Revolutions - 9.24- Swinging From A Tree

Episode Date: February 17, 2019

In 1917, Villa said he would fight on until Carranza was swinging from a tree.  Sponsor: https://molekule.com/

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 9.24, Swinging from a tree. Last time, we covered the creation of the new Mexican Constitution, which was promulgated in February 1917. After that, it did not take long for the revolution to really kick into overdrive. By this point, the people had completely lost faith in the Tsar. The crushing demoralization caused by World War I, combined with anger over corruption in the government and food shortages across the country

to spark riotous demonstrations in St. Petersburg that quickly spiraled out of control. And even though all of this began on March the 8th, 1917, by the old calendar, Russia was still in February. And so to this day, we still call it the February Revolution. Oh, wait, whoops, wrong revolution. But all of that is happening just now on the other side of the world. and we will of course come back to all of that in our next series. So leaving these terrible jokes that I do sometimes behind us, we will now carry on with our last few episodes on the Mexican Revolution,

which, just so you know, we'll wrap up in a few weeks at episode 9.27. So Venetiano Carranza has become president of Mexico in the spring of 1917, and he is now operating under the official political umbrella of a new constitution. But his domestic troubles were far from over. Karanza had personal enemies who were not just going to quit trying to topple him, most especially via and Zapata, but there was also a host of other minor rebellions flaring up out there, including the one led by Felix Dias down in the southeast, which aimed not at advancing the revolution,

but at reestablishing the Porfariato. But in many ways, Karanza was already sort of doing that. The only real difference between Dias and Karanza was the specific set of men who would compose the ruling elite. In terms of structure, values, and methods, Caranza was not very different from the Porfirians. And remember, Caranza had once been a member of that Porfirian ruling click, and when it looked like Porfirio Dias was going to retire, Caranza was all set to support Bernardo Reyes and maintain the whole Porfarian apparatus. He certainly had a lot more in common with those guys temperamentally and ideologically than he did with like the Vistas and the Apatistas.

So while Caranza had spent his revolutionary career painting himself as the leader of a popular reform movement, as his presidency unfolded, it became clear Caranza was in fact setting about establishing at least his version of a conservative regime. He was no less than the Porphyrians aiming at those two magical words, order and progress. Karanza's ultimately conservative program is most blindingly obvious when it comes to the all-important question of land. The land question was probably the defining catalyst of the Mexican Revolution. Abstract theories of freedom and democracy and constitutional rights appealed to middle-class intellectuals, but most of the men and women who picked up a rifle after 1910 were ultimately fighting for control of land. From the Zapatistas and Morelos to the Yaqui tribes who fought for Obrigon to the volunteers who had joined the Division del Norte.

The most broadly shared motivation was that the rich bosses' control of the country, too much land, and some of it needed to be redistributed to the people, either in private plots or communal village lands. So it is one of the bitter ironies of the revolution that the guy who was claiming victory, Cranza, did not broadly share that broadly shared motivation. Now, of course, like every other revolutionary faction, Cronza and his generals had confiscated a lot of land since they had first gone into rebellion back in 1913. First from the old Porfarian oligarchs, then from supporters of Huerta and then from supporters of Via. But unlike the other revolutionaries who thought that these confiscations would be permanent,

and, you know, kind of the point of all this, Karanza did not. He believed enough in private property rights as a matter of principle that he only considered these confiscations temporary, that they were economic expedience or a tactical way to punish his enemies during these revolutionary wars. So even as his government brought all the confiscated land under a new Department of confiscated land. And even as those confiscations were politically legitimized by the language of Article 27 of the Constitution of 1917, Carranza had little interest in breaking the property up and doling it out to the people. And it wasn't just that Carranza thought breaking up the

assyendas and large productive estates was bad in principle. He thought that on a practical level, it would be an economic disaster. As we discussed last week, now President Carranza had inherited a country whose economy was in the tank, which could barely feed itself. Carranza believed that the large asciendas needed to get back up and running. They didn't need to be broken up into a million little pieces. He believed in the productive power of large consolidated estates, so the people could clamor for parcels of land, but they would not be coming anytime soon. So if Carranza believes in private property rights and keeping the assyendas intact,

who is going to assume control over the millions of 18? the Department of Confiscated Lands now controlled. Well, first, the victorious generals, obviously. None of the high-ranking Carancistas are going to walk out of this without adding considerable acreage to their personal portfolios in the form of plantations, ranches, ranches, farms, and assyendas. When Obergoan resigned as Minister of War to head off into temporary retirement, he was not going back to being a middle-class ranchero. He walked onto the battlefields of the Mexican Revolution as a middling chickpea farmer, and he now retired from those battlefields controlling extensive estates all over northwestern Sonora. Somehow, Obrgon and his friends wound up holding the deeds to most of the best land.

Now, this is eyebrow-raising, but hardly surprising or controversial. To the victors, go the spoils. But what was surprising and controversial was that the other main group that's going to benefit from Kranza's land allocation policies is the old Porphyrian oligarchs. Like Napoleon welcoming back the emigres, Caranza's agents reached out to the original exiles of the revolution with an offer to restore them to their estates. They were invited to petition the Department of Confiscated Lands, and if their claims and titles were in order, Caranza was prepared to let them have what was once theirs.

Now, this offer did not come without a few caveats. If you petitioned for your lands and it was discovered that at any point you had backed where to, or even worse, via, then you were screwed. Carranza's offer was only for the Perfarians or people who had been run off defending the constitutionalist cause. Even the Madero's were denied their petition because the Madero brothers had thrown their lot in with Via rather than Caranza. So that was one caveat. The other was that your family had to pledge itself to being non-political. This was an offer of economic restoration, not political restoration.

And many of the old families jumped at the opportunity. in 1917 saw the slow but steady return of the old bosses to their assyendas. This obviously generated resentment and resistance and would help ensure Mexico would never be without rebellion during Kranz's tenure in office. But a lot of the workers and villagers out there were actually glad to see their old patrons and landlords come back. In many places, the constitutionalist generals who had taken over these estates had proven themselves greedy and neglectful, more interested in short-term looting than long-term development, at least with the return of the old bosses. Work, wages, and food might become steadier and more reliable.

In the final analysis, widespread exhaustion and a desire to return to normalcy were Carranza's most potent political allies. Up in the north, this resignation to the economic retrenchment of the Porfarian Ascendados was bad news for Pancho Villa, because it meant that the rebellious fire that had fueled his revolutionary career was dying out. There was nothing that helped Carranza stave off his various enemies more than weariness with fighting and a longing for an end to all the destruction. But still, Via rode around Chihuahua trying to relight the fire in 1917. And at the end of 1916, Via had managed to capture the city of Torreon, which, remember from our earlier adventures with Via, was a key gateway to the south.

But this was a very different incarnation of Via than the one we had known previously. He might be able to attack and briefly hold a city, but there was no more long-term occupations. All he could do now was catch and release. He simply did not have the men, money, or weaponry to actually hold ground for any length of time. So though his capture of Torreon sent nervous ripples through the delegates hammering out the Constitution, within days Via had withdrawn back into the mountains. Not that Via had any illusions about holding Torreon. The purpose of his raids was to acquire some money and supplies,

but most importantly, to embarrass Kranz's government and put lie to the notion that they actually were in control of Mexico. But aside from this, Via wasn't even really fronting much of a political platform anymore. He was driven instead by this feverish mix of pride and honor and revenge, and as 1916 gave way to 1917, Villa said, we shall fight on until Don Venustiano is swinging from a tree. But there's lack of any kind of coherent political platform or wider social goal hurt Via's cause, because there wasn't a cause anymore.

Especially after the Americans withdrew in February 1917, Via was having a hard time explaining to anyone why they were still fighting or what they were fighting for. He could vaguely point to the social and economic misery, but as I just said, social and economic misery was no longer sparking rebellion, as it had in 1910. It instead lay over the people like a heavy blanket. And it was not without good reason that this blanket now lay heavily upon them. Basically, we've been fighting and dying and seeing our homes destroyed and our family scattered, and it was all supposed to have been for something. But look around. It's all just the same. Maybe worse. And now you want us to remount our horses and follow you back

into the crummy existence of a guerrilla army hiding in the mountains because you personally hate Caranza? I'm sorry, no. Now, there was a broader political case to be made here, probably, but by now Via had lost most of his best political advisors, most especially Felipe Anhalis, and so Via failed to fully exploit the very real unpopularity of Caronza's government. Via had successfully provoked the Americans into invading, and it had done all he hoped that it would. It had angered the people and driven a wedge between Caranza and Woodrow Wilson, but then the Americans had stopped moving, and Caranza had publicly stood up to them, and now the Americans were gone. So for as brilliant an idea as the invasion of Columbus was, it didn't pan out. Via also failed to take advantage of the returning Osandados.

He never so much has issued a proclamation trying to use Caranza opening the door to the return of the old Porphyrian devils as a political wedge he could use to his advantage. So Via failed to make his case to a population that was, for good reasons, becoming more insular and defensive. And not only were his words failing to rouse them, his actions were making them resent him even more. Vio was working with a very quick trigger these days. As I mentioned, the old Robin Hood and avenging angel routine had devolved into furious violence and indiscriminate confiscation. This had really begun back in the dark days after his great collapse at the hands. hands of Obrgon. When returning home from his failed campaign in Sonora back in January 1915, VIA had massacred all the men in a small town because a group of them had mistaken Via scouts for

bandits and fired on them. Through 1916 and 1917, Via continued to be fast and loose with his gun. After capturing a town while its constitutionalist garrison was out on patrol, he got infuriated when the women of the town started barking at him. He killed the leader of these women with his own pistol, and then ordered another 90 summarily executed. These are massacres, and word of these massacres spread, and hatred of Via started to become as common as love of VIA. It wasn't just what VIA himself did, though, but also what was required to fight him.

As long as Via was riding around, the violent and abusive weight of federal army garrisons also remained. Most of the federal army soldiers were from out of state and not very happy to be stuck out here fighting scruffy rebels who refuse to get with the program. So from the senior officers on down, these soldiers aimed to plunder, loot, extract, and abuse as much as they could as compensation for their miserable assignment. This feeling throughout the civilian population of being trapped between these two sides in a war that they no longer wanted any part of, did, however, help Carranza solidify some popular recognition for his new regime, because he willingly made deals with local municipalities that said if they raised their own militias and pledged them to

fight Via, that Carranza would not find it necessary to house a regular army garrison amongst them. So in defense of their families and homes, they turned away from Via and towards Carranza. These very real political problems for Via compounded his military problems. Recruitment was difficult, arming and supplying himself was nearly impossible. Provoking the Americans into invading may have had points in its favor, but it played hell on Via's ability to get guns and ammunition across the border. If Via's popularity had taken a hit in Chihuahua, it had been completely obliterated in the United States. Just a few years earlier, he had been the star of one of the most popular movies in the United States that portrayed him as a romantic and daring defender

of the people. Now, he was just a hated, murderous bandit. So while clandestinely running guns to Via in 1913 and 1914 had been a fun adventure that was profitable, winked at by the authorities, and would later be a good story to tell. By 1917, it was a dangerous game that was very unpopular. Besides, thanks to the punitive expedition, the border was lined with national guardsmen, and all the regular checkpoints were closely monitored. Only a few really die-hard supporters of Via continued to be willing to supply him. Via's ammunition problem then became very acute when one of senior officers was captured by the regular army. To save his own life, this guy spilled a secret that only a handful of men were privy to, the location of Via's largest weapons cash, where he had

stockpiled literally millions of rounds of ammunition. Thanks in part to this shocking betrayal, Via's attempted raid on Chihuahua City on April 1st, 1917, failed. Then he was dealt another debilitating blow. Just a few weeks later, he led his men up to the border, where they were supposed to receive a large shipment of arms, but the shipment just never showed up, and Via had to retreat. And not only were the barrels of their guns now empty, so too were their bellies. Thanks to the devastated fields of Mexico, Via could not keep men bunched together, and so he realized that he could now no longer arm or feed thousands of men, and so he broke them up into small groups and told them to go out and reconvene after the harvest.

So by the summer of 1917, Via was back to directly leading no more than 100 men. And it was with these men that he embarked on one of his more hairbrained schemes. In August of 1917, Via led this small band South. The plan was to ride all the way to Mexico City, kidnap Caranza, take him to Morelos, where he would be put on trial and executed. Okay, so this plan is nuts and it's not going to work, But like the raid on Columbus, there was a method to Via's madness. Executing Caronza would not just be personally satisfying.

It would open up a power vacuum on the constitutional aside that would almost certainly lead to some kind of succession battle amongst the various rival civilian and military leaders. Maybe Via and Sepat could then emerge triumphantly from the subsequent chaos, or something. This idea came to Via when he found out that Caronza liked to take daily rides accompanied by just a single aid. Via erroneously believe this information meant he would just be able to like

bushwhack Caranza in the middle of Mexico City, as if there was not some kind of large and well-coordinated security perimeter around the president's route, which of course there was. So even had he gotten to Mexico City, Via's plan likely never would have worked. But Via never got anywhere near Mexico City. Not wanting to be found out, Via and his men dressed up in uniforms from the regular army, and they rode south pretending to be an official patrol. But we're now at the point where army patrols are as despised by the townspeople as anyone,

and the locals became increasingly hostile wherever Via went. Many of them have their own militias now, and they didn't want the army around. So at one town, Via and his men were greeted by armed men on all their rooftops. Then a little further down the road, they ran into a posse of about 30 guys hunting a gang of bandits. Not wanting to be reported, Via captured this posse and had everyone killed, which then set off alarm bells throughout the region that a murderous gang was on the loose. With thousands of miles still left to travel, Via ordered his men to halt and go back, breaking them into two groups of about 50 men. But on the way back, the group that was not

under Via's direct command, mutinied. And when Via found out about this, he had to order executions, at this time, killing some of his longest-serving comrades. When he returned to Chihuahua, for the first time, Via's mood changed to depression. He had done exuberant. He had done arrogant. He had done angry. But now he, too, was running out of fuel. Now, there was no way he would ever cut a deal with Caranza, nor Caranza with him.

But Via's object now seemed to be just stay in the field long enough to outlast Caranza to either see him dead or deposed, so Via could cut a deal with his sick. successor. I mean, even Via didn't know what the point was anymore. Unfortunately, the failure of this plan means that we don't get the fun version of history where Villa takes the Kidnap Carranza to Morelos, where Via and Sapata preside over a revolutionary tribunal and then restart the revolution together. Now, with the two great Caudillos fighting side by side. Not that this version of history would have ended well. One of them would have eventually killed the other, but still, it would have been some fun Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid stuff,

at least for a little while. But we don't get that. Instead, Sepata had to carry out the revolution in the South without Via's help, and he was finding it only marginally easier than Vio was up in Chihuahua. Zapata at least continued to have something resembling a political program that a large swath of the population believed in. But Morelos was a microcosm of the terrible economic conditions that were plaguing the rest of the country.

As the years had gone by and the fighting had just never stopped, villages had been torched and destroyed. Homes were lost. People were killed or ran. Many of the traditional village leaders had died along the way. It's estimated that the state lost a good 20% of its population. The Osandados and their managers had all been driven off, and so the Asiendas had fallen into disrepair. Where fields had once been planted with crops, they were now planted with weeds and dirt. The sugar mills had all been broken or abandoned and they produced nothing. Various livestock and animals. pigs and goats and chickens had all but disappeared. Mostly, most of the people were down to subsistence farming, and yet the Zapatistas refused to give up. Part of their endurance was thanks to the fact that even more than in Chihuahua, the stick part of the old bread or stick routine fell very heavily on Marelos. By the fall of 1916, the Zapatistas were dealing with the single largest army ever arrayed against them,

as many as 30,000 men surrounded the perimeter of the state or occupied its principal towns and cities. Against them now stood just a few thousand Zapatista guerrillas, mostly operating in small groups of 50 to 100. But this was a way of fighting that suited them. They were close to home and they were working in small guerrilla bands. They could hit and run and harass, but never surrender. And they were massively helped by the fact that the constitutionalist forces had learned nothing. The enveloping army seemed to be operating on a program of just violent corruption. Moral among these troops was no better here than anywhere else,

and the day-to-day occupation of Morelos was about drunkenness, gambling, plundering, and abusing the local population. The task of defeating the Zapatistas had been given to General Pablo Gonzalez, who I've talked about only a little bit in passing, but he was a carancista general going all the way back to the original plan of Guadalupe days. He had in fact been in charge. of the eastern leg of that three-pronged advance south against Huerta in 1913, when Overgonne had led the west and via the center. Gonzales didn't realize that he was going to wind up just a footnote in Mexican history, and he thought that his assignment in Morelos would be key to his own

presidential ambitions, that if he could finally defeat the undefeated Zapatistas and then control the lucrative spoils at the sugar plantations, that his political fortunes would flourish. But like every other general who had been sent to Morelos, he found himself in a frustrating quagmire. And despite declaring victory in May 1916, the fighting in Morelos only got worse. As the constituent Congress was getting ready to convene in the fall of 1916, Zapata led his men back out on a wide campaign. But facing off against so many troops, Sapata, for the first time, conceived of a campaign

less in military terms than in political terms, which is to say that he was not a very much in focused so much on winning territory or defeating enemy forces as he was on wrecking the political legitimacy of Caranza. And he was pretty successful at this. On October the 4th, the Zapatista successfully captured the water pumping station that supplied Mexico City with clean water. Then a week later, they attacked a suburb of the Capitol and stood just eight miles from downtown. This blew up the official press accounts that the Zapatistas had been defeated because clearly they had not been. Then Sopata moved on to overt acts of terrorism. On November the 7th, 1916, Zapatista's dynamited a train running along the line between Kornavaka and Mexico City.

The blast killed 400 people. Then about a week later, they dynamited a second train. Now, the point here was the same as the point of all terrorist tactics throughout history. First, to expose the powers that be as unable to fulfill their most basic responsibility to the population. Maintain peace and protect citizens from physical harm. Second, to invite overreaction from those powers that be. Get them to act paranoid and lash out violently against the civilian population, which will only further undermine their own legitimacy. General Gonzalez fell into this trap immediately.

The attacks were hugely embarrassing, as he had told everyone he had the situation well in hand, and so he lashed out with paranoid violence. The tens of thousands of soldiers now arrayed in and around Morelos were ordered to crack down even harder, which, predictably, drove the population that was as weary of war as anyone back into the arms of the rebels. Then in November, martial law was declared across South Central Mexico, ruining the official declarations that Mexico was on its way towards building a constitutional government premised on the rule of law. Now, General Gonzalez did not quite go so far as to create explicit concentration camps for the population,

but he did define certain areas that if you were found there and didn't have a good reason, it was very likely you would be summarily executed. And this was for sure true of anyone caught lurking around the railroad tracks without a good explanation. Gonzalez was angry, humiliated, and frustrated, and so were his men. So as they marched around out there, they were now going back to committing a Trump. They were summarily executing people. They were destroying villages. They were rapes and kidnappings and deportations. So even if the population of Morelos were getting sick of the constant fighting, the actions of the federal army were once again making it impossible for them to give up the fight. Really, in all the years of the Mexican Revolution, Felipe Anhalis had been the only general to have any kind of insight in how to actually suck the air out of the Zapatista revolution. And Zapata himself acknowledged as much. So all this raging around got the army no closer to victory. And eventually Gonzalez did this really funny thing where he ordered his men to clear the surrounding terrain

500 meters on either side of the Mexico City to Kornavaka railroad line. This was to prevent future sabotage and terrorist attacks. His men did this while moving backwards from Kornavaka to Mexico City. And then wouldn't you know it? Once Gonzalez and his men were back in Mexico City, he announced, oh yes, this is my new headquarters. What are you talking about? No, that wasn't just a massive retreat made to look like a planned operation, but it was. By the time the Constitution was promulgated in February 1917, the Zapatistas were back in control of practically the whole state.

When the national elections were held in March of 1917, Marrillos was the only state not to hold elections. They were just back to doing their own thing. They were forming their own government again. The cycles here are really crazy. Marrillos is the smallest, state in Mexico. It is less than 100 miles from the capital and like a half dozen different generals and God knows how many troops have tried to conquer this little piece of real estate and the people there just remained functionally out of reach of all national governments for going on seven years now. Every time you think, oh, this is it, this is the end of them, they just come back. But though they continued to hold out, there was now growing concern in the Zapatista camp

that Caranza had not fallen yet. I mean, that was their whole idea that Caranza would fall, just like Diaz and Madero and Huerta, but it had been now close to two years since Obrugone had broken the back of the conventionist coalition. And now, instead of collapsing, Caranza was only further dug in in Mexico City. He had been inaugurated as president of Mexico in May of 1917 and had been recognized by the rest of the world. So some among the Zapatista Inner Circle concluded that one of the main problems was that there was not a truly national movement to unseat him. Via was riding around in the north, Felix Diaz was in the southeast. There are various groups of emigres working against Caranza from bases in the United States,

and the Zapatistas, of course, themselves continued to fight on in Morelos. But there was no unity to their actions, and Caronzo was able to successfully fend them off one by one. Now, so far he had been unable to defeat them, he could only go so far as fending them off. But still, they could not defeat him either. So if they were going to defeat Carranza, they needed to reunify, to reform something like the conventionist coalition. Taking the lead on this initiative, and the one pushing hardest for it, was Ildardo Magagna. You will remember Maganya from way back when. He was the one who had spent time in prison with Pancho Villa, and then emerged as the principal go between, between Via and Zapata back in the good old days of 1913 and 1914. Maganya was in fact,

something of Zapata's roaming ambassador. And more than anyone else in the Zapatista inner circle, Magana had always been the one pushing for external links and alliances. And though this made him a bit suspect among the more locally focused chiefs, Zapata himself always trusted Magana, because though Magana was always pushing for these outside alliances, and recommending the compromises and understandings that would make those alliances possible, he never budged on the plan of Ayala,

and he never asked Zapata to betray his most close. mostly held beliefs. So here now in 1917, Maganya began to take on a larger role inside the movement, and Sepanta gave his blessing for Maganya to start arranging a new pan-Mexican anti-Karanza alliance. As Magana got going, he found those nearest at hand would be the trickiest to deal with, because as you move east out of Morelos, you run into a fuzzy gray area of local rebels doing their own thing. Many were fighting under Sepantism. but the further east you went, the more these rebels were relying on the political and military services of Felix Dias. Now, Dias was no better than Carranza, obviously. But that didn't mean they

couldn't coordinate around the edges if they happened to all be pointing their guns in the same direction. Besides, most of these Felicistas were that in little more than name, hardly ideological bent. This budding alliance had to be handled delicately, though, and their cooperation with was never publicly acknowledged. But they did start respecting each other's terrains in sphere of influence and helping each other out. Most especially, though, Sopata insisted that they needed VIA back in the fold. Pancho Villa was still one of the few guys out there who Sopata thought was fighting right fight for the right reasons. But unfortunately, Via was very hard to locate in the summer of 1917.

He's down to running 100 guys out of a mountain base. And he was never in contact with Sopata, even as. he was dreaming up this scheme to kidnap Caronza and bring him to Morelos. Maganya also reached way, way, way into the Wayback Machine, and he wrote letters to Emilio Vasquez Gomez, who was then living in exile in Texas. You remember the old Vasquez-Gomez brothers? They had been the ones who thought they could replace Madero

as the head of the original revolution. Since nobody really wanted Felix Diaz to replace Caranza, Maganya wondered if maybe Vasquez Gomez wanted another crack. at it. But these talks went nowhere. Vasquez Gomez was interested, but he had no resources, and he commanded no support. So the question of who could possibly succeed Caranza as president was still to be determined. Word was leaking through the grapevine that Obrugone was not very happy with Caronza's turn towards arch-conservatism. So maybe he could be turned. And one cannot help but notice that Felipe Anhalis is still out there. Just saying. On September the 1st,

17, Sapata issued yet another manifesto to the nation. He'd gotten pretty good at working the political side of things, unlike Pancho Villa, who never figured that part out. This manifesto denounced Caranza as a false prophet, who was going to bring all the worst tyrannical excesses of the Porfirio back. And of course, there was no one who could more bitingly and convincingly attack Caronza for letting the old Porfarian ascendados back into the country than Sepata. The point in the manifesto was that Carranza was a phony revolutionary, that we can't trust him. He's just another dictator. Real revolutionaries fight for principles, like the principle of the plan of Ayala, which was about giving land to the people, not restoring it to our old oppressors. And finally, when we win the

revolution, we are going to re-expell the returning ostendados. We are going to take their land, and we are going to use it to fund the restoration not of the oligarchs, but of the common people of Mexico. It was a stirring call to arms, and there were still plenty of arms out there to be stirred. But we are approaching the final few episodes of this series on the Mexican Revolution for a reason. The Mexican Revolution is not about to catch a second wind, or fifth wind, whichever wind it happens to be trying to catch right now. And as we proceed through our final three episodes, tragedy is going to far outweigh triumph.