When Francisco I. Madero escaped jail in 1910 and issued his Plan de San Luis, calling for an uprising against Porfirio Díaz on 20 November 1910, Pancho Villa was not being sought for crimes. However, he had had many confrontations with the administrators of haciendas and with the Porfirista authorities. In contrast to Zapata, he did not have an overriding commitment to his village nor to an Amerindian community. He had never been a community leader, but rather the head of an outlaw gang primarily of rustlers that also hired out to do security for foreign companies. However, he was not at all indifferent to the suffering of the undertrodden and during his career as an outlaw he had been known for his considerable generosity toward the poor, a generosity that greatly increased after 1910 in tandem with his influence.
Villa, in contrast to Pascual Orozco, had no political ambitions at the time. Often outlaws join a revolution in hope of successful looting and plundering. Villa was known for ironhanded discipline of his men and looting was kept to a minimum among his followers. His primary motivation for joining the Revolution was probably to satisfy his hatred against the disruption of his way of life, not unlike the character of Demetrio Macías in the famous novel by Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo, and also to quench his thirst for revenge. Hatred and revenge were key motivating features throughout Villa’s life.

Villa joined the ranks of the Madero movement at the age of 32. He was in the prime of life. He quickly solidified his reputation as a natural leader and audacious and imaginative military tactician, who knew the terrain in which he fought with the accuracy of a former drover and bandit. While his commander, Pascual Orozco, extremely well connected in the state, was greatly loved by the Chihuahuans, Pancho Villa, who was an outsider from Durango, became almost immediately greatly feared. He was seen as a master horseman and one of Mexico’s greatest gunfighters and marksmen. In contrast to Zapata, he dressed very commonly with no desire for pomp or show. Villa kept his men under very strict control and he was extremely self-disciplined as well. He neither smoked, drank nor took drugs including the vaunted marijuana of the Revolution. He was a relentless womanizer. He married at least four wives and never divorced and he sired many children throughout Chihuahua with his wives and numerous girlfriends. He was a responsible father, husband and lover financially and in other ways. He acknowledged his children and maintained and sustained them financially. It has been speculated that he was influenced by Mormon colonists who had settled in Chihuahua to escape U.S. laws against polygamy.

Villa seemed to face formidable obstacles to the success that he achieved in Chihuahua including his lack of education, his lack of political experience or connections, lack of family or clan connections, his low socioeconomic status, and his reputation as a bandit. Nevertheless, his braveness, discipline, relentless energy, natural command of followers, imaginative tactics, intimate knowledge of the field, and superb fighting qualities propelled him from the initial rank of colonel to commander second only to his leader Pascual Orozco in a matter of months. Even before 20 November 1910 he had taken over some haciendas and equipped his followers and on 21 November 1910 he occupied the old military camp of San Andrés which had recently evolved into a town.

On 11 May 1911, his forces and those of Pascual Orozco attacked and captured Ciudad Juárez contrary to the orders of the more cautious Madero. This victory marked the resignation and exile of Porfirio Díaz and the triumph of the Madero revolution.

After Madero assumed the presidency, in contrast to Emiliano Zapata who defied Madero and waited suspiciously for Madero to give ¡Tierra y Libertad! to his followers, Villa returned to civilian life as a businessman. However, the rebellion of his former commander in chief, Pascual Orozco in 1912 brought him back into the revolution, defending the Madero regime independently, and then under Victoriano Huerta’s orders when the latter was appointed as his chief military commander. Francisco “Pancho” Villa was promoted to honorary brigadier general in early May 1912. Villa defeats Orozco in a battle on the Chihuahua-Durango border, but quickly a rivalry developed between Huerta and Villa, and when Villa’s men seize an Arabian horse and Villa keeps it for himself, Huerta orders Villa’s execution for insubordination. However, Villa was spared by the personal intervention of Raúl Madero, the President’s brother. Villa languished in jail in Mexico City for a while but managed to escape to the United States. After Madero was murdered, he reentered Mexico with a handful of companions to fight the usurper Huerta. By September 1913 that handful had become the nucleus of Villa’s vaunted División del Norte.