CHAPTER III.
1816–1821.
APODACA VICEROY.—SPANISH CONSTITUTION OF 1812 PROCLAIMED IN MEXICO.—CONDITION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY.—VICTORIA—MINA LANDS AT SOTO LA MARINA—HIS EFFORTS—LOS REMEDIOS—GUERILLAS—HE IS SHOT.—PADRE TORRES—ITURBIDE—APODOCA SELECTS HIM TO ESTABLISH ABSOLUTISM.—ITURBIDE PROMULGATES THE PLAN OF IGUA LA—ARMY OF THE THREE GUARANTIES.
Don Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, Conde del Venadito,
LXI. Viceroy of New Spain.
1816–1821.
With the death of Morelos the hopes of the insurgents were crushed and their efforts paralyzed. This extraordinary man, so fertile in resources, and blending in himself the mingled power of priest and general, had secured the confidence of the masses, who found among his officers, none upon whom they could rally with perfect reliance. Besides this, the congress which had been conducted safely to Tehuacan by Bravo, was summarily dissolved by General Teran, who considered it an "inconvenient appendage of a camp." We cannot but regard this act of the general as unwise at a moment, when the insurgents lost such a commander as Morelos. By the dissolution of the congress the nation abandoned another point of reunion; and from that moment, the cause began to fail in all parts of the country.
The Constitution, sanctioned by the Cortes in 1812, had, meanwhile, been proclaimed in Mexico, on the 29th of September of that year; and, whilst the people felt somewhat freer under it, they were enabled, by the liberty of the press, which lasted sixty-six days, to expend their new-born patriotism on paper instead of in battles. These popular excitements, served to sustain the spirits of the people, notwithstanding the losses of the army; so that when Apodaca, assumed the reins of the viceroyalty in 1816, the country was still republican at heart, though all the insurgent generals were either captured or hidden in the wilderness, whilst their disbanded forces, in most instances, had accepted the indulto, or pardon, proffered for their return to allegiance.
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The remaining officers of Morelos spread themselves over the country, as there was no longer any centre of action; and each of them, occupying a different district, managed, for a while, to support revolutionary fervor throughout the neighborhood. "Guerrero occupied the west coast, where he maintained himself until the year 1821, when he joined Iturbide. Rayon commanded in the vicinity of Tlalpujahua, where he successively maintained two fortified camps on the Cerro del Gallo, and on Coporo. Teran held the district of Tehuacan, in Puebla. Bravo was a wanderer throughout the country. The Bajio was tyrannized over by the Padre Torres, while Guadalupe Victoria occupied the important province of Vera Cruz." [61]
The chief spite of the royalists,—who hunted these republican heroes, among the forests and mountain fastnesses of Mexico, as the Covenanters had been hunted in Scotland,—seems to have fallen upon the last named of these patriot generals. Victoria's haunt was chiefly in the passes near the Puente del Rey, now the Puente Nacional, or National bridge, on the road leading from the port of Vera Cruz to the capital. He was prepared to act either with a large force of guerillas, or, with a simple body guard; and, knowing the country perfectly, he was enabled to descend from his fastnesses among the rocks, and thus to cut off, almost entirely, all communication between the coast and the metropolis. At length, superior forces were sent to pursue him with relentless fury. His men gradually deserted when the villages that formerly supplied them with food refused further contributions. Efforts were made to seduce him from his principles and to ensure his loyalty. But he refused the rank and rewards offered by the viceroy as the price of his submission. At length he found himself alone in his resistance, in the midst of countrymen, who, if they would no longer fight under his banner, were too faithful to betray him. Yet he would not abandon the cause, but, taking his sword and a small stock of raiment, departed for the mountains, where he wandered for thirty months, living on the fruits of the forest and gnawing the bones of dead animals found in their recesses. Nor did he emerge from this impenetrable concealment, until two faithful Indians, whom he had known in prosperous days, sought him out with great difficulty, and, communicating the joyous intelligence of the revolution of 1821, brought him back once more to their villages where he was received with enthusiastic reverence as a patriot raised from the dead. When discovered by the Indians he was worn to a skeleton, covered with hair, and clad in a tattered wrapper; but, amid all his distresses and losses, he had preserved and treasured his loyalty to the cause of liberty and his untarnished sword!