At the cry of halt, given by the commander of the troops drawn up upon the Plaza, the monks separated to the right and left, without interrupting their funeral chant, and the condemned remained alone in the middle of the space left free for them. These men were patriots, who had attempted to overthrow the established government, in order to substitute another, the more broad and democratic basis of which would be, as they thought, in better accordance with ideas of progress and the welfare of the nation. These patriots belonged to the first families of the country.
The population of Santiago viewed with sullen despair the death of the men whom they considered as martyrs. It is even probable that a rising in their favour would have taken place, if General Don Poncho Bustamente, the minister at war, had not drawn out a military force capable of imposing upon the most determined, and obliging them to be silent spectators of the execution of men whom they could not save, but whom they entertained a fierce hope of avenging at a future day.
The condemned alighted; they piously knelt, and confessed themselves to the monks of Mercy nearest to them, whilst a platoon of fifty soldiers took up a position within twenty paces of them. When their confession was completed, they rose up bravely, and taking each other by the hand, ranged themselves in a single line in front of the soldiers appointed to put them to death. In spite, however, of the great numbers of troops assembled on the Plaza, an ominous fermentation prevailed among the people. The crowd rocked about in all directions. Murmurs of sinister augury and curses, pronounced aloud against the agents of power, seemed to remind the latter that they had better finish the affair at once, if they did not wish to have their victims torn from their hands.
General Bustamente, who calmly and stoically presided over this dismal ceremony, smiled with disdain at this expression of popular disapprobation. He waved his sword over his head and commanded "right about face," which was executed with the rapidity of lightning. The troops faced the insurgents on all sides; the front rank pointing their muskets at the citizens crowded together before them, whilst the others appeared to take aim at the balconies encumbered with people. This was followed by so dead a silence, that not a word was lost of the sentence read by the proper officer to the patriots—a sentence which condemned them to be shot as traitors, or accomplices in a conspiracy designed to overthrow the constituted government, and plunge their country into anarchy.
The conspirators listened to their sentence with silent firmness; but when the officer, who trembled in every limb, had finished reading it, they all cried, as with one voice,
"Viva la Patria! Viva la Libertad!"
The General gave a signal, and a loud rolling of the drums drowned the voices of the condemned. A discharge of musketry resounded like a clap of thunder, and the ten martyrs fell, once again shouting their cry of liberty, a cry doomed to find an echo in the hearts of their terrified compatriots.
The troops filed off, with shouldered arms, ensigns flying, and band at their head, past the dead bodies, and regained their barracks. When the General had disappeared with his escort, and the troops had left the Plaza, the people rushed in a mass towards the spot where the martyrs of their cause lay in a confused heap. Every one wished to offer them a last farewell, and to swear over their bodies to avenge them, or to fall in their turn.
At length, by degrees, the crowd became less compact, the groups dispersed, the last torches were extinguished, and the spot where, scarce an hour before, an awful drama had been accomplished, was left completely deserted. A considerable time elapsed before any noise disturbed the solemn silence which brooded over the Plaza Mayor.
Suddenly, a heavy sigh escaped from the heap of bodies, and a pale head, disfigured by the blood and dirt which stained it, arose slowly from this human slaughterhouse, pushing aside with difficulty the carcasses which had covered it. The victim, who, by a miracle, survived this bloody hecatomb, cast an anxious look around him, and passing his hand over his brow, which was bathed in a dark perspiration, said vehemently—