Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/357

Rh through the plains of Apam and extended across Puebla to the confines of Oajaca. Toward the close of the year the territory of Tlascala was invaded, the city attacked, and many of its towns and their districts devastated. The highway between the capital and Orizaba was almost closed to the royalists, and communication with Vera Cruz interrupted.

The first impulse to the revolutionary movement in the plains of Apam was given by José Francisco Osorno, a highwayman by profession, and so illiterate that he only succeeded in learning to scrawl his name when he became prominent as a leader. Having collected a band of 600 or 700 men, he entered Zacatlan on the 30th of August without opposition. Here he was presently joined by Mariano Aldama a relative of the Aldamas who had been the associates of Hidalgo with the rank of major-general; and their rapid progress soon caused inconvenience in the capital by the stoppage of supplies from the haciendas situated in the plains. Venegas accordingly despatched an expedition against Zacatlan under the command of a naval captain named Ciriaco del Llano. This officer gained a series of successes over the insurgents, but his sanguinary and oppressive proceedings, instead of extinguishing the insurrectionary spirit, only served to inflame it. Thus Osorno, though repeatedly defeated and his followers dispersed, ever reappeared at