CHAPTER IV 1821–1824.

Thus perished the hero who, suddenly, unexpectedly, and effectually, crushed the power of Spain in North America. It is not fair to judge him by the standards that are generally applied to the life of a distinguished civilian, or even of a successful soldier, in countries where the habits and education of the people fit them for duties requiring forbearance, patience, or high intellectual culture. Iturbide was, according to all reliable accounts, a refined gentleman, yet he was tyrannical and sometimes cruel, for it is recorded in his own handwriting, that on Good Friday, 1814, "in honor of the day, he had just ordered three hundred excommunicated wretches to be shot!" His early life was passed in the saddle and the barrack room; nor had he much leisure to pursue the studies of a statesman, even if his mind had been capable of resolving all their mysteries. His temper was not calculated for the liberal debates of a free senate. He was better fitted to discipline an army than to guide a nation. Educated in a school in which subordination is a necessity, and where unquestioning obedience is exacted, he was unable to appreciate the rights of deliberative assemblies. He felt, perhaps, that, in the disorganized condition of his country, it was needful to control the people by force in order to save the remnant of civilization from complete anarchy. But he wanted conciliatory manners to seduce the congress into obedience to his behests,—and he therefore unfortunately and unwisely played the military despot when he should have acted the part of a quiet diplomatist. Finding himself, in two years, emperor of Mexico, after being, at the commencement of that period, nothing more than commander of a regiment, it may be pardoned if he was bewildered by the rapidity of his rise, and if the air he breathed in his extraordinary ascent was too etherial for a man of so excitable a temperament.