was arrested and imprisoned. The U.S. continued to view him as the best option for the replacement of Madero, a course on which it was now set. Madero was perceived unable to achieve order and stability that the U.S. government and businesses required. Wilson made it clear that he wanted Madero replaced and a candidate more amendable to the U.S. installed in the presidency. General Bernardo Reyes also sought regime change. Both men were imprisoned by Madero, but not executed and went on to lead a coup d'etat with support of the U.S. Ambassador. Given activist U.S. interventions in Latin American internal affairs for decades, it was not out of the question that the U.S. would intervene in Mexico in this unsettled period. When that did not happen, the ambassador played a decisive role in undermining the Mexican public's and international diplomatic corps' as well as business interests' perception of the Madero's regime's ability to keep order. From January 1913, a coup against Madero seemed inevitable, supported by the U.S. The plot by Díaz and Reyes against Madero was sprung in February 1913 in a coup d'état during a period now known as the Ten Tragic Days (la decena trágica). which overthrew Madero. Wilson brought Félix Díaz and the head of the Mexican Federal Army, General Victoriano Huerta, who had ostensibly been a defender of the president but now in opposition to him. A signed agreement signed on 19 February, the Pact of the Embassy, laid out a power-sharing agreement between the two Mexican generals, with the explicit support of the U.S. ambassador. U.S. President William Howard Taft, who had appointed Wilson in 1909 as ambassador to Mexico, was a lame duck president, having lost the election to Woodrow Wilson. The new president would be inaugurated on March 4, 1913. In the final days of his presidency, President Madero, at long last and too late realized the tenuousness of his hold on power. He appealed to President-elect Wilson to intervene on his behalf, but to no avail, since Wilson was not yet in office. Ambassador Wilson had secured the support of the foreign diplomatic corps in Mexico, especially the British, German, and French envoys, for the coup and lobbied for U.S. recognition of the new head of state, General Huerta. U.S. and Huerta regime 1913–1914 Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated president in March 1913, but the coup d'état in Mexico was