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Supporting himself on the opinion of the Assessor Bracho, the Commandant General, Don Nicolás Salcedo had already, since the 26th, ordered the execution. After the degradation (from the priestly office) had been concluded, the sentence of death and confiscation of his goods was made known to Hidalgo on the same day—the 29th—and he was told to select a confessor to impart to him the last religious consolations. The illustrious promulgator of independence selected Friar José Mariá Rojas, who had been notary of the ecclesiastical process instituted by the Bishop of Durango. In his prison, which was the room under the tower of the chapel of the Royal Hospital, he received kind and compassionate treatment from his two guards, Ortega and Guaspe (a Spaniard), alcaldes of that prison, to whom he showed his gratitude in two ten-line poems written by himself with a piece of coal upon the wall, the evening of his death.

The 30th of July, the last day of his life, dawned and in his last hours he showed the greatest calmness. “He noticed,” says Bustamente, “that at breakfast they had given him less milk than usual, and asked for more, saying that it ought not to be less, just because it was last.... At the moment of marching to the place of execution, he remembered that he had left some sweets under his pillow; he returned for them and divided them among the soldiers, who were to shoot him.” At seven in the morning he was taken to a place behind the hospital, where the sentence was executed; he did not die at the first discharge, but after falling to the ground received numerous bullets. His body found sepulchre in the Chapel of San Antonio of the Convent of San Francisco, and his head and those of Allende, Aldama and Jiménez were carried to Guanajuato and placed in cages of iron at each one of the corners of the Alhondiga[6] of Granaditas, where they remained until 1821, when they were taken to the Ermita de San Sebastian. On the door of the Alhondiga, by order of the Intendant, Fernando Pérez Marañón, the following inscription was placed:

“The heads of Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano Jiménez, notorious deceivers and leaders of the revolution; they sacked and stole the treasures of God’s worship and of the royal treasury; they shed, with the greatest atrocity, the blood of faithful priests and just magistrates; and, they were the cause of all the disasters, misfortunes, and calamities which we here experience and which afflict, and are deplored by, all the inhabitants of this, so integral, part of the Spanish nation.

“Placed here by order of the Señor Brigadier, Felix María Calleja del Rey, illustrious conqueror of Aculco, Guanajuato and Calderon, and Restorer of the Peace in this America. Guanajuato, 14 of October, 1811.”

But, the hour of reparation, though tardy, arrived; one of the first acts of the independent and liberated nation was to consecrate the memory of its martyrs and to reward the efforts of its loyal sons, and on the thirteenth anniversary of the glorious Grito de Dolores (The Cry of Dolores, i. e., the motto of independence) the heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama, and Jiménez, slowly become fleshless in the cages of Granaditas, and their other remains buried in the humble cemetery of Chihuahua, were received with solemn pomp at the Capital city and a grateful people bore them to rest forever in the magnificent sepulchre, before destined for the Spanish viceroys; the names of those heroes and of other eminent leaders, were inscribed in letters of gold in the Hall of Congress, and those of all will remain in indestructible characters in Mexican hearts.