A levy of thirty thousand men to recruit the army was ordered. Requisitions were forthwith transmitted to all the principal places in the republic, for their respective quotas of men. Puebla, and the whole of the towns within a circuit of fifty or sixty leagues of the metropolis, are stated to have complied with the requisition for troops, with the greatest alacrity. To facilitate the arming and equipping of this large body, the government ordered that duties on all munitions of war shall cease to be levied, until further notice.
Santa Anna was thus once more in the capital and effectually at the head of power; but he remained only a short time to attend to political matters, and dreading, doubtless, to assume openly the management of the government or to trust himself away from the protection of the military, he hastened to surround his person with the army;—as commander-in-chief, he effectually controlled all the departments of the government.
In order to perceive distinctly the perilous position of Santa Anna, we must understand the state of parties in Mexico. The revolution which placed him in power was brought about by a union of the federalists with his partizans. Santa Anna, of course, retained an influence over his adherents after arriving in Mexico; but the federalists were divided into two parties—the Puros and Moderados, or, democrats and conservatives. The dissensions in these sections enabled Santa Anna, in a degree, to hold the balance between them. Salas, the acting executive, was a conservative, and Gomez Farias, president of the council of government, was a democrat. Intrigue after intrigue occurred in the cabinet and elsewhere among the ultras to supplant Salas, and several resignations gave evidence of the ill feeling and dissensions betwixt the ministers—Cortina and Pacheco, both conservatives, resigned—and so did Rejon and Farias. The National Guard intimated its discontent with the condition of things very manifestly, and the new cabinet was filled with old enemies of Santa Anna. Meanwhile Almonte, the ablest man in the country, retained the ministry of war.