self and for his children but for the arrogance with which he treated his new subjects and for his indifference to their constitutional rights. He soon quarreled with the Cortes and arrested a number of the members, then dissolved the body and replaced it with a set of men who would obey him without question. These high-handed proceedings opened the eyes of the people to the true character of their favorite. The northern provinces were first to turn upon him; he was now styled "the usurper Iturbide." Santa Anna, governor of Vera Cruz, uniting with Guadalupe Victoria, joined the disaffected party and hoisted the flag of the republic; and when troops were sent from Mexico by the emperor to put down the revolt, they too joined his enemies. Iturbide saw his mistake when it was too late. In March, 1823, after a reign of only ten months, he offered his abdication to the old Congress. Congress ignored the fact that he had ever worn a crown, but accorded him the honor due to his first title—"Liberator of Mexico"—and sent him and his family quietly over-sea on a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year.
One more sad act, and the curtain falls on poor Iturbide. Too restless to stay in Italy, whither he had betaken himself, the ex-emperor secretly came back, hoping, no doubt, to gain his old place in the hearts of his countrymen. He was discovered by one of his former generals, arrested as an outlaw by the State of Tamaulipas under a law passed by Congress forbidding him on pain of death to set foot on Mexican soil, and shot by State authority.
The year 1824 is one of the bright points in this dreary history of turbulence. About that time a galaxy of Spanish colonies had declared for independence—
