So well had the emperor dissembled, that up to this time Santa Anna apparently had no suspicion that Iturbide intended to call him to account. The announcement to Santa Anna of his removal from the command in Vera Cruz was made in terms of highest compliment;[1] and when Iturbide departed for the capital on the 1st of December, he embraced him and said: "I await you in Mexico, Santa Anna, to make your fortune for you."[2] It was, perhaps, a little overdone by Iturbide, and Santa Anna was as clever a dissembler as he. Further than this, he was secretly warned that his ruin was meditated.[3] Therefore, with every appearance of undisturbed confidence, with every mark of subservient respect,[4] he attended Iturbide for a short distance on his journey, but returned with hatred in his heart to Jalapa, and in a few hours was on his way to Vera Cruz. He arrived at the port on the following day, and putting himself at the head of the 8th infantry regiment, of which he was colonel, proclaimed in the name of the nation a republican government, declaring that the three guaranties of the plan of Iguala would be inviolably observed.[5]
- ↑ 'En los terminos mas honorificos que pudo inventar el sagaz y avisado emperador.' Santana, Manifiesto a sus conciudadanos, 8.
- ↑ Id., 9.
- ↑ Santa Anna says that he would have been deceived by Iturbide's manner 'si un confidente de Mexico no me avisara con oportunidad "que mi perdicion estaba decretada."' Id., 8.
- ↑ Francisco de Paula Álvarez, Iturbide's secretary, in reply to a letter of Santa Anna addressed Dec. 6th to Iturbide, setting forth the reasons which urged him to revolt, says: 'Vd sabe que yo sé de la manera que habló siempre al Emperador, temblando y adulando, ofreciendose á servicios de un lacayo, indignos de un gefe.' Santa-Anna hasta 1822, 7. This communication was written at Puebla in Dec. 1822, and was printed and published at Guadalajara the same month. In 1844 it was again published just before Santa Anna's fall in that year. It is an intensely stinging diatribe, exposing in scathing language all the worst traits of Santa Anna's character, his conduct from boyhood, and his motives. In invective it can hardly be matched, and in future revolutions it was always made use of as a means of vilifying him.
- ↑ Santana, Proclamas, 2 Dicre 1822; Gac. Imp. Mex., ii. 1011. On the 6th he addressed to Iturbide the letter mentioned in the previous note. After reminding him of the excess of his zeal in his service, which had become 'odious to his fellow-citizens, who thought him servile and a flatterer,' and professing unalterable affection, he says: 'I have felt myself under the necessity of separating myself from your command, because your absolute government is about to fill with incalculable evils our beloved country. . . The provinces, the towns, the
