Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/303

Rh entirely unknown to them. Their effort was simply to overwhelm by superiority of numbers. But the cool phalanx of Creoles stood firm, until the Indian disorder became so great, and their strength so exhausted by repeated yet fruitless efforts, that the regulars commenced the work of slaughter with impunity. Calleja boasts that Hidalgo lost "ten thousand men, of whom five thousand were put to the sword." It seems, however, that he was unable to capture or disband the remaining insurgents; for Hidalgo retreated to Guanajuato, and then fell back on Guadalaxara, leaving in the former city a guard under his friend Allende.

Calleja next attacked the rebel forces at the hacienda of Marfil, and having defeated Allende, who defended himself bravely, rushed onward towards the city of Guanajuato. This place he entered as conqueror. "The sacrifice of the prisoners of Marfil," says Robinson, "was not sufficient to satiate his vindictive spirit. He glutted his vengeance on the defenceless population of Guanajuato. Men, women and children, were driven by his orders, into the great square; and fourteen thousand of these wretches, it is alleged, were butchered in a most barbarous manner. Their throats were cut. The principal fountain of the city literally overflowed with blood. But, far from concealing these savage acts, Calleja, in his account of the conflict, exults in the honor of communicating the intelligence that he had purged the city of its rebellious population. The only apology offered for the sacrifice was that it would have wasted too much powder to have shot them, and therefore, on the principle of economy he cut their throats. Thus was this unfortunate city, in a single campaign, made the victim of both loyalists and insurgents.

Hidalgo and his division were soon joined by Allende, and although they suffered all the disasters of a bad retreat as well as of Spanish victories, he still numbered about eighty thousand under his banners. He awaited Calleja at Guadalaxara, which he had surrounded with fortifications and armed with cannon, dragged by the Indians, over mountain districts from the port of San Blas, on the Pacific; but it is painful to record the fact, that in this city Hidalgo was guilty of great cruelties to all the Europeans. Ward relates that between seven and eight hundred victims fell beneath the assassin's blade. A letter, produced on Hidalgo's trial, written to one of his lieutenants, charges the officer to seize as many Spaniards as he possibly can, and, moreover, directs him, if he has any reason to suspect his prisoners of entertaining seditious or restless ideas, to bury them at once in oblivion by putting such