at Cádiz, which had produced the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812. After Mexican independence was achieved, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier (a rather unorthodox priest who claimed that the Virgin of Guadalupe had been engraved not on the tilma of Juan Diego but on the mantle of Saint Thomas) represented Nuevo Reino de León at the national constituent congress. In its decree number 45, article 1, the congress pronounced that "Nuevo León will be from this time forward a state of the Mexican Federation". Father Mier organized the establishment of a local legislature, which adopted the first constitution of the newly established state 5 March 1825. This state congress was dissolved in 1835 and the state was converted into a "Department". The national struggle between conservatives and liberals damaged the region's stability. In 1846, during the Mexican–American War, United States forces besieged Monterrey (see Battle of Monterrey). Additionally, native tribes originating in the U.S. made a brutal assault on the region, stealing women, children, cattle, and provisions. The chaos was such that it became routine to draw up ones will before making even a short journey. Separatist attempts By the middle of the 19th century the inhabitants of Nuevo León began to take reprisals against the indigenous natives, the U.S., and the Mexican authorities. In 1850 towns throughout Nuevo León were ready with an armed militia and with combat provisions (bastimento) already prepared for a combat that could break out at any moment. The bastimento consisted of corn biscuits, dried meat, and chocolate, the cornerstones of the rural diet of Nuevo León then and now. The response to the native invasions was ruthless. Influenced by the methods of the Americans to their north, the Nuevoleonese poisoned the waters from which the natives drank and put a bounty on natives' scalps. The combat with the Apaches, Comanches, runaway Kickapoos and North American filibusterers, while brutal and inhuman, gave a great deal of experience to the Nuevoleonese militias, who defeated the Mexican Army in several battles. The combat skills of local heroes Juan Zuazua, José Silvestre Aramberri, Mariano Escobedo, Lázaro Garza Ayala and Jerónimo Treviño were all tempered by those skirmishes. The leader of this self-defense movement was Santiago Vidaurri, who proclaimed the Plan de Monterrey in 1855, restoring the sovereignty of Nuevo León. Later a sympathizer with the Confederacy in the American Civil War, Vidaurri democratically annexed the Mexican state of