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The whole ten hours' bombardment and rifle fire resulted in but fourteen dead rebels; but it won the campaign for the Government, and earned for Huerta his promotion to Major-General besides the proud title of "Hero of Bachimba." President Madero and his anxious Government associates were more than glad to receive the tidings of this "decisive victory."
"My dear Con, I should think not. Putting your eyes out with red-hot irons would be one of the least things that old Madero would do to you. Fatherly old chap, isn't he? But, as you said, Hickey: Don't fool with dynamite!" A few paces more brought the boys to their tent. "Well, good night, or buenas noches, as they say in this benighted land," said Harding, as they reached it.
The new malcontents declared that Madero had betrayed the revolution, and that they were going to overthrow him and themselves carry out the promises he had made. This sounds heroic, noble, and patriotic, but will not bear close inspection.
Madero and his vice president Pino Suarez were killed, it was believed by order of Huerta, and on the 27th of February, in the City of Mexico, Huerta was proclaimed President. Don Venustiano Carranza, Governor of the State of Coahuila, straightway denied the constitutionality of the new Government and led a new revolution under the banner of the Constitution.
He located his rancho here a few years ago and pretended to raise cattle. All that time he has been smuggling arms and ammunition across the border. He was for Madero against Diaz. Now he is against Madero because he and all the rebels think Madero failed to keep his promises. There will be another revolution. And all the arms go from the States across the border.
Energetic, courageous, and outspoken, Madero had full command of the phraseology of the demagog. His only shortcoming in the eyes of his own party was that he had not been persecuted by the Government. The officials, alas, soon supplied this deficiency.
The elimination of Huerta became the chief feature for a while of its Mexican policy. Meanwhile the followers of Madero and the pronounced Radicals had found a new northern leader in the person of Venustiano Carranza. They called themselves Constitutionalists, as indicative of their purpose to reestablish the constitution and to choose a successor to Madero in a constitutional manner.
At the same time President Madero induced his former fellow rebel, Ambrosio Figueroa, now Commander-in-Chief of Mexico's rural guards, to cooperate with General Huerta by bringing a mounted force of three thousand rurales from Guerrero into Morelos from the south so as to hem in the Zapatistas between himself and Huerta at Cuernavaca.
In order to understand the situation in Mexico, it is necessary to get firmly in our minds that there are in reality two Mexicos. One may be called American Mexico and the other Mexican Mexico. The representative of the new, half-formed northern or American Mexico was Francisco Madero rich, educated, well mannered, honest, and idealistically inclined.
The steady pressure of moral force will before many days break the barriers of pride and prejudice down, and we shall triumph as Mexico's friends sooner than we could triumph as her enemies and how much more handsomely, with how much higher and finer satisfactions of conscience and of honor! Three days later Madero was assassinated while in the custody of the new government.
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