Elizondo pretended to be a supporter of the struggle to overthrow Spanish rule, lured the rebels into a trap, and captured them with little resistance.

On September 16, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Roman Catholic priest, triggered the Mexican War of Independence with his speech, called in Mexico the "grito."

Along with the remnants of the rebel army, Allende, Aldama and Hidalgo, and others fled northward with the goal of getting to the United States and hoping that they would receive military and financial support from the U.S.[1] The military leaders blamed Hidalgo for the loss at Calderon Bridge, forced him to resign his command, and threatened to execute him if he resisted.

[2] Meanwhile, another rebel general, José Mariano Jiménéz, was leading a separate army of 7,000 men from San Luis Potosi toward Saltillo.

In Monclova, Aranda chose a retired militia officer, Ignacio Elizondo, to take charge of royalist prisoners.

Elizondo was converted to the royalist cause by his prisoners, He was asked to continue to pretend he supported the rebels to gain intelligence about the plans of Allende and Hidalgo.

[3] The royalist sympathizers in Monclova included a group of large landowners of the region led by José Melchor Sanchez Navarro.

[13] Allende, Aldama, and Jiménez were tried and found guilty in May 1811 and executed by firing squads and decapitated on July 26, 1811,[14] Another leader, Mariano Abasolo, escaped execution due to his public denouncement of the insurgent cause and the intervention of his wife, María Manuela Rojas Taboada, whose family had connections with aristocrats of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

[15] He was instead sentenced to life in prison in the Santa Catalina Castle at Cádiz, Spain, where he died of pulmonary tuberculosis April 14, 1816.

[16] Hidalgo was tried by the Mexican Inquisition by the bishop of Durango, Francisco Gabriel de Olivares, for an official defrocking and excommunication on 27 July 1811.

Iriarte was subsequently executed according to the previous instructions left by Allende, based on suspicions such as having freed General Felix Maria Calleja's wife.

[22][23] López Rayón would go on to meet with Jose Maria Morelos and other insurgent leaders to establish a prototypical governing body known as the Council of Zitácuaro to continue the struggle for independent against the vice-regal structure.

The four heads of the executed insurgent leaders were hung from the corners of the Grain Exchange Alhóndiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato, to discourage the independence movement.

Of the more than 800 common soldiers and junior leaders captured several hundred were executed in Monclova; others were sentenced to work in mines and on haciendas scattered around Coahuila.