Page:History of the War between the United States and Mexico.djvu/339

Rh beyond Perote, the Mexican general-in-chief employed himself for several days, towards the latter part of April and the beginning of May, in the neighborhood of Orizaba, in collecting and organizing a new force, whose assistance had been invoked by his countrymen. As early as the 8th of April, it was proposed to adopt the guerilla system, at a meeting of the principal citizens of Mexico, and orders were issued, and measures taken by the government to carry the suggestion into effect. Among the most efficient of their agents and coadjutors was a padre, by the name of Jarauta, originally an Aragonese curate, who had been compelled to fly from Spain, on account of his participation in the cruelties and barbarities perpetrated by the guerilleros who fought under Cabrera.

There is something noble in the aspect presented by a people flying to their arms, unitedly and spontaneously, in defence of their altars and their hearthstones, to save themselves from wrong and injury, and their wives and daughters from outrage and violence. The movements of an excited populace are irresistible as the rush of the mountain torrent. Of what avail were an armed soldiery of 30,000 men, when the citizens of Paris had determined that the BastileBastille [sic] should be razed to the ground? The moors and glens of Scotland, the wild fastnesses of the Emerald Isle, and the dense savannas of Georgia and the Carolinas, tell us what may be done by men, who, seizing the sword, and casting away the scabbard, resist