Terror struck the hearts of the Spaniards and every town yielded to this new leader, who now bore the title of Generalissimo, as the army approached the City of Mexico. One terrible battle occurred at Monte las Cruces and both forces withdrew. Hidalgo—and this was probably his greatest error—retreated, and his fortune immediately turned. The volatile nature of the people asserted itself and his followers deserted by the thousands. He started for the United States, but was betrayed and captured, and was executed at Chihuahua on July 31st, 1811. For ten years his head was suspended by a spike from one of the corners of the Alhondiga de Granaditas, once occupied by him as conqueror, as a warning to revolutionists, but was afterward buried with great ceremony in the cathedral at the capital. It was around a disciple of Hidalgo that the forces of discontent and patriotism rallied upon the death of their first leader, and that man was also a priest, Jose Maria Morelas. Of low birth and poor, this man drove mules until thirty years of age before an opportunity presented itself for education to fit himself for the priesthood, which was his ambition. In that time he had acquired the qualities of patience and cool calculation from the animals he drove. A student under Hidalgo, he had imbibed a love for independence, and leaving his church upon the sounding of the “grito,” offered his services to the Generalissimo. He was an abler leader than Hidalgo and showed great military skill, winning a series of victories clear across the country from Acapulco, on the Pacific Coast, to Cuautla not far from Vera Cruz. At Cuautla he was besieged for over two months, and then successfully withdrew with all his forces by night. Returning to Acapulco he summoned the first Mexican Congress, which met at Chilpantzingo, a small town near that city. This congress met on the 14th of September, 1813, and on the following day issued its famous declaration of independence, as follows:—“The Congress of Anahuac, lawfully installed in the city of Chilpantzingo, of North America, solemnly declares, in the presence of God, arbitrator of kingdoms and author of society, who gives and takes away according to the inscrutable designs of his providence, that, through the present circumstances of Europe, it has recovered the exercise of its sovereignty, hitherto usurped, its dependence upon the throne of Spain being thus forever disrupted and dissolved.”[5]