His father, General Leonardo Bravo, since the month of May prisoner of the Royalists, had been condemned to death in Mexico—and to the same fate were destined José María Piedras and Luciano Pérez, apprehended at the same time, after the sally from Cuautla. The viceroy had suspended the execution of the sentence, in the hope that the prisoner might influence his sons, Nicolás and his brothers, to desert the files of the Independents and to ask for pardon, under which condition he offered him his life. But the youthful leader, although authorized by Morelos to save his father by accepting the pardon offered by the viceroyal government, believed he ought not to trust in the pledges given, since he remembered that some time before, the brothers Orduñas were victims of the Royalist Colonel José Antonio Andrade, who had promised them pardon but, when he had them in his power, commanded their execution.
Morelos then wrote to the viceroy, Vanegas, offering the surrender of eight hundred prisoners, mostly Spanish, as the price of Leonardo Bravo’s life. The viceroyal government, in turn, refused this proposition and on September 13, 1812, General Bravo and his fellow prisoners, Piedras and Pérez, suffered, in Mexico, the penalty of the garrote, the former displaying, in his last moments, that calm and valor, of which he had given so many proofs in battle. In communicating this sad news to Nicolás Bravo, Morelos ordered him to put all the Spanish prisoners he held—some three hundred in number—to the knife. Let us hear the hero himself narrate his noble action, with the simplicity of one of Plutarch’s characters:
“In effect, he said to me in the proposition made to me in Cuernavaca, that the Viceroy Vanegas offered me amnesty and the life of my father, if I would yield myself.... When Morelos was in Tehuacan he appointed me General-in-chief of the forces, which were operating in the province of Vera Cruz.... I commenced to fight him (Labaqui) and, after an action lasting forty-eight hours, gained a complete victory, making two hundred