Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/384

368 There was no help for it, however, and so day by day the situation of his people became more distressing as the scarcity of food increased. But, as I have said, they bore their sufferings with heroic fortitude, and with every manifestation of unyielding purpose. The soldiers on their return from battle, whatever might be the result of their sally, were greeted with loud cheers; those who fell were buried to the sound of pealing church bells rung in celebration of their glorious death; enthusiastic joy marked any success, however slight; and death was proclaimed against him who dared to speak of surrender. Even Calleja could not suppress his wonder and admiration at such highsouled fortitude. "These people are heroes," he writes the viceroy, "and they would merit a distinguished place in history—if their cause were just"! Morelos he declared to be a second Mahomet.

Nor was the situation of the royalists by any means an enviable one. The troops, reared in the temperate and cool regions of the table-land, suffered under the fervid sky of the tierra caliente. They broke down under their heavy fatigues by night and day; sickness came upon them, and toward the end of April 800 men were in hospital. The rainy season too was fast approaching ought already to have come; then fever would strike them down by files, and the enemy, inured to the deadly climate, would fall upon them and complete their ruin. It was a question between time and nature which would win. Nature was this time on the side of oppression, to her shame be it said. The rains were unusually late this year. Day after day the fiery sun rose and set, and still no cloud appeared to the wistful eyes of the famished crowds in the beleaguered city. Their sufferings were awful. When all else was wellnigh consumed, old, time-worn,