Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/242

 204 MEXICO. mory of his former services was lost. I'heir measures were concerted accordingly. No men of rank were employed in carrying them into execution, but recourse was had to the sergeants, and non-commissioned officers of the garrison, who were, in general, much attached to Iturbide's person. These men, headed by one Pio Marcha, the iirst sergeant of the Infantry regiment No. 1, and seconded by a crowd of the leperos, (lazzaroni,) by whom the streets of Mexico are in- fested, 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 manoeuvre 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 As- sembly. 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 favour- able circumstances, had raised him. But the struggle for power, far from being terminated by his elevation, seemed
 * Vide Statement, pages 38, 39, and 40.