CHAPTER VI. 1829–1843.

independence. For a whole month the contest was carried on with balls and grape shot in the streets of Mexico, whilst the rebels, who held the citadel outside the city, finished the shameless drama, by throwing a shower of bombs into the metropolis, shattering the houses, and involving innocent and guilty, citizens, strangers, combatants and non-combatants, in a common fate. This cowardly assault under the orders of Valencia, was made solely with the view of forcing the citizens, who were unconcerned in the quarrel between the factions, into insisting upon the surrender of Mexico, in order to save their town and families from destruction. There was a faint show of military manœuvres in the fields adjoining the city; but the troops on both sides shrank from battle when they were removed from the protecting shelter of walls and houses. At length, the intervention of Mexican citizens who were most interested in the cessation of hostilities, produced an arrangement between the belligerants at Estanzuela near the capital, and, finally, the Plan of Tacubaya was agreed on by the chiefs—as a substitute for the constitution of 1836. By the seventh article of this