We have seen in the foregoing chapter the mistakes which had been made by Madero. Being surrounded by enemies, he was too lenient with them, and it proved disastrous. Orozco, one of his chiefs of guerrilla, should have been court-martialled and shot in Juarez according to military rule. The same drastic penalty could have been applied without injustice against two other high officers in the Mexican army, who had rebelled against the authority--Felix Diaz and General Reyes. But Madero, besides being too humane for such methods, sincerely believed that leniency was a sign of strength. Assuredly it was, but only in case the cabinet and the government in general had been loyal to him. Some cabinet members plotted quite openly against him--A. G. Granados, for instance. The headquarters of the plotters were in Paris and Geneva, with a branch office in the New York Consulate. In Mexico Rodolfo Reyes was the soul of the movement. In Paris, Limantour and L. de la Barra worked together with General Mondragon to unravel the threads of the conspiracy in favor of Felix Diaz, who would represent the old Porfirista crowd, with the assistance of the clericals and the great landowners, and bankers, Americans as well as Mexican and French. In New York the plotters supported General Reyes as representing the army, especially the younger element. To all appearances the conspiracy was essentially a military mutiny backed by the científicos, the landed interest and the clericals. The most prominent army plotters were General Mondragon, General Reyes, General Blanquet, Gen. Felix Diaz, General Beltran, General Navarrete and General Huerta. Among the civilians were: M. Calero, A. G. Granados, T. E. Obregon, Vera Estañol, A. R. Gil, L. de la Barra, J. M. Lozano, Q. Moheno and Dr. Urrutia. The political and military heads, exemplified in the above mentioned names, represented the army, the científicos, the clericals, the landed aristocracy,--in fact, all the reactionary powers and none of the liberal or revolutionary tendencies of the people. In utter blindness, innocence and optimism, call it what you please, Madero scoffed at the idea of a plot which could overthrow him. He firmly believed that the Mexican people were behind him and would support him. He forgot that all the powers of reaction were well organized and that the Mexican people who supported him were not organized,--that they were at the mercy of a few political bandits without principles and without country. These unpatriotic politicians knew from experience that the foreign bankers, the foreign corporations, the American government and especially the American ambassador, were inimical to Madero, and hostile to liberal ideas, and would help them to resist any attempts to reform the land question or change the financial “status quo” as left over by J. Y. Limantour.