allowed to leave the country, being provided with a vessel to Italy, and allowed an annuity of twenty-five thousand dollars in consideration of his distinguished services.
This was in March; his reign had been brief, lasting only nine months. In July of the following year the exiled emperor imprudently ventured to return to Mexico, but had hardly set foot on his native soil when he was arrested, hastily tried, and sentenced to be shot. Thus fell another martyr to Mexican independence, one who had done more than any other man towards the final severance from despotic Spain. Thus miserably perished the first Mexican emperor since the great Guatemotzin.
Congress was hastily assembled upon the expulsion of Iturbide, and placed the government in the hands of an executive power, composed of Generals Bravo, Victoria, and Negretti. In October, 1824, a Federal constitution was adopted, which was mainly modelled after that of the United States, though it declared the Roman Catholic religion to be that of the Republic, and forbade the exercise of any other.
