Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/270

 Jūān dĕ los Llānŏs, where a Royalist division of three hundred cavalry, and four hundred infantry, under the command of Don Felipe Căstăñōn, was stationed. Căstăñōn was one of the most enterprising of the Royalist officers, and, like Iturbide, had been almost uniformly successful in his expeditions: but his military achievements were tarnished by his sanguinary character, and by the cruelty with which, even under the mild Government of Apodaca, he uniformly sacrificed the prisoners, whom the event of an action had thrown into his hands. His success alone caused these enormities to be tolerated, but he was too valuable a partizan for his services to be dispensed with, and, at the time of Mina's arrival, the flying division, which he commanded, was the terror of the whole Baxio.

The forces with which Mina prepared to meet it, consisted of his own division, (about two hundred strong, including new recruits,) with a detachment of fifty Creole infantry, and eighty lancers, under Mŏrēnŏ, and Encarnacion Ortiz. On the morning of the action, (the 29th June,) he was joined by a few more Insurgents, who increased his numbers to four hundred, but of these new arrivals, few were armed for service in the field, being provided mostly with rusty muskets, all without bayonets, and many without flints.

The two parties met in the plains which divide the town of San Fĕlīpĕ from that of San Jūān, and in eight minutes the action was decided. Colonel