A month after he took office, revolutionary leaders Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata took Mexico City. Gutiérrez's government was moved to the national capital, now in the hands of the Army of the Convention. Relations with Villa were strained to the point Villa had ordered the Minister of War (his superior), to execute President Gutiérrez in January 1915. In 1915, Gutiérrez told Vasconcelos that "The Mexican landscape smells of blood." Gutiérrez decided to leave the capital on January 16, 1915, and moved his government to San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, where he declared both Villa and Carranza traitors to the "revolutionary spirit" and formally resigned the presidency on July 2, 1915. Another source gives the date of his resignation as May 1915.