ader, was unfortunate
enough to lose a leg in the struggle. This physical deprivation,
however, did not interfere with that doughty hero's zest for tilting
with other unquiet spirits who yearned to assure national regeneration
by continuing to elevate and depose "presidents."

Another swing of the political pendulum had restored the federal system
when again everything was overturned by the disastrous war with the
United States. Once more Santa Anna returned, this time, however,
to joust in vain with the "Yankee despoilers" who were destined to
dismember Mexico and to annex two-thirds of its territory. Again Santa
Anna was banished--to dream of a more favorable opportunity when he
might become the savior of a country which had fallen into bankruptcy
and impotence.

His opportunity came in 1853, when conservatives and clericals indulged
the fatuous hope that he would both sustain their privileges and lift
Mexico out of its sore distress. Either their memories were short
or else distance had cast a halo about his figure. At all events,
he returned from exile and assumed, for the ninth and last time,
a presidency which he intended to be something more than a mere
dictatorship. Scorning the formality of a Congress, he had himself
entitled "Most Serene Highness," as indicative of his ambition to become
a monarch in name as well as in fact.

Royal or imperial designs had long since brought one military upstart to
grief. They were now to cut Santa Anna's residence in Mexico similarly
short. Eruptions of discontent broke out all over the country. Unable to
make them subside, Santa Anna fell back upon an expedient which recalls
practices elsewhere in Spanish America. He opened registries in which
all citizens might record "freely" their approval or disapproval of
his continuance in power. Though he obtained the huge majority of
affirmative votes to be expected in such cases, he found that these
pen-and-ink signatures were no more serviceable than his soldiers.
Accordingly the dictator of many a day, fallen from his former estate
of highness, decided to abandon his serenity also, and in 1854 fled the
country--for its good and his own.

CHAPTER VI. PERIL FROM ABROAD

Apart from the spoliation of Mexico by the United States, the
independence of the Hispanic nations had not been menaced for more
than thirty years. Now comes a period in which the plight of their big
northern neighbor, rent in twain by civil war and powerles