Morello

“ The reason for the fear in the mind of the honest, and even the most intelligent, Italians is born of the thought that such leaders as Morello and Lupo, were more than human in their craftiness, and had dark and mysterious ways of avoiding the best detectives in this country, and that they could even commit murder and laugh in the teeth of the police. The answer to such a thought is the sentences imposed on Morello, Lupo and the other members of the gang now confined in the federal prison. ”

“ The prisons of the holy office were preferred to that of the government, and some witnesses were found who deposed to certain facts which the Mexican qualifiers thought sufficient to authorize them to pronounce Morellos suspected of atheism, materialism, and other errors. One proof of his guilt was, that he had two children. The accused abjured, and was absolved in an auto-da-fé, which was celebrated with as much parade as in the reign of Philip II. When the Inquisitors treated Morellos with so much moderation, they knew that the viceroy would hang him ”

“ The Mestizos and Indians united under a village priest, Hidalgo, and overran the country. This incursion brought the disputants to a sense of their own peril; they collected troops, were beaten by the bold priest, rallied for another field, beat him, took him prisoner in the battle, and put him to death.
But the spirit of revolt had now become popular, and another priest, Morellos, was found to head another insurrection. His talents and intrepidity swept all before him for a period, and the “independence of Mexico” was declared by a “national273 assembly” in November 1813. ”

“ Therefore for me, Morella, thy wife, hath the charnel house no terrors—mark me!—not even the terrors of the worm. The days have never been when thou could'st love me; but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore."
"Morella!"
"I repeat that I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection—ah, how little!—which you felt for me, Morella. And when my spirit departs shall the child live—thy child and mine, Morella's. But thy days shall be days of sorrow—that sorrow which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. ”

“ Then the children watched with joy as the metal sank suddenly molten, and was shoved about against the nose of the soldering-iron, while the room was full of a scent of burnt resin and hot tin, and Morel was silent and intent for a minute. He always sang when he mended boots because of the jolly sound of hammering. And he was rather happy when he sat putting great patches on his moleskin pit trousers, which he would often do, considering them too dirty, and the stuff too hard, for his wife to mend. ”

“ What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when, amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, I shrieked within the ears of the holy man the syllables—Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with the hues of death, as, starting at that sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the Earth to Heaven, and, falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded—"I am here!" ”

“ The following year, Morelos was defeated in an engagement which took place in the environs of Tesmelaca, taken prisoner, led to Mexico, and, after a short trial, degraded from his ecclesiastical functions, and shot in the village of San Cristobal Ecatepec, seven leagues from the capital. The revolutionary party considered him as a martyr in the cause of liberty, and he is said to have died like a true hero. The appellation of Morelia, given to the city of Valladolid, keeps his name in remembrance, but her blood-stained mountain is a more lasting record of his cruelty. ”

“ They emerge from a path that tortuously descends and re-climbs a small valley towards the end of the village. They were Don Giovanni Vergas, an Italian gentleman of a great Southern family, seventy years of age, with a still lively physiognomy, in spite of a fine, correctly cut white beard; Monsieur Jean Morel, a Frenchman, a Parisian, an old man of eighty, slender of figure, shrivelled and upright, with a clean-shaven face, furrowed with a thousand wrinkles, but on which physical strength was still to be read ”

“ The remainder of the year 1811 passed quietly, but early in 1812, after penetrating to within twelve miles of the capital, the insurgents retired to the town of Cuautla, where they were besieged by the royal army. Morelos, who had assumed the leadership, made vacant by the death of Hidalgo, was a man of similar qualifications to the first, and educated in the same seminary of learning, in Valladolid. He was born in the year 1765, of humble parentage, and, though studiously inclined, could not gratify his thirst for knowledge till late in life. ”

“ The brothers, Don José, and Don Antonio, Gălĕānă, who had already declared for the cause of Independence, joined him, soon afterwards, with their adherents, (November, 1810,) and increased his numbers to about a thousand men. With this force Morelos advanced upon Acapulco. He was met by the Commandant of the district, Don Francisco Paris, at the head of a numerous and well-appointed body of troops. Notwithstanding his superiority, Morelos, aware of the necessity of commencing his operations by a coup-d'éclat, determined to attack the camp of the Royalists by night. ”

“ Colonel Wylde had joined Espartero a day or two after the capture of Pena-Cerrada, and he at once sent Arthur south to join the force with which Oraa was preparing to besiege Morella. Here he found three other English officers, commissioners of the British government, who were to report the doings of the army, and above all to urge that the Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners should be observed. Morella was a town of great natural strength. It lay in the very heart of the mountains, was built on rising ground, and defended by twenty guns. ”

“ By letters received this morning from Mexico, we find that Señor Gomez Pedraza has left the Ministry.
As we had but six leagues to ride in order to reach Morelia, we did not leave San Bartolo till four in the afternoon, and enjoyed a pretty ride through a fertile and well-wooded country, the road good and the evening delightful. As the sun set, millions and tens of millions of ducks, in regular ranks and regiments, darkening the air, flew over our heads, changing their quarters from one lake to another. Morelia is celebrated for the purity of its atmosphere and the exceeding beauty of its sky ”

“ He sprang with one bound to the paillasse, and withdrew from it the stiffened form of an infant four years old, dead and cold. Want and misery had accelerated its end, although its complaint, which had originated in the positive want of common necessaries, was beyond the reach of any human aid to remove. Its poor little limbs were already rigid with death. Morel, whose very hair seemed to stand on end with despair and terror, stood holding his dead child in his arms, motionlessly contemplating its thin features with a fixed bloodshot gaze, though no tear moistened his dry, burning eyeballs. ”

“ Morelos was victorious in several other actions in the same and succeeding months, and pushed his advanced guards into the valley of Mexico, where he occupied Chalco and San Agustin de las Cuevas, about twelve miles from the metropolis. Morelos finally resolved to make his stand at Cuautla, in the tierra caliente, on the other side of the mountain ranges which hem in the valley; and, to this place the viceroy Venegas despatched Calleja, who was summoned from the north and west, where, as may readily be imagined, so fiery a spirit had not been idle or innocent since the defeat of Hidalgo. ”

“ I beseech you, as God shall help you, show favour unto him. Then King Don Alfonso answered, This is betimes in the morning for a banished man to ask favour of his Lord; nor is it befitting a King, for no Lord ought to be wroth for so short a time. Nevertheless, because the horses were won from the Moors, I will take them, and rejoice that my Cid hath sped so well. And I pardon you, Minaya, and give again unto you all the lands which you have ever held of me, and you have my favour to go when you will, and come when you will. ”

“ And the Cid answered and said, Chafe not thyself, Pero Bermudez, for the man who thinketh by chafing to expedite his business, leaveth off worse than he began. Be you certain, that if I die not I shall take vengeance upon those traitors, and I trust in God not to die till I have taken it. Now therefore, give me no more anger than I feel in my own heart, for Felez Muñoz hath given me enough. I thank my Lord King Don Alfonso for the answer which he gave you, and for appointing the Cortes, and in such guise will I appear there as shall gall them who wish ill to me. ”

“ When Ferran Alfonso, who was there to guard the ivory seat heard this, he answered and said, Count, you talk full foolishly, and speak ill of one against whom it behoves you not to talk. He who is to sit upon this seat is better than you, or than all your lineage; and he hath ever appeared a man to all his enemies, not like a woman as you say. If you deny this I will lay hands upon you, and make you acknowledge it before my Lord the King Don Alfonso, who is here present. ”

“ Now Don Alfonso was a goodly personage and of fair demeanour, so that the Moors liked him well. And as he was going by the side of the King, two honourable Moors followed them, and the one said unto the other, How fair a knight is this Christian, and of what good customs! well doth he deserve to be the lord of some great land. And the other made answer, I dreamed a dream last night, that this Alfonso entered the city riding upon a huge boar, and many swine after him, who rooted up all Toledo with their snouts, and even the Mosques therein: Certes, he will one day become King of Toledo. ”

“ The night is gone, morning is come, mass is said, and they go to horse. They left Medina and past the river Salon, and pricked up Arbuxuelo, and they crost the plain of Torancio. That good Christian the Bishop Don Hieronymo, night and day he guarded the ladies; on a goodly horse he rode, and they went between him and Alvar Fañez. They came to Molina and there were lodged in a good and rich house, and Abencaño the Moor waited on them. Nothing did they want which they could wish to have; he even had all their beasts new shod, and for Minaya and the ladies, Lord! ”

“ And King Don Alfonso lifted up his voice and said, Hear me, all ye who are here present: inasmuch as the knights of the Cid have conquered, they have won the cause; and the twelve true-men made answer, that what the King said was the truth, and all the people said the same. And the King gave command to break up the lists, and gave sentence that the Infantes of Carrion and their uncle Suero Gonzalez were notorious traitors, and ordered his seneschal to take their arms and horses. And from that day forth their lineage never held up its head, nor was of any worth in Castille ”

“ That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have something to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the black clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room. If he walked and walked for ever, there was only that place to come to.
He was not tired when he got near home, or he did not know it. Across the field he could see the red firelight leaping in her bedroom window. ”

“ The next moment he fell, shot in the back; [30] passing through a traitor's death into the sphere of patriot-martyr and hero immortal.
His countrymen have placed him next to Hidalgo in the rank of patriot liberators, and justly so, for if the latter started the revolution, Morelos nobly carried on the great work, and more ably, it must be admitted. While possessing little book learning, he
had what far outweighed it genius—which, when the summons came, transformed the benign cura into the greatest and most successful military leader among the insurgents, at least till Iturbide joined them. ”

“ Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the altar; and I never spoke of passion, nor thought of love. She, however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone, rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder;—it is a happiness to dream.
Morella’s erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents were of no common order—her powers of mind were gigantic. ”

“ Morelos was taken to Mexico; the ecclesiastical tribunes covered him with ignominy, and he was handed over to the military authorities. By them he was at once sentenced to death, and on the 22d of December, 1815, he was shot in the small town San Cristobal Ecatepec, dying with the bravery of a hero.
This was the end of the dark period, called the second, of Mexican independence. Its life was in its chief, the daring, patriotic Morelos.
There is no doubt that Morelos had many of the great qualities for a successful leader of men. He was born in poverty, with no antecedents of greatness ”

“ Eager to wash out the stain upon his reputation, he returned to Morella, when General Oraa made his unsuccessful attack upon it a few months later, and died leading the forlorn-hope, the first man upon the breach.
The capture of Morella was a great triumph for Cabrera, whose chief stronghold it became. It assured him the dominion of a large and fertile tract of country. From its towers, lofty though they were, the banner of Isabella the Second could nowhere be descried, save on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the distant banks of the Ebro. ”