Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/280

264 at Calderon, and the offer of pardon, had a bad effect upon his men. His troops broke and fled after firing some cannon-shots, and Mercado betook himself with a few followers to San Blas. Both in that port and in Tepic a reaction had set in. Francisco Valdés, who had been temporarily placed by Mercado in command of the first division of the coast militia, took the opportunity of exciting a counter-revolution at Tepic in favor of the government, and immediately apprised Cruz of the state of affairs. Cruz sent a detachment thither at once, and that important town fell into his hands without a blow. Captain Salas, the commander of the troops sent to Tepic, was instructed to proceed thence to San Blas and occupy that port, where he was to make every effort to secure the persons of Mercado and other insurgent leaders, as well as to arrest Lavallen, Bocalan, arid others implicated in the surrender of the port to Mercado. But that town had already been lost to the revolutionists, and Mercado killed.

When, after his failure to arrest the advance of Cruz, Mercado had returned to San Blas, Padre Nicolás Santos Verdin, cura of the town, formed a plot with the royalists to seize him and the comandante Romero. On the night of the 31st of January they made the attack. Romero, however, with barred doors defended himself by firing from a window until he, Estévan Matemala, commander of the artillery, and one other were killed; the assailants having two of their party slain and four wounded. The particulars of Mercado's death are not known. On the following morning his body was found at the foot of a precipice, down which it was conjectured he had fallen during flight. But there is reason to suppose that he was killed while defending himself; and that those