page_title: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
section_title: Hidalgo's army – from Celaya to Monte de las Cruces
hierarchical_section_title: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla / Hidalgo's army – from Celaya to Monte de las Cruces
context_page_description: Don Miguel Gregorio Antonio Francisco Ignacio Hidalgo-Costilla y Gallaga Mandarte Villaseñor, more commonly known as Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or Miguel Hidalgo, was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, a leader of the Mexican War of Independence, and recognized as the Father of the Nation.
  He was a professor at the Colegio de San Nicolás Obispo in Valladolid and was ousted in 1792. He served in a church in Colima and then in Dolores. After his arrival, he was shocked by the rich soil he had found. He tried to help the poor by showing them how to grow olives and grapes, but in New Spain growing these crops was discouraged or prohibited by the authorities so as to avoid competition with imports from Spain. In 1810 he gave the famous speech, "Cry of Dolores", calling upon the people to protect the interest of their King Fernando VII by revolting against the European-born Spaniards who had overthrown the Spanish Viceroy.
  He marched across Mexico and gathered an army of nearly 90,000 poor farmers and Mexican civilians who attacked and killed both Spanish Peninsulares and Criollo elites, even though Hidalgo's troops lacked training and were poorly armed.
context_section_description: Hidalgo was met with an outpouring of support. Intellectuals, liberal priests and many poor people followed Hidalgo with a great deal of enthusiasm. Hidalgo permitted Indians and mestizos to join his war in such numbers that the original motives of the Querétaro group were obscured. Allende was Hidalgo's co-conspirator in Querétaro and remained more loyal to the Querétaro group's original, more creole objectives. However, Hidalgo's actions and the people's response, meant he would lead and not Allende. Allende had acquired military training when Mexico established a colonial militia; Hidalgo had no military training at all. The people who followed Hidalgo also had no military training, experience or equipment. Many of these people were poor who were angry after many years of hunger and oppression. Consequently, Hidalgo was the leader of undisciplined rebels.
  Hidalgo's leadership gave the insurgent movement a supernatural aspect. Many villagers that joined the insurgent army came to believe that Fernando VII himself commanded their loyalty to Hidalgo and the monarch was in New Spain personally directing the rebellion against his own government. They believed that the king commanded the extermination of all peninsular Spaniards and the division of their property among the masses. Historian Eric Van Young believes that such ideas gave the movement supernatural and religious legitimacy that went as far as messianic expectation.
  Hidalgo and Allende left Dolores with about 800 men, half of whom were on horseback. They marched through the Bajío area, through Atotonilco, San Miguel el Grande (present-day San Miguel de Allende), Chamucuero, Celaya, Salamanca, Irapuato and Silao, to Guanajuato. From Guanajuato, Hidalgo directed his troops to Valladolid, Michoacán. They remained here for a while and then decided to march towards Mexico City. From Valladolid, they marched through the State of Mexico, through the cities of Maravatio, Ixtlahuaca, Toluca coming as close to Mexico City as the Monte de las Cruces, between the Valley of Toluca and the Valley of Mexico.
  Through sheer numbers, Hidalgo's army had some early victories. Hidalgo first went through the economically important and densely populated province of Guanajuato. One of the first stops was at the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Atotonilco, where Hidalgo affixed an image of the Virgin to a lance to adopt it as his banner. He inscribed the following slogans to his troops’ flags: "Long live religion! Long live our most Holy Mother of Guadalupe! Long live America and death to bad government!" For the insurgents as a whole, the Virgin represented an intense and highly localized religious sensibility, invoked more to identify allies rather than create ideological alliances or a sense of nationalism.
  The extent and the intensity of the movement took viceregal authorities by surprise. San Miguel and Celaya were captured with little resistance. On 21 September 1810, Hidalgo was proclaimed general and supreme commander after arriving to Celaya. At this point, Hidalgo's army numbered about 5,000. However, because of the lack of military discipline, the insurgents soon fell into robbing, looting and ransacking the towns they were capturing. They began to execute prisoners as well. This caused friction between Allende and Hidalgo as early as the capture of San Miguel in late September 1810. When a mob ran through this town, Allende tried to break up the violence by striking at the insurgents with the flat of his sword. This brought a rebuke from Hidalgo, accusing Allende of mistreating the people.
  On 28 September 1810, Hidalgo arrived at the city of Guanajuato with rebels, who were, for the most part, armed with sticks, stones, and machetes. The town's Spanish and Creole populations took refuge in the heavily fortified Alhóndiga de Granaditas granary defended by Quartermaster Riaños. The insurgents overwhelmed the defenses after two days and killed everyone inside, an estimated 400 – 600 men, women and children. Allende strongly protested these events and while Hidalgo agr
caption: Map of Hidalgo's Campaign.
exif: {}