DEFEAT OP CAREER A. 



243 



tion, and again marched against Guatimala, proclaim- 

 ing his intention to raze every house to the ground, and 

 murder every white inhabitant. 



The consternation in the city cannot be conceived. 

 General Morazan was again solicited to come. A line 

 in pencil was received from him by a man who carried 

 it sewed up in the sleeve of his coat, urging the city to 

 defend itself and hold out for a few days ; but the dan- 

 ger was too imminent ; Salazar, at the head of the 

 Federal troops (the idle soldiers complained of), march- 

 ed out at two o'clock in the morning, and, aided by a 

 thick fog, came upon Carrera suddenly at Villa Nueva, 

 killed four hundred and fifty of his men, and complete- 

 ly routed him, Carrera himself being badly wounded 

 in the thigh. The city was saved from destruction, 

 and the day after Morazan entered with a thousand 

 men. The shock of the immense danger they had es- 

 caped was not yet over ; on the morrow it might re- 

 turn ; party jealousies were scared away ; all looked to 

 General Morazan as the only man who could effectually 

 save them from Carrera, and, in turn, begged him to 

 accept the office of dictator. 



About the same time Guzman, the general of Quez- 

 altenango, arrived, with seven hundred men, and Gen- 

 eral Morazan made formidable arrangements to enclose 

 and crush the Cachurecos. The result was the same 

 as before : Carrera was constantly beaten, but as con- 

 stantly escaped. His followers were scattered, his best 

 men taken and shot, and he himself was penned up and 

 almost starved on the top of a mountain, with a cordon 

 of soldiers around its base, and only escaped by the re- 

 missness of the guard. In three months, chased from 

 place to place, his old haunts broken up, and hemmed 

 in on every side, he entered into a treaty with Guzman, 



