and it was mainly through their co-operation that the
three battles with the rebels had been won. The Spaniards, however,
instead of being grateful for the assistance they had received from the
Creoles, persisted in looking upon the latter as a pack of unlucky
rebels, whose treason had not even been rendered respectable by success.

Enraged at the revolt that had threatened to deprive their king of his
supremacy, and themselves of the plunder of the richest country in the
world, the Spaniards applied themselves to obviate the possibility of
any future rebellion, by pretty much the same measures that a bee-hunter
takes to secure himself against the stings of the bees before seizing
their honey, namely, by fire and the axe. Twenty-four cities, both large
and small, and innumerable villages, were razed to the ground during the
first eighteen months of the revolution, and their inhabitants utterly
exterminated, as a punishment for having favoured the insurgents. Even
then, these bigoted and barbarous servants of legitimacy were not
satisfied with this wholesale slaughter. Through the medium of the
church, and in the name of the divine Trinity and of the blessed Virgin,
they proclaimed a solemn amnesty, and those among the credulous and
unfortunate rebels who availed themselves of it were mercilessly
massacred. This infamous and blasphemous piece of bad faith rendered any
pacification of the country impossible, and went far towards uniting the
whole population against its contemptible and blood-thirsty tyrants.

Amongst the adventurers who had joined Hidalgo on his triumphant march
from Guanaxato to Mexico, was his old friend and schoolfellow, Morellos,
rector of Nucupetaro. Hidalgo received him as a brother, and
comnissioned him to raise the standard of revolt in the south-western
provinces of Mexico. Morellos, who was then sixty years of age, repaired
to his appointed post with only five followers. In Petalan he was joined
by twenty negroes, to whom he promised their freedom; and soon
afterwards several Creoles ranged themselves under his banner. Unlike
the unfortunate Hidalgo, he began the war on a small scale, and after
the fashion of those guerillas who in Spain had done so much mischief to
the French armies. Gradually enlarging the sphere of his operations, he
had, during a sixteen months' warfare, gained several not unimportant
advantages over the Spanish generals. Report represented him as a man of
grave and earnest