The great owners understood the Captain's reasons the more easily because their interests were at stake. They therefore enthusiastically followed his advice, and raised at their common charge a corps of one hundred and fifty Opatas--brave soldiers, thoroughly devoted to the Whites. They placed this corps under the Captain's orders, pledging themselves to pay and support it so long as the danger lasted. Don Marcos thus doubled his army at one stroke. This success, which he had been far from expecting, owing to his profound knowledge of the apathy and selfishness of his countrymen, induced him to try the second plan.
This was very simple. It consisted in enlisting, for a certain bounty, as many as he could of the adventurers who always swarm on the borders, and whose neutrality is at times more formidable than declared enmity. The sum offered by the Captain was two ounces per man, one payable on enlistment, the other at the termination of the campaign. This offer, seductive though it was, did not produce all the effect the Captain expected from it. The adventurers responded but feebly to the appeal made to them. These men, in whose hearts patriotic love does not exist, and who only care for pillage, saw in the insurrection of the Indians a source of disorder, and, consequently, of rapine. They cared very little about defending a state of things which their predacious instincts led them, on the contrary, to attack.
Thirty or forty adventurers, however, responded to the call; and these immoral men, who were impatient at the yoke of discipline, were rather an embarrassment than an assistance to the Captain; still as, take them altogether, they were sturdy fellows, and thoroughly acquainted with Indian warfare, he attached them to his cavalry, which was thus raised to a strength of one hundred men. Don Marcos thus found himself at the head of two hundred and fifty infantry and one hundred horse--a force which appeared to him, if well directed, more than sufficient to withstand, behind good entrenchments, the effort of the whole Indian army.
We are aware that this number of men defending a town will produce a smile of pity among European readers, who are accustomed to see on battlefields masses of three hundred thousand men come into collision. But all is relative in this world. In America, where the population is comparatively small, great things have often been decided at the bayonet's point by armies whose relative strength did not exceed that of one of our line regiments. In the last battle fought between the Texans and Mexicans--a battle which decided the independence of Texas, the two armies together did not amount to two thousand men, and yet the collision was terrible, and victory obstinately disputed. In the actions between white men and Indians, the latter, in spite of their indomitable valour, were almost always defeated in a pitched battle, in spite of their crushing superiority of numbers. Not through the courage of their enemies, but by their discipline and military skill. The latter is certainly very limited, but sufficient for adversaries such as they have to combat.