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Resolving not to surrender and making hasty preparations for defence, they intrenched themselves in a strongly built grain warehouse, with the governor at their head. Much better armed than the mass of their assailants, and backed up by strong stone walls, the authorities defended themselves vigorously, and for a time the affair looked anything but promising for Hidalgo’s improvised army.
The Alhondiga de Grenaditas, the building to which their heads were attached, is now used as a prison, but its walls still bear the spike which for ten years held Hidalgo’s head. Before it there stands a bronze statue of this earliest of the Mexican patriot leaders. Shall we add a few words descriptive of the later course of the struggle for independence?
Hidalgo’s little band was joined by the regiment of his comrade Allende, and a crowd of field laborers, armed with slings, sticks, and spades, hastened in to swell their ranks. So popular did the movement prove that in a brief period the band of eighty men had grown to a great host, fifty thousand or more in numbers. Poorly armed and undisciplined as they were, their numbers gave them strength.
Hidalgo’s eager desire for liberty, long smouldering, burst into flame in 1810, when the Spanish authorities attempted to arrest in Querétaro some revolutionists who had talked too freely. Warned of their danger, these men fled or concealed themselves. News of this came quickly to Hidalgo and taught him that with his reputation there was but one of two things to do, he must flee or strike.
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