Ignacio Elizondo (9 March 1766 – 12 September 1813) was a Spanish Royalist military officer who served in the Mexican War of Independence. He most notably captured Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Jose Mariano Jimenez, Ignacio Allende, and Juan Aldama at the Wells of Bajan in Coahuila in March 1811.
Biography[]
Ignacio Elizondo was born in Salinas Victoria, Nuevo Leon, New Spain in 1766, the son of a hacendado. He joined the Spanish Army in 1798 and became a dragoon captain, and, in 1806, he settled on a hacienda near Monclova in Coahuila. He initially sided with the Mexican revolutionary cause while stationed in Tejas at the start of the Mexican War of Independence, but a bishop and two captured Royalist generals persuaded him to defect to the Royalist cause. On 21 March 1811, he and 150 men ambushed the rebel leaders Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Jose Mariano Jimenez, Ignacio Allende, and Juan Aldama at the Wells of Bajan in Coahuila and betrayed them to their executions later that year. Elizondo was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel as a reward, but, on 20 June 1813, he was defeated at the Battle of Alazan Creek in Texas. On 18 August 1813, he crushed an American filibustering expedition at the Battle of Medina. On 3 September 1813, he was mortally wounded during an attack by one of his subordinates as he slept in his encampment near the Brazos River, and he died on 12 September.