favorably are their proposals regarded by some of Trujillo's officers, that they induce him no less than three times to hold a parley with the enemy in front of his line of infantry. Hostilities, meanwhile, have ceased. Friendly and specious are the words which Trujillo uses, and at each conference the insurgents, gathering in crowded ranks about their spokesman, draw nearer and nearer. At the third parley he has enticed the unsuspecting revolutionists close up to his bayonets; then he throws off the mask and orders his men to fire.[1] The volley which follows stretches more than sixty victims to his perfidy dead upon the ground.[2]
This treacherous act infuriated the insurgents, and the battle was renewed with increased vigor. Trujillo, however, maintained his position until half-past five in the evening, when, having lost one third of his force in killed and wounded, among whom were many of his best officers, his ammunition, moreover, being wellnigh exhausted, he decided to force his way through the enemy in his rear. His position was indeed no longer tenable. His ranks were being decimated by the insurgents' artillery, his troops, worn out with fatigue, were without provisions; while numbers of the enemy were hastening to reënforce those who were waiting to intercept his retreat. Abandoning his cannon, therefore, he put himself at the head
- ↑ His own words are: 'Los acerque hasta bien inmediato de mis bayonetas, y recogiendo el teniente coronel D. Juan Antonio Lopez un estandarte de N. S. de Guadalupe que venia en las sacrílegas manos de estos infames, mandè la voz de fuego à la infanteria que tenia.' Gaz. de Mex., 1810, i. 926.
- ↑ Bustamante, Cuad. Hist., i. 82. According to Liceaga, a kind of armistice had been established, during which Aldama and Jimenez sent in proposals to the native-born soldiers and officers to join the independent cause, at the same time guaranteeing the lives of Trujillo and the Spaniards who were with him. Whether this was done with the approbation of Allende or not the author does not know. Adic. y Rectlfic., 140. Trujillo, as is sometimes the case with base natures, instead of seeing anything disgraceful in his act, glories in it. It was, however, severely condemned even in the Semanario Patriotico de Cádiz, no. 45, of Feb. 14, 1811, in the following words: 'Hacer fuego sobre estos rebeldes al tiempo de estar parlamentando con ellos, . . .ni fué justo, ni honesto, ni político.' The defence urged is that the insurgents were not sincere in their offers, which were made only for the purpose of hemming in the royalists, which is pure subterfuge. Gaz. de Mex., 1811, ii. 348-9.
