Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/167

Rh civilians who have secreted themselves among the stores are dragged forth and ruthlessly butchered. Above the din, shots still are heard in different parts of the alhóndiga, as here and there some one still undaunted dearly sells his life and kills as he dies. But fainter and fainter grow these sounds, which presently cease; then for a brief space the dull, heavy thud of the death-blow is heard; and then all is still; resistance is at an end.

Pillage is next in order. From the living, the dying, and the dead, the clothes are torn. The store rooms are ransacked and the treasures carried off, the plunderers fighting among themselves for the spoils. What a sight is here, oh God! and all for liberty, all for tyranny; liberty or tyranny among some, with others, glory, gold, or plunder—among all with more or less of that horrid gratification a bloodhound feels as it tears its victim limb from limb and scatters around the bloody fragments. Blood! blood and mangled humanity everywhere. Nude, distorted forms lay stretched on heaps of maize saturated with blood, and on piles of silver bars dyed crimson; blood-stained pillagers bear off their blood-bespattered plunder over the pavements slippery with gore; while the wild gesticulations, the exultant shouts, and the savage oaths of the frenzied victors, would put to shame hell's banqueters!

When the Europeans who were in the hacienda de Dolores saw that the revolutionists had possession of the alhóndiga, they meditated escape by a side door on the north-west, which opened to the wooden bridge over the Rio de la Cata. It had, however, already been broken open by the insurgents, who were pouring in in overwhelming numbers. The doomed band—among whom was Francisco Iriarte, who, as the reader is aware, had been commissioned by the intendente to report to him Hidalgo's proceedings at Dolores—then retired to the well, which was situated in an elevated position. There they defended