Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/255

Rh awaited the insurgent chief. On the 2d of January, 1811, Padre Parra, having discovered a ford, while crossing it in company with five soldiers was taken, prisoner. On the 8th Hermosillo, after fording the river, fell into the hands of 400 royalists secreted in the brush on either side of his line of march. So deadly was the fire opened upon him, that in less than ten minutes more than 300 of the insurgents were slain, and the rest fled panic-stricken. Hermosillo lost all his cannon, baggage, and munitions of war, and the expedition so successfully begun was thus suddenly ended.

But in another direction success attended the revolution. In the eastern provinces it spread with rapidity. After San Luis Potosi had thrown off the yoke, the neighboring district of Nuevo Santander was awakened by the spirit of independence. The governor, Lieutenant-colonel Manuel de Iturbe, was compelled to retreat to Altamira by the revolt of troops which he had raised under the same delusive expectation indulged in by Abarca and Rendon. The country was now overrun by revolutionists. Spaniards were dragged from their homes and cast into dungeons from which the vilest criminals had been released; their wealth was appropriated and their property destroyed. The mines were deserted and