Guadalajara and Valladolid commanded the seizure of suspects and caused them to be stabbed at night, in remote places, that they might not, by their cries, cause a disturbance. In this way six hundred innocent persons perished; and he advised the leader, Hermosillo, to do the same in El Rosario and Cosalá. Morelos, after the battles of Chilapa, Izucar, Oaxaca, etc., shot all his prisoners without mercy; and Osorio did the same in the valley of Mexico, García in Bajio, and all the other insurgent leaders, though usually in the way of reprisal.
In the first insurrection, military ferocity developed to a degree only seen in Asiatic and African wars, without the least regard for humanity and with systematic neglect of the rights of nations. The prisoners surrendered with Sarda in Soto la Marina, for example, were taken to San Juan de Ulúa, on foot, in pairs, shackled together, and in the fortress, were entombed in humid, dark, pestilential, dungeons, hot from the tropical sun of the coast lands. This constant corporal subjection, led to mutual hatreds among the unhappy beings, since the natural necessities of the two members of a couple were rarely simultaneous; and in order to satisfy thirst or any other need it was necessary to beg permission of one’s companion; which led to constant bickerings between them and occasioned sport for the jailors. Orrantia personally struck General Mina, when he was taken prisoner, with the flat of his sword. To hasten the surrender of the Fort of Sombrero, the same leader left one hundred corpses, of those who had fallen in the fruitless assaults, unburied, with the object of causing pestilence. The infirm and wounded of Los Remedios were burned in the building which served them as hospital, and those who attempted to escape were driven back at the point of the bayonet. Liñan forced two hundred prisoners to demolish the embankments of the fortress of their own party; and then tied them to tree trunks in the forest that they might be shot for target practice. Ordoñez in Jilotepec shot one hundred and twenty-three prisoners, including wounded and children, by thirties, at the edge of a ditch, in the Cerro del Calvario; first causing the wounded to be carried thither on the shoulders of the uninjured.