Huerta was forced to resign in July 1914 and flee the country to Spain,[1] only 17 months into his presidency, after the Federal Army collapsed.

[6] In that role he distinguished himself and, with Gen. Guerra's support, gained admission to the Mexican National Military Academy (Heroico Colegio Militar) at Chapultepec in Mexico City in 1872.

[3] After entering the army as a lieutenant in the engineers in 1877, he was put in charge of improving the Loreto and Guadalupe forts in Puebla and the castle of Perote in Veracruz.

From 1890 to 1895 Huerta lived in Mexico City, becoming a regular visitor to the presidential residence at Chapultepec Castle, and was seen as part of Díaz's "court".

[19] The rebellion was ended when Díaz brokered a deal with Neri, who surrendered in exchange for a promise to remove the unpopular state governor.

[20] Huerta confirmed his reputation for ruthlessness by refusing to take prisoners and continuing to attack the followers of Neri even after Díaz had signed a ceasefire.

His health began to decline, and perhaps because of his heavy drinking he complained he could not go outside in the sunshine without wearing sunglasses, and he suffered bouts of uncontrollable nervous shaking.

He then applied his technical training by taking up the position of Head of Public Works in Monterrey and planning a new street layout for the city.

"[30] As Madero lost support and as internal and external groups plotted to remove him from the presidency, Huerta secretly joined the conspiracy.

[34] Following a confused few days of fighting in Mexico City between loyalist and rebel factions of the army, Huerta had Madero and vice-president José María Pino Suárez seized and briefly imprisoned on 18 February 1913 in the National Palace.

Four days later Madero and Pino Suárez were taken from the National Palace to prison at night and shot by officers of the rurales (federal police), who were assumed to be acting on Huerta's orders.

"[41] Huerta attempted to build further support for his government, and the urban working class in Mexico City made important gains before being suppressed.

[44] One deputy was arrested by Mexico City police as he was delivering a speech denouncing Huerta at a rally and taken out to the countryside, where he was "shot while trying to escape".

[46] British historian Alan Knight wrote about Huerta: "The consistent thread which ran through the Huerta regime, from start to finish, was militarisation: the growth and reliance on the Federal Army, the military takeover of public offices, the preference for military over political solutions, the militarisation of society in general".

[49] Huerta disliked cabinet meetings, ordered his ministers about as if they were non-commissioned officers and displayed in general a highly autocratic style.

[53] Together with an increase in the number of the paramilitary rurales mounted police force and the state militias, Huerta had approximately 300,000 men, or about 4% of the population, fighting for him by early 1914.

[56] As Indians were felt to be particularly docile and submissive to whites, the leva was applied especially heavily in southern Mexico, where the majority of the people were indigenous.

[57] A visitor to Mérida, Yucatán wrote of "heart-breaking" scenes as hundreds of Maya said goodbye to their wives as they were forced to board a train while in chains.

[58] The men rounded up in the leva proved to be poor soldiers, prone to desertion and mutiny, since they were serving against their will and felt hatred for their commanding officers.

[59] Huerta had to follow a defensive strategy of keeping the army concentrated in large towns, since his soldiers in the field would either desert or go over to the rebels.

[61] In October 1913, in the town of Tlalnepantla, the army's 9th Regiment, which was said to have been "crazed with alcohol and marijuana", mutinied, murdered their officers and went over to the rebels.

In the fall of 1913, running spurious stories in the press warning of an imminent U.S. invasion and asking for patriotic men to step up to defend Mexico.

[64] The other source of volunteers was provided by allowing wealthy landlords to raise private armies under the guise of the state militias, but few peons wanted to fight, let alone die, for Gen. Huerta, since some Constitutionalists were promising land reform, although not First Chief Venustiano Carranza.

[66] When Huerta refused to call elections, and with the situation further exacerbated by the Tampico Affair, President Wilson landed US troops to occupy Mexico's most important seaport, Veracruz.

Franz von Rintelen of German Navy Intelligence for money to purchase weapons and arrange U-boat landings to provide support, while offering (perhaps as a bargaining chip) to make war on the US, which Germany hoped would end munitions supplies to the Allies.

[70] Huerta traveled from New York by train to Newman, New Mexico (25 miles (40 km) from the border), where he was to be met by Gen. Pascual Orozco and some well-armed Mexican supporters.

After some time in a US Army prison at Fort Bliss he was released on bail, but remained under house arrest due to risk of flight to Mexico.

Although U.S. business interests had hoped that President Wilson would recognize the Huerta government, they realized he would not and began aligning themselves with different revolutionary factions.

Despite efforts in Mexico to redress the exclusion of Andrés Molina Enríquez from the pantheon of Mexican revolutionaries—since he is considered the intellectual father of the Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, which empowered the state to implement land reform and expropriate private owners of resources like oil—Molina Enríquez is usually considered by Mexican historiography as "tainted" due to his service in the Huerta government.

[78] Huerta has been portrayed or referenced in any number of movies dealing with the Mexican Revolution, including The Wild Bunch, Duck, You Sucker!