From Izucar, Morelos entered Tehuacan triumphantly, whence he passed to Orizaba where he captured artillery, vast quantities of tobacco, and a large amount of treasure. But he was not allowed to rest long in peace. The regular forces pursued his partizan warriors; and we next hear of him at Oaxaca, where he took possession of the town after a brief resistance. It was at this place that Guadalupe Victoria, afterwards president of the republic, performed a feat which merits special remembrance as an act of extraordinary heroism and daring in the face of an enemy. The town was moated and the single drawbridge suspended, so as to cut off the approach of the insurgents. There were no boats to cross the stagnant water; and the insurgents, as they approached, were dismayed by the difficulty of reaching a town which seemed almost in their grasp. At this moment Guadalupe Victoria, sprang into the moat, swam across the strait in sight of the soldiers in the town who seem to have been panic struck by his signal courage, and cut the ropes that suspended the drawbridge, which, immediately falling over the moat, allowed the soldiers of Morelos a free entrance into the city! Here he rested for some time undisturbed by the Spaniards. He conquered the whole of the province with the exception of Acapulco, to which he laid siege in February, 1813, but it did not lower its flag until the following August. The control of a whole province, and the victories of Bravo and Matamoros, elsewhere in 1812 and 1813, considerably increased the importance and influence of Morelos, who now devoted himself to the assemblage of a national Congress at Chilpanzingo composed of the original Junta of Zitacuaro, the deputies elected by the province of Oaxaca, and others selected by them as representatives of the provinces which were in the royalists' hands. On the 13th of November, 1813, this body published a declaration of the absolute independence of Mexico.[60] DON FELIX MARIA CALLEJA, LX. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN.--1813-1816. This was the period at which the star of the great leader, Morelos, culminated. Bravo was still occasionally successful, and the commander-in-chief, concentrating his forces at Chilpanzingo, prepared an expedition against the province of Valladolid. He departed on the 8th of November, 1813; and, marching across a hitherto untraversed country of a hundred leagues, he reached this point about Christmas. But here he found a large force under Llano and COLONEL ITURBIDE,--who was still a loyalist--drawn up to encounter him. He attacked the enemy rashly with his jaded troops, and on the following day, was routed, with the loss of his best regiments and all his artillery.