END OF THE PROLOGUE.
[1] The person to whom we allude is at this moment in Paris, and could, if necessary, confirm our statement.
[2] However incredible this fact may appear, we repeat that it is strictly true.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE ADVENTURERS.
The daring revolt of the Curé Hidalgo opened against the Spanish government that era of sanguinary struggles and obstinate contests which, thirteen years later, on February 24, 1821 was fated to end in the proclamation of Independence by Iturbide at Iguala. This proclamation compelled the Viceroy, Apodaca, to abdicate, and the Spaniards finally to abandon these magnificent countries which they had ruled with a hand of iron for more than three centuries. But during these thirteen years what blood had been shed, what crimes committed! All Mexico was covered with ruins. The unburied corpses became the prey of wild beasts; towns taken by storm burned like lighthouses, and the flames were extinguished in the blood of their massacred inhabitants.
The Mexicans, badly armed and disciplined, learning through their very defeats the art of beating their conquerors, struggled with the energy of despair; incessantly defeated by the old Spanish bands, but never discouraged, deriving strength from their weakness and their firm desire to be free, they ever stood upright before their implacable foes, who might kill them, but were powerless to subjugate them.
In no country of the New World did the Spaniards offer so long and desperate a resistance to revolution as in Mexico, for Spain was aware that once this inexhaustible source of wealth was lost, her influence and prestige in the Old World would be utterly destroyed. Hence it happened that the Spaniards quitted Mexico as they entered it, on ruins and piles of corpses. And their power, inaugurated by Hernando Cortés by the light of arson, and amid the cries of the victims, slipped in the blood of millions of murdered Indians, and was stifled by their bodies. It was a hideous government, the offspring of violence and treachery, and, after three centuries, violence and treachery overthrew it. It was a grand and sublime lesson which Providence gave the despots through the inflexible logic of history, and yet despots have ever refused to understand it.