CHAPTER XXVII.
VICEROY APODACA AND HIS VIGOROUS MEASURES.
1816-1817.
Causes Which Sustained the Revolution — Review of Calleja's Rule — Character of the New Viceroy Apodaca — Measures to Gain Adhesion — Combined Movement against Tehuacan — Its Siege and Surrender — Deplorable Weakness of Teran — Vera Cruz is Swept by the Royalists — Their Successes in Mizteca — The Council of Jaujilla — Strife in Michoacan — Tarnished Reputation of Ramon Rayon — The Five Years' Siege of Mescala is Ended — Treachery of Vargas — Movements in the North — The Declining Insurrection Centres in Guanajuato — Apodaca's Success.
It may have struck the reader as peculiar that the excellent campaign plans of Calleja, of concentrated and energetic action against the revolutionary leaders in detail, which had succeeded so well during the first year of his rule, should not have met with more general success since then. This certainly failed not to be pointed out by the enemies of the viceroy, with hints more or less sinister about personal interest in maintaining the war. There appears little doubt that he could, with prompt and efficient avail of advantages gained by his well disciplined troops, have long before this overthrown leader after leader, as he had lately Osorno, and reduced the insurrection to a far smaller compass. One reason for the failure, or neglect, lay in the lack of subordination among his officers, whom we repeatedly find committing blunders without being brought to account, and indulging in exactions, speculations, and outrages, at which Calleja and authorities under him winked complacently, mainly, it was
