Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/740

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TRIUMPH OF THE REVOLUTION.

On the 2d of July he assaulted the town, and sustained so serious a repulse that he retreated to Cordoba, where in his mortification he fulminated a vow of destruction against Vera Cruz. We will there leave him for the present, to take up Bravo's operations.

This chief, after the disaster at Tepeaca, had moved from Zacatlan against Tulancingo, whence Concha, who had been sent to the support of Querétaro, precipitately fled. At Tulancingo Bravo was joined by Guadalupe Victoria, who had emerged from his concealment in the mountains of Vera Cruz, and had issued a proclamation at Santa Fé on the 20th of April, exhorting his countrymen to maintain union and constancy in support of the new movement.[1] His appeal was responded to with alacrity, old insurgents rallied round him, and he soon induced the greater portion of the province to declare for independence. Bravo now joined Herrera and laid siege to Puebla. The attempts on the part of the viceroy to relieve the beleaguered city were feeble and ineffective. Concha, though sent with a large force, after executing a number of ridiculous movements,[2] returned to the capital, and on the 17th of July Llano, who refused to surrender the city to any other than the chief of the revolution, agreed to an armistice. Meantime Iturbide, after the capture of Querétaro, had moved forward against Mexico, entering Cuernavaca on the 23d of June. Thence he turned his course to Puebla, and on his arrival at Cholula, Llano capitulated.[3] Itur-

  1. Bustamante supplies a copy of his proclamation. Cuad. Hist., v. 184-5. Ward relates that the news of Iturbide's declaration was conveyed to Victoria by two faithful Indians, who had been the last to leave him. They employed six weeks in their search for him, and when at last Victoria discovered himself to one of them, the Indian was so 'terrified at seeing a phantom covered with hair, emaciated, and clothed only with a cotton wrapper, advancing upon him with a sword in his hand,' that he took to flight. It was only on hearing himself called repeatedly by his name that he recovered his composure sufficiently to recognize his old general. Ward's Mex., i. 231-4.
  2. In derision, the nickname of 'la trajinera' was given him; a term applied to the canoes which trafficked between the villages on the margins of the lakes near the capital. Alaman, Hist. Méj., v. 254.
  3. The terms of the capitulation were agreed upon by colonels Horbegoso and