Francisco Javier Venegas - Insurrection

Insurrection

Two days after Venegas took office, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla delivered the Grito de Dolores (the Cry from Dolores) and rose in rebellion.

Venegas recognized that this was not a minor disturbance. He quickly had recourse to the army to suppress the rebels. The capital was left without a garrison in order to increase the number of troops in the field. He ordered the clergy to preach against them.

With the fall of Celaya (September 21), Guanajuato (September 28), Zacatecas (October 7) and Valladolid (October 17) to the rebels, Venegas began to refer to them as insurgentes, the name by which they are still known in Mexico. He raised the regiment Tres Villas, with troops from Córdoba, Xalapa and Orizaba, and accepted a contingent of 500 Negroes freed from the haciendas of Gabriel J. de Yermo. These troops were put under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Torcuato Trujillo.

On October 19, 1810, in Valladolid, Father Hidalgo issued a decree freeing the slaves. On November 29, in Guadalajara, he extended it to all of New Spain and also abolished tribute payments.

Trujillo knew the insurgents were now marching in the direction of the capital, from Tepetongo to Toluca, so he moved to occupy the latter place. (Toluca is less than 75 kilometers from Mexico City.) Toluca, however, had to be abandoned and the royalists fell back to a canyon known as Monte de las Cruces. Here the insurgents under Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende defeated the royalists on October 30, 1810. Trujillo, Agustín de Iturbide, and other royalist leaders escaped.

Venegas was now greatly alarmed. He raised a battalion of volunteers, which he stationed at Paseo de Bucareli, on the western edge of the city. However, in a moment of apparent indecision, Father Hidalgo, after a series of triumphs and within striking distance of the poorly defended capital, ordered a retreat toward Vallodalid. The reason for this has never been adequately explained.

After the retreat of the insurgents, Venegas recovered from his surprise, and began decisive action against them. He ordered General Félix María Calleja to march to the aid of the capital from San Luis Potosí. In his march from Querétaro to Mexico City, Calleja met the insurgents in the plains of San Jerónimo Aculco, where he defeated and decimated them (November 7). Another group of rebels took Guadalajara on November 11. Calleja retook Guanajuato on November 25 and Guadalajara on January 21, 1811.

Calleja defeated the insurgents again, disastrously, in the battle of Puente de Calderón on January 17, 1811. The insurgents were on the point of victory when a grenade ignited a munitions wagon in their camp, sowing confusion. The royalists took advantage, and routed the insurgents. A remnant of the rebel forces began retreating northward, where they hoped to receive moral and material aid from the United States.

However the principal rebel leaders — Hidalgo, Allende, Juan Aldama, Jiménez and Abasolo — were taken prisoner at the Wells of Baján (Norias de Baján) near Monclava, Coahuila, on 21 March 1811. They were sent to Chihuahua, where, on July 26, 1811 Allende, Aldama and Jiménez were shot as traitors. Hidalgo was shot July 30, 1811. Abasolo was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; he died in Cádiz in 1816.

Venegas now believed the insurrection over, but then came the news of the activities of Ignacio López Rayón in the center of the country and the victories of Father José María Morelos in the south. Guerrillas roamed freely around the country. Royalist troops shot prisoners immediately. The slightest suspicion of collaboration with the insurgents was grounds for arrest and imprisonment.