Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/214

140 On Wednesday Carrera joined the rebels. He had sent his emissaries to the villages, rousing the Indians, and promising them the plunder of Guatimala; and on Thursday, with a tumultuous mass of half-naked savages, men, women, and children, estimated at 10,000 or 12,000, presented himself at the gate of the city. The Antiguanos themselves were struck with consternation, and the citizens of Guatimala were thrown into a state bordering on distraction. Commissioners were again sent out to treat with him, from whom he demanded the deposition of Galvez, the chief of the state, the evacuation of the plaza by the Federal troops, and a free passage into the city. Probably, even at this time, if the Federal troops had been supported by the citizens, they could have resisted the entry; but the consternation, and the fear of exasperating the rebellious hordes, were so great, that nothing was thought of but submission. The Assembly met in terror and distraction, and the result was an assent to all that was demanded.

At five o'clock the small band of government troops evacuated the plaza. The infantry, amounting to three hundred, marched out by the Calle Real, or Royal-street. The cavalry, seventy in number, exclusive of officers, on their march through another street, met an aid-de-camp of Carrera, who ordered them to lay down their arms. Yañez answered that he must first see his general; but the dragoons, suspecting some treachery on the part of Valenzuela, became panic-struck, and fled. Yañez, with thirty-five men, galloped through the city, and escaped by the road to Mixco; the rest rushed back into the plaza, threw down their lances in disgust, dismounted and disappeared, when not a single man was left under arms.

In the meantime Carrera's hordes were advancing. The commandant of the Antiguans asked him if he had his masses divided into squares or companies; Carrera answered, "No entiendo nada de esto. Todo es uno." "I don't understand anything of that. It is all the same." Among his leaders were Monreal and other known outlaws, criminals, robbers, and murderers. He himself was on horse-back, with a green bush in his hat, and hung round with pieces of dirty cotton cloth, covered with pictures of the saints. A gentleman who saw them from the roof of his house, and who was familiar with all the scenes of terror which had taken place in that unhappy city, told me that he never felt such consternation and horror as when he saw the entry of this immense mass of barbarians; choking up the streets, all with green bushes in their hats, seeming at a distance like a moving forest; armed with rusty muskets, old pistols, fowling-pieces, some with locks and some without; sticks formed into the shape of