Page:The Fall of Maximilan's Empire.djvu/75

 was put on affairs by the arrival of the American mail steamer "Virginia," with no less a person on board than General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, with a staff of five officers.

The wholly unexpected arrival of this man caused consternation in the minds of all who were familiar with his history and revolutionary proclivities, and above all at this critical juncture, when he might undo all that had been accomplished, not only in Vera Cruz, but throughout all Mexico. A subaltern in the Spanish army in 1821, during the first war for Mexican independence, he was quickly induced to espouse the cause of his native land, and in 1824 first came into prominence as the governor of the Yucatan peninsula, at the age of twenty-six; nine years later, elected President by the Liberal party, the first organization of the kind in the country, but, after a short voluntary retirement, heading a successful revolution against his own Vice-President, and then governing as a virtual dictator in the interests of the church and the army; exiled in 1837 for trying, while prisoner to the Texans, to negotiate a treaty recognizing the independence of that State,—the beginning of Santa Ana's political career was eloquent as an exponent of his turbulent character. Amnestied, he relapsed into obscurity until the French attack on the castle of San Juan de Uloa gave him an opportunity, when, in December, 1838, he once