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PAPERS OF MmAnEAU BuoNAPARTE LAMAR
had organized the militia and with his well known skill and valor dis-' puted the entrance of the invaders into the city until the invaders_, weakened by their great losses, suspended the attack and left the pa- triots in possession of the city. Arista and Duran had begun to distrust their Dictator, and, on being informed that such a letter had left Mexico in pursuit of them, they abandoned the siege of Puebla and went to meet him. Both armies descried each other in the vicinity of Texcoco, but Santa Anna, seeing that his enemy's troops were superior to his own in numbers and discipline, retired to a neighboring town where he fortified himself and operated on the defensive. At this place he was besieged by Arista and Duran, and doubtless would have been compelled to sur- render, if General Mejia, who had just returned with his division from Queretaro, had not fortunately arrived in time to assist him. The union of the two forces of :Mejia and Santa Anna gave the latter a great preponderance over his adversaries and obliged them to take the road into the interior, Sapta Anna, Mejia and ' Arago leaving in pur- suit of them a short time afterwards. A prefect who was related to Duran resided in the town of Toluca and when Santa Anna reached there, Duran made the prefect promise to arrange a meeting for him with the General. Duran, after waiting a long time for him at the appointed place, returned in anger to San Juan del Rio where his troops were determined to reveal Santa Anna's connivance in that revolution to the world. This he did, for he had scarcely reached his headquarters before he published a pamphlet in which he accused and denounced Santa Anna as a traitor and declared that everything that had been done during the revolution had been done by his orders. Santa Anna did not deny this statement, but contented himself with declaring that the rebels lied in this way be- cause they had failed to make him promise to join in their plans. And what were these plans? To establish a central government with Santa Anna at its head as Dictator. While Santa Anna was approaching Queretaro with·_his forces, his opponents were making their way to Guanajuato by another route. Santa Anna remained in Queretaro three or four days, and, some troops having joined him there, he marched against Guanajuato, despite the opposition of the State authorities and of the ge,nerals and officers ac- companying him who feared the destruction which would befall the troops on account of the cholera which was said to exist in the adja- cent States. It therefore happened that he lost a great number of his soldiers from that disease during the march from Queretaro to the Burras hacienda. After taking possession of Burras, five leagues from where his enemy was stationed, in Guanajuato, he realized the impos- sibility of advancing, not only because his troops had considerably de- creased, but also on account of the feeling of depression among the- remainder. He therefore decided to return to Queretaro, leaving in the aforementioned hacienda more than 60 men with the cholera, and· after a five days' march reached that place with only half of the troops he had started out with. In the meantime Arista and Duran, who were still in possession of uanajuato, established a kind of bulletin or loose sheet in which they
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