Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 1.djvu/305

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TREATMENT OF PRISONERS.
277

Texans and some Americans, they marshalled them in the most summary manner for the decision of their officers; ordered them out without the formality of a trial, and shot every individual of them, without mercy or delay.

Capturing other parties of Americans, part of whom were women—camp-followers and soldiers' wives—they fell upon them in indiscriminate revenge, and ruthlessly cut their throats; sparing none: their dead bodies, weltering in their blood, were afterwards discovered by their friends.

They hung and cut to pieces several Mexicans and Texans, whose only crime consisted in acting as compulsory guides to the hostile army; and left their mutilated remains exposed in conspicuous places as warnings to others.

It was their practice to extort, by the most brutal threats and unlicensed conduct, the money and property of individuals unfortunate enough to be in their vicinity; or, failing this, to outrage their families, or sacrifice a portion of them to their mean revenge. They exhibited the utmost baseness and duplicity in case of attempts at compromise, or interchange of prisoners, in relation to small parties who had