Mainly owing to the good-will of Guerrero, the Vice-President was General Anastasio Bustamante, a heavy, dull, rather kindly and fairly honest aristocrat, though nominally a moderate Federalist. When appointed by Guerrero to command the army of reserve at Jalapa, the principal military force in the country, he exclaimed on taking leave of the President, "Never will I unsheathe my sword against General Guerrero," but within a year (December, 1829) he did it; and, though a beneficiary of the Acordada riot, he revolted against the government in the name of the constitution. As a matter of fact his rebellion was merely another effort of the privileged classes, a revised edition of Montaño's, and the army received its pay from the money chests of the oligarchs. Little opposition was encountered, for Guerrero had let Delilah shear him, the Acordada episode and much other misconduct had completely discredited the radical Federalists, and the Federalists in general--who had raised Bustamante from a political prison to the second place in the nation--could not believe, after his fresh protestations of loyalty to the constitution, that he would betray them. The President, finding nobody to lean upon, fled to his old haunts in the south, was treacherously captured and was shot; and meanwhile, on the first of January, 1830, Bustamante took up the reins. Greed, corruption, imprudence, evil passions and lawlessness had ruined the cause of democracy, and Victoria's experiment of letting aristocrats administer a professedly popular system had to be tried again.[2.6] Bustamante opened Congress with a bit of the fashionable hypocrisy, asserting that a "sacred Constitution" had placed him in power; but he showed that what interested him was "the wishes of the army," and the army reciprocated this affection. Alamán, who had been Victoria's chief adviser at first, now became the real head of the government. More than any other man in Mexico he could claim to be called a statesman, for he knew some history, had observed politics in Europe, and in a superficial yet impressive way could reason; but he was a statesman of the Metternich school, wily and insincere, wholly unable to sympathize with democracy, and profoundly in love with force. Whatever did not suit the government he demolished without regard to law; whoever opposed it was crushed. In administration the government did well, but--attempting to represent democracy and privilege, progress and reaction, the past and the future, a self-governing state and an all-controlling church at one and the same time--it undertook to perform an impossible task by impossible means. Consequently it satisfied neither of the parties and offended both. King Stork proved worse than King Log.[2.7]