Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/391

Rh embarked on the flotilla, crossed the bay under the fire of the Royalist batteries, took on board the garrisons of the batteries at the Boca Chica, and on the 7th put to sea in a storm which dispersed the blockading squadron.

Morillo entered the city on the 6th December, and found it a hospital of dying men, and a cemetery of dead bodies, which lay all about the streets; the very air was poison. The siege had lasted one hundred and eight days. It was calculated that six thousand had died in the city of hunger and disease, besides those who were killed in the various attacks. The loss of the besiegers was nearly three thousand five hundred men.

The victory was stained by an act of barbarism. Morales, who had occupied the batteries at the Boca Chica, on their evacuation by the Patriots, offered an amnesty to all fugitives who would present themselves. Four hundred old men, women, and children, and some fishermen who had hidden in the brushwood covering the island, presented themselves. The throats of every one of them were cut on the seashore by his orders. Morillo was more humane, but Castillo, who had hidden himself, was put to death by his command, and his body was exposed on a gibbet. The same fate was meted out to six of the principal citizens, among them being Garcia Toledo, who had headed the revolution in 1810. At the same time the Inquisition was re-established.

Calzada, advancing from Barinas to aid in the subjugation of New Granada, attempted first to clear the plains of Casanare of the Patriot light horse, but being beaten by them on the 1st October, he crossed the Cordillera with 1,800 infantry and 500 cavalry, routed various detached parties of Patriots who came in his way, and totally defeated their main body at Balaga on the 25th November. He then occupied Pamplona, where he found the streets strewn with the corpses of Spaniards, who had been barbarously murdered by the Patriots when they evacuated that city.

Congress now again made Torres President, with