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Still fresh the laurels just gained in San Agustin, the valiant youth proceeded to the province which had been assigned to him as the seat of his campaign, and early in September advanced with three thousand men to Medellin, after attacking a Royalist convoy at the Puente del Rey and taking ninety prisoners of the troops that guarded it. There Bravo was to cover himself with an immortal glory, without counterpart in history.

His father, General Leonardo Bravo, since the month of May prisoner of the Royalists, had been condemned to death in Mexico—and to the same fate were destined José María Piedras and Luciano Pérez, apprehended at the same time, after the sally from Cuautla. The viceroy had suspended the execution of the sentence, in the hope that the prisoner might influence his sons, Nicolás and his brothers, to desert the files of the Independents and to ask for pardon, under which condition he offered him his life. But the youthful leader, although authorized by Morelos to save his father by accepting the pardon offered by the viceroyal government, believed he ought not to trust in the pledges given, since he remembered that some time before, the brothers Orduñas were victims of the Royalist Colonel José Antonio Andrade, who had promised them pardon but, when he had them in his power, commanded their execution.

Morelos then wrote to the viceroy, Vanegas, offering the surrender of eight hundred prisoners, mostly Spanish, as the price of Leonardo Bravo’s life. The viceroyal government, in turn, refused this proposition and on September 13, 1812, General Bravo and his fellow prisoners, Piedras and Pérez, suffered, in Mexico, the penalty of the garrote, the former displaying, in his last moments, that calm and valor, of which he had given so many proofs in battle. In communicating this sad news to Nicolás Bravo, Morelos ordered him to put all the Spanish prisoners he held—some three hundred in number—to the knife. Let us hear the hero himself narrate his noble action, with the simplicity of one of Plutarch’s characters:

“In effect, he said to me in the proposition made to me in Cuernavaca, that the Viceroy Vanegas offered me amnesty and the life of my father, if I would yield myself.... When Morelos was in Tehuacan he appointed me General-in-chief of the forces, which were operating in the province of Vera Cruz.... I commenced to fight him (Labaqui) and, after an action lasting forty-eight hours, gained a complete victory, making two hundred prisoners, whom I sent under escort to the province of Vera Cruz, and returned with all my wounded to Tehuacan to give account of the action of arms confided to me. In the interview which I had with Morelos, he told me that he was about to send a communication to the viceroy, Vanegas, offering him, for my father’s life, eight hundred Spanish prisoners, and that he would inform me of the result. I immediately returned to the Province of Vera Cruz, where, five days after leaving Tehuacan, I had another favorable action near Puente Nacional, attacking a convoy, which was proceeding to Jalapa with supplies; I took ninety prisoners and betook myself to Medellin, where I established my headquarters and from where I threatened the city of Vera Cruz, with the three thousand men who were under my command. After a few days Morelos notified me that the proposition which he had made to the viceroy had not been accepted and that he (the viceroy) had, on the contrary, commanded that my father be put to the garrote and that he was already dead; he commanded me at the same time to order that all the Spanish prisoners in my power be put to the knife, and informed me that he had ordered the same to be done with the four hundred, who were in Zacatula and other points; I received this notice at four in the afternoon and it moved me so much that I commanded the nearly three hundred that I had at Medellin to prepare for death and ordered the chaplain (a monk named Sotomayor) to aid them; but during the night, not being able to sleep, I reflected, that the reprisals I was about to practice would greatly diminish the credit of the cause which I defended, and that by adopting a conduct contrary to the viceroy’s I would secure better results, an idea which pleased me far more than my first resolution; then there presented itself the difficulty of palliating my disobedience to the order I had received, if I carried my resolve into effect; with these thoughts, I occupied myself the whole night until four o’clock in the morning, when I resolved to pardon them in a public manner, which should produce the desired effects in favor of the cause of independence; with this end in view, I withheld my decision until eight in the morning, when I ordered my troops to draw up in the form usual in cases of execution; the prisoners were brought out and placed in the centre, where I informed them that the viceroy, Vanegas, had exposed them to death that day, in not having accepted the proposition made in their favor for the life of my father, whom he had given to the garrote in the Capital; that I, not caring to parallel such conduct, had determined, not only to spare their lives for the moment, but to give them entire freedom to go where they pleased. To this, filled with joy they replied, that no one desired to leave, that all remained at the service of my division, which they did, with the exception of five merchants of Vera Cruz, who on account of business interests were given passports for that city; among these was a Senor Madariaga who, afterward, in union with his companions, sent me, in appreciation, the gift of sufficient cloth to make clothing for a full battalion.”

Never, in past times nor in modern ages, could history record in its pages so noble an action; and never has human magnanimity expressed its lofty deeds with more sublime simplicity than that of the Mexican hero in the document, which we have just copied. In the midst of that war of extermination, Bravo displays the noble sentiment of forgiveness as a supreme protest of humanity whose laws were being disregarded and trampled under foot; he condemns the barbarous system of reprisals; he teaches the conquerors, who immolated without exception so many prisoners as fell into their hands, to respect the life of the conquered; in contrast to Venegas, Calleja, Cruz (Alaman’s hero), Trujillo, Llano, Porlier, Castillo Bustamente, and so many others, stained with Mexican blood and thirsting for vengeance, he presents the spotless figure of the patriot giving life and liberty to the prisoners in his power; and, he does this when he knows that his noble father, after a prolonged captivity, has succumbed under a punishment reserved for thieves and assassins; and he forgives, when his feared and respected leader orders him to punish. He restrains his great grief and in the reflections to which he yields himself, on the receipt of that order, he does not think of the blood of his father, yet warm; he thinks only of his country’s interests, he believes that the reprisals which he is ordered to practice will greatly diminish the credit of the cause of independence and that, by observing a conduct contrary to that of the viceroy, he would secure better results; he encounters but the one difficulty that he cannot palliate his responsibility in disobeying the order which he has received; and, after meditating all night, he resolves to pardon the prisoners in a public manner, in order that the pardon may secure all the good results desirable in favor of the cause of independence. Bravo, on that day, conquered, for his country, titles of universal respect and rehabilitated human dignity in that period of unbridled cruelty.