Page:Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan.djvu/222

148 The consternation in the city cannot be conceived. General Morazan was again solicited to come. A line in pencil was received from him by a man who carried it sewed up in the sleeve of his coat, urging the city to defend itself, and hold out for a few days; but the danger was too imminent; Salazar, at the head of the Federal troops (the idle soldiers complained of), marched out at two o'clock in the morning, and, aided by a thick fog, came upon Carrera suddenly at Villa Nueva, killed 450 of his men, and completely routed him, Carrera himself being badly wounded in the thigh. The city was saved from destruction, and, the day after, Morazan entered with 1,000 men. The shock of the immense danger they had escaped was not yet over; on the morrow it might return; party jealousies were scared away; all looked to General Morazan as the only man who could effectually save them from Carrera, and, in turn, begged him to accept the office of dictator.

About the same time Guzman, the general of Quezaltenango, arrived, with 700 men, and General Morazan made formidable arrangements to enclose and crush the Cachurecos. The result was the same as before: Carrera was constantly beaten, but as constantly escaped. His followers were scattered, his best men taken and shot, and he himself was penned up, and almost starved on the top of a mountain, with a cordon of soldiers around its base, and only escaped by the remissness of the guard. In three months, chased from place to place, his old haunts broken up, and hemmed in on every side, he entered into a treaty with Guzman, by which he agreed to deliver up 1,000 muskets, and disband his remaining followers. In executing the treaty, however, he delivered only 400 muskets, and those old and worthless; and this breach of the convention was winked at by Guzman, little dreaming of the terrible fate reserved for himself at Carrera's hands.

This over, Morazan deposed Rivera Paz, restored Salazar, and returned to San Salvador, first laying heavy contributions on the city to support the expense of the war, and taking with him all the soldiers of the Federal Government, belying one of the party cries against him, that he was attempting to retain an influence in the city by bayonets. Guzman returned to Quezaltenango, and the garrison consisted only of seventy men.

The contributions and the withdrawal of the troops from the city created great dissatisfaction with Morazan, and at this time the political horizon became cloudy throughout the republic. The Marquis of Aycinena, who had been banished by Morazan, and had resided several years in the United States, studying our institutions, by a series of