Santa Anna

“ The Senora had so far recovered as to understand that within a few hours Santa Anna and the Americans must meet. And, mentally led by Isabel’s passionate hatred, she now showed a vindictiveness beyond that of any other woman.
She spent hours upon her knees, imploring the saints, and the stars, and the angel Michael, to fight against Santa Anna. To Isabel she whispered, “I have even informed the evil one where he may be found. The wretch who ordered such infamies! He poisons the air of the whole world as he goes through it. I shall never be happy till I know that he is in purgatory. ”

“ Vain, ruthless, cruel, but with genius, Santa Anna can have no friends except those whom he may use. Unless you submit, unless you do everything that he wishes, you are, in his opinion, a traitor to him, a malefactor and an enemy, to be crushed by trickery or force, by fair means or foul. ”

“ Not far from here, in the narrowest of narrow streets, beyond an obscure archway we found the small church of Santa Anna, interesting by reason of its cloisters with their pointed arches springing from delicately carved capitals that rested upon slender, graceful shafts; a vision of refined beauty. In the centre grew a wild and lovely garden. Spain is undoubtedly the land of cloisters, loveliest in existence; and Barcelona is especially rich in them. ”

“ Well, Bradburn, back again at last; thy stay
Was long enough to vouchsafe good success:
When can we hold our entry in the fort?
Bradburn.
When you have slain the last of its defenders.
Santa Anna.
Is this—I ask—their whole reply?
Bradburn.
It is.
Santa Anna.
Well, man! a school-boy's eloquence
Could have succeeded where thy art has failed.
Were not our hundred guns, our whelming numbers
Convincing arguments enough to move
The must tenacious rebel to submission?
Bradburn.
What scares a knave stirs not a hero's blood.
Santa Anna. ”

“ Other aspirants have risen to popular favor, and then fallen, one after the other, and have disappeared. But Santa Anna's falls have ever been a prelude to his rising again to a greater elevation; and there is no point of elevation to which he has risen from which he has not been ignominiously hurled. He is a politician whose course reminds us of a skillful swimmer in the breakers; half the time he rides the waves and half the time he is submerged, yet never sinks so deep but that he rises again to the surface. ”

“ Duque.
I pray thee, wake him: e'en to hear his dream.
To see him writhe, congeals my blood with terror.
Prado.
I cannot, will I not incur his wrath;
He oft dreams so. See, he begins anew.
Santa Anna.
[Laboring under still more violent convulsions than before.]
Ha! still I live ! What change in me and nature!
Instead of stifling heat, as erst, now creeps
An icy chill through every limb of mine,
While over me a midnidit-blackness veils
The burning sky and blinds the sunlight's blaze. ”

“ I have some power with Santa Anna. He is a great man—a great man! In all his wars, good fortune flies before him.”
He kissed her hands as he opened the door, and then went back to the fire, and bent, muttering, over it: “Giver of good! a true Yturbide; a gentle woman; she is like my sister Mercedes—very like her. These poor women who trust me, as I am a sinner before God, I am unhappy to deceive them.”
Fray Ignatius might have divined his thoughts, for he entered at the moment, and said as he approached him:
“You have done right. The soul must be saved, if all is lost. ”

“ Recalled by the successful rebels from his exile in Cuba and South America, Santa Anna hastened to the scene of conflict, sniffing from afar the smoke of battle and gloating over prospective spoil with which to replenish his depleted treasury. ”

“ How was it when we were in Mexico? Santa Anna, a man of but little genius or talent, but cleverer than those about him in the low arts of intrigue, and into whose well-laid traps more than one old associate had fallen, was at the head of the reform government as president. ”

“ When Santa Anna is in authority the fickle multitude cry out against him, and when he is in exile no suffering innocent can compare with him; and the books that at such times sell best in Mexico are those that vindicate his past career. Of such a man something must be said, and to render that something intelligible, a brief account of the social and political changes of his times must be rendered.
Santa Anna was born at Vera Cruz, in the year 1796, in the most prosperous era of the colonial government of the vice-kingdom of New Spain, while Ravillagigedo was Virey. ”

“ Santa Anna.
And would our clemency and kind forbearance
Not be interpreted as fear and weakness?
Or can the dignity of our Republic
Afford to be insulted by a band
Of most ungrateful foreigners to whom
We gave the benefit of settling here?
Bradburn.
Revenge is low in Man as well as State.
Santa Anna.
'Tis justice to restrain the bad by force.
Bradburn.
'Tis useful oft to overlook a fault.
Santa Anna.
'Tis wiser oft to kill an evil's germ.
Bradburn.
'Tis more humane to cure it than to kill it.
Santa Anna.
What warrants their obedience in the future? ”

“ Santa Anna, the logical hero of such a nation, was also its logical scourge — a statesman unable to guide, a general unfitted to command, a leader qualified only to win revolutions, lose battles, and alternate between dictatorship and exile. ”

“ On the result of the battle on the field of San Jacinto, on the twenty-first of April, 1836, turned the decision of the question whether Texas should become wholly Spanish, for Santa Anna had threatened that he would put to death every man, woman, and child west of the Sabine who would jabber English, and the massacre of the Alamo and of Fannin's command at Goliad, tell how bloodily he was executing his diabolical threat. We are accustomed to look on Santa Anna as a monster of crime. ”

“ The last comer was General Santa Anna; and before his attendants had time to recover from their shock of horror, he had himself advanced in a towering passion to the wretched Indian, thrown him down upon the floor, and held him there with his own hands till the soldiers had bound him fast. ”

“ Santa Anna.
I am informed, you know a hidden way,
— Yes, yes, you know,—I read it in your eye—
That underground leads to the Alamo.
Elsie.
[Nobly.]
Has Santa Anna's height and grandeur stooped
To low and despicable spionage,
Then I, weak woman as I am, will not
Descend to falsehood—Yes, I know the way.
Santa Anna.
For reasons of the State and Strategy
Man oft is forced to condescend to means
He loathes to employ in private life.
Elsie.
Heaven then forefend to be a man of State. ”

“ He looks like a good man, with an honest, benevolent face, frank and simple in his manners, and not at all like a hero. His conversation was not brilliant, indeed I do not know apropos to what, I suppose to the climate, but it chiefly turned on medicine. There cannot be a greater contrast, both in appearance and reality, than between him and Santa Anna. There is no lurking devil in his eye. All is frank, open, and unreserved. ”

“ While Santa Anna is in bed, and certain women are ministering to her, others are represented as washing the Madonna with great care; one brings water, another the swathing bands, one occupies herself with one service, another with something else, and while each is attending to that appertaining to her, one has taken the infant in her arms, and smiling into its face, is making it smile in return, with a feminine grace truly appropriate to a work of this character ”

“ When only twenty-three years old, Santa Anna entered the arena of politics by disrupting the empire established by Iturbide, and the career thus begun was consistently carried out. At an early age he had so mastered the arcana of scheming and revolution as to reflect credit on a veteran in the cause, demolishing and creating sovereignties, often grasping victory from defeat, and gathering strength when all seemed lost. He was five times president, and was the means of deposing, probably, twenty rulers. As a commander of men, his resources and ability were remarkable. ”

“ No doubt Santa Anna had felt at an earlier period and possibly felt even now an occasional emotion of patriotism inundate his soul, as a Mexican proclamation would have said. Few are so utterly selfish as never to bestow a kind wish upon their fellow-creatures, and Santa Anna was bad in a spontaneous, human way, not in that of cold villainy. Probably he was largely guided by worse men than himself, who had more ability to think but needed him to execute their designs.
31. The army sent agents to question Santa Anna with reference to his intentions. ”

“ I take this occasion to express my gratification to Santa Anna, even at this late date, for not staying on the field he had won, and I acknowledge his distinguished consideration in permitting me to remain at Saltillo. How vexatious it must have been to Santa Anna in his old age to recall to mind that the ignorance of Gen. Taylor in not knowing he was whipped so changed his destiny, and no doubt he thought how truthful is the line:
"Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise." ”

“ An historical Sketch.—Truth seldom spoken of Santa Anna.—Santa Anna's early Life.—Causes of the Revolution.—The Virgin Mary's Approval of King Ferdinand.—The Inquisition imprisons the Vice-King.—Santa Anna enters the King's Army.—The plan of Iguala.—The War of the two Virgins.—Santa Anna pronounces for Independence.
Before commencing our journey to the interior, we must break the thread of our narrative by a brief biographical sketch: for this town is the birth-place, and here began the public career of that man whose life has become the history of his country. ”

“ Where'er thou leadest me, I follow thee!
[While Elsie and James Travis are proceeding to the rear of the corridor, Santa Anna, hitherto lost in a faint stupor, starts for the door, which he tries in vain to force open.]
Santa Anna.
[With violence.]
Confound these monks ! what they have built, withstands
The wear of times and strength of stoutest hands.
[While Santa Anna, in the meantifne, looks for another way of egress, Elsie and J. Travis reach the altar in the back-ground of the corridor. Standing behind it,]
Elsie. ”

“ El Telégrafo said in capitals on March 31: "Many a nation would like to take by the hand" one of the heroes who helped to establish it, and "the silence of the majestic tomb replies, 'He no longer lives'; but Santa Anna does live, and his voice proclaims, 'Mexico shall be great, free and happy.'"
24. A revolt in favor of Santa Anna occurred at Mazatlán on May 7, but it was not an integral part of the movement. ”

“ Just as Santa Anna might be expected to treat his captive enemies, whether of his own people, or as yourselves, foreigners. More cruel tyrant never ruled country. But his reign, thank Heaven, will not be long. I’ve reason for saying that, and better still for thinking it.”
The little interlude of dialogue was brought to a close by the entrance of the mayor-domo loaded with bottles and glasses. ”

“ Then she threw her arms around his neck and bewailed her bad fortune. “If I were the Almighty God, I would not give love and then take it away,” she murmured. “I would give orders that the good people should always be happy. I would not let men like Santa Anna live. He is a measureless monster, and ought to go to the d—to purgatory, at the very least.”
While the Senora soothed her complaining, the doctor left. ”

“ Santa Anna has, at this moment, a great advantage; he is posted at San Luis with an army of twenty-five or thirty thousand men. Thus concentrated at one point, he will be enabled to strike, with his whole force, or the greater part of it, at Tampico, Saltillo, or Victoria, while our forces, are necessarily divided into comparatively small bodies. He can act with perfect secrecy, in a friendly country, and with a perfect knowledge of all our movements, while we are ignorant of his. ”

“ The insurrection in Texas now broke out into open rebellion. Santa Anna took the field in person, reaching the Rio Grande del Norte with an army of six thousand men in February, 1836. He at first was successful, but after one or two triumphs his army was completely routed, and he himself made prisoner by the Texan army under Houston. Santa Anna was taken to the United States by his conquerors. During his captivity he made a treaty with the Texans, which amounted to nothing at all, as his functions were suspended by the Mexican government. ”

“ When Santa Anna marched on Texas, first Barragan, and then Coro, exercised the functions of the presidency for a while, until, under the new constitution, Bustamente, having returned from exile, was elected President; the temporary unpopularity of Santa Anna, and his retirement in disgrace to Manga de Clavo, having left the field open to the friends of Bustamente. ”

“ The three first, as principal figures in every revolution, are already historical; Bustamante as an honest man and a brave soldier; Santa Anna as an acute general, active and aspiring, whose name has a prestige, whether for good or for evil, that no other possesses ”

“ Many of the scholars, who went out during the revolution, have not yet returned. K—— was in admiration at the galleries, which look like long vaulted streets, and at the chapel, which is certainly remarkably rich....
Having stopped in the carriage on the way home, at a shoemaker's, we saw Santa Anna's leg lying on the counter, and observed it with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. ”