Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/816

800 from the military command, and Brigadier Gomez Pedraza appointed in his place.

All now depended on the decision of the revolutionary junta at Puebla, which, having assembled on the 14th, resolved that it could not recognize the congress until assured that its liberty was not interfered with; at the same time it was decided to advance against Mexico. On the following day the army began its march, but commissioners from the congress who had been sent to treat with the leaders being met a short distance from the town, a second meeting was held, at which, after a long discussion, the following resolution was adopted: The ejército libertador and the junta will recognize as legitimate the old congress, which had been illegally dissolved, when the competent number of deputies is complete, and will obey it as soon as it enjoys absolute freedom in regard to its labors. When this decision was known to Iturbide, he gave up the struggle. The coldness of his reception when congress was reinstalled; the rejection of a proposal made by him that his own and the revolutionary forces should respectively retire to positions fifty leagues distant from the capital, and that a regency should be appointed to which he would delegate the executive power; and the threatening movement from Puebla all were too palpably significant of the intention to overthrow him. But he could still make a show of having at heart the welfare of his country, and he determined to retire for its good. On the night of March 19th congress was assembled in extraordinary session, and Iturbide's abdication, written by his own hand, was read to the chamber by Navarrete, the minister of justice. Since the congress, he said, had been recognized by the junta at Puebla and by the troops that had declared for the plan of Casa Mata, he laid down the crown which at first he had accepted with the greatest unwillingness, and then only to prove his self-sacrifice and devotion to his country.