Expenses then increased still more. Jealousies and enmities were embittered. Public sentiment veered sharply. Time, strength and funds were swallowed up in pomps that created no more illusion than a college student in a toga. Encompassed with flatterers, foes and traitors, financially and politically incompetent himself and guided by incompetent advisers, well enough aware that after deceiving everybody he could expect no one to be true, Itúrbide lost his head, sometimes wavered and sometimes tyrannized. Finally he thought it necessary to deprive Santa Anna of an authority that had no doubt been abused; and this interesting young man, who had recently proclaimed that he welcomed Itúrbide's elevation with a positively uncontrollable exuberance of joy, "pronounced" for a republic, knowing scarcely anything about that system, but knowing a great deal about the Emperor's unpopularity. This precipitated a revolution; and the movement, soon taken up by Victoria, Guerrero and Bravo, spread rapidly. Itúrbide's most intimate and trusted general was despatched against the insurgents, but betrayed him. The army went over. The people, who revered the Liberator but not the Emperor, concurred. With bad faith and gratuitous outrages his enemies crowded savagely upon him. Early in 1823 he abdicated; and in May, forsaken by every one of the many he had benefited, the discredited hero sailed for Europe, leaving behind him examples and suggestions of the most demoralizing kind.[2.3] The junta, meanwhile, had disgusted the nation with its frivolities, political and fiscal incompetence and usurpation of powers, and there was a feeling of relief when it dissolved in February, 1822, the next day after Congress met. Congress, however, did no better and fared even worse, for it earned much contempt by sanctioning under pressure the elevation of Itúrbide; and then Itúrbide made Congress, and made all popular government, quite ridiculous in the eyes of the people and the army by forcibly sending the members home. When at his wit's end, he recalled it as if inviting the _coup de grace_, and soon it not only earned more contempt by pronouncing his elevation illegal and punishing every mark of condolence for the fallen chief, but undertook to outrank omnipotence by pretending that no empire had existed. Soon, too, all the selfish ambitions that had combined against Itúrbide in this body showed themselves so clearly as to add further discredit; and worse yet the Congress, though chosen merely to frame a constitution under the Plan of Iguala, held on after the refusal of Spain to coöperate had put an end to that scheme.[2.3]