GUANAJUATO SACKED 



LAS CRUCES. 



283 



solved upon a stout resistance, shut themselves up in the city and 

 refused the humane terms offered by Hidalgo upon condition of 

 surrender. This rash rejection led to an immediate attack and 

 victory. When the city fell, it was too late for the insurgent priest 

 to stay the savage fury of his troops. The Spaniards and their 

 adherents were promiscuously slaughtered by the troops, and, for 

 three days the sacking of the city continued, until wearied with 

 conquest, the rebels, at length, stopped the plunder of the town. 

 Immense treasures, hoarded in this place for many years, were the 

 fruits of this atrocious victory which terrified the Mexican authori- 

 ties and convinced them that the volcanic nature of the people had 

 been fully roused, and that safety existed alone in uncompromising 

 resistance. 



The original rebellion was thus thrown from the hands of the 

 Creoles into those of the Indians. A war of races was about to 

 break out; and although there were not among the insurgents more 

 than a thousand muskets, yet the mere numerical force of such an 

 infuriate crowd, was sufficient to dismay the staunchest. The 

 viceroy Venegas, and the church, therefore, speedily combined to 

 hurl their weapons against the rebels. Whilst the former issued 

 proclamations or decrees, and despatched troops under the com- 

 mand of Truxillo to check Hidalgo who was advancing on the 

 capital, the latter declared all the rebels to be heretics, and excom- 

 municated them in a body. Venegas ordered all the higher clergy 

 " to represent from the pulpit, and circulate the idea privately, that 

 the great object of the revolution was to destoy and subvert the holy 

 Catholic religion, while he directed the subaltern ministers to sow 

 discord in families by the confessional." 1 But the arms of the 

 Spanish chiefs and the anathemas of the Roman church, were un- 

 equal to the task of resistance. Hidalgo was attacked by Truxillo 

 at Las Cruces, about eight leagues from the capital, where the In- 

 dian army overwhelmed the Spanish general and drove him back to 

 Mexico, with the loss of his artillery. In this action we find it 

 difficult to apportion the ferocity, with justice, between the com- 

 batants, for Truxillo boasted in his despatch that he had defended 

 the defile with the "obstinacy of Leonidas," and had even "fired 

 upon the bearers of a flag of truce which Hidalgo sent him." 2 



The insurgents followed up their success at Las Cruces by pur- 

 suing the foe until they arrived at the hacienda of Quaximalpa, 

 within fifteen miles of the city of Mexico. But here a fatal distrust 

 of his powers seems first to have seized the warrior priest. Vene- 



1 Robinson Memoir Mex. Rev. 19. 2 lb. p. 20. 



