The Mexicans, instructed and hardened to war by ten years' fighting and their numerous defeats, were no longer the half-savage men who marched without order or discipline, impelled solely by religious fanaticism or the ardent love of liberty, and let themselves be bravely slaughtered by the old Spanish bands on the plains of Calderón. Hidalgo and Morelos, those sublime champions of liberty, had lost their lives in their generous attempts at emancipation; but their blood had not in vain bedewed that Mexican soil which the Spaniards fancied enslaved forever. Other chiefs, electrified by the heroic devotion of their predecessors, had risen in their turn, and, profiting by past errors, organized the revolt, and gradually, by their skilful and incessant guidance, the insurrection, at first timid and retired, extended, and eventually became a revolution. The knell of Spain had rung: her power, ruined on all sides, crumbled away in hands too feeble to hold it. The Viceroys of New Spain, incessantly pressed, were involuntarily forced to try concessions--a fatal resolve for tyranny, which it is impossible to check, for no sooner is one difficulty smoothed than another larger and more formidable rises up. The supreme struggle began. The proclamation of Iguala, published by General Iturbide--that is to say, the independence of New Spain, union between the Spanish and Mexican races, and the exclusive maintenance of the Catholic religion--gave the signal for revolt. It was general; insurgent bands were organized on all sides. Don Pelagio Sandoval summoned all the hacenderos of the province, and two days after the conference we have described, the insurgent forces, amounting to more than ten thousand well-armed men, infantry and cavalry, and having a battery of six mountain guns, quitted the Hacienda del Barrio, where their chief only left a weak garrison to hold the Indians in check, and advanced by forced marches on Coahuila. This capital of the province was a town of nine or ten thousand souls, built on an affluent of the Río Sabina, surrounded by walls, and; owing to the arrangements made long before by General Cárdenas, it was perfectly defended from a surprise. The progress of the insurrectionary army was truly a triumphant march. At each step reinforcements reached it, and the Mexicans everywhere took up arms. Leona Vicario, Castanuello, Parras, Nueva Bilbao, and Santa Rosa expelled the Spaniards, and proclaimed their independence by hoisting the green, white, and red flag, the emblem of the three guarantees of the treaty of Iguala, independence, union, and religion.