Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/607

Rh Orrantia and other lieutenants within his own province of Guanajuato and on the adjoining borders in the pursuit of revolutionists, that he claims to have despatched within less than two months nearly 900 men, including nineteen chiefs, among them the brigadier presbyter Saenz and one of the celebrated Pachones. The effect was undoubtedly to render the highways more secure and to restore comparative peace in the long-desolated settlements. To this contributed greatly the active enrolment of local guards in the different towns and villages which coöperated in the pursuit of such leaders as Torres, Rafael Rayon, and Tovar, who still hovered in the mountains of Guanajuato, and two scions of Villagran, who flitted as avengers in the Tula region. But this was no longer a campaign. It was a hunting-down of human beings, as blood-hounds hunt wild beasts; and it is to be noticed that the foremost hunter and persecutor was the personage who finally gave the decisive blow for independence, and rose to the summit of power in liberated Anáhuac. His able though merciless performance as a royalist, however, served rather to excite admiration than hatred among many of his opponents; and it is a tribute to their gallantry as well as fairness to note that the greatest outcry against Iturbide at this time was raised by his execution of a woman who lent her beauty to sustain the cause of independence.