Chapter the Nineteenth.
| "I long To hear the story of your life, which must Take the ear strangely." The Tempest. |
"Welcome, Alonzo, and Pedro, and Cosmo, in the quarters of freedom!" cried Jago to the servants, as, with outstretched hand, he advanced a few steps to meet them. "A welcome to ye all!"
"Maldito herege!" cried Alonzo, bringing his carbine to his shoulder. "Dog! do you dare"——
The other servants joyfully took the proffered hand. The arrieros bowed before the man who had so lately been one of themselves, with marks of deep reverence, which were only stopped by a significant sign from their cidevant comrade.
"Always the same man, Alonzo," said the captain with a contemptuous laugh; "just fit to say 'beso las manos a su señoria,' and to cringe and bow before counts and marquises. But it is ill speaking with dogs of that kind," added he, as he again turned to the young nobleman. "Yes, señor," he continued, "Hidalgo was a true man. He it was who first put me out of conceit with slavery of all kinds. 'Tis just sixteen months and three weeks to-morrow, since the shell burst. Hidalgo was keeping the tertulia with his musicians—it was nine in the evening. In came Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga, as white as ashes; he had ridden for dear life from Valladolid, where Iturriaga, in order to secure his place in heaven, had consigned his sworn brothers to destruction, by confessing every thing to Father Gil, who in his turn had confessed to the Audiencia. The corregidor of Valladolid had been immediately arrested as one of the heads of the conspiracy, and luckily this had reached the ears of Allende and Aldama, who hastened to horse, and came as fast as spur and whip could bring them, to take counsel of the only man who could help them in their extremity. And counsel he gave them. He and the captain deliberated for one hour, and then out he came, brisk and bold, and declared himself ready for the fight. Off he started to the prison, put a pistol to the jailer's head, and compelled him to give up the keys and set loose the prisoners. Allende went to the houses of the Gachupins and took away their money, giving them acknowledgments for it. All this was done without blood being spilled. Only one Gachupin, who behaved roughly to Hidalgo, had been slightly wounded. The Indians, Metises, and Zambos, rallied round their cura, and away they all went to Miguel el Grande and Zelaya, where an infantry regiment and four squadrons of cavalry joined them. On to Guanaxato, where another battalion came over. Todos diabolos!" continued Jago, "Hidalgo had now more than fifty thousand men at his back; but what were they? Three thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry among a legion of Indians. The soldiers were lost amid the brown multitude, like flies in a pail of pulque. The fifty thousand Indians were shoeless and half-naked, armed with clubs and slings, or at most with machetes, which might do well enough to cut up tasajo,[38] but were a deal too short to be measured with Spanish bayonets. Capital fellows were they for plundering and murdering, but ill fitted for a fight. In Miguel el Grande, in San Felipe, in Zelaya, the Gachupins had been cut off to a man. That would not have mattered much, but the gente irracionale had included the Creoles with the Spaniards. In Guanaxato, it was still worse. I joined Hidalgo just in time for that dance. We were received with open arms by the Léperos and Indians, but the Creoles and Gachupins had shut themselves up in the Alhondega. This was the first resistance our mad mob had met with, and they rushed like raging savages to attack the granary. They were right well received, and a desperate fight began. At last a giant of a tenatero found an enormous flat stone, put it on his head as he might have done his sombrero, and held it on with his right hand, while with a lighted torch in his left, he set fire to the door of the Alhondega. A way was soon opened to the assailants, who rushed in over the smouldering fragments of the door. In a few minutes fourteen hundred Spaniards and Creoles, with wives and children, were stabbed, struck down, and torn in pieces. The Indians waded in blood and treasure. The latter they brought out by baskets full; and the fools might be seen changing doubloons for copper money, taking them for half-dollar bits.
"About four thousand Indians had joined us out of the city, and thirty thousand out of the district, of Guanaxato. Hidalgo was at the summit of his glory. A council of war had named him generalissimo; Allende was his second in command; Ballesa, Ximenes, and Aldama, lieutenant-generals; Abasala, Ocon, and the brothers Martinez were brigadiers. Hidalgo sang a Te Deum, and divided the army into regiments, each of a thousand men, and gave regular pay; to the officers three dollars a-day, the cavalry one dollar, and the rest half a dollar. He himself appeared in field-marshal's uniform, blue with white facings, the medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe upon his breast. It would have been wiser, however, to have named him archbishop, and made Allende general-in-chief. Hidalgo was a capital priest, but a thorough bad general, and could not even maintain discipline in his army. In his first anger at the Creoles for keeping aloof from the revolution, he had included them in the cry of 'Mueran los Gachupinos!' and now his eighty thousand Indians had taken their cue from him, and murdered, and ravaged, and burned, wherever they came, like incarnate devils. In this manner, the Creoles had been rendered our inveterate enemies—more the pity. My late mother used always, when she went on a pilgrimage to Guadalupe, to burn two tapers, a white and a black one—the first for the blessed Virgin, the second for the devil. 'There is no knowing,' she used to say, 'what one may come to.'"
The interesting nature of Jago's narrative, and his originality of manner, had by this time riveted the attention of Don Manuel and his attendants.
"When we left Guanaxato," continued the ex-muleteer, "we were more than eighty thousand men, but only three thousand four hundred of us were armed. The gente irracionale, in their mad rage, had destroyed even the muskets of the Gachupins. Our numbers, however, still kept increasing, and Hidalgo continued his march in triumph. On the 27th October we were in Tolucca. On the 28th we met Truxillo at Las Cruces, and scattered him and his fifteen hundred men to the winds of heaven. Two days later we were in sight of Mexico."
The captain paused. His delivery during the latter part of the narrative had been hurried and broken; he was evidently much excited by the recapitulation of the stirring scenes in which he had mingled. With visible effort he resumed—