uniform and general's sash.[1] The joy of the reactionists was unbounded, and was manifested in salutes, illuminations, etc.; the victory serving Miramon to cover up his error and fiasco of Vera Cruz. Amid that rejoicing, and the chanting of a te deum by the clergy, Miramon issued a written order to Marquez to shoot all his prisoners of the rank of officers. Marquez, being a man of very limited education, regardless of the duties of humanity, had gone into the war prompted by fanaticism and personal ambition. Shooting prisoners was perfectly in order in his estimation, and consequently he fulfilled Miramon's order to the letter, and even went beyond; for either himself, or those to whom he intrusted its execution, committed on that day and night crimes that filled the world with horror. Several students of the medical college had come out to attend the wounded of either band, and while fulfilling this mission were dragged in the darkness of night from the bedsides of their patients to the place where the prisoners were being shot, and immolated with the others. Both Miramon and Marquez disclaimed responsibility for the outrage, shifting it one upon the other.[2]
- ↑ As acknowledged in his circular published in El Pigmeo, and reproduced in La Estrella de Occid., June 24, 1859.
- ↑ The number of students thus massacred was eleven, all of them members of good families. The following names have been recorded: Juan Doval, José M. Sanchez, Gabriel Rivera, Ildefonso Portugal, Juan Diaz Covarrubias, and Alberto Abad. Another young man, Manuel Mateos, recently admitted to the bar, was also shot. I find also among the executed Agustin Jáuregui, Eugenio Quisen, S. Fischer, Manuel Neira, and captains Ignacio Sierra and José Lopez. Rivera, Hist. Jalapa, v. 203-4; Id., Gob. de Méx., ii. 559. Minister Ocampo on the 23d of April addressed a circular, which says: Se cebaron bárbaramente con los heridos, con los pocos disperses que aprehendieron, y aun con los cirujanos. Upwards of 100 persons were sacrificed, 'among them several of very tender age.' Archivo Mex., Col. Ley., iv. 23; Dublan and Lozano, Leg. Mex., viii. 667-9; North Am. Review, ciii. 113; Lefêvre, Doc. Maximiliano, i. 26-7; Lefêvre, Le Mexique, 81-8, 93; Marquez, Refutacion, 24-7. Marquez, in a manifesto published in New York in 1869, says that he gave orders not to harm the prisoners, and at his first interview with Miramon told him so. After their separation at the city, he, Marquez, went back to Tacubaya, where soon after Lieut-col Flores, an aid of the president, handed him, in the presence of many, an order that read as follows, translated into English: 'General-in-chief of the national army. Most excellent sir: This very afternoon, and under your excellency's strictest responsibility, you will cause to be shot all the prisoners of the rank of oficiales y jefes, reporting to me the number of those whom this lot has befallen. God and law. Mexico, April
