As the men rounded up in the "leva" proved to be poor soldiers, prone to desertion and mutiny, Huerta had to follow a defensive strategy of keeping the army concentrated in large towns, since his soldiers in the field would either desert or go over to the rebels. Throughout the civil war of 1913-14 the Constitutionalists fought with a ferocity and courage that the federal army never managed. In Yucatán about 70% of the army were men conscripted from the prisons, while one "volunteer" battalion consisted of captured Yaqui. In October 1913, in the town of Tlalnepantla, the army's 9th Regiment, which was said to have been "crazed with alcohol and marijuana", mutinied, murdered their officers and went over to the rebels. To provide volunteers, Huerta turned to Mexican nationalism and anti-Americanism in the fall of 1913, running spurious stories in the press warning of an imminent American invasion and asking for patriotic men to step up to defend Mexico. The campaign attracted some volunteers from the lower middle class, through they were usually disillusioned when they learned that they were going to fight other Mexicans, not the Americans. In rural Mexico a sense of Mexican nationalism barely existed at this time among the "campesinos". Mexico was an abstract entity that meant nothing, and most "campesinos" were primarily loyal to their own villages, the "patria chicas". Huerta's patriotic campaign was a complete failure in the countryside. The other source of volunteers was to allow wealthy landlords to raise private armies under the guise of the state militias, but few "peons" wanted to fight, let alone die, for Gen. Huerta, since the Constitutionalists were promising land reform.