Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/245

Rh left Guanajuato with all his forces on the 9th of December, having previously despatched a convoy to Mexico with the king's silver and that of private persons, amounting in all to six hundred bars. He also sent the machinery and dies of Hidalgo's mint, and, as a trophy of his victory, the heavy piece of artillery taken on the cerro del Cuarto, which the insurgents had vainly named El defensor de la América. With this convoy went most of the principal families of Guanajuato, deeming their future residence in that city unsafe, from the fact that no garrison or other protection was left in the place, except a company of armed citizens. This abandonment of Guanajuato by the more wealthy inhabitants completed its ruin. The mortality occasioned by war and typhus fever, which raged in the city during this period, the departure of great numbers of the populace with the insurgent leaders and the flight of others, caused within a few months a depopulation amounting to over 25,000. The mining and agricultural industries were for years next to nothing, and stillness and stagnation reigned in the once busy and thriving city.

At Silao, a town five leagues from Guanajuato, Calleja halted his army for several days. While at this place, on the 12th of December, with the object of preventing further atrocities, he published a singular edict. After exhorting all to unite with the authorities, clergy, and honest citizens in preserving the peace, he declared that in every town in which soldiers, servants of the government, municipal and other authorities, or honest citizens, whether creole or European, should be assassinated, four of the inhabitants, with out distinction of person, should be selected by lot for each man murdered, and without further formality be put to death. It was but an idle threat, however, no attempt being made to carry it out. From