All the Spaniards within the environs of Santa Fé, numbering about one thousand persons, were collected within the precincts of the Palacio Real. Otermín now told the religious adviser Father Gómez, to “consummate the Holy Sacrament,” and bring to the governor’s house all church vessels and adornments. For five days, between the fifteenth and the twentieth, the Spanish colony was besieged within the royal precincts. There were only about a hundred men capable of bearing arms, whereas the warriors amounted to at least two thousand. At daybreak on August 20, the small Spanish force rushed out from the Palacio Real, taking the Indians by surprise. A few hours’ struggle accomplished their conquest. Three hundred were killed, forty-seven captured, and the rest escaped by flight. García, unable to reach his chief, rescued a large number of colonists in Rio Abajo, very few of whom, however, were able to bear arms. Just as Otermín was assured that none of those in the other division had survived, so was García deceived about the true fate of his friends, and after consultation with his subordinate officers he had decided that a retreat to Mexico was the wisest course. His colony of refugees started in that direction on August 14. By the twentieth he learned that he had been duped concerning the fate of Otermín’s contingent, and called a halt. Meanwhile, by August 21st Otermín learned from captured Indians, not only that the whole region from Taos to Isleta, fifty-one leagues, was devastated, but what was more cheerful, that García’s colony had not been sacrificed. By this time Otermín also realized that the condition of his survivors was hardly less critical than when they were besieged, and gave the order to march toward Isleta, where he hoped to find García, who, as we know, had already moved on. It was not until September 13 that they joined forces at Fray Cristóbal, and after some further marching and conferring a place called La Toma del Rio del Norte[83] was agreed upon for a temporary settlement from which tidings of their terrible reverses might be sent to the viceroy in New Spain. Father Ayeta, custodian and _procurador-general_, was one of the great figures of the place and period. For a long time priest at the famous church in Cholula, he had been transferred to the New Mexican diocese. At this time he had been absent from the missionary field for nearly two years, having gone back to get help for the priests in the province. They were in sore need of men and horses, food and ammunition, to defend themselves against constant raids by the Apaches. Father Ayeta left Mexico City, September 20, 1679, with twenty-eight wagon loads of supplies and a goodly contingent of men and horses. Almost exactly eleven months later he arrived at El Paso (August 25, 1680), to be met by the disastrous tidings of the revolt and of the supposed fate of all the Spanish colonists.