Hidalgo Rings the Bell at Dolores and Launches the War of Independence
A parish priest, warned his conspiracy has been discovered, calls his congregation to arms in the pre-dawn dark
Quick facts
- Location
- Dolores, Guanajuato
- Date
- 16 September 1810
- Reported force size
- c. 60,000
- Hidalgo captured and executed
- 21 March 1811 (captured)
What happened
Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the criollo priest of the parish of Dolores, learned in the early hours of 16 September 1810 that Spanish authorities had discovered the anti-royalist conspiracy he had joined with Ignacio Allende and others. Rather than wait for arrest, he rang the church bells as if calling parishioners to Mass and instead urged the largely Indigenous and mestizo crowd to revolt, an act remembered as the Grito de Dolores. The exact wording is not preserved, but accounts agree he invoked the Virgin of Guadalupe and denounced 'bad government' and the gachupines, Spanish-born colonists. Hidalgo's improvised army, reported at around 60,000, took the silver city of Guanajuato but suffered defeats at Aculco and elsewhere, and by November had failed to take Mexico City. Hidalgo was captured in Coahuila on 21 March 1811 and executed after being stripped of his priesthood.
Why it matters
Hidalgo's revolt failed militarily within a year, but it set in motion an eleven-year war that eventually did win independence, and its call for the end of Spanish rule, land redistribution, and racial equality shaped the demands of every insurgent leader who followed him, including Jose Maria Morelos. September 16 is now celebrated as Mexico's Independence Day.
How we know
Manuscript records held in the Library of Congress's Peter Force Collection document Hidalgo's biography and the Inquisition's earlier case against him; period accounts from multiple independent chroniclers describe the 16 September uprising and its immediate military campaign.
Sources
- The Mexican Revolution and the United States exhibit, Library of Congress. Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla · Primary sourceloc.gov · The domain "loc.gov" is on our Primary source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Mexican War of Independence · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link loads, but its text didn't clearly match the event's terms
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