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180 MEXICO. under the command of Colonel Orrantia, who had been de- puted by the Viceroy for the express purpose of preventing this junction, but was discouraged from attempting it by the recollection of the battle of Peotillos. After refreshing his men there, who were almost exhausted with a four-days'* fast, the division proceeded to Sombrero, (one of the three strong- holds still in the possession of the Insurgents,) which it reached on the 24th of June, having, in thirty days, traversed a tract of country two hundred and twenty leagues in extent, and been three times engaged with an enemy of infinitely superior strength. Mina only allowed his men four days of repose at Sombrero, after which he undertook an expedition, in conjunction with his new allies, Don Pedro Moreno, (the Commandant of the fort,) and the famous Insurgent partizan, Encarnacion Ortiz, against San Juan de 16s Llanos, where a Royalist division of three hundred cavalry, and four hundred infantry, under the com- mand of Don Felipe Castan5n, was stationed. Castafion was one of the most enterprising of the Royalist officers, and, like Iturbide, had been generally successful in his expeditions : but his military achievements were tarnished by his sanguinary character, and by the cruelty with which, even under the mild government of Apodaca, he uniformly sacrificed his prisoners, whom the event of an action had thrown into his hands. His success alone caused these enormities to be tolerated, but he was too valuable a partizan for his services to be dispensed with, and, at the time of Mina's arrival, the flying division, which he commanded, was the terror of the Baxio. The forces with which Mina prepared to meet it, consisted of his own division, (about two hundred strong, including new recruits,) with a detachment of fifty Creole infantry, and eighty lancers, under Moreno, and Encarnacion Ortiz. On the morning of the action, (the 29th June,) he was joined by a few more Insurgents, who increased his numbers to four hundred, but of these new arrivals, few were armed for ser-