guards and battalion of provincial infantry were hastily formed into line, while the principal citizens and the commercial class, hurriedly seizing their weapons, rushed with crowrds of the populace to the buildings of the intendencia. All was confusion and terror; the stores were closed and house doors barred; the plazas were deserted by the hucksters; frightened women hurried along the thoroughfares for their homes; while horsemen at full speed spread wider the consternation as they galloped in different directions through the streets with orders from headquarters.[1] Riaño explained to the assembled throng the cause of the alarm, and the populace expressed a desire to engage the enemy,[2] believing that the insurrection was a demonstration in favor of the French.[3] At two o'clock in the afternoon the intendente convoked a junta of the ayuntamiento, the prelates of the religious orders, and the principal citizens, at which he expressed his apprehension that the danger was great, but declared that he was determined to take every defensive measure possible.[4]
After some consultation it was decided to defend the city, and during the day barricades were thrown up at the entrances of the principal streets. Spaniards and Americans—as the creoles and Indians are now called[5]—were assembled in arms, and outlying de-
- ↑ Hernandez y Dávalos, Col. Doc., ii. 277.
- ↑ 'Los que segun el general entusiasmo si entraron en aquel dia hubieran perecido sin remedio.' Bustamante, Cuad. Hist., i. 23.
- ↑ Liceaga, Adic. y Rectific., 73-4.
- ↑ The ayuntamiento of Guanajuato in February 1811 states to the viceroy that several of its members proposed to Riaño that he should immediately march against Hidalgo with the provincial battalion, which numbered more than 400 men, and with such armed citizens as could be mustered; and that had this measure been adopted the revolution would have been nipped in the bud. Guan. Pub. Vind. Ayunt., 10-11. Brigadier Miguel Costansó, the commissioner appointed to report on the matter, approved of Riaño's action in refusing to accede to the proposal, by doing which he would have left the capital of his province defenceless. Id., 71-2. Liceaga, with tedious length, also supports the intendente. Adic. y Rectific., 71-89. Alaman, on the contrary, considers that the proposed movement would have been the best that could be adopted, and supplies the additional information that Major Berzábal was one of those who proposed it. Hist. Mej., i. 407.
- ↑ We have here the most proper use, except as applied to the aborigines, of the many-sided and generally misappropriated word Americans. In treat-
