Iturbide, after a two years’ exile, whether uneasy in his fall, or tempted by the perpetual tumults of party at home, returned to Mexico in 1824. He was said to complain of the stoppage of his pension; but, before his arrival, a party especially hostile to him had obtained power, and Iturbide, with a rashness which exhibits the true Creole, landing, without making the natural inquiry into the actual condition of things, was instantly seized and shot. Santa Anna, who had distinguished himself in the military service, now appealed to the usual donor of power, the army, and, at the head of his squadrons, took possession of the Presidentship.
In the present confusion of Mexican affairs, the recollection of Santa Anna has been frequently brought before the mind of his nation, as the only man fit to sustain it under the difficulties of the crisis; and nothing can be more fully acknowledged, than that, among the successive leaders of the country, he has had no rival in point of decision, intelligence, and intrepidity, the qualities obviously most essential for the time.
Santa Anna, in 1823, was unknown; he was simply a colonel in the Mexican service. The declaration of public opinion in that year for Republicanism, found him a zealous convert; and at the head of his regiment he marched from Vera Cruz to meet the troops of Iturbide. He met the Emperor’s general, Echavari, half-way to the capital, and, after some trivial encounters, made a convert of his enemy; Echavari’s battalions marched into Santa Anna’s camp. Iturbide, thus suddenly stript of his troops, had no alternative but to capitulate, and go into banishment. The Republic was proclaimed, and Santa Anna was recognised as the deliverer of his country. But an occasion occurred in which his military talents were to be equally conspicuous.
In 1829, a Spanish armament, with four thousand troops under General Barrados, made its appearance off Tampico, dispatched to recover the country for the Spanish crown. This instance of activity on the part of Old Spain was so unexpected, that the Republic was in general consternation. But Santa Anna took his measures with equal intelligence and bravery. Collecting about seven hundred men hastily, crossing the Gulf in open boats, and evading the Spanish vessels of war, he landed within a few miles of the Spanish expedition. Barrados, unprepared for this dashing antagonist, had gone on some rash excursion, carrying with him three-fourths of his force; the remaining thousand were the garrison of Tampico. Santa Anna, losing no time, assaulted the place next morning, and after a four hours’ struggle, made the whole garrison prisoners. But his victory had placed him in imminent danger. Barrados rapidly returned; the Mexican general, encumbered with prisoners, found himself in presence of triple his numbers, and with a river in his rear. Death, or surrender, seemed the only alternatives. In this emergency, he dexterously proposed an armistice, impressing the Spanish general with the idea that he was at the head of an overwhelming force—an impression the more easily made, from the apparent hardihood of his venturing so near an army of Spanish veterans. One of his first conditions was, that the Mexican troops should return to their own quarters unmolested. Thus, with merely six hundred men, he escaped from five times that number. In a few days he was joined by several hundred men. He then commenced a vigorous and incessant attack on the Spanish position, which was followed by the surrender of the entire corps; and 2200 Spaniards were embarked for the Havannah as prisoners of war. Santa Anna’s force never exceeding 1500 men.
A campaign of this rank naturally placed him in a distinguished point of public view. Yet he remained in comparative quiet on his estates near Vera Cruz, probably on the Napoleon principle—waiting his opportunity. It soon came; in 1841, Bustamente, the president, fell into unpopularity; murmurs rose ominously among the troops, and Santa Anna was summoned to head a revolution. Gathering five or six hundred men, chiefly raw recruits, he marched on the capital. The enterprise was singularly adventurous, for Bustamente was an experienced officer, with 8000 men under his immediate command. Santa Anna again tried the effect of diplomacy; the result was, that Bustamente finally surrendered both his power and his place, and was shortly after sent into exile.
Santa Anna now governed the country as dictator. His administration had the rashness, but the honesty, of his Spanish origin; and Mexico, relieved from the encumbrances of her Spanish dependence, was beginning to enjoy the riches of her unparalleled climate and boundless fertility, when a new enemy arose in Texas—the American settlers, who, in the spirit of cosmopolitism, had been universally suffered to enter the Mexican territories as inhabitants. The result was, that they began to clamour for provincial independence. The natives were generally tranquil; but the new-comers intrigued, harangued, and demanded a direct alliance with the United States. The struggle has been too recent to require recital. Santa Anna, with the rashness which characterises his courage, rushed into this war with troops evidently unprepared. After various skirmishes, in which the settlers suffered severely, his undisciplined force was routed, and Santa Anna, left alone in the field, was made prisoner in the attempt to escape. The “Independence” of Texas followed, which was quickly exchanged for the “Annexation” to the United States, by which its independence was extinguished.
The “Annexation” was immediately pronounced by the Mexican government to be a breach of that treaty by which the neighbour States were pledged to respect the possessions of each other; and the invasion of Mexico by an American army was the consequence. The Mexican force on the frontier was obviously too feeble for any effective resistance; and the American general, after some delays of movement, and divisions of his forces, which one active officer on the defensive would have turned to his ruin, attacked the Mexicans, drove them from their position, and took their guns. Since that period the advance of the Americans seems to have been checked by the difficulties of the country. Whether it is the intention of the American commander to fight, or to negotiate, to make a dash for the capital, or to treat for California, must be left to be discovered by events. But Paredes, the present head of the state, and commander of the troops, has the reputation of a brave officer, and Santa Anna is strongly spoken of as the man whom the nation would gladly summon to the redemption of his country.
But Mexico has one fatal feature which makes the mind despair of her ever holding the rank of a great nation. However glaring may be the superstition of continental Europe, it is of a feeble hue to the extravagance of Mexican ceremonial. In those remote countries, once guarded under the Spanish government with the most jealous vigilance from the stranger’s eye, every ceremonial was gradually adopted, of every shape and colour, which the deepest superstition, aided by great wealth, the influence of a powerful hierarchy, and the zeal of a people at once desperately ignorant and singularly fond of show, could invent. Rome, and even Naples, were moderate, compared with Mexico. The conveyance of the Host to the sick was almost a public pageant; its carriage to the wife of Santa Anna was accompanied by twenty thousand people. The feast of Corpus Christi exhibits streets through which thirty or forty thousand people pour along, of all classes of society, with thousands of soldiery, to swell and give military brilliancy to the display. At the head of the pageant moves a platform, on which the wafer is borne by the highest dignitaries of the church. Then follows, in a similar vehicle, “Our Lady of the Remedies,” the blessed Virgin Mother, a little alabaster doll, with the nose broken and an eye out. This was the image of herself given by the Virgin to Cortes to revive the valour of his soldiers after their Mexican defeat; and this the priests profess to believe, and the populace actually do believe. The doll’s wardrobe, with its precious stones, is valued at a million of dollars. The doll stops all contagious diseases, and is remarkably active in times of cholera.
Some of the popular exhibitions on Scriptural subjects are actually too startling to be described to Christian ears. Among those is the exhibition of the Nativity, as the especial display of Christmas eve. Joseph enters Bethlehem with Mary; they are sitting on the same mule; they search the city for lodgings in vain. At last they find the stable. The rest of the exhibition, a part of which, however, passes behind a curtain, is indescribable. And all this is done with the highest approbation of the ecclesiastical authorities.
The anniversary of the “Miracle” of the “Virgin of Guadaloupe,” is one of the “grand days” of the Federal Republic. The president, the cabinet, the archbishop, and all the principal functionaries of the state, are present, with an immense multitude of every class. A member of Congress delivers an oration on the subject; and the Virgin and her story are no more doubted than the history of Magna Charta. The story thus blazoned, and thus believed, is briefly this:—