Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/230

 ]92 MEXICO. The contest between them would not have been decided without an appeal to arms, had not the approach of a Royal- ist Division terminated the dispute ; Torres's friends gave in their submission to Arago, and the Padre himself, after lead- ing a fugitive life for some months in the mountains of Pen- jamo, was run through the body with a lance, by one of his own captains, Don Juan Zamora, whom he had attempted to deprive of a favourite horse. e1 Giro was surprised, about the same time, (July, 1819,) by some soldiers of the Royalist Colonel, Bustamante, and killed, after a gallant defence, in which he slew three of his adversaries with his own hand. Don Jose Maria Liceaga, one of the oldest Insurgent chiefs, and the colleague of Rayon in the Junta of Zitaciiro, was killed at the commencement of the year by an Insurgent officer, belonging to the district of Guanajuato ; so that of all those, who had taken any lead in the Revolution, not one re- mained in July, 1819, when the Insurgent cause may be said to have reached its lowest ebb. Guerrero, indeed, main- tained himself on the right bank of the river Zacatula, (near Colima, on the Pacific,) but he was cut off from all commu- nication with the Interior, and had little hope of assistance from without ; so that, notwithstanding his military talents, his little force was not formidable to the Royalists, who were in undisturbed possession of almost all the interior of the country, with the whole of the Eastern coast. So confident, indeed, was the Viceroy, that the Revolution was at an end, that he wrote to Madrid, to state that he would answer for the safety of Mexico without a single additional soldier being sent out ; the kingdom being again tranquil, and perfectly submissive to the Royal authority.