strong reënforcement. Joined by Guerrero, Bravo unsuccessfully endeavored to oppose Armijo's advance, and exhausted by suffering, retired to a secluded rancho in the sierra, there to attend to his grievous bodily injuries. But his ill-luck pursued him. Armijo, having discovered the place of his retreat from a prisoner whom he captured a few days afterward, suddenly surrounded the place on the 22d; and Bravo, Padre Talavera, Colonel Vazquez, and some others fell into his power.[1]
The prisoners were conducted to Cuernavaca. The lives of the ecclesiastics were not in immediate danger, as formal proceedings were ordered to be instituted against them; but Bravo and the other captives were summarily condemned by the viceroy to be put to death pursuant to the edicts of Venegas and Calleja.[2] Armijo's son, however, hastened to Mexico with a petition, signed by his father and brother officers, that Bravo's life might be spared; and Apodaca, inclined to mercy, and considering the revolution virtually ended, revoked the death sentence, and issued another order commanding the secular prisoners also to be put on their trial. As the viceroy placed the reprieve in Armijo's hands, he told him that Bravo's life now depended on his speed, and at breakneck pace, regardless of self or horse, Armijo sped on his return. He arrived at Cuernavaca only just in time to stop the execution. In the proceedings which followed, every effort was made to spare the lives of the prisoners; and though Rayon was condemned to death on July 2, 1818, Apodaca suspended the execution of the sentence by decree of September 30th, in the hope that some loop-hole of escape might be found. When a general pardon was proclaimed on the occasion of the king's marriage with a princess of Saxony, the viceroy was not slow to avail himself of it. Accordingly, in
