The sub-inspector of artillery went to bed in the palace of the royal
viceroy; when he rose the next morning he found little or nothing to do.
Like his deposed predecessor, he went on dictating measures, which
nobody noticed, to check the revolution; but this had advanced too far
for sub-inspectors to lay hands upon.
Not only the old insurgents came to the front, but the greater part of
the chiefs of the royalists, Spanish as well as Mexican, declared for
independence, Santa Anna, at Vera Cruz, among others. Yturbide placed
himself at the head of all, and with such resources the campaign was
swift and successful. Thus passed the month of July. On the 30th arrived
at Vera Cruz a new viceroy, sent in advance, before insurrection was
dreamed of at home, to replace Apodaca, the last governor ever sent from
Spain, Juan O'Donojú, sixty-fourth viceroy since the coming of Mendoza.
He disembarked, took the oath of office before the governor of Vera
Cruz, and assumed the position of governor and captain-general.
Yturbide hastened to meet him at Cordova on his way to the capital, and
convinced him by the eloquence of his arguments and the proof of his
power, visible in the ample number of troops within his control, that
discretion was the better part of valor. The Treaty of Cordova, then
and there settled between these two men, declared the independence of
Mexico, with Ferdinand VII. or some other for its independent sovereign,
establishing a Junta of government, to which O'Donojú stipulated to
belong, provisional until a king should be found.
These things settled, Yturbide and O'Donojú, hand in hand, as Yturbide
and Guerrero had come before, approached the capital. Sub-inspector
Novella was summoned outside the city to a conference, and not
unwillingly surrendered his brief authority to the two harmonious
chieftains.
Yturbide paused at Toluca to collect all his forces and to draw in such
Spanish troops as were now ready to accept him. On the 27th of
September, his birthday, he made a triumphal entry into the capital with
the army of the Independents, consisting of some sixteen thousand men,
with sixty-eight pieces of artillery. They were received with immense
enthusiasm, and great demonstrations of rejoicing signalized the end of
Spanish domination, which had lasted three hundred years.
On the next day, the 28th of September, the provisional Junta met, and
declared itself installed under the presidency of Yturbide. Its
thirty-eight members accepted by oath the Plan of Iguala and the Treaty
of Cordova, and further issued an Act of Independence of the Mexican
Empire, subscribed to by all the Junta. A government was formed, called
the Regency, composed of Don Agustin de Yturbide, president, and five
other members, among them Don Juan O'Donojú. The latter died the next
month, and thus ended his very brief career in Mexico; his place was
taken by the Bishop of Puebla.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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