Note XX-16 — Chapter XX · DEMOCRACY RESTORED IN GUATEMALA. 1865-1873.

The government had supposed him in a distant department fleeing from its troops, when he quietly slipped into Palencia, a town distant 8 or 9 miles from Guatemala, in the night of Saturday. Feeling certain that the govt was ignorant of his whereabouts, and confident that the people of Palencia were friendly, he failed to adopt proper precautions, and even had high mass chanted for his troops in the small hours of the morning. But it so happened that the authorities of Guatemala received late in the night information of his arrival, and of the number of his men. An overwhelming force of Santa Rosa Indians, devoted to Cerna and hostile to Cruz' Indians, was despatched under command of Brig. Solares, who surrounded Cruz and attacked him before he had begun to prepare for his own attack of the capital. He made a desperate fight of two hours, however, behind the adobe walls of a corral, but it availed naught. His only chance of escape was in flight. A rush carried him and his remaining men to the edge of a ravine, and he had gone down half of the steep descent when a ball struck him in the thigh and broke it. No quarter was asked or given. He was slain while fiercely fighting to the last. His fleeing men were relentlessly pursued for several days, and such as were not killed in the ravines were captured and executed. Peatfield's Glimpse at a Cent. Am. Rep., in Overland Monthly, xiv. 163-5; see also Guat., Boletin de Noticias, Jan. 15, 1870; Id., Gaceta, Jan. 28, 1870; Nic., Gaceta, Feb. 5, 19, 1870; Nueva Era, Paso del Norte, Apr. 3, 1885. The victorious Solares was promoted to mariscal de campo; his officers also received promotion, and the rank and file one month's extra pay; but he lived to enjoy his new honors less than a year, his death occurring in Nov. 1870. Nic., Gaceta, Dec. 3, 1870.