He made his first stand at the Castle of Perote; but finding this too isolated a position, he marched to Oajaca, in the extreme southwest of the Republic, and took up his quarters in the Dominican convent of that city. As he was closely hemmed in by an active enemy, provisions grew scarce, and he was forced to resort to a novel method of supplying himself. On a feast-day, at the San Franciscan church, he dressed a party of his soldiers in the garb of monks, and, having placed them in a convenient position, he made prisoners of the whole assembled congregation, and then proceeded to divest them of all ready cash on hand, and then emptied the contribution-box of the money destined for the poor saints[8] at Jerusalem, and retired and ended the war; for the successful termination of the insurrection of the Acordada in the city of Mexico accomplished the object for which Santa Anna took up arms--the declaration by Congress, that General Guerrero, a man of mixed blood was the real President elect, instead of Pedraza, a white man, and the candidate of the aristocracy. CAPTURE OF THE ARMADA. When King Ferdinand had regained his despotic authority, in 1825, by the aid of French bayonets, he bethought himself of Mexico, the most productive of his lost colonial possessions in America, which had yielded, to his predecessors, the total sum of $2,040,048,426,[9] or rather an annual revenue in silver dollars of $6,800,000 during a period of three hundred years. He was also incited by his impoverished _noblesse_, who could no longer obtain colonial appointments for their sons. The Spanish merchants also complained of the loss of their monopolies. But what at last aroused him to activity was the expulsion of the Spaniards from Mexico, in consequence of the ascendancy of the democratic party. Those of mixed and Indian blood were now truly enfranchised; and they were heard to utter strange voices, which had until then been suppressed by the combined power of a spiritual and temporal despotism: so that the bones of Cortez, the benefactor of the Kings of Spain, were no longer safe in the convent of San Francisco, where they had lain for three hundred years.[10] They were in such imminent danger of being dragged out and scattered to the winds by the mob, as those of "the accursed" enslaver of their race, that they were removed by stealth, and for a time deposited in the most sacred shrine in Mexico: afterward they were secretly removed to Europe, where they cried to the Spanish king for vengeance on the sacrilegious nation. An Armada was at last fitted out, and landed at Tampico; and now all Mexicans, from the President down to the humblest _peon_, watched the result with the deepest anxiety, as they saw Santa Anna undertaking the defense of the country with untried soldiers. For on the issue of the struggle depended the question whether the whole nation should be again reduced to servitude, or whether they should be left in the