POLITICAL EVENTS CHAP. XXV. 



introduced some military arrangements among his 

 followers. He established a mint for coining the 

 silver, directed the bell-founders to cast cannon, 

 and employed the most skilful mechanics and 

 artists he could procure to work the mines. A 

 deputation from Valladolid, a city of forty thou- 

 sand inhabitants, invited Hidalgo to visit that 

 place, and receiving there fresh accessions of num- 

 bers, he marched to take possession of Mexico, 

 the capital. 



The insurgents appeared before Mexico with 

 a force of regulars and irregulars amounting to 

 more than seventy thousand, who could be op- 

 posed but by a few, and those ill-disciplined 

 troops. The viceroy had sent two divisions of 

 his forces in different directions, who had united 

 in the rear of the insurgents ; this so alarmed the 

 latter, that they abandoned the attack on the 

 capital, and retired upon Guanaxuato. They were 

 there attacked and defeated, and the city was 

 occupied by the royalists, who inflicted the most 

 summary and barbarous vengeance on the in- 

 habitants. 



Hidalgo collected the remnant of his forces and 

 retired upon Guadalaxara, where the standard of 

 revolt had been erected. Here again he was de- 

 feated and his army dispersed ; but as fast as a 

 reverse was experienced in one part of the country, 

 such was the state of excitement, that equal num- 

 bers quickly appeared in arms in some other. 



