if
he were then present. The Mexicans were
assured that they were right after what had
occurred in Spain and in Mexico since the
overthrow of the Spanish throne, in demand-
ing that the dominion of New Spain be con-
served for its legitimate sovereign.

The manifesto made the following concrete
demands : — the Europeans resident in Mexico
were to resign the command of the armed
forces into the hands of a Congress to be
created to represent Fernando VII in Mexico
and to conserve his rights, but to be wholly
independent of Spain. They might, if they
so elected, remain as citizens under the pro-
tection of the laws, and under a guarantee
of safety as to their persons, families, and
property. And such as were then holding
offices might retain the titles, privileges, and
honors thereof and a portion of the emolu-
ments, but they were not to exercise any of-

136 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

ficial functions unless appointed thereto by
the Mexican Congress. And such as might
desire to leave the country would be granted
passports to whatever place they might ap-
point, but in such case public officials must
relinquish their claims to any part of their
official pay.

The most effective measures were to be
adopted to secure the Independence of Mex-
ico. All the people of the land, Creoles and
mestizos, as well as Europeans, were to con-
stitute themselves a nation of American citi-
zens, subjects of Fernando VII, bent only on
promoting the public welfare. When this was
done, Mexico would be able to contribute,
for the prosecution of the war in Spain, such
sums as Congress might see fit to appropriate,
according to the country's means, as evidence
of the fraternal feeling existing between Mex-
ico and Spain, and as proof of their common
aspirations.

That portion of the manifesto which was
devoted to propositions regarding the conduct
of the war then in progress in Mexico stated
that if such a contest were indeed unavoid-
able, it should be carried on, as far as pos-
sible, in a manner least shocking to human-
ity. It was between brothers and fellow citi-
zens. Both contending parties professed to

The Epoch of Morelos 137

acknowledge Fernando VII. The Mexicans
had given abundant proof of their loyalty by
swearing allegiance to the King, by proclaim-
ing him in every part of the land, by invoking
his name in their official acts, by carrying his
portrait upon their banners, and by stamping
his name on their coinage. Such a war, there-
fore, ought not to be more cruel than one
between foreign nations. The rights of na-
tions and the rules of war observed even
among infidels and savages ought certainly
to be regarded among those who were sub-
jects of the same sovereign, the constituents
of a Christian kingdom. Prisoners of war
should not be treated as though guilty of high
treason, or sentenced to death as criminals
for causes purely political. If kept as hostages
or for purposes of exchange, they should not
be placed in irons. By the rules of war,
bloodshed was permissible in the act of com-
bat alone. When the battle was over no one
should be killed, nor should those who threw
down their arms or fled, be fired upon. The
severest penalties should be meted out to
such as entered defenceless towns with fire
and sword, or assigned prisoners to be shot
by fifths or tenths, and thus confused the in-
nocent with the guilty.

Ecclesiastical tribunals were not to inter-

138 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

fere in what was clearly an affair of the
state and was in no way connected with the
cause of religion. The Independents showed
their profound respect and veneration for the
clergy, and recognized the Church's jurisdic-
tion in matters sacred. But if the present
manifest inclinations of the ecclesiastical au-
thorities were not restrained, the Independ-
ents could not be responsible for what might
result from popular indignation. And if the
propositions for the more humane conduct of
the war were not accepted by the Europeans
to whom they were submitted, the Independ-
ents would naturally be forced to pursue a
policy of vigorous reprisal.

It was an able declaration of rights, and
should have received the considerate atten-
tion of the Viceroy and the Aiidicncia. %On
the contrary, however, it was treated as sedi-
tious and by the Viceroy (Venegas) was or-
dered ceremoniously to be burned by the
public executioner in the Plaza Mayor of the
City of Mexico. But this was done too late
to counteract its effect upon the minds of
thoughtful people in Mexico, and the cause
of the Independents gained ground.

At Zitacuaro was evolved a daring scheme
for capturing the Viceroy and bringing him
to some place where Rayon might govern

The Epoch of Morclos 139

the country through him. The plot was dis-
covered, and steps were taken forthwith for
the breaking up of the junta and the destruc-
tion of its members. General Calleja del
Rev was sent with a body of troops for that
purpose. He acted with great promptness
and on the first of January, 1812, burned the
town, killed many of the non-combatant citi-
zens, and executed all the prisoners captured.
When he returned in triumph to the capital,
there was a solemn Te Deinn in the great
Cathedral on the fourteenth of February in
commemoration of this victory over a defence-
less town.

The junta escaped to Sultepec, where it as-
sumed the name of Junta Americana, and for
a while it exercised more potent authority
than before. Rayon was a man of ability.
He was a native of Tlalpujahua, in what is
now the state of Michoacan, in the Provin-
cias Internas. He had been educated at San
Nicolas College, Valladolid, under Hidalgo,
and had conceived a great love and admira-
tion for the patriot-priest. He completed his
studies in the College of San Idelfonso in the
City of Mexico, and after graduating there
in the law, he had returned to his native
place. Immediately upon receiving informa-
tion of the Grito de Dolores and that Hidalgo

140 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

was leading in the movement for the libera-
tion of the country, he abandoned his private
interests, joined Hidalgo, and served him as
his private secretary. It was in that capacity
that he wrote the first manifesto to the Mex-
ican people, which declared the Revolution
just, reasonable, and sacred. He was, as we
have seen, sometime Minister of State and
Business in the provisional Government at
Guadalajara, and after the defeat at Puente
de Calderon he alone of the officers of Hidal-
go remained faithful to his former friend,
teacher, and counsellor; and he openly op-
posed the movement by which Allende at-
tained to the supreme command. Allende,
upon setting out for the United States, con-
fided the supreme command of the army to
him. It is significant of his intention to iden-
tify himself thoroughly with the work of
Hidalgo that he formally celebrated, in his
camp in Huichapam, on the sixteenth of Sep-
tember, 1812, the second anniversary of the
Grito de Dolores, and that the Supreme Junta
of America issued on that day a patriotic
proclamation to the Mexican people.

Under Rayon a foundry was established
in Tlalpujahua for the casting of cannon ; and
factories for the manufacture of guns and
ammunition. Following the example of

The Epoch of Morelos 141

Hidalgo, he made an effort to mould public
opinion by the publication of the Seminario
Patriotico and the Ilustrador Americano,
papers which printed a series of apologetics
for the Revolution and upheld popular
rights.1 In El Pensador Americano which
Don Carlos Maria Bustamante, in the City
of Mexico, edited and published at a great
personal risk, the broadsides from Sultepec
found an echo. And although the Cortes and
the Regency of Spain had guaranteed the lib-
erty of the press, the Viceroy thought it wise
to suspend the operation of the Regency's
liberal edicts so long as the press was being
used for seditious purposes.

It was dissensions within, which caused the
decline of the Junta Americana, at the time
that the Cortes of Cadiz adopted the new
Constitution in March, 1812, which was ap-
parently the most liberal that could be made
for the government of New Spain. It served
to introduce a new phase of the struggle for
Independence, under the leadership' of one
who was well qualified to share with Hidalgo
the glories of the Revolution, as he was re-
garded as the greatest military genius of his
time.

'It is said that they were printed from wooden
type.

142 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon was a mestizo,
a native of Valladolid, and was eleven' years

the junior of Hidalgo, lie had followed the
very humble life of an arriero until he was
twenty-five years old. He then became am-
bitious of entering the Church, and in the
college of San Nicolas, under Hidalgo's
rectorship, he studied grammar, philosophy,
and morals, in the educational terminology
of those days. He was admitted to Holy Or-
ders, served first as Curate of Choromuco,
and afterwards became Curate of Caragua,
in which he was under the charge of Hidal-
go. He joined Hidalgo, as we have seen,
October 28, 1810, and was commissioned by
the Generalissimo to subdue the Pacific coast
towns and win them to the cause of Inde-
pendence.

After the defeat of Hidalgo at Puente tie
Calderon, Morelos was Hidalgo's logical suc-
cessor in the military leadership. He post-
poned assuming this leadership until after the
decline of the Junia Americana, when, by a
series of brilliant military exploits, he came
to be both a political and a military leader,
and was created Captain-General.

One of these military adventures was the
evacuation of Cuautla in 1812. In some
manner Morelos had found himself and three

The Epoch of Morelos 143

thousand soldiers besieged in this town of
about five thousand inhabitants in the south-
ern part of Mexico. General Calleja del Rey
with twelve thousand well-equipped and per-
fectly disciplined soldiers, attacked the town
on the nineteenth of February, 1812, and was
repulsed and forced to lay siege. The sol-
diers of Morelos, after suffering the usual
horrors of a beleaguered city and experienc-
ing almost daily attacks from the Spanish
troops, formed in three divisions in the dark-
ness of the night of May 2, and marched
out of the town. They were unobserved un-
til, some distance beyond the Spanish lines,
they reached a barranca. Then upon the
Spaniards' beginning an attack, Morelos's
men suddenly dispersed, to rendezvous else-
where. In the darkness, mistaking friends
for foes, the Spanish troops fired upon one
another, while the Independents escaped with
the loss of but seventeen men who failed to
report at the appointed rendezvous.

There had long been mutual jealousies be-
tween the Viceroy and General Calleja del
Rey, which had culminated upon the return
of the General after his savage work at Zita-
cuaro. And it was to get him out of the
capital that Venegas had sent his able but
cruel General-in-chief to Cuautla; and be-

144 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

cause of Calleja del Key's failure to pursue
Morelos and capture him, he was severely
censured by the Viceroy. But the affair
proved the undoing of Venegas, and early in
1813 he was superseded in the viceregal office
by his enemy General Felix Maria Calleja
del Rey.

Morelos added to his list of military ex-
ploits the capture of Tehuacan, Orizaba, and
Oaxaca, securing much rich booty in each
case, particularly in Oaxaca where one thou-
sand muskets, sixty cannon, and many pris-
oners were taken. All these military exploits
were in the vicinity of the City of Mexico,
and Morelos appears to have had the same
prospect of taking that city which Hidalgo
had enjoyed two years before, with some ad-
vantages over Hidalgo in the constituency of
his army, in the discipline to which he hati
reduced his troops, and in his own superior
generalship. But like Hidalgo, he turned
from the city and went to the scene of his
first military operations. Acapulco surren-
dered to him in 1813, and the following
month he gave attention to the establishment
of government. Chilpancingo, about one hun-
dred and thirty miles south of the City of
Mexico, was the scene of another attempt at

The Epoch of Morelos 145

popular government, which deserves our es-
pecial attention.

Morelos called a Congress of Mexicans to
combine with the Junta of Zitacuaro and or-
ganize an independent nation. The Congress
was to consist of forty deputies to be elected
by popular vote and to represent Oaxaca,
then in the possession of the Independents,
and the other provinces. Morelos had dis-
approved of the concessions made by the
Junta of Zitacuaro to the royalists, and the
Congress of Chilpancingo was more directly
under his influence.

Ir^ September, ..1813. the Congress of Chil-_
pancingo issued decrees abolishing slavery,
imprisonment for debt, and the collection of
tithes for the support of religious houses.
Congress finally convened in Apatzingan and
there, in November, 1813, promulgated its
formal Declaration of Independence of Spain.
"Mexico was declared free from Spanish con-
trol, with liberty to work out its own destiny,
and with the Roman Catholic Religion for /
its spiritual guidance." The name chosen for
the new nation was the "Kingdom of Ana-
huac^and a Constitution, liberal in itgjjrq-
visions, was adopted. A commission of three,
called Poder Ejecutivo (Executive Power),
was appointed to serve as a provisional Gov-

146 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

ernment. It consisted of Liceaga, Morelos,
and Dr. Cos.

Both the Declaration of Independence and
the Constitution met with the same fate as
the provisional manifesto, and were by order
of the Viceroy burned in public in the City
of Mexico and in the chief cities throughout
the land. It was not this, however, that mini-
mized their influence upon the popular mind.
It was more the lack of harmony among the
members of the Congress, and most of all,
the course events in Spain suddenly took.

Before his fall, in 1814, Napoleon executed
a treaty with Fernando VII and released him
from captivity and sent him back to Spain.
Fernando celebrated his advent to power by
annulling the Constitution of 1812, abolish-
\ } ing the Cortes, restoring the Inquisition, and
reestablishing absolutism. The news of all
this created consternation among the Inde-
pendents of Mexico. Fernando VII became
forthwith persona non grata to those Mex-
icans whose revolt had been against improp-
erly constituted authority when they opposed
him. So the tendency toward republican in-
stitutions was nursed in Mexico, and partisan
spirit that was aroused in the Congress tended
to destroy its influence. The revolt against
Spain was maintained with less definiteness,

hff^j

The Epoch of Morelos 147

and the fortunes of Morelos began to wane.

Soon after the adoption of the Declaration
of Independence which he regarded as the
most important event in his career, Morelos
set out for Valladolid, having seven thousand
men under his command, with the intention
of making that city the basis of his operations.
It was a return to a localization of the revolt
in the Provincias Internas, a revolt of the
Provinces against the city, and a repetition
of the mistake which Hidalgo had made.
Some further military success was attained.
Matamoros, another warrior-priest, by the
capture of the "Asturian Invincibles," de-
stroyed the prestige of the Spanish military
supremacy in Mexico. But Matamoros was
soon afterwards captured by Iturbide at
Puruaran. Earnest efforts were made to save
his life, but Calleja del Rev, then Viceroy,
was deaf to all appeals made on his behalf.
His execution was avenged by the slaughter
of all the prisoners at that time in the hands
of the Independents.

Dissensions among the Independents in-
creased, and it was evident that the end of
the Morelian epoch was at hand. In an ef-
fort to concentrate his troops with those of
General Mier y Teran for the protection of
Congress, which he regarded as of the ut-
most importance, Morelos fell into the hands

148 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

of the Spaniards at Texinalaca in Novem-
ber, 1815. "My life is of little consequence,"
he said, "if only Congress is saved. My ca-
reer was run when I saw an Independent
Government established." When betrayed to
the Spanish forces, he sent the main body of
his little army forward, under General Nicolas
Bravo to escort the Congress to a place of
safety, while he with fifty men held the Span-
ish back. He took his position in a narrow
pass and fought until all his men were slain,
and was then captured. He was taken to the
City of Mexico a prisoner in chains, and his
entry into the capital caused no little excite-
ment. Crowds of eager citizens flocked to
see the warrior-priest who had so long with-
stood the viceregal arms.

The Holy Office, after having been sus-
pended by the Spanish Constitution of 1812,
was reestablished by decree of Fernando VII
in July, 1814, partly for the purpose of com-
bating the spread of revolutionary ideas in
Mexico. The reestablishment thereof in
Mexico was announced in a proclamation by
the Viceroy Calleja del Rey in January, 1815,
and the tribunal was kept busy from that time
on, inviting and receiving denunciations of
those engaged in rebellion against the Gov-
ernment, and in resenting the constant intru-

The Epoch of Morelos 149

sion of the Viceroy upon its jurisdiction. And
it eagerly seized the opportunity to assert
itself, afforded by the arrival of the captured
Morelos in the city on the fifteenth of No-
vember. But its jurisdiction in the case was
somewhat unwillingly recognized by the
Viceroy, and granted on the promise that the
trial should occupy no more than four days.
Hence the trial of Morelos was the most ex-
peditious in the history of the Inquisition.

The conduct of Morelos before the Holy
Office was precisely what might have been
expected of him. In answer to the questions
asked him about his life he admitted some
moral delinquencies, as we might regard them
in these days, but he claimed that his habits,
if not edifying had not been scandalous. The
tribunal paid little attention to that matter,
but it attached more importance to his admis-
sion that he had once captured a package of
edicts of the Holy Office directed against
Hidalgo and had utilized them in the manu-
facture of cartridges. He asserted that the
purpose of the Independents was to oppose
the French domination in Spain, and that
Fernando's restoration in 1814 was assumed
to be only another phase of Napoleon's su-
premacy, and showed that Fernando could not
be a sincere Catholic.

150 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Of the three advocates of prisoners offered
to him to conduct his defence, Morelos select-
ed the one who had served as Hidalgo's advo-
cate four years before, Don Jose Alaria Guti-
errez y Rosas. But no adequate time was
allowed him to prepare his defence ; and con-
viction and sentence followed as a foregone
conclusion. On the twenty-seventh of No-
vember the anto da fe was duly celebrated
in the audience hall of the Inquisition in the
presence of five hundred of the most impor-
tant personages in the capital. The Bishop
of Oaxaca performed the ceremony of degra-
dation from the priesthood, and Morelos was
delivered over to the secular arm and removed
from the prison of the Inquisition to the
citadel.

The military authorities were more delib-
erate in their action, and it was not until the
twenty-secondjof December that he was taken
to San Cristobal Ecatepec and executed. He
met death like the hero that he was. When
the time came, he bound a handkerchief over
his eyes, and, kneeling down, exclaimed with
deep fervor: "Lord, if I have done well,
Thou knowest it. If I have done ill, to Thy
infinite mercy I commend my soul." He then
gave the signal to the soldiers who had been
drawn up for his execution.

The Epoch of Morelos 151

The Morelian epoch was especially rich in
heroic names and incidents. Three brothers
of the Galeana family fought with Morelos,
and when captured were shot. There were
four members of the family of Bravo who
fought with distinction under the standard of
Independence — Leonardo, Miguel, Victor and
Nicolas, the son of Leonardo. Leonardo
Bravo was taken prisoner and was condemned
to death. The Viceroy offered him pardon if
his son, Nicolas, would abandon the cause of
the Independents. Neither consented, and
the father was executed. Nicolas subsequently
had three hundred prisoners of the Viceroy's
army in his hands, and Morelos authorized
him to put them to death to avenge his
father. The young chief refused to imitate
the Viceroy, and set his prisoners free. In
this heroic deed originated the expression,
7 'enganza insitrgent e— in su rgent vengeance.
Nicolas was prominent in the affairs of
Mexico subsequent to the Revolution.6

eThere is another version of the incident. By the
capture of Palmar after three days' resistance Nicolas
Bravo secured three hundred prisoners, and these
were placed at his disposal by Morelos. Bravo
offered them to the Viceroy (Venegas) in exchange
for his father, Don Leonardo, who had been sen-
tenced to death in the capital. The offer was re-

152 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

After the death of Morelos the Congress
by which he had set such store was disbanded
by General Mier y Teran, who found it "an
inconvenient appendange to his camp." This
General, who had better practical knowledge
of political science than any one of his times,
and a keen sense of humor, declared that the
members of Congress were punctilious in
calling each other "Your Most Honorable,"
but neglected to transact any public business.
After the disbanding of Congress there was
no governing body to give authority to the
Independent leaders. Each became a law
unto himself and felt responsible to no one.

jected, and Don Leonardo was ordered to immediate
execution. The son at once commanded the pris-
oners to be liberated, saying that he wished to put
it out of his power to avenge his parent's death,
lest in the first moments of grief the temptation
should prove irresistible.

CHAPTER IX.
THE EPOCH OF ITURBIDE.

BY the new constitution adopted at Cadiz
by the Cortes in March, 1812, the Span-
ish nation was declared to consist of all Span-
iards in either hemisphere; and the term
"Spaniard" was made to include all freemen
born and raised in the Spanish dominions,
and all to whom the privileges of citizenship
might be granted. Spanish citizens — by
which was meant all Spaniards except those
who by either parent were of African de-
scent— alone were to have the franchise or to
be qualified to hold any office or civil trust.
Fernando VII was recognized as King, and
Spain was to be a hereditary monarchy. But
though the executive functions of the Govern-
ment were nominally committed to the King,
his authority was reduced to little more than
a name; he was to be aided by a Council of
State and to act through nine responsible
ministers.

The Council of the Indies was replaced by
a "Minister of the Kingdoms beyond the
Seas." The Inquisition was suspended; re-
153

154 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

ligious houses were dissolved ; and freedom of
the press was assured, excepting as restraint
might be imposed upon it by specific laws.
Altogether the Constitution of 1812 was lib-
eral in its provisions, and far more favorable
to New Spain than anything that had pre-
viously been known. But in any of the prov-
inces in which it was not considered safe or
judicious to apply the liberal terms of the
Constitution, the home government was em-
powered to delay its operations, so that New
Spain was liable to be placed in that category
at the will of the Viceroy at any time, and
while such revolutionary conditions prevailed
the people had little cause to expect that it
could be made effective.

The people were all the more suspicious
that they were going to be deprived of their
rights as they knew that the Cortes was in
negotiation with England in regard to the
means to be employed for the pacification of
the American provinces; and two battalions
of Spanish troops had already arrived in New
Spain to support the viceregal Government
and to assist in overthrowing the Independ-
ents.

The Viceroy, Venegas, proclaimed the new
Constitution in New Spain, though he consid-
ered most of its provisions as impracticable

The Epoch of Iturbide 155

there as in Spain; and as he saw that it was
impossible for him to maintain his authority
under it, he suspended one provision after an-
other until nothing remained. But his au-
thority was rapidly declining, nevertheless,
and in March, 1813, he was succeeded as
Viceroy by General Felix Maria Calleja del
Rey, who, having been ennobled after his
decisive battle with Hidalgo, was now the
Count of Calderon. Calleja was totally indif-
ferent to the provisions of the Constitution of
1812 and pursued the Independents with such
vindictive zeal as to maintain his right to the
title of "the Cruel."

The suspension of the Constitution of 1812
by Venegas was but anticipating the action
of Fernando VII when he was released by
Napoleon from captivity, in 1814. He re-
jected the Constitution, abolished the Cortes,
restored the religious orders, and reestablished
the Inquisition ; and when news of this resto-
ration of absolutism reached Mexico it caused
such dissension among the supporters of the
viceregal Government that, had there been
harmony among the Independents, they might
have taken advantage of these circumstances,
and their cause might have profited thereby.

The logical successor of Morelos as Cap-
tain-General of the army of the Independents

156 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

was Dr. Mier y Teran, who was also the
most influential member of the executive junta
which succeeded to the functions of the Con-
gress and the Poder Ejecutivo. But the cause
of the Independents languished. There were
signs of disintegration; what had been under
Morelos a homogeneous army became a num-
ber of guerrilla bands, harassing the viceregal
army, but accomplishing absolutely nothing
for the permanent good of Mexico. The
Viceroy was justified in treating them as ban-
ditti, and the Spanish forces were employed
in crushing one band after another, -or in dis-
persing them among the mountains. This
period furnished more instances of Calleja's
cruelty, and added to the growing list of heroes
and martyrs for the cause of Independence,
women as well as men, not a few.

The numbers of women named among the
heroes and martyrs of the Independence im-
plies the wide extent of the popularity of the
movement from its earliest days. The dis-
tinguished part taken by Dona Josefa Ortiz
de Dominguez in precipitating the revolution
has already been mentioned. Her action was
probably widely known, and exerted its influ-
ence upon other Mexican women who broke
the bonds of conventionalism and made their
valuable sacrifices for the cause. This prob-

The Epoch of Iturbide 157

ably meant far more in Mexico than in any
other country in the world. Such a heroine
was Dona. Leona .Vicario, who at the age_of
nineteen consecrated herself to the cause of
Independence. She~~improvised a system of
conveying messages in aid of the insurgents,
assisted in the journalistic efforts of Rayon,
and sold her jewels in order to purchase metal
for the founding of cannon at Tlalpujahua in
1812. She refused to denounce the patriots
to the Royalists and suffered imprisonment in
consequence. She became the wife of Andres
Quintana Roo. foe dJRtinpritishpd patrint q£_
Queretaro.

The existence of sympathizers with the
popular cause in the City of Mexico, and
especially at the time when that cause seemed
doomed to failure, is another remarkable
phase of the revolutionary epoch. It was on
the night of Maunday Thursday in 1811 that
the bells of the great Cathedral and a salvo
of artillery announced in the City of Mexico
that Hidalgo and his companions had been
captured and imprisoned. This was signifi-
cant of the importance with which the vice-
regal Government then regarded the Revolu-
tion. The news thus reaching Dona Mariana
Rodriguez del Toro, the wife of Don Manuel
Lazarin, aroused in her the deepest feelings

158 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

of patriotism. She turned to the guests in
her house with the indignant inquiry, "Are
there no men in America, that this should be
allowed?" And when asked what was to be
done, she answered with spirit, "Set the pris-
oners at liberty. How? Capture the Viceroy
and hang him !" and that night there was a
sympathetic demonstration in the City of
Mexico, which is known in history as the con-
spiracy of 1811. It was quickly suppressed,
to be sure, and Don Manuel Lazarin and his
heroic wife, together with several lawyers,
writers, secular clergy, and others, were ap-
prehended and imprisoned. But the incident
stimulated public opinion in favor of the lib-
eration of the country.

Women also distinguished themselves on
the field of battle. Dona Manuela Medina
raised a company of Independents, was called'
the Ccvpitana, participated in seven engage-
ments with the Spanish, and died in 1822
from wounds received in battle. Dona Maria
Geronima Rivera, the wife of a cavalry offi-
cer, participated in all the experiences of the
campaign made by her husband until his
death ; after that event she stayed with the
army, and finally fell in battle in 1821. Dona
Manuela Herrera, a woman of some wealth,
burned her house rather than have it furnish

The Epoch of Iturbidc 159

resources for the royalist army. She then re-
tired to the solitude of the forest and suffered
hunger and all the hardships of a life in the
wilderness, as one consecrated to prayer for
the salvation of the country.

The cause had its heroine martyrs likewise.
Let a few examples suffice. In August, 1814,
in the town of Salamanca, Dona Maria To-
masa Esterez was executed by Don Ignacio
Garcia, who declared that he was acting
under the orders of Colonel Agustin cle Itur-
bide. Her crime was that she had induced
citizens and soldiers to espouse the popular
cause. In 1817, Luisa Martinez de Rojas
was executed by order of the royalist General
Pedro Celestino Negrete, because of services
she had rendered in various ways to the in-
surgents. Before her execution she declared:
"I am a Mexican, and I have a right to do
all that I can to help my country. I have
committed no fault, and have done no more
than my duty."

In September, 1816, Calleja del Rey was
called to Spain and was succeeded by Juan
Ruiz de Apodaca as Viceroy. His rule was
signalized within the next few months by the
freebooting expedition of Francisco Xavier
Mina, whose career was cut short by his de-
feat at Venaditas, in October, 1817, and his
execution the following month. Mina was a
Navarrese who professed sympathy with the

160 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Independents and transferred to New Spain
the guerrilla warfare he had previously car-
ried on in Spain, for the purpose, as he de-
clared, of establishing the Independence of
Mexico on a constitutional basis without the
separation of the country from Spain. His
proclamation to that effect failed to awaken
any popular enthusiasm. He_ was an_jnte.r-
loper. He had no appreciation whatever of
the causes of Hidalgo's movement.

In like category were the operations of
Padre Torres, who established the Junta of
Jauaxilla in the heart of the Sierra Madre,
which was in no way related to the Grito de
Dolores, save as the proclamation of Hidalgo
and his followers gave him ideas of Independ-
ence and made his movement possible. Re-
lated to the expedition of Mina he undoubt-
edly was in more than one sense.

Except for the military demonstrations of
Padre Torres and Mina, the interloper, the
country was little disturbed by actual war
until 1820. The Viceroy Apodaca pursued
conciliatory policies with good effect. Many
of the Independents accepted his offers of par-
don and joined his party or entered his serv-
ice. A few (Ignacio Rayon was one of
them) suffered imprisonment. Mier y Teran
surrendered to the Viceroy and retired to

The Epoch of Iturbide 161

private life to emerge at a later period and
end in tragedy a short but active political
career in the cause of Independence for
Mexico. Liceaga was assassinated by one of
his own men. Verduzco was captured by the
Spanish troops and was able to escape execu-
tion by pleading the provisions of the Consti-
tution of 1812 which offered a general am-
nesty to certain political offenders. In 1819
Venegas reported that it was unnecessary for
Spain to send any more troops to Mexico,
and that he would, for the time being, answer
for the safety of New Spain. Juan Alvarez,
a full-blooded Indian who was operating in
the South; Felix Fernandez, who had disap-
peared into the mountain region, and Vicente
Guerrero, who still held aloft the banner of
Independence in the region about Acapulco,
the Viceroy regarded as negligible elements in
the apparently peaceful conditions which pre-
vailed.

The following year, however, another revo-
lution occurred in Spain; the revolutionists
proclaimed in Saragossa the restoration of
the Constitution of 1812, and thus forced Fer-
nando VII to proclaim the same in Madrid
and to convene the Cortes. The Cortes pro-
ceeded to dissolve the religious orders, abol-
ish the Inquisition, ordain the freedom of the

1 62 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

press, and the right of holding popular meet-
ings and forming political clubs. The proc-
lamation in Mexico of the restored Constitu-
tion and of the decrees of the Cortes, while it
was extremely gratifying to the Creoles and
mestizos whose rights were recognized and
enlarged, yet caused great excitement among
the Old Spaniards. These were divided into
two factions. The one faction was composed
of those favorable to the new order of things,
and who were inclined to sympathize with the
Creoles and mestizos. The others were favor-
able to the old system under which they had
fattened and grown rich and powerful. These
were the "Serviles," as they were called in
old Spain, being the adherents of the King
in the struggle. These thought of offering to
Fernando VI T a refuge in Mexico, a throne
and an opportunity to found a new dynasty
and a great empire in the New World. The
Viceroy Apodaca was a Servile, and after
taking- the oath prescribed by the Cortes to
support the Constitution of 1812, he was
planning how to overthrow it.

The clergy of New Spain also were Ser-
viles. Could they but establish Fernando VII
upon a throne in Mexico, they could secure
through him the rights of which they were
deprived by the Constitution and the liberal

The Epoch of I turbid c 163

decrees of the Cortes. They were, however,
placed in a curious position. Nine years pre-
viously they had opposed the Revolution, and
in the most vigorous terms had denounced the
idea of Independence or separation from
Spain, as heretical. At that time Spain and
the Spanish system were the conservators of
their rights and privileges. Now the liberal
Constitution of Spain took from them much
valuable property and many prized preroga-
tives. It was the liberalism of Spain that
now threatened religion itself. Verily Hidal-
go was vindicated in his saying that "one
might be opposed to Spain and ret be a good
Catholic." The interests of the Church in
Mexico demanded an absolute separation from
Spain and its radicalism.

So the clergy became revolutionists — be-
gan to hold the same ideas for which Hidalgo
had uttered the Grito dc Dolores, had fought,
had suffered, had died. The clergy began to
hold secret consultations with their closest
adherents among the Old Spaniards and to
devise means whereby the rights and preroga-
tives of the religious orders might be con-
served, the revenues of the Church saved,
and the cooperation of the Mexican people
secured in their interests ; in short, the Old
Spaniard party was planning to effect a com-

164 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

promise with the Independents and get con-
trol of the revolutionary movement. It was
a foregone conclusion, as the clergy then
looked at it, that an independent nation was
sooner or later to be established in Mexico.
The apparent suppression of the active opera-
tions of the Independents was but a lull be-
fore the storm would break out with in-
creased vigor. And during the period of this
lull the clergy had found time to think upon
the situation. They were well aware that the
Spanish treasury was exhausted, the army
unpaid and ready for mutiny; and if the strug-
gle for Independence were renewed, there
were no resources at hand to crush it. That
it would succeed seemed inevitable, and in
such case what was to become of the Old
Spaniards, the clergy of the old regime, the
officials of the Government, and the soldiers
of the viceregal army?

It was to discuss these matters that meet-
ings were held in the Church of La Profesa
in the City of Mexico. The meetings were
attended by Old Spaniards, Creoles, and the
more influential mestizos. The clergy were,
of course, largely represented, and officers of
the viceregal Government were active partici-
pants. In fact, one of the most actively in-
terested in these meetings was in the cate-

The Epoch of I turbid c 165

gory of both influential mestizo and officer
of the viceregal army, and none other than
the Agustin de Iturbide, who has previously
been mentioned

Iturbide was a native of Valladplid and was
thirtY-seven years of age. Although usually
spoken of as a Creole, he failed to conform
to the definition heretofore given of that
term; for while his father was of pure Span-
ish blood, his mother was a Mexican. He
had entered the provincial militia at the age
of sixteen and was rapidly promoted until he
reached the rank of colonel. We have seen
him spring into prominence by suppressing the
revolt in Valladolid in 1809. Upon the sud-
den outbreak of the revolution the following
year he is supposed to have shown at first
some inclination toward the revolutionists ;
but he declined Hidalgo's offer of rank in the
army of the Insurgents and joined the army
organized for the support of the viceregal
Government. We have seen him fighting at
Monte de las Cruces and subsequently against
the armies of Morelos. The energy, not to
say vindictive cruelty, with which he had pur-
sued the Independents gave the Old Spaniards
no grounds of suspicion as to where his politi-
cal sympathies were placed. He had recently
been relieved from active service in the army

1 66 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

and was living a somewhat idle life in the
capital, though devoting himself to religious
exercises and ingratiating himself with the
clergy.

He was ambitious, and clearly foresaw
that with the entire separation of Mexico from
Spain, if he were allied with the Spanish ele-
ment there would be no opportunity for future
promotion; but if allied with the successful
party and having part in effecting the separa-
tion which appeared to be inevitable, his
chances for promotion under a new order of
things were greatly enhanced. The plan then
under discussion, for a union of Europeans,
Creoles and mestizos under one banner, he
afterwards claimed to have originated. And
when the demand for a military chief arose
he was the logical candidate for that position.
An army was secured by inducing the Viceroy
to appoint him to the command of troops
which were then being organized to go out
and destroy Vicente Guerrero and proclaim
in the western coasts of Mexico the restora-
tion of the King's absolute authority, which
the Viceroy was to proclaim at the same time
in the capital.

There is one phase of this new version of
the old plan, which should not escape atten-
tion. It emanated, not from the country —

The Epoch of Iturbide 167

the Provincias Internas — as the original
scheme for Independence had, but from the
capital. It was not provincial, therefore, nor
did it bear the marks and signs of a provincial
insurrection. It was national in its character.
It was not the province setting out to capture
the capital ; it was the capital going out to
secure the assistance of the provinces. Jeru-
salem, not Galilee, was to be preeminent in
the new order of things.

Vicente Guerrero was of humble origin, of
mixed blood, had been a participant in the
evacuation of Cuautla, a follower of Morelos,
and had led a band of guerrillas after the
defeat and execution of that patriot. In
March, 1818, he was the only general officer
in resistance to the Viceroy's Government.
He set out to collect the scattered patriots
and unite them for a final struggle. By a
series of victories over the viceregal forces,
in 1820, he had become recognized as a for-
midable revolutionary leader, requiring no
longer the attention of the constabulary, but
of military forces. He was, in fact, at the
time now under consideration coming up from
the south and threatening a march on the
capital.

Iturbide with twenty-five hundred men left
the capital in November, 1820, and established

1 68 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

himself near the army of Guerrero. The fol-
lowing February an interview was arranged
between the two military leaders, and Iturbide
disclosed to Guerrero a plan for the establish-
ment of a constitutional monarchy in Mexico
which should guarantee to the people (i) the
Roman Catholic religion without toleration of
any other, and with the rights, immunities,
and property of the clergy preserved and
secured; (2) the absolute independence of the
country; and (3) the enjoyment of the same
civil rights by all the actual inhabitants of
Mexico, whatever their birthplace or descent,
thus doing away with all distinction of race
or color. These were the three guarantees
(Las Tres Garantias), Religion, Independence
and Union, which were to give the name to
the plan. Under the plan it was intended
that Fernando VII should be the Emperor,
provided he would accept the throne in per-
son and take an oath to support the Consti-
tution to be adopted by a Congress of the
Mexican nation. Provision was to be made
for the conservation of the property and rights
of the clergy ; for an army to take the Roman
Catholic religion under its protection; for a
Congress to frame a Constitution; and for a
junta to assume the reins of government pend-
ing the arrival of the Emperor.

The Epoch of Iturbide 169

The plan received another name, derived
from the little town of Iguala, south of the
capital, where on the twenty-fourth of Feb-
ruary Iturbide proclaimed it to the officers of
his army. The Plan de Iguala when disclosed
to Guerrero was enthusiastically received by
him, and his troops forthwith took an oath to
support it. Guerrero ceded to Iturbide the
command of the army of the Three Guaran-
tees ; and the latter, leaving Guerrero in com-
mand of the troops in the South, went to the
Provincias Internas to proclaim the Plan de
Iguala there. It found favor throughout the
army of the Viceroy as well as with the Inde-
pendent chiefs. Guadalajara, Valladolid, To-
luca, Queretaro, Puebla, Durango, Zacatecas,
Oaxaca, Vera Cruz and other localities pro-
nounced for the Trcs Garantias, and the Inde-
pendence of the country seemed assured with-
out the sacrifice of another drop of blood.

As the Plan de Iguala became from this
time forth a characteristic institution of the
country whose history we are considering, it
is well to look at the form in which it was set
forth. The following is a good translation
of most of the articles, those omitted referring
to details of government of no present inter-
est. There were in all twenty-four articles.

Article i. The Mexican nation is inde-

170 Miguel Hidadgo y Costilla

pendent of the Spanish nation, and of every
other, even on its own continent.

Article 2. Its religion shall be the Catholic,
which all its inhabitants profess.

Article 3. They shall all be united, without
distinction between Americans and Europeans.

Article 4. The Government shall be a con-
stitutional monarchy.

Article 5. A junta shall be named, consist-
ing of individuals who enjoy the highest
reputation in different parties which have
shown themselves.

Article 6. This junta shall be under the
presidency of His Excellency the Count of
Venaditas, the present Viceroy of Mexico
(Apodaca).

Article 7. It shall govern in the name of
the nation, under the laws now in force, and
its principal business shall be to convoke, ac-
cording to such rules as shall be deemed ex-
pedient, a Congress for the formation of a
Constitution more suitable to the country.

Article 8. His Majesty Fernando VII shall
be invited to the throne of the Empire and,
in case of his refusal, the Infantes Don Carlos
and Don Francisco de Paula.

Article 9. Should His Majesty, Fernando
VII, and his august brothers, decline the in-
vitation, the nation is at liberty to invite to

The Epoch of Iturbide 171

the imperial throne any member of reigning
families whom it may choose to select.

Article 10. The formation of the Consti-
tution by the Congress, and the oath of the
Emperor to observe it, must precede his en-
trance into the country.

Article n. The distinction of castes is
abolished, which was made by the Spanish
law, excluding Creoles, mestizos and negroes
from the rights of citizenship. All the in-
habitants are citizens and equal, and the door
of advancement is open to virtue and merit.

Article 12. An army shall be formed for
the support of religion, independence and
union, guaranteeing these three principles,
and therefore called "The Army of the Three
Guarantees."

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Article 20. All the public functionaries,
civil, ecclesiastical and military, who adhere
to the cause of Independence, shall be contin-
ued in their offices, without any distinctions
between Americans and Europeans.

Article 21. Those functionaries of whatso-
ever degree and condition who dissent from
the cause of Independence shall be divested
of their offices and shall quit the territory
without taking with them their families and
effects.

172 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Article 24. It being indispensable to the
country that this plan should be carried into
effect, inasmuch as the welfare of this country
is its object, every individual of the army
shall maintain it to the shedding (if neces-
sary) of the last drop of his blood.

Town of Iguala, 24 February, 1821.

It cannot be claimed that this Plan is an
ideal document, either in its form or the prin-
ciples of government it strove to set forth, but
what is called to the reader's attention is this :
That there is no article of the twenty-four to
which Hidalgo would not have subscribed had
it been presented to him on the sixteenth of
September, 1810. Nor is there any article of
which Rayon and the junta of Zitacuaro would
have disapproved. Nor is it improbable that
the consent of Morelos might have been .ob-
tained to it as a compromise measure at least
before his Declaration of Independence was
proclaimed.

The Viceroy's offers of money and political
advancement failed of any effect with the mes-
tizo Colonel, who was now the Commander-
in-Chief of the Revolutionary army. Apodaca
had been inclined at first to favor the Plan.
But he soon suspected Iturbide of motives of
self-aggrandizement. He declined to accept
the position of President of the junta which

The Epoch of Iturbide 173

was to carry the Plan into effect, and issued
a proclamation warning the people against
the new movement and offering pardon to all
who would return to their allegiance to Spain.
Still the Serviles regarded him with suspicion,
and brought charges against him of lacking
energy in an emergency, and of taking no ac-
tive measures to suppress the Plan. When
the troops in the capital mutinied, Apodaca
resigned, July 5, 1821, and turned the gov-
ernment over to Francisco de Novella, his
chief of artillery. Novella's term of office
lasted but a few days. On the thirtieth of
July, General Juan O'Donoju arrived in
Mexico with the commission of Captain-
General. Upon landing in Vera Cruz he took
the oath of office as Viceroy. He hastened to
assure the people of Mexico by a proclama-
tion that his principles were liberal and his
intentions right, and he begged that hostilities
might be suspended until he could consult
with the Independent leaders and receive in-
structions from Spain. Vera Cruz was in the
hands of the Independents, and O'Donoju had
to ask the privilege of landing and to apply
to Iturbide for a safe conduct to his capital.
Seeing that it would be futile to attempt to
suppress the Revolution by force of arms,
O'Donoju proposed to treat with Iturbide, and

174 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

a meeting was arranged to be held at Cordoba
on the twenty- fourth of August, 1821. On
that day was signed the Treaty of Cordoba,
embodying the Plan de Iguala. Mexico was
declared sovereign and independent ; provision
was made for the call of the Bourbon family
of Spain to the throne and for the immediate
establishment of a provisional Government
pending the arrival of the chosen monarch.
The people were assured of the liberty of the
press, and of the equal rights of Mexicans
and Spaniards residing in the country. It
was agreed that the army of the Three Guar-
antees should occupy the capital, and that the
Spanish troops should be sent out of the
country as promptly as possible.

On the twenty-seventh of September, Itur-
bide, being that clay thirty-eight years of age,
entered the capital in triumph at the head of
his army. He was greeted as "Liberator,"
and with every demonstration of joy the peo-
ple hailed the establishment of Independence.
But gradually the ulterior meaning of the
Plan de Iguala became apparent. The pro-
visional Government established by Iturbide
was composed of Old Spaniards. So also was
the Regency which was solemnly installed in
the Cathedral upon taking the oath to support
the Treaty of Cordoba. So were the Minis-

The Epoch of Iturbide 175

ters appointed to constitute the cabinet or
council of advice to the Regency. And the
Old Spanish system of government was re-
tained when, upon the death of O'Donoju, the
Bishop of Puebla was appointed to his place
in the Regency, and made honorary President,
while Iturbide retained command of the army,
with the title of Generalissimo and an ex-
travagant salary. In the retention by the new
nation of the worst features of the old polit-
ical system, military and ecclesiastical domi-
nation, the people began to perceive that there
were further battles to be fought before the
Independence of the country could be fully
achieved. These battles were reserved for the
Congress provided for under the Plan de
Iguala and the Treaty of Cordoba. The pub-
lic press began to attack the Plan de Iguala.
and certain writers began to propose the adop-
tion of a republican form of government. Be-
fore the close of the year a revolutionary
movement, having for its professed purpose
the establishment of a republic, was discov-
ered and suppressed ; in consequence of which
certain Independent chiefs were consigned to
prison.

In course of time the Congress assembled.
Contrary to Iturbide's intention, it consisted
of but one house of popularly elected deputies.

176 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

But notwithstanding the oath taken by each
deputy to support the Plan de Iguala and the
Treaty of Cordoba, Congress was found to
comprise three distinct parties. These were
the "Bourbonistas," the Republicans, and the
"Iturbidistas." The first was composed of the
Old Spanish element, who were strict ad-
herents to the Plan and to the Treaty. The
second was composed of the Creoles, old revo-
lutionary leaders, and the Independents, who
desired that the Plan and the Treaty should
be set aside, and that a Federal Republic
should be instituted. The third party was
composed of partisans of Iturbide — repre-
sentatives of the army, the clergy, and the
more influential mestizos, who, while accept-
ing the Plan and the Treaty, foresaw what
would be the action of the Spanish Cortes in
regard thereto, and were prepared to foist
Iturbide into the place of the unavailable
Bourbon prince.

When, soon after the organization of the
Congress, the clearly foreseen action of the
Spanish Cortes, repudiating the Treaty of
Cordoba, was received in Mexico, the Bour-
bonist party ceased to exist perforce. The
parties in Congress were hence reduced to
two, Iturbidistas and Republicans, the latter
dominating. Various measures were adopted

The Epoch of Iturbide 177

clearly inimical to the interests of the Liber-
ator. The army was reduced, thus depriving
him of military support. The Regency was
replaced by men more in harmony with free
institutions. And when finally a decree in-
hibiting members of the Regency from bear-
ing arms passed to its third reading and was
about to be adopted, Iturbide decided that the
time had come for his friends to act in his
behalf.

A popular demonstration, started in the
garrisons and spreading through the city,
reached Congress at the proper psychological
moment, and, taking advantage of the ab-
sence of the Republican members, with the
galleries filled with noisy friends, Iturbide
was elected Emperor of Mexico, really by
acclamation, though a vote of seventy-seven
to fifteen was formally recorded. All protes-
tations of disfavor were drowned in shouts
of "Viva el Emperador! Viva Agustin Pri-
mero!" Iturbide took the oath of office be-
fore Congress and organized his provisional
Council of State within an incredibly brief
space of time. This was on the eighteenth
of May. 1822. On the twel^:ffirr3~'ol July
following he was . anointed and crowned in
the great Cathedral and assumed the title of
"Agustin I, Emperador."

CHAPTER X.
THE INDEPENDENT MEXICAN NATION.

THE stage upon which the drama of the
Independence of Mexico was enacted
was of comparatively narrow scope. But
there was a larger expanse of territory, con-
taining an immense population, influenced by
the life of Hidalgo and the principles which
he and his successors promulgated. The
short-lived Empire which was hastily estab-
lished for Iturbide was territorially the fourth
largest in the world, the British Empire,
China, and Russia alone being larger. It was
divided into five Captaincies-General and in-
cluded a large and but partially explored
region north of the Rio Grande del Norte,
extending to the Pacific Ocean. In the south,
Guatemala was lopped off while the Inde-
pendence was pending, and Chiapas became a
part of Mexico in partial compensation. These
incidents in the historical geography of the
country excited little commotion at the time,
in the midst of so many more important hap-
penings. It was an Empire of magnificent
opportunities, and of natural resources with-
out limit, though but little known at that time.
178

The Independent Mexican Nation 179

By the revolt of the Texans in 1836; by the
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 at the
close of the war with the United States, and
by a treaty in 1853 made with James Gads-
den representing the United States, Mexican
territory was reduced to its present area. It
contains a population of more than fourteen
millions living under the influence of the Grito
de Dolores.

The Independence of Mexico was recog-
nized by the United States in 1822, and a
Minister Plenipotentiary was sent to the new
nation. The United States furthermore re-
solved to assist in securing the recognition of
Mexican Independence by the European na-
tions and advanced, at the instance of Eng-
land's Minister of Foreign Affairs, the decla-
ration which has since been known as the
"Monroe Doctrine/' This declaration doubt-
less did much to prevent Spain from making,
for a time at least, any effort to reclaim her
revolted provinces in America ; though it was
not until 1836 that Spain acknowledged the

_^py.i i j i i« i i V tm

Independence of Mexico.

The government of Iturbide was absolutism
as great as that of Fernando VII ; and it suf-
fered by comparison with that of Fernando
to this extent ; whereas the absolutism of Fer-
nando was that of a hereditary monarch, that

180 Miguel Hidalgo y Castillo,

which Iturbide now sought to institute in
Mexico was the absolutism of a young up-
start, who could not claim to rule by divine
right, and whose claim to sovereignty by the
will of the people failed to withstand close
scrutiny. The Empire was doomed from the
beginning. Opposition increased until Itur-
bide's Empire was virtually reduced in extent
to the City of Mexico. He abdicated in
March. 1823, and was granted by Congress
an annual pension, on condition that he spend
the remainder of his life abroad. This, on the
whole, generous treatment of him was in
recognition of his services as the Liberator
of his country. He took up his residence in
Italy, but being deceived by supposed friends
as to the political situation in his country, and
imagining that he might be reinstated in the
government of his native land, he sought to
return. In July, 1824, he appeared at Soto
la Marina. It is no part of our present pur-
pose to discuss the injustice of the means by
which he was executed in Padilla on the
nineteenth of July, 1824.

The Empire had recognized the significance
of the life of Hidalgo and his efforts for the
Independence of the country, and by a decree
of Congress the twelfth anniversary of the
Grito de Dolores was duly celebrated.

The Independent Mexican Nation 181

In the meantime Congress had proceeded to
reorganize the Government of Mexico and to
prepare for the adoption of a Republican
Constitution, modeled somewhat after that of
the United States ; which declared the absolute
independence of the country and united the
several Mexican provinces into a Federal Re-
public. The legislative power was by the Con-
stitution vested in a bicameral Congress; the
supreme executive authority was conferred
upon one individual, to be known as the
"President of the United Mexican States;"
and it was declared that "the religion of the
Mexican nation is, and will be perpetually,
the Roman Catholic Apostolic. The nation
will protect it by wise and just laws, and pro-
hibit the exercise of any other whatever."

Unquestionably the influence of the United
States, directly exerted through the Minister
Plenipotentiary, was felt in the framing of a
Constitution of this character, even though
the old Spanish ideas prevailed in the article
which established the Roman Catholic religion
perpetually. The federal system of govern-
ment was not adopted without strong opposi-
tion, led by General Mier y Teran, who was a
unique character in Mexican history and
evinced clearer ideas of the science of gov-
ernment than any one before him. He favored

1 82 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

a centralized form of government as being
thoroughly in accord with the spirit and
genius of the Latin-American people. He
spoke in opposition to the article of the Con-
stitution which declared, "The Nation adopts
the Republican, Federal, Popular, Representa-
tive form of government," and showed how
different were the circumstances of Mexico
from those of the United States. The United
States had been separate provinces which had
federated to resist the oppression of England.
They first suppressed the King's name from
their separate State Constitutions, and the
States thus established were fitted to become
afterwards the components of a Republic.
But Mexico was in no such category, and the
difference between the two cases was radical.
Mexico had suffered as a whole the yoke of
an absolute monarch during three centuries,
and neither the whole nor any part had any
experience whatever in the workings of Re-
publican institutions.

The Republic thus coming into existence
by the adoption of a Constitution, was recog-
nized by the United States and England in
1825. Up to that time Spain had maintained
a garrison in San Juan de Uua, a small
island off Vera Cruz. She now abandoned
this position and gave up her last foothold

The Independent Mexican Nation 183

in America. Mexico was, however, still under
the domination of Spanish ideas of govern-
ment. The Federalists, under whose influ-
ence the Constitution had been adopted, were
half a century in advance of their time. The
country was not prepared for such a form of
government. The Centralists, who had sought
a modification of the Constitution, remained
under the spell of Spanish ideas ; and to one
or the other of these two parties, under va-
rious names as time went on, the fortunes of
the Republic were committed. Doubtless the
political ideas of the Centralists were best
adapted to the needs of the nascent Republic.
But as often as the Centralists came into
power they established absolutism, which
caused revolt and a golpe de estado.

The first president under the new consti-
tution was Felix Fernandez, the revolutionary
hero who is usually known as Guadalupe Vic-
toria, names which he adopted out of respect
for the great religious patron of Mexico,
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, and in refer-
ence to the success that had attended all the
battles in which he had been engaged. He
was an excellent man, a Federalist and a pa-
triot. His Vice-President, General Nicolas
Bravo, was a Centralist. Hence it was not a
powerful administration, and it is remarkable

184 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

that it was permitted to continue for its full
term of four years. It was to be many years
before a president was to fill out his consti-
tutional term of four years. Within the next
twenty years, the constitutional terms of five
successive presidents, the presidential office
changed hands no less than a score of times.

The disturbed condition of the country was
largely caused by the man who for over half
a century proved the evil genius of Mexico.
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was in many
respects a remarkable character. His life
admirably illustrates the political conditions of
Mexico in the early years of the Republic.
He was a conspicuous type of the Spanish-
American politician of his time, reflecting the
political training afforded by Spain in her
colonial government; unscrupulous, unprin-
cipled, ambitious; one to whom no Constitu-
tion furnished a law of restraint. His plots
against the Government began in the epoch of
Iturbide ; they continued for nearly half a cen-
tury and until within a few years of his death
in 1876, at the age of eighty.

It is no part of our present purpose to enter
upon the details of the rise and fall of the
various factions which in turn ruled the coun-
try for good or for ill for the first three
decades of Mexican national existence. Two

The Independent Mexican Nation 185

great events demand our attention in passing
over these years: One, the adoption of the
Constitution of Las Sietc Leycs, by which
the Constitution of 1824 was supplanted in
1836 by a centralized form of government ;
the other, the adoption of the Bases Organicas
Politicas seven years later, by which the Gov-
ernment was still further centralized. The
first furnished the cause for the revolt of the
Texans, and the loss to Mexico of the valu-
able territory comprised within that State;
the latter furnished the opportunity for the
war with the United States and the further
loss of valuable territory.

Undoubtedly the Constitution of 1824 was
far more liberal in its provisions than the wis-
dom of Hidalgo would have dictated. But
he would have detected in the Constitutions of
1836 and 1845 tne domination of Spanish
ideas, the absolutism, the destruction of popu-
lar rights, the bad and oppressive government
against which he raised his voice in the Grito
de Dolores.

A new era dawned upon Mexico as the first
half of the nineteenth century drew to a close
and the second half began. Absolutism was
apparently triumphant when, in 1853, Santa
Anna attained to the presidency by a success-
ful revolution. But when, in December of
that year, he proclaimed himself Perpetual

1 86 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

Dictator, the longtime gathering forces which
were to interpret to a new generation of Mexi-
cans the meaning of the Grito de Dolores
asserted themselves. Men like Benito Juarez,
Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Melchior Ocampo,
and a little later, Porfirio Diaz, who had been
studying in seclusion the lessons of indepen-
dence and good government, emerged from
obscurity and proclaimed that Republican in-
stitutions, emancipation from Spanish polit-
ical ideas, the exercise of popular rights, were
possible in Mexico; that the Grito de Dolores
was vindicable; that the life of Hidalgo was
justified.

These men presented a concrete programme
of reform. It was necessary first of all that
certain abuses which were Mexico's most un-
wholesome inheritance from the Spanish sys-
tem should be rectified. Chief among these
were ecclesiastical and military domination.
And drastic measures, to say the least, were
employed to reform these abuses, to limit the
jurisdiction of the Church to matters spirit-
ual, and to nationalize the immense estates in
its possession.

The old Spanish spirit, however, died hard,
and it was not without sincerity and some po-
litical sagacity that Don Jose Maria Gutier-
rez de Estrada, a distinguished Conservative

The Independent Mexican Nation 187

(as the Centralists were then called), wrote
his famous open letter to the President in
1840, declaring that the efforts of Mexico to
maintain a republic and provide good govern-
ment had proved a failure. Nothing but a
succession of revolutions had resulted. He
proposed to return to the monarchical form
of government and to establish an Empire
with a European prince at its head. Such
was the form of government to which the
people of Mexico had been accustomed from
the beginning. Such was the form of gov-
ernment contemplated by the Grito de Dolores
and the Plan de Iguala.

The sensation produced by this remarkable
plan for the reorganization of the Govern-
ment was revived in 1857, by the triumphs
of the Federalists, or as they were now called,
the Liberals or the Reform party, and by the
adoption of the definitive Constitution of that
year. The defeated Centralists or Conserva-
tives rallied and set up a reactionary Govern-
ment, sought the aid of European nations,
and thus brought about the intervention of
the foreign powers and the establishment of
the Second Empire. This lasted only until
the Archduke, Fernando Maximilian of Aus-
tria, met at Queretaro, in 1867, the fate of
Iturbide.

1 88 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

It is a significant fact that even the Second
Empire could not ignore Hidalgo and the
Grito de Dolores. Visiting Dolores in 1864,
the Emperor Maximilian wrote in the visitors'
book in Hidalgo's church, "A people that,
under the protection and blessing of God,
founds its Independence on Law and Lib-
erty, and has one single will [una sola voilun-
tad] is invincible, and may face the world
with pride." The sixteenth of September was
celebrated under the Empire as well as under
the Republic, by Centralists, Conservatives,
and Imperialists as well as by Federalists,
Liberals and the party of Reform. It had
long since become a fixed institution of the
country, and through its annual enthusiastic
observance by the people, without regard to
what the Government might decree, it bears
testimony to the fact that the people recog-
nize the relation of Hidalgo to their national
life, and have voluntarily adopted the six-
teenth of September as their national birth-
day.1

JIn 1896 a government commission was appointed
to secure the bell Hidalgo had employed in 1810
to call his followers together and proclaim to them
his plans for Independence, and to remove it to
the capital. The bell was brought into the City of
Mexico with great pomp and ceremony, and was

The Independent Mexican Nation 189

The Constitution of 1857 was a long way in
advance of the ideas of Hidalgo. It was set
forth "in the name of God, and with the au-
thority of the Mexican people." It declared
that the Mexican people recognized that the
rights of man are the basis and the object of
social institutions. Consequently they, the
Mexican people, declared that "all the laws
and all the authorities of the country must
represent and maintain the guarantees which
the present Constitution establishes." It de-
clared further that "The national sovereignty
resides essentially and originally in the people,
and is instituted for their benefit," — a prin-
ciple of government once declared in that
country heretical and seditions ; and for ut-
tering which Verdad lost his life. "The peo-
ple have at all times the inalienable right to
alter or modify the form of their Govern-
ment." By the terms of this Constitution,

suspended over the central portal of the National
Palace. From that day to this, the great national
fiesta, El Diez y Seis de Setiembre, has been ushered
in by the President of the Republic, who a few
minutes before midnight on the fifteenth rings the
bell and proclaims the Independence of the nation.
This ceremony is witnessed annually by thousands,
and is accompanied by salvos of artillery, the ring-
ing of bells, the playing of bands, and "vivas''
from thousands of human voices.

igo Miguel Hidatgo y Costilla

"the Mexican people voluntarily constitute
themselves a democratic, federal, representa-
tive Republic, composed of States free and
sovereign in all that concerns their internal
government, but united in a federation estab-
lished according to the principles of this
fundamental law."

These were the principles of government,
however, to which those of Hidalgo would
have grown could the Independence which
he proclaimed have been attained. And the
men who produced this remarkable document,
which was to bring good government and law
and order to a much disturbed country, could
only have succeeded in their long struggle
for its adoption and its maintenance by living
and working under the influence of Miguel
Hidalgo and the Grito de Dolores. The proc-
lamation of the Grito was "Death to bad gov-
ernment !" Verily the Grito found its best
and fullest interpretation in a Constitution
which abolished slavery, declared instruction^
to be free, and that every man was left free_
to adopt whatever useful and honorable pro-
fession, industrial pursuit, or occupation
suited him ; which declared that the State
would not permit any c.o.ntract to be carried
out which had for its object the diminutiog,
loss, or irrevocable sacrifice of man's liberty,

The Independent Mexican Nation igi

forthe sake of labor, education, or religious
vows; which declared freedom of speech,
and of the press, without other limitation than
respect for private life, morality, and the pub-
lic peace; which secured the right of petition,
of association, of carrying arms; which sup-
pressed titles of nobility, the prerogatives and
special privileges (fueros) of corporations,
punishment by mutilation, torture, infamy, or
confiscation of property ; which prohibited the
acquisition by corporations of property for
speculative purposes; which abolished special
tribunals, retroactive laws, private laws, and
imprisonment for debts of a purely civil char-
acter; which consecrated as inviolable the
home, private correspondence, and the rights
of the accused to legal defence; which abol-
ished the death penalty for political offences,
and established religious toleration.

It was in support of such a Constitution
and such a guarantee of good government as
this gave, that the patriots of Mexico main-
tained the struggle with the reactionaries of
1857-60 and with the interventionists and im-
perialists of 1861-67, and finally triumphed.

But it was reserved for a still later patriot
to give the people of Mexico the fullest and
most complete interpretation of the Grito de
Dolores, and of the National Independence

192 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla

which Hidalgo proclaimed. It is curious that
Porfirio Diaz should have been born on the
twentieth anniversary of the Grito de Dolores.
As he grew to manhood he had abundant op-
portunity to observe what trials and oppres-
sions his country endured while it was under
the spell of the inheritance it had received
from Spain, in a vicious system of govern-
ment which stifled the rights of the people.
Under the influence of Benito Juarez he
learned that the Independence which Hidalgo
had proclaimed in 1810 meant emancipation
not only from Spanish rule but also from the
domination of Spanish ideas ; from the Span-
ish system of absolutism, whether administered
by a monarch across the seas or by a Presi-
dent or Dictator at home. He espoused the
cause of the Liberals and the party of Re-
form. He became an active partisan of the
Constitution of 1857, which he found to be
the best exponent of the principles of Hidal-
go and his followers. The value of the serv-
ices he rendered to his country in support of
that Constitution when it was assailed by the
reactionaries in the war of Reform, and by
a foreign foe in the war of the Intervention,
are beyond human powers to estimate. And
when, in 1876, a grateful country made him
chief magistrate, he added to his patriotic

The Independent Mexican Nation 193

zeal a wisdom which has enabled him to adapt
the Constitution to the highest needs of the
country; to establish good government, which
shall serve the best interests of the people;
and to elevate Mexico to a condition of pros-
perity and happiness at home, and to a posi-
tion among the nations of the earth which
commands the respect of all. And by train-
ing citizens to an appreciation of the blessings
of Independence, Porfirio Diaz has taught
them to realize the true meaning of the life
of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.

THE END.

INDEX

INDEX

Abasalo, Mariano, 79, 112, 129
Aldama, Ignacio, 71, 73, 74,

78, 87, 99, ii2, 113
Aldama Juan, 115, 116, 127,

128
Alhondiga de Granaditas, 78,

80-82, 100
Allende, Ignacio, 67-70, 8r, 87,

90-99, 102, 103, 108, 112-116,

127, 128

Alvarez, Juan, 161
Apodaca, Juan Ruiz de, Vice-

roy, 159-173
Arias, Joaquin, 87
Audiencia, 45, 52 et seq. 64,

91. see Government of New

Spain
Audenda of Nueva Galicia, 17,

101, 103, no
Ayuntamientos, 4, 45, 52-55,

Bases Organicas Politicas, 185
Bonaparte, Joseph, 48, 49, 52,

60

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 46-48, 85
Bravo, Nicolas, 148, 151

(note), 183
Bustamante, Carlos Maria, 141

Callejadel Rey, Felix Maria,

68, 87, 99, 100, 107-114, 143-

i59

Carlos HI, 4, 5, 28, 44, 65
Carlos IV, 23, 28, 35, 41, 44,

46-50, 65

Catani, Pedro de, 63, 84
Casa de Contratacion, 31, 37
Centralism, 183, 184
Chico, Jose Maria, 104, 129
Chihuahua, 14, 16, 115-129
Chilpancingo, 144
Consejo de las Indies, 29, 30,

54, 58, 153

Constitution of 1857, 189, 191
Cos, Dr., 133-141, 146
Costilla, family name, 2, 3
Creoles, 3, 4, 27, 28, 35, 52,

56, 62, 65, 85, 96, 162
Cruz, General de la, 107, 108
Cuajimalpa, 94
Cuautla, 142, 143

Declaration of Independence,

I45-I47

Diaz Porfirio, 186, 191-193
Dies y Sets de Setiembre, 188

188
Dominguez, Josefa Maria Ortiz

de, see Ortiz
Dominguez, Miguel, 70-72
Dolores, 8, 32-37, 73-78, 188

IQ7

198

Index

Education in New Spain, 5, 6,1

8

El Despertador Americano, 105
Elizondo, Ignacio, 114, 115
EL PENSADOR AMERICANO, 141
''El Zorro," 6, 35, 125
Esterez, Maria Tomasa, 159
Estrada, Fray Manuel, 23. 24,

37

Federal Republic, 181, 182
Fernandez, Felix, 161, 183
Fernando VII, 47-49, 52, 62,

91, 92, 104, 132, 148, 153,

161, 168-179

Flon, Manuel de la, 86, 87
Fray Serri, 10, 37

Gaceta, 18, 97, 105
Gachupines, 74, 78, 90, (note)
Galcana Brothers, 151
Gallaga, Dona Ana Maria, 1-3,

5, ii

Garibay, Pedro de, 60
Godoy, Manuel, 47, 48
Grito de Dolores, 77, 96, 108

139, 140, 163, 180, 185, 187

192

Guadalajara, 17, 100-110
Gudalupe-Hidalgo, 84, 179
Guanajuato, i, 14, 70, 81-83

99, 100

Guerrero, Vicente, 166-168
Gutierrezde Estrada, Jose Ma

ria, 186
Gutierrez y Rosas, Jose Maria

119, 150

Herrera Manwela, 158
Hidalgo — (hijo de algo,) 3
— Cristobal, 1-5, ii
— Fr. Michaele, 12, note
— Jose Joaquin, 5, 7, 8, 32,

Hidalgo — Jose Maria, 5, n, 35,
4i

— Manuel Mariano, 5, ii
— Mariano, ii, 75, 115, 129

Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel,
birth, parentage and early
years, 1-5, Education, 5-8.
Nicknamed "El Zorro" 6,
Takes his degrees, 7, 8. In^-
structor in San Nicolas Col-
lege, 9. Ordination, le.
Rector of San Nicolas, 10.
His brothers, n. Residence
in Valladolid, 12. Uncer-
tainty of details of his Life,
17-20. In Colima, 21. In
San Felipe, 21. Denounced
to Inquisition, 23-25. How
employed in 1800-1803, 25-
30. Curate of Dolores, 32.
How employed in Dolores,
33, 34- Visits City of Mex-
ico, in 1805, 35. In contact
with civil authorities, 37.
Denounced again to Inquisi-
tion, 37, 38. His character
and learning, 39-42. Plans
revolution 68. The Grito
de Dolore, 73-78. Leads
army of Insurgents, 77. In
Guanajuato, 79-83. Is Ex-
communicated, 86. Reward
offered for him, 87. In Val-
ladolid, 87-89. Made Gen-
eralissimo, 87. Monte de las
Cruces, 92-96. Retreats to
Provincias Internas, 95-98.
Again denounced to Inquisi-
tion, 96-98. Defeated at
Aculco, 98, 99. In Guadala-
jara, 101-109. Publishes El
Despertador Americano, 105.

Index

199

Answers his Accusers, 106.
Battle of Puente de Cal-
deron, 108-111. Resigns as
Generalissimo, 1 1 2. Sets out
for United States, 113-115.
Captured and sent to Chi-
huahua, 115-116. Trial be-
fore Military Commandant,
116-120, Degraded from Holy
Orders, 116. Trial by In-
quisition in absentia, 117-
121. Issues manifesto "A
todo el Mundo," and submis
sion to Holy Office, 121-123,
Execution, 124, Personal Ap-
pearance, 124, 125. Inqui
ries of Inquisition into his
case, 125, 126. Head taken
to Guanajuato, 127. Re
moved to City of Mexico
127, 128. References to, 129
131. I39-U2, iSS, 157, J93
Hidalgo, Padre Ignacio, n

(note)

Holy Office, (see Inquisition)
Humboldt, Baron von, cited, 5

Illustrador Americano, 14
Index Expurgatorius, 40
Indians, 27, 28, 30, 89, 98, 99
Inquisition, 9, n, 19, 22-25
32, 37-41, 53, 54, 57, 64, 96
106, 117-126, 148-150, 153
Iriarte, Rafael, 104, 113
Iturbide, Agustin de, 69, 93

165-180
Iturrigary, 36, 50-58, 66, 67

Jalapa, 50, 67

Jimenez, Manuel, 87, 104, 113

116, 127, 128
Juarez, Benito, 186

'.into Americana, 139-141
tinta de Zitactiaro, 145

^as Casas, cited, 29
.as Siete Leyes, 185
*as Tres Garantias, 168
,eon, Nicolas, cited i, 125
^iceaga, Jose Maria, 132, 141,

146, 161
Lizana, Francisco Xavier, 53-55,

57, 60, 63

tfarfil, 99, 100

Martinez de Rojas, Luisa, 159
Matamoros, Mariano, 66, 147
Maximilian, 187, 188
Medina, Manuela, 158
Mestizos, 4, 27, 28, 63, 85, 96,

162
Mexico, City of, 3, 7, 10-15,

18, 28, 35, 51-60, 84, 85, 89,

93-95, 127, 128, 164, 177, 180
Miery Teran, Manuel, 147, 152,

156, 181, 182
Mina, Francisco Xavier, 159,

1 60
Monte de las Cruces, 92, 93,

165
Morelos, Jose Maria, 13, 66, 88,

133, 142-150

New Spain, Conditions in, 18,
26, 30. Education in, 5-8.
Government in, 15-18, 30, 31,
36, 42-46, 50-52, 91

Novella, Francisco de, 173

O'Donoju, Juan, 173

Old Spaniards, 26, 27, 45, 52,
60, 62, 64, 162-175

Ortiz de Dominguez, Josefa Ma-
ria, 70-72, 156

2OO

Pabellon, Hacienda de, 112
Perez, Ignacio, 71, 72, 74
Plan de Iguala, 169-174, 187
Provincias Internas, 14, 18, 21,

26-30, 35, 65, 84, 85, 88, 96- T

98, 103, 147, 167
Puento de Calderon, 108-110

Texas, 129, 130
Tlalpujanua, 139, 140
Torres, Jose Antonio, 101, 103
Torres, Padre, 160

reaty of Cordoba, 174-176
Trujillo, Torcuato, 92-94

Queretaro, 14, 68-70, 84, 86,
97

Rayon, Ignacio Lopez, 14, 104,

132-141, 160, 172
Riano, 71, 79-81 ,
Rivera, Geronima, 158
Rodriguez del Toro, Mariana,

IS7

Salazar, 114

San Felipe, 25

San Juan de Lagos, 69

San Miguel el Grande, 68, 74,

77, 78
San Nicolas, College of, 5, 7-

9, ii, M, 139, 142
Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de

184-185

Santa Maria, 115, 116
Seminario Patriotica, 141
Serviles, 162, 163
Spain, conditions in, 46-61
Sultepec, 139-141

University of Mexico, 7, 9

Yalladolid, i, 5-14, 18, 69, 87,

89, 102, 165
Venegas, Francisco Javier, 63,

84-87, 95, 143, 144. IS4
Ven%ansa insurgente, 151
Vera Cruz, 50, 58, 173, 182
Verdad, Licenciado Francisco,

54, 55, 58, 59; 66
Verduzco, Dr., 133, 161
Vicario, Leona, 157
Viceregal government, 30
Victoria, Guadalupe, (see Felix

Fernandez)
Virgin de los Remedies, 94

Yermo, Gabriel, 57 .

Zitacuaro, Junta de, 133-141,

172
Zacatecas, 14, 102-104, i'3

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