Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/439

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FIGHTING PRIESTS.
423

whom he shot; after which he marched on to Tzintzuntzan and Pátzcuaro, where he ordered other executions.[1] Captain Pesquera approached the line of Guanajuato, where the combination was made for the capture of Albino García; and later, on the 7th of May, was directed to look after and bring in as a prisoner the clergyman José Guadalupe Salto, ex-vicar of Teremendo, who had found refuge in a cave,[2] at the entrance of which he was overtaken by Pesquera's soldiers. It is said that he then cried out, "Do not kill me; I am a minister of Christ," at the same time thrusting a lance into one of the soldiers, and began defending himself from the inside of the cave. The soldiers fired; and entering the cave found Salto on the ground with a bullet through his body, and by his side two women whom he had been holding as prisoners. Pesquera had the wounded man conveyed on a bed to Valladolid, where, by order of Trujillo, he was executed the next day.[3]

The revolution, having been begun by an ecclesiastic, had from its incipiency many members of the clergy, both secular and regular, among its leaders; and it may be said that at this time the war was kept up almost wholly by them.[4]There was hardly a bat-

  1. Concha's report, May 4th, to Col. Trujillo. Gaz. de Mex., 1812, iii. 604-6.
  2. Father Salto bore the reputation of a man of exemplary virtue, who was persecuted by the government because he had a brother who was a colonel among the independents, and early in April 1811 imprisoned. He was afterward pardoned and released, but fearing re-arrest concealed himself. At the end of five months he appealed in writing to Bishop-elect Abad y Queipo for protection, pleading his innocence and sufferings, which petition was unheeded. Salto was then commissioned as a colonel of the independent forces on the 1st of April, 1812. He was accused of horrid crimes, among them the murder by his instigation of forty wounded royalists, together with their attendants, in the hacienda del Tecacho. Arechederreta, Apunt. Hist., in Alaman, Hist. Méj., iii. 211. Bustamante, Cuad. Hist., ii. 155, denies that Salto ever committed any offence—'no era criminal, ni habia motivo para perseguirlo como á una fiera'—and charges Abad with sacrificing him to curry favor with Venegas and Trujillo.
  3. Trujillo notified Bishop Abad, and said that on no account would he extend the time. The bishop waived the formal degradation. Gaz. de Mex., 1812, iii. 607-14. The prisoner was carried on a bed to the scaffold, and garroted, and then shot. Castillo Negrete, Mex., v. 47-57; Alaman, Hist. Mej., iii. 213.
  4. Some of them bore nicknames significant of habits not the most exemplary; one was called Padre Chinguirito, or drum of rum; another, Padre Caballo flaco; a third, Padre Chocolate. Zamacois, Hist. Hex., viii. 400.