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Those not lost in the inconceivable stupor which the deadly upas in their midst cast far and near, opened wide eyes of amaze. A trumpet cry rang through the land! Liberals and Conservatives, even the less bigoted of the clerical party, sprang to arms. The entire nation, grieving and reduced to misery by the loss of ninety thousand men who had been dragged from their homes to support the pomp and power of the tyrant, to become a prey upon the land, and upon the helpless families of whom they should naturally have been the support, had refused long to be dazzled by the spectacle of military pomp, or to be beguiled by the fiestas and processions which in every town and village made the administration one that appeared a prolonged carnival and madness. These continued insults to the public misery; the daily proscriptions of men who dared to raise the voice or write a line against the Dictator or his senseless policy; the oppressions of the army; the cold, cruel, implacable espionage which made life unendurable,—these wrought quickly their inevitable consequences among a people accustomed to disorder and revolutions, and who in their blind, irrational way longed for liberty. Disgust and detestation of the dictatorship became general. As suddenly as it had sprung into being it was met and crushed. Rebellions sprang up on every hand; the populace rose in mass; the statues of Santa Anna were thrown down in the streets, his portraits stoned; the houses of his adherents were sacked, their carriages destroyed. The popular fury culminated in the practical measure of the promulgation of the plan of Ayutla, which condemned to perpetual exile the ambitious demagogue who had disappointed and betrayed all parties, mocking with cruel levity his country’s woes, and which declared for the establishment of a Republic based upon the broadest platform of civil rights. Gomez Farias gave form to this act; but Ignacio Comonfort became its soul when he proclaimed it in Acapulco, and in the almost inaccessible recesses of the South raised the standard of a rebellion, which rapidly extending throughout the land hurled from its pedestal the idol of clay, that for a brief moment had been taken for gold, to place in its stead a new favorite.