 The port city of Veracruz, and the fort of San Juan de Ulúa, where Cortés landed three hundred years earlier, was where the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Crown made their last stand against the independence movement in 1824.During the Mexican War of Independence, there was support for the insurgents in many parts of the state, with skirmishes erupting in various parts as early as 1811.A major conspiracy against the colonial government was discovered in the port in 1812, with rebels taking Ayahualulco and Ixhuacán during the same year.