# Mexico in 1827/Volume 1/Chapter 8

SECTION IV.
REVOLUTION FROM 1820 TO 1824, INCLUDING ITURBIDE'S RISE AND FALL.
In giving the opinion mentioned at the close of the preceding chapter, Apŏdācă showed himself to be much less intimately acquainted than his predecessor with the character of the contest, in which Spain, and her Colonies, were engaged. Nothing could be more fallacious than the appearances to which he trusted. The country was exhausted, but not subdued; and during the suspension of hostilities, upon which his hopes were founded, the principles of the Insurrection were daily gaining ground. The great support of Spain, during the early part of the contest, had been the Creole troops, who had embarked in her cause with a zeal for which it is difficult to account, as the military profession, under the old system, was not exempt from the disadvantages to which other professions were liable, no Creole being allowed to hold any important command. But means had been found to conciliate the ​army at the critical moment, and, up to 1820, it continued faithful to the cause which it at first espoused. During the war, the officers had little leisure for reflecting upon the rights of the question, and it even became a sort of esprit de corps with them to designate the Insurgents as banditti, to whom none of the privileges of ordinary warfare were to be extended. Their men, when once blooded, followed blindly those whom they were accustomed to obey; and the severities which they exercised upon their Creole countrymen, and which were retaliated upon themselves whenever the fortune of the field allowed it, left but little opportunity for any approximation of opinions. But, when the heat of the contest had subsided, things assumed a very different aspect: crowds of Insurgents, who had accepted the indulto, were allowed to mingle with the troops, and many were even admitted as recruits into the Creole regiments: each of these men formed proselytes amongst his comrades, while the officers were attacked, not merely by argument, but by all the seductions of the female sex, who have been, throughout America, the warmest advocates of Independence. They were taught that it was to them that their country looked for freedom; that they alone had prevented its attainment at a much earlier period; and that ​it was their duty to repair an error, which a mistaken notion of honour had induced them to commit.
A feeling of this nature was gaining ground when the re-establishment of the Constitution in Spain, by the very army that was destined to rivet the chains of America, gave to the partisans of the Independent cause an additional advantage. Although the liberty of the press was not established, still, freedom of communication could not be prevented. The events of 1812 seemed to be repeated; the elections threw the minds of the people again into a ferment, which, from the restricted powers of the Viceroy, it was almost impossible to allay; and, in addition to this, the Old Spaniards were divided amongst themselves. Many were sincere Constitutionalists, while others were as sincerely attached to the old system. In Mexico, as in the Mother country, these parties broke out into open hostility. The Viceroy Apodaca, who probably thought que c'étoit son metier à lui d'étre royaliste, although he took the oath to the Constitution, lost no opportunity of favouring the party opposed to it; and took advantage of the decrees of the Cortes respecting Church property, to form an alliance with the great Dignitaries of the church in the Capital, in conjunction with whom, it is believed to have been his intention to proclaim a return to the old system, as the only means of saving the country from ruin, and religion from contamination.
​Don Agustin de Iturbide was the person chosen to carry this plan into execution; and, to all appearance, it would have been impossible to select a fitter instrument. He was a Creole born, and could therefore address the Mexicans as his countrymen; while, from the brilliancy of his military career, he was almost sure to be followed by the army. In addition to this, he was much esteemed by the high clergy, having been employed, for some time, in expiating the excesses of his former life, by a rigid course of penance and mortification, in the College of the Professa in the Capital.
It is difficult in speaking of events so very recent as Iturbide's rise and fall, to arrive at the exact truth, particularly, where every thing is distorted by party-colouring; the following facts, however, seem to be universally admitted respecting the career of this extraordinary man. He was of a respectable, but by no means a wealthy family, of the Province of Valladolid; and, at the commencement of the Revolution, was serving as lieutenant in a regiment of Provincial Militia. Distinguished by a fine person, a most captivating address, and polished manners, as well as by a daring and ambitious spirit, he was amongst the first of those, who dipped in the plans for shaking off the yoke of Spain, in which the years 1808, and 1809, abounded. Of the termination of his connexion with the first Insurgents, two very different stories are told. He ​himself asserts that he was disgusted with their projects, and refused to take any share in their execution, although they offered him the rank of Lieutenant-general as the price of his co-operation; while the Insurgents affirm that these were the conditions proposed by Iturbide, and rejected by them, because they conceived that it was setting too high a price upon the services of a man, so young, and so little distinguished, as he then was. However this may be, it is certain that all communication between them was broken off in disgust, and that Iturbide joined the troops, which were assembled by the Viceroy Venegas for the defence of Mexico, in 1810, and distinguished himself in the action of Lăs Crūcĕs, under the orders of Trŭxīllŏ. From that moment his rise was rapid: his activity and knowledge of the country recommended him for every dangerous expedition; and in these he was almost uniformly successful. As a Guerrilla chief he displayed great military talent; and, when entrusted with more important commands, he inflicted two of the most severe blows that the Insurgent cause sustained, in the battles of Văllădŏlīd, and Pŭrŭărān, (where Morelos's great army was destroyed, and Mătămōrŏs taken,) and mainly contributed to the triumph of the Spanish arms. As he himself states, he never failed but in the attack upon the fort of Cōpŏrŏ, in 1815, upon which occasion he volunteered his services, and led the party that was destined for the ​assault. He was afterwards appointed to an independent command in the Baxio, (an honour which few Creoles had obtained before him;) but there, as during the course of his previous career, he tarnished the lustre of his military exploits by giving loose to the violence of the most unbridled passions. Few even of the Spanish Commandants equalled him in cruelty: his prisoners were seldom, if ever spared, and a dispatch of his is still extant, addressed to the Viceroy, after an action at Sălvătīĕrră, dated Good Friday, 1814, in which he tells him that, "in honour of the day, he had just ordered three hundred excommunicated wretches to be shot!"
This dispatch has been declared by Iturbide's partisans to be apocryphal; but the original exists in the archives of the Viceroyalty. All, therefore, that can be said is, that these detestable executions, in cold blood, were but too much in consonance with the barbarous spirit of the time; and that, although it is impossible now to determine with which party they originated, they were almost universally practised by both. These were not, however, the only causes of complaint against Ĭtŭrbīdĕ; his rapacity and extortions in his government led to such numerous representations against him, that he was recalled, in 1816, to Mexico, where an inquiry was instituted into his conduct, which was, however, stifled, because the malversations of which he had been guilty extended, more or less, to the whole ​army, which was, consequently, disposed to make common cause with Iturbide, in repelling an attack so dangerous to all.
From this time Iturbide remained unemployed until the year 1820, at the close of which Apodaca had recourse to him, as I have already stated, as the fittest agent for carrying into execution his plans for the overthrow of the Constitution, and offered him the command of a small body of troops upon the Western coast, at the head of which he was to proclaim the re-establishment of the absolute authority of the King.
Iturbide accepted the commission, but with intentions very different from those with which it was conferred upon him. He had had leisure, during the four years which he had passed in retirement, to reflect upon the state of Mexico, and to convince himself of the facility with which the authority of Spain might be shaken off, if the Creole troops could be brought to co-operate with the old Insurgents in the attempt. The European troops in the country consisted only of eleven Spanish Expeditionary regiments; and these, though supported by from seventy to eighty thousand old Spaniards, disseminated through the different Provinces, could not oppose any sort of resistance to seven Veteran and seventeen Provincial regiments of Natives, aided by ​the great mass of the population of the country, which had given ample proofs of its devotion to the Independent cause during the earlier stages of the Revolution. The only difficulty was to bring the two parties to act in concert; and this Iturbide endeavoured to effect by the famous plan of Igŭālă, of which I believe him to have been the sole author, although it has been attributed, by his enemies, to the Spanish party in the capital.
But the desire shown throughout it to conciliate the European Spaniards, by guaranteeing to such as chose to remain in the country a full participation in all the rights and privileges of native Mexicans, and even allowing them to retain possession of such public employments as they might hold at the time of joining his (Iturbide's) party, was a feeling not unnatural in a man, who had passed his whole life in the service of Spain, and who regarded as friends, and comrades, those from whom his countrymen had suffered most. Nor was it impolitic, in another sense, as it weakened the motives which the Spaniards would otherwise have had for resistance, and thus smoothed the way for the adoption of those great political changes, which it was destined to introduce. Where life and property are at stake, a man must needs risk every thing in their defence; but the case is different where the question at issue is reduced to a question of right between two Governments; and there can be no doubt, that every European, who was induced by the mild spirit of the ​plan of Igŭālă, to regard Iturbide's insurrection in this light, diminished the list of opponents, whom he would otherwise have had to encounter. I have given the whole of this plan, which consists of twenty-four Articles, in the Appendix, (Letter F.) Many of its provisions are excellent, particularly those by which all distinctions of Caste were abolished (Article 11), and an end put to the despotism of Military Commandants (Article 23), who were deprived of the power of inflicting capital punishments, which they had so long, and so shamefully, abused. But it was an illusion to suppose that any intimate union could be effected, where the passions had been reciprocally excited by so long a series of inveterate hostility. Creoles might forgive Creoles for the part which they had taken in the preceding struggle; but Spaniards, never: and from the first, the basis of "Union," which was one of the three Guarantees proposed by the plan of Igŭālă, was wanting. The idea itself was singular. Iturbide, conceiving that Independence, the Maintenance of the Catholic Religion, and Union, were the three great objects which he ought to hold in view, denominated them, " the three Guarantees; and the troops who agreed to uphold them, "the Army of the three Guarantees." As a proof of his own ​principles, by the first Article of his plan, the Independence of the nation was declared; by the second, its religion fixed; and by the eighth, the crown offered to His Majesty Ferdinand VII., and, in case of his refusal, to the Infants Don Carlos and Don Francisco de Paula, provided any one of them would consent to occupy the throne in person. Such was the project, which was proclaimed on the 24th of February, 1821, at the little town of Igŭālă, (on the road to Acapulco,) where Iturbide had then his head-quarters. His whole force, at the time, did not exceed eight hundred men, and of these, though all, at first, took the oath of fidelity to the plan of Iguala, many deserted when they found that it was not received by the country at large with the enthusiasm that was expected. There was a moment when Iturbide's progress might, undoubtedly, have been checked; but it was lost by the indecision of the Viceroy, who hesitated to put himself at the head of a force, which he had concentrated for the defence of the Capital. The Europeans, alarmed at this delay, deposed him, (as they had done Iturrigaray, in 1808,) and placed Don Francisco Nŏvēllă, an officer of artillery, at the head of affairs: but the authority of the new Viceroy was not generally recognized, and Iturbide was enabled by this schism in the Capital, to prosecute his own plans without interruption in the Interior. After seizing a Conducta of a million of dollars, which had been sent to Acapulco by the Manilla Company, he effected a ​junction with General Guerrero, who had maintained his position on the river Zăcātūlă, unsubdued by the forces which had been successively detached against him, but who did not hesitate to place himself under Iturbide's orders, as soon as he knew that the Independence of the country was his object. From this moment his success was certain. On his route to the Baxio, towards which, as a central position, he directed his march, he was joined by all the survivors of the first Insurrection, as well as by detachments of Creole troops. Men and officers flocked to his standard, in such numbers as to set all fear of opposition at defiance. The Clergy and the People were equally decided in his favour. The most distant Districts sent in their adhesion to the cause, and wherever he appeared in person, nothing could equal the enthusiasm displayed. Few have enjoyed a more intoxicating triumph than Iturbide;—few have been called, with more sincerity, the saviour of their country; and none have offered a more striking example of the instability of popular favour, and of the precarious tenure of those honours, which great revolutions sometimes give. While the tide of success lasted, nothing could arrest his progress: before the month of July, the whole country recognized his authority, with the exception of the Capital, in which Novella had shut himself up, with all the European troops. Iturbide had reached Qŭerētărŏ, on his road to Mexico, which he was about to invest, when he received intelligence of the ​arrival, at Veracruz, of the new Constitutional Viceroy and Political Chief, Don Juan O'Donoju, who, at such a crisis, was, of course, unable to advance beyond the walls of the fortress. Iturbide, with his usual talent, hastened to turn this circumstance to account: at an interview with the Viceroy, whom he allowed to advance for the purpose as far as the town of Cōrdŏvă, he proposed to him the adoption, by treaty, of the plan of Igŭālă, as the only means of securing the lives and property of his countrymen established in Mexico, and of fixing the right to the throne on the House of Bourbon. With these terms O'Dŏnŏjū complied. In the name of the King, his Master, he recognized the Independence of Mexico, and gave up the Capital to the army of the Three Guarantees, which took possession of it, without effusion of blood, on the 27th of September, 1821. Novella, and such of his troops as chose to quit the Mexican territory, were allowed to do so, and the expenses of their voyage to the Havanna defrayed. Civilians were treated with similar indulgence, and their private property most strictly respected. O'Donoju, himself, was empowered to watch over the observance of the articles of the treaty favourable to his countrymen, as one of the members of the Junta, which was to be entrusted with the direction of affairs, until the King's decision could be known: while a Congress was to be assembled, to fix the bounds, which were to be prescribed to the Royal Authority.
​Such was the Treaty of Cordova, which was signed by Iturbide, "as the depository of the will of the Mexican people," and by O'Donoju, as the representative of Spain, on the 24th of August, 1821. The best excuse for the concessions made by the latter is, as stated by Iturbide,the fact, that he had no alternative. He must have signed the treaty, or become a prisoner, or returned at once to Spain, in which case his countrymen would have been compromised, and his Government deprived of those advantages, which the Mexicans were still willing to concede. Under these circumstances, it is not easy to point out what O'Donoju could have done for Spain better than what he did; although the advantages were, at first, most apparent upon the Creole side. Iturbide obtained, in virtue of the treaty of Cordova, immediate possession of the Capital, which he entered in triumph on the 27th of September, 1821, and, on the following day, the Provisional Junta was installed, the establishment of which was provided for by the fifth Article of the plan of Iguala. This Junta, which was composed of thirty-six persons, elected a Regency, consisting of five individuals, of which Iturbide was made President: he was at the same time created Generalissimo, and Lord High Admiral, and assigned a yearly salary of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
​Up to This time Iturbide's plans had been completely successful. He seemed to have carried the nation along with him, and, in every thing that could tend to promote a separation from Spain, not a single dissenting voice had been heard. But, from the moment that the future organization of the Government came under discussion, this apparent unanimity was at an end. One of the first duties of the Provisional Junta was to prepare a plan for assembling a National Congress; and this, at Iturbide's suggestion, was done in such a way as to pledge the Deputies to the adoption of the plan of Iguala in all its parts, by obliging them to swear to observe it, before they could take their seats in the Congress. Many of the old Insurgents thought that this was restricting too much the powers of the people, who ought to be allowed to approve, or reject, through the medium of their representatives, what had been done in their name, but without their authority. Guadelupe Victoria was one of the advocates of this opinion, and was driven again into banishment by the persecution which it drew upon him. Generals Bravo and Guerrero were likewise of the same mode of thinking, as, indeed, were a host of others; and thus, although Iturbide succeeded in carrying his point, and in compelling the deputies to take the oath proposed, the seeds of discontent were sown before the sessions of the Congress commenced.
On the 24th February, 1822, the first Mexican ​Cortes met, and three distinct parties were soon organized amongst the members. The Bourbonists, who wished to adhere to the plan of Iguala altogether, and to have a Constitutional monarchy, with a Prince of the House of Bourbon at its head. The Republicans, who denied the right of the army to pledge the nation by the plan of Iguala at all, and wished for a Central or Federal Republic: and the Iturbidists, who adopted the plan of Iguala, with the exception of the article in favour of the Bourbons, in lieu of whom they wished to place Iturbide himself upon the throne.
Upon the merits of the respective creeds of these parties, I shall make no comments: each probably thought that it had good reasons for adopting that which it did adopt, and each, certainly, hoped to derive considerable advantages from the triumph of its own.
The Bourbonists soon ceased to exist as a party, the Cortes of Madrid having, by a Decree dated the 13th of February, 1822, declared the Treaty of Cordova "to be illegal, null and void, in as far as the Spanish Government and its subjects were concerned," thereby precluding the possibility of the acceptance of the crown of Mexico by a junior member of the Royal Family. The struggle was thenceforward confined to the Iturbidists and the Republicans, between whom a violent contest was long carried on,—the Congress accusing the Regency, audits President, of wasteful expenditure, and Iturbide as ​loudly accusing the Congress of an intention to destroy "the most meritorious part of the community"—the army, by not providing funds for its support. These bickerings were increased by the introduction of a project in the Congress, for reducing the troops of the line, from sixty, to twenty thousand men, and supplying the deficiency by calling out an auxiliary force of thirty thousand militia. This measure was most strenuously opposed by Iturbide, but was, nevertheless, carried by a large majority, in the beginning of April. From that moment his friends saw that his influence was on the wane, and that if they wished ever to see him upon the throne, the attempt must be made before the memory of his former services was lost. Their measures were concerted accordingly. No men of rank were employed in carrying them into execution, but recourse was had to the Sergeants, and noncommissioned officers of the garrison, who were, in general, much attached to Iturbide's person. These men, headed by one Pio Marcha, the first sergeant of the Infantry regiment No. 1, and seconded by a crowd of the leperos, (lazzaroni) by whom the streets of Mexico are infested, assembled before Iturbide's house on the night of the 18th of May, 1822, and proclaimed him emperor, under the title of Augustin the First, amidst shouts and Vivas, and firing, which lasted through the whole of the night. The old and stale manœuvre of pretending to yield, reluctantly, to the will of the people, was repeated upon this ​occasion, as detailed by Iturbide himself; and was kept up during the whole of the next day, when the Congress was employed in discussing the strange title to a crown, which the Commander-in-chief stated himself to have derived from the acclamations of a mob; while Iturbide, after filling the galleries with his partizans in arms, endeavoured, like the prince of hypocrites, as he proved himself upon this occasion, to obtain a hearing for those who were adverse to his nomination. The discussion ended, of course, by the approbation of a step, which it was not in the power of Congress to oppose; and Iturbide was proclaimed Emperor, with the sanction of the National Assembly. The choice was ratified by the Provinces, without opposition; and had the new Sovereign been able to moderate his impatience of restraint, and allowed his authority to be confined within the constitutional bounds, which the Congress was inclined to prescribe for it, there is little doubt that he would have been, at this day, in peaceable possession of the throne, to which his own abilities, and a concurrence of favourable circumstances, had raised him. But the struggle for power, far from being terminated by his elevation, seemed only to have become more implacable. The Emperor demanded privileges inconsistent with any balance of power;—a Veto upon all the articles of the Constitution then under discussion, and the right of ​appointing and removing, at pleasure, the members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. He recommended, likewise, the establishment of a Military Tribunal in the Capital, with powers but little inferior to those exercised by the Spanish Commandants during the Revolution; and when these proposals were rejected, (as they were with great firmness, by the Congress,) he arrested, on the night of the 26th August, 1822, fourteen of the Deputies, who had advocated, during the discussion, principles but little in unison with the views of the Government.
This bold measure was followed by a series of reclamations and remonstrances on the part of the Congress, which produced no other effect than that of widening the breach between the Emperor and the National Assembly, until, at last, it became evident that the two could not exist together. Iturbide terminated the dispute, as Cromwell had done, under similar circumstances, before him, by sending an officer to the Hall of Congress, with a simple notification that the Assembly had ceased to exist, and an order to dissolve it by force, should any attempt at resistance be made. But no compulsion was required: the Deputies, many of whom were prepared beforehand for what was about to occur, dissolved their sessions at once, and the doors of the edifice in which they met, were closed by the officer whom Iturbide had commissioned to make known to them his will.
This took place on the 30th October, 1822, ​and, on the same day, a new Legislative Assembly was created by the Emperor, which was called the Instituent Junta, and consisted of forty-five members, selected by Iturbide himself, from amongst those whom he had found most inclined to comply with his wishes in the preceding Congress.
This body never possessed any sort of influence in the country, and, with the exception of a decree for raising a forced loan of two millions and a half of dollars, and for applying to the immediate exigencies of the State, two millions in specie, which had been sent to Veracruz by different merchants, but were detained at Perote, its records are hardly distinguished by a single public act.
Iturbide's popularity did not long survive his assumption of arbitrary power. Before the end of November, an insurrection broke out in the Northern Provinces, which was headed by General Garza. It was, however, suppressed by the Imperial troops, who remained faithful to their new Sovereign. But the army was his only reliance, and, unfortunately for him, a schism soon afterwards took place between two of his most confidential officers.
The motives which first induced General Săntānă, the Governor of Veracruz, to turn his arms against the Emperor, are said to have been of a private nature; but of this it is impossible now to judge. All that is known to the public is, that, at the close of 1822, this young officer published an address to the nation, in which he reproached the Emperor ​with having broken his Coronation oath, by dissolving the Congress, and declared his own determination, and that of the garrison under his command, to re-assemble the Congress, and to support whatever form of Government that assembly might please to adopt.
To repress this dangerous spirit, Iturbide detached General Ĕchāvărĭ, a Spaniard, in whom he placed unlimited confidence, with a corps of troops sufficiently strong to invest Veracruz, and thus to compel Săntānă to submission. But that officer had been joined, in the interim, by Guadelupe Victoria, to whom he yielded the chief command, in the expectation that his name, and the known strictness of his principles, would inspire all those with confidence who were inclined to favour the establishment of a Republic. Nor was he deceived: Victorias character proved a powerful attraction; and Ĕchāvărĭ himself, after a few trifling actions in the vicinity of Puente del Rey, finding that public opinion was declaring itself every where against the Emperor, determined upon making common cause with the Garrison of Veracruz, and induced his whole army to follow his example.
On the 1st of February, 1823, an act was signed, called the Act of Casa-Mata, consisting of eleven articles, by which the armies pledged themselves to effect the re-establishment of the National Representative Assembly, and to support it against all attacks.
​This act was the signal for revolt throughout the country: it was adopted by all the Provinces in rapid succession, and by most of the Military Commandants. Amongst others, by the Marquis of Vibanco, then commanding a large body of troops at La Puebla, and by Generals Guerrero and Bravo, who left the Capital in order to proclaim the new system upon their old scene of action in the West. General Nĕgrētĕ likewise joined the Republican army, and defection soon became so general, that Iturbide, either terrified by the storm which he had so unexpectedly conjured up, or really anxious to avoid the effusion of blood, determined to attempt no resistance.
On the 8th March, 1823, he called together all the members of the old Congress then in the Capital, and tendered his abdication, which was not accepted, because there were not at the time members enough present to form a house. On the 19th of March, he repeated the offer, and stated his intention to quit the country, lest his presence in Mexico should serve as a pretext for further dissensions. The Congress, in reply, refused to accept the abdication, which would imply (they said) a legal right to the Crown; whereas his election had been compulsory, and consequently null: but they willingly allowed him to quit the kingdom with his family, and assigned to him a yearly income of twenty-five thousand dollars (about five thousand pounds) for his support.
​Iturbide was allowed to choose his own escort to the coast, and selected General Bravo for the purpose, by whom he was accompanied to Antigua, (near Veracruz), where a ship was freighted by the Government to convey him to Leghorn. He embarked on the 11th of May, 1823. A new Executive was immediately appointed by the Congress, which was composed of Generals Victoria, Bravo, and Negrete, by whom the affairs of the country were conducted, until a new Congress was assembled, (in August, 1823), which, in October 1824, definitively sanctioned the present Federal Constitution.
Many persons have attributed Iturbide's conduct, during the latter part of his career, to pusillanimity; but this is a charge which is repelled by the whole tenor of his earlier life. I am myself inclined to ascribe it partly, to a wish not to occasion a Civil war, and partly, to a lurking hope that a little time would prove as fatal to the popularity of his rivals, as it had been to his own; and that the eyes of his countrymen would then be directed towards himself, as the only means of preserving them from anarchy. Such, at least, appears to have been the impression with which he returned to Mexico in 1824, when he was outlawed by the Congress, and shot, upon landing on the coast, by General Garza; a measure, the severity of which, after the services which Iturbide had rendered to the country, can only be excused by the impossibility of avoiding, in any other way, ​a civil war. His partizans in the Interior were still numerous, particularly on the Western coast, and had he once succeeded in penetrating into the country, with such men as Victoria and Bravo to oppose him, it is difficult to say how long the contest might have been protracted, or where the effusion of blood would have stopped.
Iturbide's family now resides in the United States, upon a provision assigned to it by the Mexican Congress. The partizans of the father were entirely personal, and his son has few, or no adherents: he is not, however, yet allowed to return to the territories of the Republic.
* ↑ Vide Căllējă's Letter, several passages of which prove how much the importance of this was felt. (Appendix.)
* ↑ Vide some passages of a correspondence between the Archbishop of Puebla and the Viceroy Calleja given in the Appendix, Letter E.
* ↑ This power was latterly used almost entirely as a means of extorting money, to which every petty Commandant had recourse, by occasionally threatening with martial law the richest persons in his district.
* ↑ Vide Statement, page 21.
* ↑ Vide Statement, pages 38, 39, and 40.