After the capture of Juarez the whole Diaz Government was practically destroyed as a political force and the Reconstruction would have been easy with a new government. But the reactionary forces were at work to arrest the impetus of the revolution. Limantour came back from Paris and prepared the way to an entrance of the reactionaries by threatening to arrest Gustavo Madero for the misappropriation of money to the use of the revolution. Madero’s father and brother had to accept his conditions and went post haste to confer with F. I. Madero at the border. Limantour’s conditions were the cessation of hostilities and a constitutional transfer of the presidential power on the shoulder of the clerical L. de la Barra. Limantour’s clever, strategic movement arrested the radical impulse, put a few Maderistas in the Cabinet, and others in the Governorship, but the inexperience of the new men and the conscious inertia of ministers, like Ernesto Madero, Secretary of Finance and Rafael Hernandez, Secretary of Fomento, checked all effective attempts at reforms. The two radical brothers, the Vasquez Gomez, were eliminated. Limantour went back to Paris to watch from a distance and to direct the tactics of the policy of inertia. Meanwhile plots were hatched against the life of Madero. One almost succeeded at this time. While L. de la Barra was provisional President they sent F. I. Madero to confer with Zapata who agreed to meet him on condition that no federal troops should accompany Madero in Cuautla. General Huerta, who was in charge of the federal troops in Morelos broke the promise, and attacked Cuautla in hopes that Zapata would kill Madero for his supposed treachery. The common sense of Zapata saved Madero’s life. The first conspiracy against Madero happened when he was in Juarez and the cientificos had plotted his destruction by inciting the suspicious anger of men like Orozco and Villa against him. But Madero’s bravery saved him again. The cientifico plotters were said to be T. E. Obregon, F. Carbajal and Oscar Braniff. T. E. Obregon later became a member of Huerta’s cabinet and Carbajal the provisional president following the flight of General Huerta. As soon as Madero was elected the cientificos captured Orozco with money and started him as the head of a counter revolution before the President had been seated a month. Then they pushed General Reyes and later Felix Diaz and Vasquez Gomez to revolt against Madero. These movements although they failed, were kept up so as to show the world the incompetence and lack of popularity of the Madero régime. Zapata started on the war path incited by the cruelties of the federal generals and all over the country rich haciendados (ranchers) gave money to guerrilla leaders to keep up the anarchy and by attacks on American property and American citizens to invite American intervention.