OAXACA CHILPANZINGO CALLEJA VICEROY ITURBIDE. 291 



Here he rested for some time undisturbed by the Spaniards. 

 He conquered the whole of the province with the exception of 

 Acapulco, to which he laid siege in February, 1813, but it did not 

 lower its flag until the following August. The control of a whole 

 province, and the victories of Bravo and Matamoros, elsewhere in 

 1812 and 1813, considerably increased the importance and influence 

 of Morelos, who now devoted himself to the assemblage of a 

 national Congress at Chilpanzingo composed of the original Junta 

 of Zitacuaro, the deputies elected by the province of Oaxaca, and 

 others selected by them as representatives of the provinces which 

 were in the royalists' hands. On the 13th of November, 1813, this 

 body published a declaration of the absolute independence of 

 Mexico. 1 



Don Felix Maria Calleja, 

 LX. Viceroy of New Spain. — 1813 — 1816. 



This was the period at which the star of the great leader, More- 

 los, culminated. Bravo was still occasionally successful, and the 

 commander-in-chief, concentrating his forces at Chilpanzingo, 

 prepared an expedition against the province of Valladolid. He 

 departed on the 8th of November, 1813 ; and, marching across a 

 hitherto untraversed country of a hundred leagues, he reached this 

 point about Christmas. But here he found a large force under 

 Llano and Colonel Iturbide, — who was still a loyalist — drawn 

 up to encounter him. He attacked the enemy rashly with his jaded 

 troops, and on the following day, was routed, with the loss of his 

 best regiments and all his artillery. 



At Puruaran, Iturbide again assailed Morelos successfully, and 

 Matamoros was taken prisoner. Efforts were made to save the 

 life of this eminent soldier, yet Calleja, who had succeeded Venegas 

 as viceroy was too cruelly ungenerous to spare so daring a rebel. 

 He was shot, and his death was avenged by the slaughter of all 

 the prisoners who were in the hands of the insurgents. 



For a while Morelos struggled bravely against adversity, his 



1 We must mention an event, characteristic of Bravo, which occurred during this 

 period. Bravo took Palmar, by storm, after a resistance of three days. Three 

 hundred prisoners fell into his hands, who were placed at his disposal by Morelos. 

 Bravo immediately offered them to the viceroy Venegas in exchange for his father, 

 Don Leonardo Bravo, who had been sentenced to death in the capital. The offer 

 was rejected, and Don Leonardo ordered to immediate execution. But the son at 

 once commanded the prisoners to be liberated, — saying that he " wished to put it 

 out of his power to avenge his parent's death, lest, in the first moments of grief the 

 temptation should prove irresistible. " — Ward, 1 vol. 204. 



