Two days after the landing of the marines General Navarrete of the staff of General Maas passed through the American lines into the fort of Ulloa, where he tried to induce F. Iglesias Calderón to join Huerta in Mexico City and publish a manifesto uniting all factions against the hated Americans. Don Fernando Iglesias answered that he could not believe any promises made by Huerta and that he was quite certain that the Constitutionalists would not join the dictator even if they were forced to resist an American invasion in the north. A few days later the Commander of the fort under the advice of Don Fernando Iglesias released all the political prisoners. The Vera Cruz incident showed up the Federals as a despicable, cowardly lot,--they had to arm a few hundred ex-convicts and civilians to do the fighting for them. The retirement of the Federals to Soledad likewise proved that there was no serious intention to resist an advance of American soldiers to Mexico City, as the general line of march could never have been taken by way of Soledad, but only through the Cerro Gordo on the road to Jalapa by the Interoceanic Railroad, the same itinerary used by Scott in 1847. By advancing through the Cerro Gordo, Jalapa, Perote and Puebla, the American troops could have ignored or driven the Federals at Soledad into the mountains and by the capture of Esperanza cut off their communications in the rear. That would automatically have forced them to evacuate Soledad, Cordoba, and Orizaba. The whole campaign would have been a repetition of the treachery of Santa Anna in 1847. Fortunately for the Americans and Mexicans, President Wilson was too wise to fall into such a trap, and the Constitutionalists were too patriotic to play into the hands of Huerta. NOTE.--The details about the arming of prisoners in Ulloa and the landing of American marines in Vera Cruz were given to the writer by Don Fernando Iglesias Calderón. CHAPTER VI THE FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE REVOLUTION Interested observers among the Americans and foreigners were wondering how the Constitutionalists could keep up a revolution against an organized military dictatorship like Huerta which had millions at its disposal; and strange to relate instead of getting weaker the revolutionists grew stronger and better organized; they seemed to have money to buy arms and ammunition, to run their local governments and even to send representatives to the United States, and Paris, London, Madrid and Barcelona, as well as social and political investigators into America and Europe. The Huerta Government was as surprised as the foreigners; they were certain that after a year of fighting, the backbone of the revolution would be broken, but instead, the offensive became so dangerous that General Huerta invited American intervention so as to save himself as well as his partisans from complete political annihilation.