Again Santa Anna was banished--to dream of a more favorable opportunity when he might become the savior of a country which had fallen into bankruptcy and impotence.
His opportunity came in 1853, when conservatives and clericals indulged the fatuous hope that he would both sustain their privileges and lift Mexico out of its sore distress.

Either their memories were short or else distance had cast a halo about his figure.

At all events, he returned from exile and assumed, for the ninth and last time, a presidency which he intended to be something more than a mere dictatorship.

Scorning the formality of a Congress, he had himself entitled "Most Serene Highness," as indicative of his ambition to become a monarch in name as well as in fact.
Royal or imperial designs had long since brought one military upstart to grief.

They were now to cut Santa Anna's residence in Mexico similarly short.