the head of his.guerillas, Victoria occupied the whole country between Xalapa and Vera Cruz; and long after the death of Morelus, he maintained a desultory warfare, although he appears to have declined co-operating with either Teran or Mina. . Don Guadalupe Victoria,' says Mr. Robinson in his Memoirs of the first Mexican Revolution, • had at no time under his command more than 2000 men ; but he was so well acquainted with the fastnesses of the province of Vera Cruz, that the Royalists could never bring him to a general action. In vain they sent superior forces to attack him ; in vain they drove him from one position to another; for, as fast as they destroyed part of his forces in one place, he recruited them in another. More than twenty times the Mexican Gazette has published, that Victoria was slain, and his party annihilated; but, a few days after those false and pompous accounts, we have heard of Victoria suddenly springing up, attacking and capturing convoys of merchandize, seizing some strong holds, and throwing the whole country into consternation. At the head of 150 or 200 cavalry, he performed some of the most daring exploits that were effected during the Revolution ; and his personal courage and activity were universally acknowledged even by his enemies. More than four fifths of the population of Vera Cruz were in his favour. Wherever he went, provisions were secretly or openly furnished him. Had he possessed musquets, there were from ten to fifteen thousand men ready to accept them and join his standard. To the want of arms and the munitions of war, and to no other cause, must be attributed his eventual failure. He obtained a few hundred muskets from New Orleans, during the time that he possessed the ports of Boquilla de Piedra and Nautla on the coast of Vera Cruz; but, after those places were retaken by the royalists at the close of 1816, or the beginning of 1817, he was cut off from all foreign supplies. The royalists have since proclaimed that he was slain and his forces destroyed.' Memoirs, vol i. pp. 232, 3.

At this period, it has since appeared, that he was indebted for his personal safety to the impervious woods between Xalapa and Vera Cruz, in which for thirty months he lay concealed without seeing the face of a human being. He was proscribed, and an immense sum being set on his head by the Spanish viceroy, he could not, it seems, trust the knowledge of his retreat to any of his followers. His privations and sufferings during this song interval were extreme; his only means of subsistence being the vegetable productions or the animal and insect inhabitants of the forests. · At one time,' Mr. Bullock informs us, • in consequence of his mental and corporal sufferings, he was attacked by fever, and remained eleven days at the entrance of a cavern, stretched on the ground, without food, hourly expecting a termination of his wretched existence, and the vultures were constantly ho

vering over him in expectation of their prey. The first nourishment he received, was the warm blood of one of these birds, which had approached to feast on his half-closed eyes, when he seized him by the neck, and was by this means enabled to crawl to the nearest water to slake his parching thirst.* After the expulsion of the Spaniards, an old and faithful Indian discovered his retreat, but with difficulty could recognise his person, he being destitute of clothes, and so altered in appearance that he had scarcely the semblance of a human form.'

Bullock's Six Months in Mexico, p. 454. The individual who could survive such sufferings, must be possessed not merely of a vigorous constitution, but of an unconquerable mental energy, and a rare degree of that true fortitude which is one of the elements of the heroic character. No sooner had Iturbidé raised the standard of independence, than Victoria again appeared in arms; he joined him at San Juan del Rio in the road from Mexico to the interior. The army of the Three Guaranteest, as it was called, marched upon Queretaro, which may be considered as the key to the interior provinces, and gained immediate possession of the place. Here, the army was formed into two divisions. It was assigned to Victoria to head that which marched towards the capital, while the commander in chief made a rapid movement to secure Puebla, which lies between Mexico and the coast. The opportune arrival of the new viceroy, General O'Donoju, and the facility with which that worthy Don was brought to recognise the Plan of Iguala, which amounted to a declaration of the national independence,-superseded the ne

* Southey would have been glad of this thrilling anecdote, to add another circumstance of horror to his fine description of • Roderick in solitude.'

the sepulchre would be
No hiding-place for him ; no Christian hands
Were here, who should compose his decent corpse
And cover it with earth. There he might drag
His wretched body at its passing hour,
And there the sea-birds of her heritage
Would rob the worm, or peradventure seize,
Ere death had done its work, their belpless prey.
Ev'n now they did not fear him......
As if, being thus alone, humanity
Had lost its rank, and the prerogative

Of man was done away.' + These Guarantees were, the Roman Catholic religion in its purity, the national independence, and the union of Americans and Spaniards.

cessity of any further military proceedings. The Spanish

. garrison marched out of Mexico with the honours of war, and on the the 27th of September, 1821, the two generals, Iturbide and O'Donoju, entered the capital together amid the acclamations of the inhabitants.

Conformably to the previous arrangements, a junta of thirtysix persons was now appointed, by whom was chosen a regency consisting of five, Iturbidé president, who was at the same time appointed admiral and generalissimo, with a yearly salary of 120,000 dollars. The attention of all classes was now directed to the convocation of a Cortes. Iturbidé, in the name of the regency, submitted to the junta a plan by which two chambers were to be constituted; the first to consist of twelve or fifteen priests, as many military officers, one delegate from every municipal council throughout the empire, and one from each territorial court of judicature. The second chamber, from which all these classes were to be excluded, was to consist of deputies to be elected by the people, in the proportion of 1 for every 50,000 of the population. This plan was rejected by the junta, and it seems to have been the first thing that awaked a distrust of the president. The first chamber would have resembled Bonaparte's senate, or Cromwell's council of state ; it would have been a packed committee of Iturbide's partizans ; while the exclusion of the priesthood and the military from the chamber of deputies, would have shut out the individuals from whom alone Iturbidé had to apprehend much opposition in carrying into execution his ambitious schemes. In the plan that was eventually adopted, the same proportion of representation was preserved, but it was directed, that each province should return one ecclesiastic, one lawyer, and one military man, so that all classes might be fairly represented. The people, however, were not satisfied with the plan, and a con:spiracy is said to have been formed, to compel the junta to adopt the provisions of the Spanish constitution. headed by Generals Victoria and Bravo, but, being revealed to Iturbidé by one of the party, those generals, with several other officers, were arrested and imprisoned. Mr. Bullock gives a somewhat different version of the matter. The moment he

. • • (Victoria) considered the views of Iturbidé as injurious to the - rights of the people, he publicly denounced him, on which he * was arrested and confined.' This open and fearless mode of proceeding certainly appears more in unison with Victoria's character ; but, whether chargeable with conspiracy or insubordination, the event proved that his suspicions of Iturbide's intentions were well founded, and there was no one whom the latter had more reason to fear. They were not made to move

It was

6

in the same orbit. Vittoria's friends enabled him to make his escape from imprisonment, and he proceeded a second time to his old place of concealment in the woods below Xalapa. We now again lose sight of him till the beginning of the year 1823, when a new turn of affairs again brought him forward in defence of the cause to which he had steadily devoted himself. A Spanish garrison still retained possession of the fortress of San Juan Ullua, which commands the port and city of Vera Cruz, and they had recently committed some acts of hostility. After some correspondence with the governor, Iturbidé, thinking that, in a personal interview, he might better succeed in bringing him to terms, left the capital on the 10th of Nov. 1822, and had proceeded as far as Xalapa, when an event occurred which led to results he little anticipated. The Author of “ Notes on Mexico" gives the following account of the circumstances.

Santana, the governor of Vera Cruz, an active, enterprising officer, who commanded the forces that stormed that city when it was taken from the royalists, and who had long enjoyed an independent command, could not brook the control of a superior. Disputes soon arose between him and Echavarri, the commander-in-chief of the southern division; and Santana was summoned before the emperor at Xalapa, to answer the charges preferred against him by Echavarri. Sure of the protection of his imperial master, to whom he had always shewn the most devoted attachment, he readily obeyed the summons ; but, to his great surprise, Iturbidé treated him harshly, and dismissed him from the command of Vera Cruz. Enraged by this unexpected treatment, Santana suddenly left Xalapa, and riding day and night, arrived at Vera Cruz before the news of his disgrace had reached there. He instantly assembled his own regiment, and pointing out to them the odious character of the government imposed upon them by Iturbidé, he exhorted them to take up arms in defence of the liberties of their country. This exhortation was in unison with the wishes of all the officers, both of the garrison of Vera Cruz and of the neighbouring towns. The character of Santana, and his supposed attachment to the emperor, had alone prevented them from openly declaring in favour of a liberal system of government.

. The standard of the republic was unfurled at Vera Cruz; and Santana addressed a letter to Iturbidé, in which he reminds him of the obligations he owed to him, of the part he had taken in his elevation to the throne, and of the affection he had always manifested for him,—but declaring, that his duty to his country now required him to set aside every other consideration, and to oppose the man who had reduced the nation to the utmost misery. He reproaches him with having broken his oath, and dissolved the congress by vio. lence; and tells him, that the people are convinced, that under his government, the sacred rights of property will never be respected. He then states his intention to re-assemble the congress, and to esta. blish a republican government; sets forth the means he possesses of carrying his plan into effect; and advises Iturbidé to renounce the crown, and to rely upon the generosity of the congress, which will take care to reward his services.

• The emperor did not relish this advice, and ordered Echavarri, who was at Xalapa, to advance with the division under his command against the insurgents, as he called the troops of Santana. The latter advanced to Puente del Rey, which he fortified; and several smart actions were fought between the imperialists and the republicans. In this state of things, Guadalupe Victoria left his hiding-place in the mountains, and joined Santana. At first, he was appointed second in command; but Santana soon found the interests of the party required, that an officer who had been an undeviating republican, and who enjoyed the entire confidence of the troops and of the people, should be raised to the supreme command. Guadalupe Victoria was accord. ingly declared commander in-chief: the people flocked to his standard, and the insurrection spread throughout the whole province.

• On the 1st of February, 1823, an arrangement was made by Echa. varri and the officers conmanding the imperialists, with Guadalupe Victoria and Santana ; and the two armies, united, sent commissions to Iturbidé, offering terms, but insisting upon a congress being immediately assembled to frame a liberal and republican constitution. Iturbidé, in his turn, sent commissions to Echavarri and his officers, to endeavour to divert them from their purpose ; and immediately marched with a small body of troops, and took post at Istapaluca, a town four leagues from the capital, on the road to Puebla. The defection of the army of Echavarri

, was the signal of revolt in all the other provinces. Oaxaca, Guadalaxara, Guanaxuato, San Luis Potosi, declared in favour of a republican government; and in the capitals of those provinces, in Queretaro, and in Valladolid, the inhabitants rose and imprisoned the imperial commanders. The generals Guerrero and Bravo, men who had been distinguished in the wars of the revolution, secretly departed from Mexico, and appeared in arms in the west.

• The province and city of Puebla were soon after added to the number of Iturbidé's enemies. The Marquess de Vivanco assumed the government of that place, and soon organised a strong force.

The army of Xalapa now pushed forward to Puebla, where they were joined by Negrete and several officers of distinction, and the advanced guard of the republicans was stationed at San Martin de Tesmelucos.

• The emperor returned to the capital, and, on the 8th of March, he called together all the members of the old congress who were in the city, and tendered his abdication.'

The result, we have anticipated. The republican army entered the capital ; the old Congress was immediately convoked ; and an executive triumvirate was appointed, consisting of Generals Victoria, Bravo, and Negrete. A new constituent Congress was subsequently elected, to