Such a solution of a great national uprising could only be temporary. The Spanish Government refused to ratify the agreement arrived at for Mexico's independence, and a barrack pronouncement acclaimed Agustin Iturbide Emperor of Mexico in June, 1822. The empire of Iturbide lasted less than a year, for the man was unworthy, and Mexican patriots had not fought and bled for ten years against one despotism for the purpose of handing themselves over to another. Iturbide was deposed and exiled, and on his return for the purpose of raising his standard afresh in Mexico, in 1824 the ex-Emperor was shot as an enemy to the peace and tranquillity of his country. The Republic of Mexico obtained the cordial support of England and the United States, and when in 1825 the last Spanish man-at-arms retired from the fortress of San Juan de Ulua, off Vera Cruz, all Spanish-Americans on the two continents were free to work out their own destiny. As was the case with the other Republics, inexperience in the science of government and attempts to force the pace of progress, condemned Mexico to fifty years of turbulence and alternating despotism and license. Ambitious soldiers strove with each other for the place of highest honour and profit. Texas, resenting the instability of Creole government, separated from the Mexican States after a devastating war. Amongst the higher classes of Mexicans the monarchical tradition which had prompted the experiment of Iturbide's evanescent empire had not entirely died out, and in 1840 a leading Mexican statesman, Estrada, argued in an open letter that the republican form of government having failed to secure peace to the country, it would be advisable to establish a Mexican monarchy with a member of one of the old ruling houses of Europe at its head. But the stormy petrel of Mexican politics, General Saint Anna, pervaded the scene yet for many years more; and in 1847 engaged in a disastrous war with the United States on the subject of the Texan boundary, in which California was lost to Mexico. In the meanwhile the suggestion that a monarchical experiment should be tried never died out; and when in 1860 the country was a prey to civil war between the anti-clericals under the great Juarez and the Conservative elements, and the interest on the foreign debt was suspended, a pretext offered for the intervention of France, England, and Spain in the internal affairs of Mexico, supported by the Conservative and monarchical parties in the country itself.