The army, then, after the war, assumed an influence which it has ever since retained, and which increased in proportion as the men placed at the head of the government more fully understood that it alone could maintain them in power or overthrow them at its good pleasure. The army, therefore, made revolutions that its leaders might become powerful. From the lowest alférez up to the general of division, all the officers look to troubles for promotion—the alférez to become lieutenant, the colonel to exchange his red scarf for the green one of the brigadier general, and the general of division to become President of the Republic.
Hence pronunciamientos are continual; for every officer wearied of a subaltern grade, and who aspires to a higher rank, pronounces himself; that is to say, aided by a nucleus of malcontents like himself, which is never wanting, he revolts by refusing obedience to the government, and that the more easily because, whether conqueror or conquered, the rank he has thus appropriated always remains his.
The military career is, therefore, a perfect steeplechase. We know a certain general, whose name we could write here in full if we wished, who attained the presidency by stepping from pronunciamiento to pronunciamiento without ever having smelt fire, or knowing the first movement of platoon drill—an ignorance which is not at all extraordinary in a country where one of our sergeant conductors would be superior to the most renowned generals.
Don Sebastian judged his position with the infallible eye of an ambitious man; and suddenly attacked by a fever of immense activity, he resolved to profit cleverly by the general anarchy to gain a position. He clambered up the first steps at full speed and became a full colonel with startling rapidity. On reaching that position he married, in order to secure himself, and to give him that solidity he desired for the great game he intended to play, and which, in his mind, only ended with the presidential chair.
Already very rich, his marriage increased his fortune, which he sought to augment, however, by every possible scheme; for he was aware what the cost of a successful pronunciamiento was, and he did not mean to suffer a defeat.
As if everything was destined to favour this man in all he undertook, his wife, a dear and charming woman, whose love and devotion he never comprehended, died after a short illness, and left him father of a girl as charming and amiable as herself—that lovely Angela whom we have already met several times in the course of our narrative.
Don Sebastian could have married again if he liked; but by his first marriage he had obtained what he wanted, and preferred to remain free. At the period we have now reached he had attained general's rank, and secured the appointment of political governor of the state of Sonora, the first stepping-stone for his ambitious projects.
Colossally rich, he was interested in all the great industrial enterprises, and a shareholder in most of the mining operations. It was for the object of watching these operations more closely, that he had asked for the government of Sonora, a new country, almost unknown, where he hoped to fish more easily in troubled waters, owing to its distance from the capital, and the slight surveillance he had to fear from the government, in which he had, moreover, all-powerful influences.
In a word, General Guerrero was one of those gloomy personages who, under a most fascinating exterior, the most affable manners, and most seductive smiles, conceal the most perverse instincts, the coldest ferocity, and the most rotten soul.
Still this man had in his heart one feeling which, by its intensity, expiated many faults.