Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/669

Rh Equally sweeping were the royalist successes in Mizteca and Tecpan under Samaniego and La Madrid, with the coöperation of Álvarez from Oajaca and Armijo along the south coast. The stronghold of Santa Gertrudis and Piaxtla fell without resistance. Ramon Sesma surrendered San Estevan, and tendered his assistance to the foe in seeking, among other acts, to persuade Martinez and Sanchez to capitulate at Silacayoapan. They nobly held out, however, till hunger and desertion obliged them to accept the bare offer of life. Armijo had cleared the region between Acapulco and the Mescala, and now he reduced Ostocingo, Tecolutla, and Alumbre, on Tecoyo hill, laying siege also to Jaliaca; but here the commandant Catalan escaped with his 200 men to join the repulsed Bravo. Even more brilliantly did Galvan force his way through the lines round Jonacatlan, after a siege of a month and the loss of over 100 men. The result was that both Guerrero and Bravo had to abandon this region and take refuge in the hot lowlands of the Zacatula, there to watch for a better opportunity to retrieve the cause.

Their hopes centred now on the ranges of Michoacan, where the revolution had ever managed to maintain itself, although declining of late to isolated and less important operations. Here ruled yet a branch of the dissolved congress; not the junta installed by this body on its departure for Tehuacan, for that had also been extirpated in the spring of