Our conversation here ended, for we had arrived at the inn where we intended to pass the night-the Venta de la Sierra Madre.Įarly on the following morning, before any one had yet arisen, I left my chamber-in a corner of which, rolled in his ample manga, Captain Castaños was still soundly asleep. He can tell you more about Morelos than any other living man: since he was aide-de-camp to the General through all his campaigns, and served him faithfully up to the hour of his death.” But if my good friend, Don Cornelio Lantejas, is still living at Tepic, when we arrive there, I shall put you in communication with him. “Ah! I understand you,” said the captain, “and I am sorry that I cannot satisfy your desires: since, during the war I was mostly engaged in the northern provinces, and had no opportunity of knowing much of Morelos personally. In other words, I want to hear those more private and particular details of Morelos’ life which the historians have not given.” “You are narrating history to me, while I want only chronicles. “Hum! I know all that already,” said I, interrupting my fellow-traveller. Of these he won twenty-two and though he lost the other four, each time he retreated with honour-” “In the single year of 1811, he fought no less than twenty-six battles with the Spaniards. “Ah! Morelos? he was a great soldier,” replied the ex-captain of guerilleros. “Can you give me any information regarding Morelos?” I asked of Captain Castaños, as we were journeying along the route between Tepic and Guadalaxara.
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But what I desired was a more personal and intimate knowledge of this remarkable man, who from being the humble curate of an obscure village in Oajaca, became in a few short months the victorious leader of a well-appointed army, and master of all the southern provinces of New Spain. His public career having become historic, was, of course, known to every one who chose to read of him. Of all the leaders of the Mexican revolution, there was none in whose history I felt so much interest as in the priest-soldier, Morelos-or, as he is familiarly styled in Mexican annals, the “illustrious Morelos”-and yet there was none of whose private life I could obtain so few details. From time to time as we travelled together, he was good enough to give me an account of some of the more noted actions of the prolonged and sanguinary war of the Independence and, among other narratives, one which especially interested me was the famed battle of the Puente de Calderon, where the Captain himself had fought during the whole length of a summer’s day! During one of many journeyings through the remote provinces of the Mexican republic, it was my fortune to encounter an old revolutionary officer, in the person of Captain Castaños.