Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/831

Rh training unfortunately had not fitted them for the field, but this failing was found as well in most of the other leaders, whose only claim to the distinction lay in a positive character or social precedence. It was a priest who started the revolution, a quiet good-hearted provincial cura; a man lacking military skill and definite plans, but self-sacrificing and resolute, who could choose soldiers like Allende for aids; a man standing between the medieval past and the material future, for he was both a philosophizing dreamer and a dabbler in science and improvements one whom we would expect to conceive lofty ideas and enterprises. Again, it was a priest, in Morelos, who, imbued with military genius and noble unselfishness, with the confidence won by a self-made condition, and with a practical mind, gave shape to the conception, organizing the revolution, giving it a real army, a representative congress, and finally a constitution with avowed independence a fit man to carry out a great project, aided by chieftains like Matamoros and Galeana, and using legislators like Ignacio Rayon. The next grade of leaders exhibits a wide range of representative characters. Villagran and Rosains are conspicuous for reckless and unscrupulous pursuit of selfish purposes; Osorno figures as a successful cavalry leader and raider; Teran is a precocious, immature hero, Mina a dashing soldier; Bravo shines for his magnanimity, and Victoria for his tenacious loyalty to the cause; while Guerrero stands forward as an able successor to Morelos, one whose stanch purpose and self-denying patriotism sustain a flickering revolution. Iturbide is typical rather of the following period as soldier and schemer, brilliant yet selfish, who fox-like watches the opportunity to seize the bone of contention. As a rule, they are a self-willed class, rising frequently to heroic spheres, but unsustained, and falling repeatedly into moral and military errors. The royalist officers appear in comparison as professionals against amateurs, who with methodic precision, studied tactics, and strict