Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/301

Rh upon a stout resistance, shut themselves up in the city and refused the humane terms offered by Hidalgo upon condition of surrender. This rash rejection led to an immediate attack and victory. When the city fell, it was too late for the insurgent priest to stay the savage fury of his troops. The Spaniards and their adherents were promiscuously slaughtered by the troops, and, for three days the sacking of the city continued, until wearied with conquest, the rebels, at length, stopped the plunder of the town. Immense treasures, hoarded in this place for many years, were the fruits of this atrocious victory which terrified the Mexican authorities and convinced them that the volcanic nature of the people had been fully roused, and that safety existed alone in uncompromising resistance.

The original rebellion was thus thrown from the hands of the Creoles into those of the Indians. A war of races was about to break out; and although there were not among the insurgents more than a thousand muskets, yet the mere numerical force of such an infuriate crowd, was sufficient to dismay the staunchest. The viceroy Venegas, and the church, therefore, speedily combined to hurl their weapons against the rebels. Whilst the former issued proclamations or decrees, and despatched troops under the command of Truxillo to check Hidalgo who was advancing on the capital, the latter declared all the rebels to be heretics, and excommunicated them in a body. Venegas ordered all the higher clergy "to represent from the pulpit, and circulate the idea privately, that the great object of the revolution was to destoy and subvert the holy Catholic religion, while he directed the subaltern ministers to sow discord in families by the confessional." But the arms of the Spanish chiefs and the anathemas of the Roman church, were unequal to the task of resistance. Hidalgo was attacked by Truxillo at Las Cruces, about eight leagues from the capital, where the Indian army overwhelmed the Spanish general and drove him back to Mexico, with the loss of his artillery. In this action we find it difficult to apportion the ferocity, with justice, between the combatants, for Truxillo boasted in his despatch that he had defended the defile with the "obstinacy of Leonidas," and had even "fired upon the bearers of a flag of truce which Hidalgo sent him."²

The insurgents followed up their success at Las Cruces by pursuing the foe until they arrived at the hacienda of Quaximalpa, within fifteen miles of the city of Mexico. But here a fatal distrust of his powers seems first to have seized the warrior priest.