Whether General Huerta was really able to win or not is beside the
issue, since the final turn of events plainly revealed that his heart
was not in the fight, and that he was only waiting for a favorable
moment to turn against Madero. Before General Blanquet with his
supposed relief column was allowed to enter the city, General Huerta
had a private conference with Blanquet. This conference sealed Madero's
doom. Later, after Blanquet's forces had been admitted to the Palace,
on Huerta's assurances to the President that Blanquet was loyal to the
Government, it was agreed between the two generals that Blanquet should
make sure of the person of the President, while Huerta would personally
capture the President's brother, Gustavo, with whom he was to dine that
day. The plot was carried out to the letter.

When Huerta put Gustavo Madero under arrest, still sitting at the table
where Huerta had been his guest, Huerta sought to palliate his action
by claiming that Gustavo Madero had tried to poison him by putting
"knock-out" drops into Huerta's after-dinner brandy. At the same time
Huerta claimed that President Madero had tried to have him
assassinated, on the day before, by leading Huerta to a window in the
Palace, which an instant afterward was shattered by a rifle bullet from
outside.

Neither of the two prisoners ever had a chance to defend themselves
against these charges, for Gustavo Madero on the night following his
arrest was shot to death by a squad of soldiers in the garden of the
Citadel, and President Madero met a similar fate a few nights
afterward. General Huerta, who by this time had got himself officially
recognized as President, gave out an official statement from the Palace
pretending that Gustavo Madero had lost his life while attempting to
escape, and that his brother, the President, had been accidentally shot
by some of his own friends who were trying to rescue him from his
guard.

Few people in Mexico were inclined to believe this official version.
Yet the murder of the two Maderos, and of Vice-President Pino Suarez,
as well as the subsequent killing of other prisoners, like Governor
Abraham Gonzalez, of Chihuahua, was condoned by many in Mexico on the
ground that these men, if allowed to remain alive, were bound to make
serious trouble for the new Government. It was generally hoped, at the
same time, even by those who condemned these murders as barbarous, that
General Huerta might still prove himself