Julio ZÁrate was born April 12, 1844, at Jalapa, in the State of Vera Cruz, where he received his education. Since he was twenty-three years of age he has been continuously in public life. In 1867 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, of which he remained a member for twenty-five years, being, at times, president, vice-president, or secretary of the body. In 1879 and 1880 he was the Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the Republic, in 1884 to 1886 Secretary of State of the State of Vera Cruz, and from 1896 to the present time he has been a Justice of the Supreme Court of Mexico.

Through all this long period of active public service, he has found time for literary work. From 1870 to 1875 was an editor of El Siglo XIX (The Nineteenth Century), in its time one of the most important journals of the Mexican capital. He wrote the third volume of the great work on national history—MÉxico Á traves de los Siglos (Mexico Through the Centuries), treating of the War of Independence. For twenty years past, from 1883, he has been Professor of General History in the National Normal School. He has written two text-books, one a compend of general history, the other of the history of Mexico. He has also been a contributor to various literary journals. While in the Chamber of Deputies he was known for his oratorical ability and his speeches were often notable for form and thought. He is a member of many learned societies at home and abroad—a miembro de numero of the Sociedad Mexicana de GeografÍa y Estadistica (Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics).

Our selections are from MÉxico Á traves de los Siglos.

THE DEATH OF HIDALGO

Supporting himself on the opinion of the Assessor Bracho, the Commandant General, Don NicolÁs Salcedo had already, since the 26th, ordered the execution. After the degradation (from the priestly office) had been concluded, the sentence of death and confiscation of his goods was made known to Hidalgo on the same day—the 29th—and he was told to select a confessor to impart to him the last religious consolations. The illustrious promulgator of independence selected Friar JosÉ MariÁ Rojas, who had been notary of the ecclesiastical process instituted by the Bishop of Durango. In his prison, which was the room under the tower of the chapel of the Royal Hospital, he received kind and compassionate treatment from his two guards, Ortega and Guaspe (a Spaniard), alcaldes of that prison, to whom he showed his gratitude in two ten-line poems written by himself with a piece of coal upon the wall, the evening of his death.

The 30th of July, the last day of his life, dawned and in his last hours he showed the greatest calmness. “He noticed,” says Bustamente, “that at breakfast they had given him less milk than usual, and asked for more, saying that it ought not to be less, just because it was last.... At the moment of marching to the place of execution, he remembered that he had left some sweets under his pillow; he returned for them and divided them among the soldiers, who were to shoot him.” At seven in the morning he was taken to a place behind the hospital, where the sentence was executed; he did not die at the first discharge, but after falling to the ground received numerous bullets. His body found sepulchre in the Chapel of San Antonio of the Convent of San Francisco, and his head and those of Allende, Aldama and JimÉnez were carried to Guanajuato and placed in cages of iron at each one of the corners of the Alhondiga[6] of Granaditas, where they remained until 1821, when they were taken to the Ermita de San Sebastian. On the door of the Alhondiga, by order of the Intendant, Fernando PÉrez MaraÑÓn, the following inscription was placed:

“The heads of Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano JimÉnez, notorious deceivers and leaders of the revolution; they sacked and stole the treasures of God’s worship and of the royal treasury; they shed, with the greatest atrocity, the blood of faithful priests and just magistrates; and, they were the cause of all the disasters, misfortunes, and calamities which we here experience and which afflict, and are deplored by, all the inhabitants of this, so integral, part of the Spanish nation.

“Placed here by order of the SeÑor Brigadier, Felix MarÍa Calleja del Rey, illustrious conqueror of Aculco, Guanajuato and Calderon, and Restorer of the Peace in this America. Guanajuato, 14 of October, 1811.”

But, the hour of reparation, though tardy, arrived; one of the first acts of the independent and liberated nation was to consecrate the memory of its martyrs and to reward the efforts of its loyal sons, and on the thirteenth anniversary of the glorious Grito de Dolores (The Cry of Dolores, i. e., the motto of independence) the heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama, and JimÉnez, slowly become fleshless in the cages of Granaditas, and their other remains buried in the humble cemetery of Chihuahua, were received with solemn pomp at the Capital city and a grateful people bore them to rest forever in the magnificent sepulchre, before destined for the Spanish viceroys; the names of those heroes and of other eminent leaders, were inscribed in letters of gold in the Hall of Congress, and those of all will remain in indestructible characters in Mexican hearts.

GENERAL NICOLÁS BRAVO.

Still fresh the laurels just gained in San Agustin, the valiant youth proceeded to the province which had been assigned to him as the seat of his campaign, and early in September advanced with three thousand men to Medellin, after attacking a Royalist convoy at the Puente del Rey and taking ninety prisoners of the troops that guarded it. There Bravo was to cover himself with an immortal glory, without counterpart in history.

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 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, when I ordered my troops to draw up in the form usual in cases of execution; the prisoners were brought out and placed in the centre, where I informed them that the viceroy, Vanegas, had exposed them to death that day, in not having accepted the proposition made in their favor for the life of my father, whom he had given to the garrote in the Capital; that I, not caring to parallel such conduct, had determined, not only to spare their lives for the moment, but to give them entire freedom to go where they pleased. To this, filled with joy they replied, that no one desired to leave, that all remained at the service of my division, which they did, with the exception of five merchants of Vera Cruz, who on account of business interests were given passports for that city; among these was a Senor Madariaga who, afterward, in union with his companions, sent me, in appreciation, the gift of sufficient cloth to make clothing for a full battalion.”

Never, in past times nor in modern ages, could history record in its pages so noble an action; and never has human magnanimity expressed its lofty deeds with more sublime simplicity than that of the Mexican hero in the document, which we have just copied. In the midst of that war of extermination, Bravo displays the noble sentiment of forgiveness as a supreme protest of humanity whose laws were being disregarded and trampled under foot; he condemns the barbarous system of reprisals; he teaches the conquerors, who immolated without exception so many prisoners as fell into their hands, to respect the life of the conquered; in contrast to Venegas, Calleja, Cruz (Alaman’s hero), Trujillo, Llano, Porlier, Castillo Bustamente, and so many others, stained with Mexican blood and thirsting for vengeance, he presents the spotless figure of the patriot giving life and liberty to the prisoners in his power; and, he does this when he knows that his noble father, after a prolonged captivity, has succumbed under a punishment reserved for thieves and assassins; and he forgives, when his feared and respected leader orders him to punish. He restrains his great grief and in the reflections to which he yields himself, on the receipt of that order, he does not think of the blood of his father, yet warm; he thinks only of his country’s interests, he believes that the reprisals which he is ordered to practice will greatly diminish the credit of the cause of independence and that, by observing a conduct contrary to that of the viceroy, he would secure better results; he encounters but the one difficulty that he cannot palliate his responsibility in disobeying the order which he has received; and, after meditating all night, he resolves to pardon the prisoners in a public manner, in order that the pardon may secure all the good results desirable in favor of the cause of independence. Bravo, on that day, conquered, for his country, titles of universal respect and rehabilitated human dignity in that period of unbridled cruelty.