Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/296

280 and on the following day the unfortunate Chico and three others were put to death. All these victims to the cause of independence were shot with their backs to the firing platoons as traitors, and their property confiscated.

With regard to the prisoners who had been left in Monclova and those-who had been sent to Durango, the more prominent of the former were shot, the common soldiers being condemned to imprisonment. In the case of the friars and clergy, more formality had to be observed out of respect to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Six of them were condemned to death, but their clerical degradation was necessary before they could be executed according to established form. Doctor Olivares, the bishop of Durango, however, refused to degrade them, and angry passages were interchanged between him and the intendente Bonavia on the matter. The prelate was inflexible, but the intendente was not to be defeated. By his command the condemned priests were brought from their cells without their ecclesiastical robes, and so executed. Their bodies were then dressed in the habiliments of their respective orders and delivered to the cura for burial.

The execution of Hidalgo was for some time delayed by these ecclesiastical formalities. On the 14th of May the bishop of Durango commissioned Francisco Fernandez Valentin, canon of that cathedral, to act as ecclesiastical judge in the case; and to him had been submitted by the military court the declarations taken by Abella. On the 14th of June they were approved by him and ordered to be returned to the auditor Bracho. The arrival of additional evidence, however, still protracted Hidalgo's trial, and it was not until the 3d of July that Bracho presented to