order too, by which the innocent were confounded with the guilty, was revoked before the troops had penetrated beyond the suburbs; and I do not find that the authors, who are most zealous in the cause of the Revolution, can prove the number of those who really suffered by the sentence of decimation, pronounced afterwards against a part of the population, to have been greater than that of the Europeans, who had fallen victims to their ferocity. Besides, it must not be forgotten that, at the commencement of a Revolution, however just its causes, all those who engage in open hostilities against the established government, do it at their own peril. They must expect to be treated as traitors, until success makes heroes of them. I do not blame the Spanish Authorities so much for having done, in the first instance, what most governments would have done in their place, as I do, for having persevered in their system of severity, when time had proved its inefficacy, and when they were intreated by the Insurgents themselves, to avoid such an unnecessary effusion of blood.
Hidalgo arrived at Valladolid on the 14th of November, from whence, after allowing three days for his followers to recruit after their late losses, he proceeded, without delay, to Guădălaxāră, which town had been occupied by one of his lieutenants, on the very day, that the battle of Ăcūlcŏ was lost by himself. During this short stay at Valladolid, he was joined by another man, who, afterwards,
