Ignacio Elizondo

Ignacio Elizondo
Captain [later promoted to Lt. Col. as reward for this action] Ignacio Elizondo [center horseman] captures Hidalgo, Allende and other insurgent leaders at the Wells of Bajan on 21 March 1811.
Born	Francisco Ignacio Elizondo Villarreal March 9, 1766 Salinas Valley, New Kingdom of León, New Spain
Died	September 2, 1813 San Marcos, Texas
Nationality	Spanish
Occupation	Military

Francisco Ignacio Elizondo Villarreal, (Salinas Valley, New Kingdom of León, New Spain, March 9, 1766 - San Marcos, Texas, New Spain, September 2, 1813), was a New Leonese royalist general, mostly known for his victorious plot to seek to capture important insurgency precursors of the Mexican War of Independence such as Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, and Juan Aldama in Baján, Coahuila in 1811. Elizondo was born in the village of Salinas (now Salinas Victoria, Nuevo León). He was son of José Marcos de Elizondo and María Josefa de Villarreal. He was of Spanish and Basque ancestry.

During his childhood, Elizondo lived in the village of Pesquería Grande (present-day Garcia, Nuevo León). His father owned many agricultural ranch stock properties then known as haciendas. In 1787, at the age of twenty-one he married María Gertrudis. She died on March 6, 1797, when she was giving birth his son, José Rafael Eusebio.

Ignacio Elizondo started his militar career in 1798, after being designated Lieutenant of Pesquería's provincial militia company. Two years later, he was honoured Captain of Punta de Lampazos provincial Dragons, one of the largest militar 'presidio' of the New Kingdom of León. However, one year later Elizondo occupied again his former position at the Pesquería's provincial militia. In 1806, governor Pedro de Herrera y Levya, commend him the control of the Eighth Dragon's company who would help Texas against the concurrent Apache attacks, already present in northern towns of the New Kingdom of León. Elizondo demanded viceroy through a letter to exempt himself from his position at the military command because this was making serious financial problems in some of his ranches and stock properties, among them some he previously bought to the church, in the same letter, he expressed the reprisals from governor Pedro de Herrera, that would cause the action of Elizondo's desertion. After, falling out with Herrera, indebted with the purchase of several haciendas from the church, he married María Romana Carrasco the same year, then he decided to change his residency to the Hacienda of San Juan de Canoas, in the province of Coahuila, where he also administrated the Hacienda of Alamo, jurisdiction of Monclova.