In 1815 this Congress decided it would like to move to Tehuacan, and assigned to Morelos the task of escorting it thither with all the troops he held at his disposition. This strange march set forth in mystery and concealment on the 29th of September; but in spite of the stratagems of Morelos, the royalist forces discovered its route, and intercepted it. Morelos gave front to the enemy, that the honorable deputies and members of his Congress might have a chance to escape. His force was routed, he himself betrayed by a deserter.
Morelos was taken to Mexico; the ecclesiastical tribunes covered him with ignominy, and he was handed over to the military authorities. By them he was at once sentenced to death, and on the 22d of December, 1815, he was shot in the small town San Cristóbal Ecatepec, dying with the bravery of a hero.
This was the end of the dark period, called the second, of Mexican independence. Its life was in its chief, the daring, patriotic Morelos.
There is no doubt that Morelos had many of the great qualities for a successful leader of men. He was born in poverty, with no antecedents of greatness; untaught, even in the rudiments of learning, until he was thirty; up to that time patiently driving mules along the steep paths of his native state. Whoever has watched the slow, though sure, progress of these animals, and the enforced loitering in the pace of him who accompanies them, must be impressed with the idea that patience is a virtue likely to be developed in such training.
Great ideas then pervaded society. It is probable that Morelos was more than dazzled by the brilliancy of Napoleon's career. Military success inflamed many hearts and turned many heads in those days. There was the making of a military commander in the stuff of which Morelos was compounded. With the opportunities of Napoleon for creating large armies, well equipped with all the appurtenances of warfare developed by the skill and science of the time, Morelos might have arrived at his object, the liberty of his country.
There is no reason to suppose that a personal ambition animated him. He made himself general-in-chief of his army, but that was a necessary step for the furtherance of his designs. His fixed idea was that of an independent Mexico. So little was he tempted by the trials of prosperity, it is impossible to say whether success, the sparkling foam of flattery, would have turned his head, as they did so many others, in the supreme hours of attainment.
As it was, he died the death of a hero, leaving behind him a reputation pure and unsullied by the taint of personal ambition.
His career was in no sense a failure. The object of his sacrifice was achieved in effect; the independence of Mexico, although not within his own grasp, was sure. Another idea of great importance was impressed upon the Spanish in Mexico, the Spaniards in the mother country and the world looking on: that the blood of the native Mexican was capable of great deeds, that the descendants of the Aztecs were something better than peones, slaves without the name. The lower class of the population of Anahuac raised their heads and listened. Low murmurs, as of a distant ocean, told them that the tide of their destiny was turned, that the day was coming when it would break with force against the bulwarks built up against it.
Morelos could die content. He had achieved for himself no proud seat on the throne of the Montezumas; he asked no such reward.
He had forcibly impressed upon his country the ideas first given to him and them by the Curate Hidalgo. The impression was not washed out, but made fast by the blood he caused to be shed, and his own.