Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/31

 Rh The history of Mexico from the time of its surrender to the Conquistadores to the day when it threw off the yoke of Spain in 1821, after a struggle of more than twelve years, is merely a dull record of Castilian tyranny and native peonage. The immediate occasion of the first revolutionary movement in what was then a Castilian colony, was the invasion of Spain by Napoleon. Indignation against the French was universal. All the attempts of the Napoleonic emissaries to arouse disloyalty to the person of the Spanish monarch proved fruitless, and indeed the first military rising was dictated by a desire to hold the country for him whom they regarded as their rightful king. But the European Spaniards in Mexico viewed the junta of native statesmen which had been hastily summoned with considerable suspicion, and seizing the Viceroy who headed it, they sent him a prisoner to Spain on 15th September, 1808, themselves assuming the reins of government. This high-handed act excited universal indignation from all classes of Mexicans; but as it met with approbation from the Spanish Government, the people grew deeply incensed, and a popular rising followed, marked by terrible excesses. On the night of 10th September, the tocsin of revolt was sounded. City after city fell before the Indians, who were led by a priest named Hidalgo. But their first successes were rapidly checked, and a guerilla warfare of painful duration commenced. The entire country, with the exception of the cities, ultimately fell into the hands of the revolutionists, led by Rayon and Morelos. Hostilities proceeded slowly until the arrival, in 1817, of Mina, a Mexican student, who had been absent in Spain. For a year he harried the Spanish regulars with a chosen band, but at length was captured and shot; and in 1819 the Revolution had reached a lower ebb than at any previous period during the struggle.

About the middle of 1820, however, accounts were received in Mexico of the Revolution in Spain which followed the