This conduct proved that much of their boasted loyalty and supposed ability had been shams, that what they really meant was to enjoy the wealth and power, that the cause of the Creoles was not one of subjects against their king, but one of subjects against subjects, and that only force could settle the issue. Dreams of independence immediately crystallized into schemes of insurrection.[1]
Foremost among the conspirators was Hidalgo, commonly described by the Mexicans as a Washington, but in reality a kindly, public-spirited, mockingly irreligious and frankly immoral priest. His plans were discovered; and so on the sixteenth of September, 1810, in the desperate hope of saving himself and his associates, he called upon the Indians, rabid with fanaticism and hatred of their oppressors, to rise against the Spanish, who, he declared, had now allied themselves with infidel Frenchmen against their holy religion. What followed was like the bursting of reservoirs filled with blood and fire. Scarcely a trace of statesmanship was exhibited by the leaders; most of their disciples acted like fiends let loose; and their enemies did little better. Soon many common priests, many Creole military men, and not a few other persons who felt sore under the heel of wealth and power and were ambitious to rise, embraced the cause, and so many of the rest sympathized with Hidalgo's demand for independence, that probably by good management he could have succeeded; but against a campaign like his the substantial elements of society found it necessary to combine, and when the heads of the insurrection were betrayed, captured and shot in 1811, little of it remained except horrible memories and lessons in conspiracy, treachery, hate, folly, wholesale destruction and wholesale murder.[2]
In a new form, however, the cause of independence lived on. Instead of wild hordes crying, "Death to the Gachupines!" there were now for the most part stealthy but merciless bands of guerillas, and the government soldiers followed close behind them in daring and ruthlessness. On the coast near Vera Cruz an officer named Antonio López de Santa Anna won a captaincy about this time by hunting down insurgents, and on the plateau a handsome, dashing man with brown hair and reddish sidewhiskers named Agustín de Itúrbide, who had negotiated with Hidalgo about accepting the lieutenant generalship of the
