JULIO ZÁRATE.

prisoners, whom I sent under escort to the province of Vera Cruz, and returned with all my wounded to Tehuacan to give account of the action of arms confided to me. In the interview which I had with Morelos, he told me that he was about to send a communication to the viceroy, Vanegas, offering him, for my father’s life, eight hundred Spanish prisoners, and that he would inform me of the result. I immediately returned to the Province of Vera Cruz, where, five days after leaving Tehuacan, I had another favorable action near Puente Nacional, attacking a convoy, which was proceeding to Jalapa with supplies; I took ninety prisoners and betook myself to Medellin, where I established my headquarters and from where I threatened the city of Vera Cruz, with the three thousand men who were under my command. After a few days Morelos notified me that the proposition which he had made to the viceroy had not been accepted and that he (the viceroy) had, on the contrary, commanded that my father be put to the garrote and that he was already dead; he commanded me at the same time to order that all the Spanish prisoners in my power be put to the knife, and informed me that he had ordered the same to be done with the four hundred, who were in Zacatula and other points; I received this notice at four in the afternoon and it moved me so much that I commanded the nearly three hundred that I had at Medellin to prepare for death and ordered the chaplain (a monk named Sotomayor) to aid them; but during the night, not being able to sleep, I reflected, that the reprisals I was about to practice would greatly diminish the credit of the cause which I defended, and that by adopting a conduct contrary to the viceroy’s I would secure better results, an idea which pleased me far more than my first resolution; then there presented itself the difficulty of palliating my disobedience to the order I had received, if I carried my resolve into effect; with these thoughts, I occupied myself the whole night until four o’clock in the morning, when I resolved to pardon them in a public manner, which should produce the desired effects in favor of the cause of independence; with this end in view, I withheld my decision until eight in the morning,