Meantime ill luck dogged the footsteps of the fugitive junta. Ayala and Doctor San Martin were cap tured;[1] and though another junta was formed in the neighborhood of Huétamo, it was similarly dispersed in June, and its president, José María Pagola, and secretary, Pedro Bermeo, shot in the cemetery of that town.[2] The year 1818 was otherwise fatal to the cause of independence and its chief supporters. Padre Torres, after his unsuccessful attempt to relieve Jaujilla, made his name execrated by his tyranny and violence. Seizing private property, and burning villages and haciendas, under the pretext of cutting off supplies from the enemy, he soon became a scourge in the land. His own officers began to hate him, and revolting against his tyranny, appointed Colonel Juan Arago as their commander-in-chief in his stead.[3] Re-
- ↑ They finally received tho benefit of the king's pardon in 1820. For an account of the capture of San Martin and the dispersal of the junta, consult Quintanar's report to Cruz in Gaz. de Mex., 1818, ix. 419-23; Torrente, Rev. Hisp. Am., ii. 471-2; Bustamante, Cuad. Hist., iv. 507-8; Liceaga, Adic. y Rectific., 313-16. Maríano Torrente, Historia de la Revolucion Hispano Americana, Mad. 1830; 2 vol. 8vo, 1st, 116 and 447 pp.; 2d, 572 pp. This author had written before a work entitled Geografia Universal. In the introductory part of his history he gives important mining, agricultural, commercial, and other statistical data, together with a long essay on the state of society in New Spain. The main portion of the work gives in chronological order the leading events of the Spanish colonies in America from 1807 to 1819. The historical facts are mostly taken from Spanish official reports, though for the most part denuded of the scandalous exaggerations appearing in those reports; they appear in concise form, in good order, and in somewhat elegant language. But the bitter expressions and marked partiality of the author for Spanish domination render his statements suspicious. He is a strenuous defender of the Spanish king's divine right to rule both in Europe and America, the interests and rights of communities being ignored. According to his doctrine, the people who were fighting in America for their independence were rebels, ingrates, and infamous; indeed, his vocabulary hardly furnished epithets sufficiently strong to apply to them. However, in the midst of all this, he throws light upon many dark points that might have remained so forever.
- ↑ Gaz. de Mex., 1818, ix. 635-6; Mendíbil, Resúmen Hist., 364-70. Pagola was a resident of Salvatierra in Guanajuato, of which town he had been a regidor. Bermeo was formerly a notary of Sultepec, and secretary of the congress before its dissolution at Tehuacan. Liceaga, Adic. y Rectiftc., 315.
- ↑ Arago was a Frenchman who had accompanied Mina, and was said to be a brother of the celebrated astronomer of that name. Id., 309.
orated by Robinson, Mem. Mex. Revol, ii. 170-1, 180. In 1820 he was still comandante general of Michoacan, and being aware of the royal amnesty decreed March 8th of that year, on the reëstablishment of the constitution, though directed by the viceroy to await a decision of the auditor de guerra on the subject, he at once set free all the political prisoners held in Valladolid, and reported having done so. Alaman, Hist. Méj., iv. 700-1.
