Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/237

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The Revolution
201

Garza from Zapatista influence, but all to no purpose, for he required to keep most of his troops watching Villa in North Mexico. Zapata commenced the most stringent blackmailing demands on the unfortunate Garza, who, in despair, fled to the United States.

Once more Zapata entered Mexico city, this time in a spirit of ferocious destruction. His ruffians invaded the stately palaces which had harboured the great Zapata loots
Mexico.
families of the Diaz régime, stripped them of their paintings and other adornments, and forced the national pawnshops to pay immense prices for them. Horses were stabled in the stately homes of Mexico, the parquet flooring of the great houses was pulled up because the women who accompanied the Zapatista army preferred to dance on earthen floors, to which they had always been accustomed. Valuable libraries, containing priceless volumes on Mexican antiquities, were looted and their contents used for fuel to cook the messes of Zapata's brigands. Women were dragged from their homes by the hundred and never seen again, and the denizens of the slums were informed that the city was now their property and that they might do what they chose with it. The altars of the great churches were looted and defiled; in short, there was no villainy to which this monster among men did not stoop in his callous disregard of the fundamentals of humanity. The foreign colony, aroused to the real danger of the situation, appealed to the British Chargé d'Affaires, Mr. Hohler, who by great efforts and the most distinguished personal bravery, succeeded in conducting 500 foreigners by train to Vera Cruz. The refugees were forced to make the journey to Pachuca by mule-cart and, having arrived at that city, entered a train which the Carranzist party had put at their disposal. What American and Brazilian efforts could not do, British pluck and forcefulness duly accomplished.

But the tale of Mexico's Provisional Presidents was not yet at an end, for a third meeting at Aguas Calientes, at which