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On that fearful night the Acordada was unusually full of desperadoes, whom the civil disorders and stagnation of business had driven to crime.
Iturbide, being unable to stem the torrent of insurrection, had abdicated; a Republic had been established upon the ruins of the empire, and Victoria, the "wild man of the woods," was elected first President. He served out his time; but the last year of his government was disturbed by the terrible insurrection of the Acordada, which had arisen out of the election of Pedraza as his successor.
God requires of all men not only contributions of money, for that is but half charity, but personal services in discharge of the duties of good citizens, and in relieving the afflicted; and he that disregards such duties may suffer as the Mexicans did in the night of the Acordada insurrection, which turned young hairs gray, and destroyed forever the happiness of unnumbered families.
One night they took possession of the Acordada, where they were joined by the whole body of desperadoes there confined. Among the persons at that time detained in this prison, and on that night wantonly killed, was an Englishman, who had been kept in prison for several years, charged with the singular offense of having married the daughter of an ex-marquis.
For this offense, his reputation and that of his kindred was to be forever blackened by a suspicion of heresy. In the night of the Acordada insurrection, the Spanish shop-keepers of the Parian found themselves utterly defenseless.
This victory was so complete as to prove a real disaster to the Yorkinos. The want of outside pressure led to internal dissensions; so that when two of its own members, Guerrero and Pedraza, became rival candidates for the presidency, the election was determined by a resort to arms, which brought about the terrible insurrection of the Acordada. Mexico becomes an Empire.
The Acordada Prison is the principal state as well as city prison. Here are confined men charged with every offense, from rioting to murder.
Still, there are those that find means to labor and to work at repairing shoes or clothes in the midst of this babel of sin and tumult. The Acordada gave its name to that night insurrection to which I have so often referred. Two regiments of artillery, quartered in the palace of the Inquisition, pronounced against the legality of the election of Pedraza to the presidency.
But now all was forgotten in anticipation of a to-morrow that he was never to see. When the attack was made upon the prison, he went to the door of his cell to learn the cause of so unusual a disturbance, and was instantly killed the first victim of the night of the Acordada.
Our friend Don José Miguel Cervantes, the President of the Ayuntamiento, took us one day to see the great prison of Mexico, the Acordada. As to the prison itself, it is a great gloomy building, with its rooms and corridors arranged round two courtyards, one appropriated to the men, the other to the women.
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