Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/243

Rh But in the economy of revenge, it will not do to ignore the benefits of spectacular exhibitions. So at nightfall following, eighteen prominent men are dragged out and hanged by torchlight in the plaza. It seems as if the curse of Sodom has fallen on the place. Round this plaza, like an amphitheatre, the houses stand tier above tier on the surrounding hills, so that the people can sit in them and look down upon the tragedy as at a play. Are these cattle or swine, that are being butchered for the market? Or has the old Aztec rite been revived among these christians? No, it is no mediæval or barbaric slaughter, but a nineteenth-century sacrifice of human beings on the altar of liberty! The air is thick with tyranny and blood. The stillness of an unpeopled world pervades the scene, there being heard only the low-voiced exhortation of the priest, or the cry of some faint hearted wretch for mercy. On the 28th eight more persons, among whom was the hapless Chovell, met the same fate in the plazuela in front of the alhóndiga, and on the following day four more were doomed to die. But the gloom of despair which had settled upon the city, the spiritless state of abjection to which the population had been reduced, and the meek surrender of every article of use that might serve as a weapon pacified at last the avenger; and in the afternoon the ringing of the bells announced that Calleja had proclaimed a general pardon. Too late, however, was the mercy extended for two of the four last condemned, who had suffered but a few minutes before; the remaining two, in the very act of taking as they supposed their last look at earth and sky, with the halters round their necks, were allowed the benefit of the pardon, and released.

These executions have been regarded by writers of