Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican Part 20

At the appointed hour, the order of Charles, was enforced. The Jesuits were shut up in their colleges, and all avenues to these retreats of learning and piety were filled with troops. The fathers were despatched from Mexico for Vera Cruz on the 28th of June, surrounded by soldiers. They halted awhile in the town of Guadalupe, where the _Visitador_ Galvez, who governed the expedition, permitted them to enter, once more, into the national sanctuary, where amid the weeping crowds of Mexicans, they poured forth their last, and fervent vows, for the happiness of a people, who idolized them. Their entrance into Jalapa was a triumph. Windows, balconies, streets, and house tops were filled with people, whose demeanor manifested what was pa.s.sing in their hearts, but who were restrained by ma.s.sive ranks of surrounding soldiery from all demonstration in behalf of the banished priests. In Vera Cruz some silent but respectful tokens of veneration were bestowed upon the fathers, several of whom died in that pestilential city before the vessels were ready to transport them beyond the sea.

Nor did their sufferings cease with their departure from New Spain.

Their voyage was long, tempestuous and disastrous, and after their arrival in Spain, under strict guardianship, they were again embarked for Italy, where they were finally settled with a slender support in Rome, Bologna, Ferrara and other cities, in which they honored the country whence they had been driven by literary labors and charitable works. The names of Abade, Alegre, Clavigero, Landibares, Maneyro, Cavo, Lacunza and Marques, sufficiently attest the historical merit of these Mexican Jesuits, who were victims of the suspicious Charles. For a long time the Mexican mind was sorely vexed by the oppressive act against this favorite order. But the Visitador Galvez imposed absolute silence upon the people,--telling them in insulting language that it was their "sole duty to obey," and that they must "speak neither for nor against the royal order, which had been pa.s.sed for motives reserved alone for the sovereign's conscience!"

Thus, all expression of public sentiment, as well as of amiable feeling, at this daring act against the worthiest and most benevolent clergymen of Mexico was effectually stifled. It had been well for New Spain if Charles had banished the Friars, and spared the Jesuits. The church of Mexico, in our age, would then have resembled the church of the United States, whose foundation and renown are owing chiefly to the labors of enlightened Sulpicians and Jesuits, as well as to the exclusion of monks and of all the orders that dwell in the idle seclusion of cloisters instead of pa.s.sing useful lives amid secular occupations and temporal interests. If the act of Henry VIII. in England was unjust and cruel, it was matched both in boldness and wickedness by the despotic decree of the unrelenting Charles of Spain.

Nor can the latter sovereign claim the merit of having subst.i.tuted virtue for vice as the British king pretended he had done in the suppression of the monasteries. Henry swept priest and friar from his kingdom with the same blow; but the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g Charles banished the intellectual Jesuit whilst he saved and screened the lazy monk.

The pretext of Charles III. for his outrageous conduct was found in an insurrection which occurred on the evening of Palm Sunday, 1766, and gave up the capital of Spain, for forty-eight hours, to a lawless mob.

It was doubtless the result of a preconcerted plan to get rid of an obnoxious minister; and, as soon as it was known that this personage had been exiled, the rioters instantly surrendered their arms, made friends with the soldiers, and departed to their homes. In fact, it was a political intrigue, which the king and his minister charged on some of the Spanish grandees and on the Jesuits. But as the former were too powerful to be a.s.sailed by the king, his wrath was vented on the Fathers of the Order of Jesus, whose lives, at this time, were not only innocent but meritorious.

"Some years preceding, on a charge as dest.i.tute of foundation, they had been expelled from Portugal. In 1764, their inveterate foe, the Duke de Choiseul, minister of Louis XV., had driven them from France; and, in Spain, their possessions were regarded with an avaricious eye by some of the needy courtiers. To effect their downfall, the French minister eagerly joined with the advocates of plunder; and intrigues were adopted which must cover their authors with everlasting infamy.

Not only was the public alarm carefully excited by a report of pretended plots, and the public indignation, by slanderous representations of their persons and principles; but, in the name of the chiefs of the order, letters were forged, which involved the most monstrous doctrines and the most criminal designs. A pretended circular from the general of the order, at Rome, to the provincial, calling on him to join with the insurgents; the deposition of perjured witnesses to prove that the recent commotion was chiefly the work of the body, deeply alarmed Charles, and drew him into the views of the French cabinet."[46]

Spain was thus made a tool of France in an act of gross injustice, not only to the reverend sufferers, but to the people over whose spiritual and intellectual wants they had so beneficially watched.

From this digression to the mingled politics of Mexico and Europe we shall now return to the appropriate scene of our brief annals. The captain of so important a port as Havana, and the inadequate protection of the coast along the main, obliged the government to think seriously about the increase and discipline of domestic troops, and especially, to improve the condition of the coast defence. These fears were, surely, not groundless. The possessions of Great Britain, north of Mexico, on the continent, were growing rapidly in size and importance; and from the provinces which now form the United States, the viceroy imagined England might easily despatch sufficient troops, without being obliged to transport reinforcements from Europe.

Accordingly suitable preparations were made to receive the enemy should he venture to descend suddenly on the Spanish main. The veteran regiments of Savoy and Flanders were sent to the colony in June, 1768, and the Marshal de Rubi was charged with the disposition of the army.

From that period, it may be said, that Mexico a.s.sumed the military aspect, which it has continuously worn to the present time.

Besides the increase and improvement of the troops of the line, the government's attention was directed towards the fortification of the ports and interior pa.s.ses. The Castle of San Juan de Ulua was repaired at a cost of a million and a half of dollars. The small island of Anton Lizardo was protected by military works at an expense of a million two hundred thousand dollars. A splendid battery was sent from Spain for the castle, and the inefficient guns of Acapulco were despatched to the Fillipine islands to be recast and sent back to America. In the interior of the country, in the midst of the plain of Perote, the Castle of San Carlos was built in the most substantial and scientific manner; and although this fortress seems useless, placed as it is in the centre of a broad and easily traversed prairie, yet, at the time of its construction, it was designed as an _entre depot_ between the capital and the coast, in which the royal property might always be safely kept until the moment of exportation, instead of being exposed to the danger of a sudden seizure by the enemy in the port of Vera Cruz. Many other points along the road from Vera Cruz are better calculated to defend the interior pa.s.ses of the country from invasion; but as the attacks of the enemy were not expected to be made beyond the coast upon which they naturally supposed they would find the treasure they desired to plunder, it was deemed best to establish and arm the fortress of San Carlos de Perote.

Such were some of the leading acts and occurrences in New Spain during the viceroyalty of the Marques de Croix. His general administration of affairs is characterized by justice. He lived in harmony with the rigid Visitador Galvez, and although the gossips of the day declared he was too fond of wine, yet, on his return to Spain he was named Captain General of the army, and treated most kindly by the king.

[Footnote 46: Dr. Dunham's History of Spain and Portugal, vol. 5, p.

175.]

CHAPTER XIV.

1771-1784.

BUCARELI Y URSUA VICEROY.--PROGRESS OF NEW SPAIN.--GOLD PLACERES IN SONORA.--MINERAL WEALTH AT THAT PERIOD.--INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY.--LINE OF PRESIDIOS.--MAYORGA VICEROY.--POLICY OF SPAIN TO ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.--OPERATIONS ON THE SPANISH MAIN ETC.--MATIAS GALVEZ VICEROY--HIS ACTS.

DON ANTONIO MARIA DE BUCARELI Y URSUA, LIEUTENANT GENERAL OF THE SPANISH ARMY, XLVI. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN. 1771-1779.

Bucareli reached Vera Cruz from Havana on the 23d of August, 1771, and took possession of the viceroyalty on the 2d of the following month.

During his administration the military character of the colony was still carefully fostered, whilst the domestic interests of the people were studied, and every effort made to establish the public works and national inst.i.tutions upon a firm basis. The new mint and the Monte de Piadad are monuments of this epoch. Commerce flourished in those days in Mexico. The fleet under the command of Don Luis de Cordova departed for Cadiz on the 30th of November, 1773, with twenty-six millions two hundred and fifty-five dollars, exclusive of a quant.i.ty of cacao, cochineal and twenty-two marks of fine gold, and the fleet of 1774 was freighted with twenty-six millions four hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars.

Nor was the acc.u.mulation of wealth derived at that time from the golden _placeres_ of Cieneguilla in Sonora less remarkable. From the 1st of January, 1773, to the 17th of November of the year following, there were accounted for, in the royal office at Alamos, four thousand, eight hundred and thirty-two marks of gold, the royal duties on which, of t.i.the and _senorage_, amounted to seventy-two thousand, three hundred and forty-eight dollars. The custom house of Mexico, according to the accounts of the _consulado_, produced, in 1772, six hundred and eighty-seven thousand and forty-one dollars, the duty on pulque alone, being two hundred and forty-four thousand, five hundred and thirty.

In 1776, Bucareli endeavored to liberate trade from many of the odious restrictions which had been cast around it by old commercial usages, and by the restrictive policy of Spain. The _consulado_ of Mexico complained to Bucareli of the suffering it endured by the monopoly which had hitherto been enjoyed by the merchants of Cadiz, and through the viceroy solicited the court to be permitted to remit its funds to Spain, and to bring back the return freights in vessels on its own account, Bucareli supported this demand with his influence, and may be said to have given the first impulse to free-trade. Meanwhile, the mineral resources of Mexico were not neglected. During the seven years of Bucareli's reign, the yield of the mines had every year been greater than at any period since the conquest. One hundred and twenty-seven millions, three hundred and ninety-six thousand dollars, in gold and silver, were coined during his viceroyalty. Laborde, in Zacatecas, and Terreros in Pachuca, had undertaken extensive works at the great and rich mine of Quebradilla and in the splendid vein of Vizcayna. Other mines were most successfully wrought by their proprietors. From 1770 to the end of 1778, Don Antonio Obregon presented to the royal officers, in order to be taxed, four thousand six hundred and ninety-nine bars of silver, the royal income from which amounted to six hundred and forty-eight thousand nine hundred and seventy-two dollars. The same individual had, moreover, presented to the same personage, fifty-three thousand and eighty-eight _castellanos_ of gold, which paid thirteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-one dollars in duties. In order to work his metals, Obregon had been furnished, to that date, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine quintals of quicksilver, for which he paid a hundred and fifty-nine thousand two hundred and forty-one dollars.

In June, 1778, the mineral deposits of Hostotipaquillo, in the province of Guadalajara, now Jalisco, were discovered, and promised the most extraordinary returns of wealth. In the following year, the valuable mines of Catorce, were accidentally found by a soldier whilst searching for a lost horse. All these discoveries and beneficial labors induced Bucareli to recommend the mineral interests of New Spain particularly to the sovereign, and various persons were charged to explore the country, for the discovery of quicksilver mines, which it was alleged existed in Mexico. The extraction of quicksilver from American mines had hitherto been prohibited by Spain, but the fear of wars, which might prevent its importation from abroad, and consequently, destroy the increasing mineral industry of the nation, induced the court to send Don Raphael Heling and Don Antonio Posada, with several subordinates, who formerly wrought in the mines of Almaden, to examine the deposits at Talchapa and others in the neighborhood of Ajuchitlan, in October, 1778, under the direction of _padre_ Alzate. But this reconnoisance proved unavailing at that time, inasmuch as the explorers found no veins or deposits which repaid the cost and labor of working.

At this epoch the Spanish government began to manifest a desire to propagate information in its American possessions. There is a gleam of intellectual dawn seen in a royal order of Charles, in 1776, commanding educated ecclesiastics to devote themselves to the study of Mexican antiquities, mineralogy, metallurgy, geology, and fossils.

This decree was directed to the clergy because his majesty, perhaps justly supposed, that they were the only persons who possessed any knowledge of natural sciences, whilst the rest of his American subjects were in the most profound ignorance. Archbishop Lorenzano published in Mexico in 1770 his annotated edition of the letters of Cortez, which is a well printed work, adorned with coa.r.s.e engravings, a few maps, and the curious fac-simile pictures of the tributes paid to the Emperor Montezuma. But the jealous monks of the inquisition kept a vigilant watch over the issues of the press, and we find that, in those days, the commercial house of Prado and Freyre was forced to crave a license from the court empowering them to ship two boxes of types to be used in the printing of the calendar!

The administration of Bucareli was not disturbed by insurrections among the creoles and Spaniards, for he was a just ruler and the people respected his orders, even when they were apparently injurious to their interests. The viceroy adorned their capital built aqueducts, improved roads, and facilitated intercourse between the various parts of the country; but the Indians of the north in the province of Chihuahua hara.s.sed the colonists dwelling near the outposts during nearly all the period of his government. These warlike, nomadic tribes have been the scourge of the frontier provinces since the foundation of the first outpost settlement. They are wild hunters, and appear to have no feeling in common with those southern bands who were subdued by the mingled influences of the sword and of the cross into tame agriculturists. Bucareli attacked and conquered parties of these wandering warriors, but every year fresh numbers descended upon the scattered pioneers along the frontier, so that the labor of recolonization and fighting was annually repeated. Towards the close of his administration, De Croix, who succeeded Hugo Oconor in the command along the northern line, established a chain of well appointed _presidios_, which in some degree restrained the inroads of these barbarians.

Bucareli died, after a short illness, on the 9th of April, 1779, and his remains were deposited in the church of Guadalupe in front of the sacred and protecting image of the virgin who watches according to the legend, over the destinies of Mexico.

DON MARTIN DE MAYORGA, XLVII. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN. 1779-1783.

In consequence of the death of Bucareli the Audiencia a.s.sumed the government of New Spain until the appointment of his successor, and in the meanwhile, on the 18th of May, 1779, Charles III. solemnly declared war against England. The misunderstanding which gave rise to the revolutionary outbreak in the English colonies of North America was beginning to attract the notice of Europe. France saw in the quarrel between the Americans and the British an opportunity to humiliate her dangerous foe; and although Spain had no interest in such a contest, the minister of Charles, Florida Blanca, persuaded his master to unite with France in behalf of the revolted colonies. Spain, in this instance, as in the expulsion of the Jesuits, was, doubtless, submissive to the will of the French court, and willingly embraced an occasion to humble the pride or destroy the power of a haughty nation whose fleets and piratical cruisers had so long preyed upon the wealthy commerce of her American possessions. The Spanish minister did not probably dream of the dangerous neighbor whose creation he was aiding, north of the Gulf of Mexico. It is not likely that he imagined republicanism would be soon and firmly established in the British united colonies of America, and that the infectious love of freedom would spread beyond the wastes of Texas and the deserts of California to the plateaus and plains of Mexico and Peru. The policy was at once blind and revengeful. If it was produced by the intrigue of France, the old hereditary foe and rival of England, it was still less pardonable, for a fault or a crime when perpetrated originally and boldly by a nation sometimes rises almost into glory, if successful; but a second-hand iniquity, conceived in jealousy and vindictiveness, is as mean as it is short sighted. England had no friends at that epoch. Her previous conduct had been so selfishly grasping, that all Europe rejoiced when her colonial power was broken by the American revolution. Portugal, Holland, Russia, Morocco and Austria, all, secretly favored the course of Spain and France, and the most discreet politicians of Europe believed that the condition of Great Britain was hopeless.

The declaration of this impolitic war was finally made in Mexico on the 12th of August, 1779, before the arrival of Mayorga, the new viceroy, who did not reach the capital till the 23d of the same month.

The Mexicans were not as well acquainted with the politics of the world as the Spanish cabinet, and did not appreciate all the delicate and diplomatic motives which actuated Charles III. They regarded a war with England as a direct invitation to the British to ravage their coasts and hara.s.s their trade; and, accordingly as soon as the direful news was announced, prayers were solemnly uttered in all the churches for the successful issue of the contest. Nor did war alone strike the Mexicans with panic; for in this same period the small pox broke out in the capital; and in the ensuing months in the s.p.a.ce of sixty-seven days, no less than eight thousand eight hundred and twenty-one persons were hurried by it to the grave. It was a sad season of pestilence and anxiety. The streets were filled with dead bodies, while the temples were crowded with the diseased and the healthy who rushed promiscuously to the holy images, in order to implore divine aid and compa.s.sion. This indiscriminate mixture of all cla.s.ses and conditions,--this stupid reunion of the sound and the sick, whose superst.i.tions led them to the altar instead of the hospital, soon spread the contagion far and wide, until all New Spain suffered from its desolating ravages and scarcely a person was found unmarked by its frightful ravages.

An expedition had been ordered during the viceroyalty of Bucareli to explore portions of the Pacific adjacent to the Mexican coast, and in February of 1799, it reached a point 55 17 minutes north. It continued its voyage, until on the 1st of July, when it took possession of the land at 60 13 minutes, in the name of Charles III.

It then proceeded onwards, in sight of the coast, and on the 1st of August, arrived at a group of islands, at 59 8' upon one of which the explorers landed and named the spot, "Nuestra Senora de Regla."

The expected a.s.saults of the English in the Atlantic were not long withheld, for in this year, on the 20th of October, they seized Omoa in Guatemala, for the recovery of which the president, Don Matias Galvez, quitted the capital immediately and demanded succor from Mexico. The Indians, it is related, aided the British in this attack, but the a.s.sailants abandoned the captured port, after stripping it of its cannon and munitions of war, in consequence of the insalubrity of the climate. The British had established a post at a place then called Wallis, the centre of a region rich in dye-woods, and aptly situated so as to aid in the contraband trade which they carried on with Yucatan, Guatemala and Chiapas; and, accordingly Don Roberto Rivas Vetancourt attacked the settlement successfully, making prisoners of all the inhabitants, more than three hundred slaves, and capturing a number of small vessels. But just as hostilities ceased, two English frigates and another armed vessel, arrived to succor the settlement, and forced the Spanish governor to abandon his enterprise and depart with his flotilla. Nevertheless Vetancourt, burned more than forty different foreign establishments, and succeeded in capturing an English brigantine of forty-four guns. The commander believed that this signal devastation of the enemy's settlement and property would result in freeing the land from such dangerous neighbors.

About this period the Spanish government detached General Solano and a part of his squadron, with orders for America, to aid in the military enterprises designed against Florida, in which Mexico was to take a significant part. This commander was to co-operate with Don Bernardo de Galvez, and both these personages, in the years 1779, 1780 and 1781, making common cause with the French against the English, carried the war actively up the Mississippi and into various portions of Florida. The remaining period of Mayorga's viceroyalty was chiefly occupied with preparations in the neighborhood of Vera Cruz against an a.s.sault from the British, and in suppressing, by the aid of the alcalde Urizar, a trifling revolt among the Indians of Izucar. An unfortunate disagreement arose between Mayorga and the Spanish minister Galvez, and he was finally, after many insults from the count, displaced, in order to make room for Don Matias Galvez. The unfortunate viceroy departed for Spain but never reached his native land. He died in sight of Cadiz, and his wife was indemnified for the ill treatment of her husband by the contemptible gift of twenty thousand dollars.

Mayorga was the victim apparently of an ill disposed minister, who controlled the pliant mind of Charles. The viceroy in reality had discharged his duties as lieutenant of the king, with singular fidelity. All branches of art and industry in Mexico received his fostering care; but he had enemies who sought his disgrace at court, and they were finally successful in their shameful efforts.[47]

DON MATIAS DE GALVEZ, XLVIII. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN. 1783-1784.

Don Matias Galvez, hastened rapidly from Guatemala to take possession of the viceroyalty, and soon exhibited his generous character and his ardent desire to improve and embellish the beautiful capital. The academy of fine arts was one of his especial favorites, and he insisted that Charles should not only endow it with nine thousand dollars, but should render it an effective establishment, by the introduction of the best models for the students. These evidences of his munificence and taste, still exist in the fine but untenanted halls of the neglected academy. Galvez directed his attention, also, to the police of Mexico and its prisons;--he required the streets to be leveled and paved; prohibited the raising of recruits for Manilla, and solicited from the king authority to reconstruct the magnificent palace of Chapultepec on the well known and beautiful hill of that name which lies about two miles west of the capital, still girt with its ancient cypresses.

It was during the brief reign of this personage that the political Gazette of Mexico was established, and the exclusive privilege of its publication granted to Manuel Valdez. On the 3d of November Don Matias died, after a brief illness, unusually lamented by the people, from amidst whose ma.s.ses he had risen to supreme power in the most important colony of Spain. Mexico had regarded his appointment as a singular good fortune, and it was fondly but vainly hoped that his reign might have been long, and that he would have been enabled to carry out the beneficent projects he designed for the country.

As the death of this officer was sudden and unexpected, no _carta de mortaja_, or mortuary despatch, had been sent from Spain announcing his successor, and, accordingly the Audiencia a.s.sumed the reins of government until the arrival of the new viceroy.

[Footnote 47: See Bustamante's continuation of Cavo, vol. 3, pp. 45, 46.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHAPULTEPEC.]

CHAPTER XV.

1785-1794.

BERNARDO DE GALVEZ VICEROY.--CHAPULTEPEC.--GALVEZ DIES--HIS DAUGHTER.--HARO VICEROY--CORRUPTION OF ALCALDES.--FLORES VICEROY--HIS SYSTEM OF RULING THE NORTHERN FRONTIER--MINING INTERESTS.--II. REVILLA-GIGEDO VICEROY--CHARLES IV.--REVILLA-GIGEDO'S COLONIAL IMPROVEMENTS--HIS ADVICE AS TO CALIFORNIA--ANECDOTES OF HIS POLICE REGULATIONS.--THE STREET OF REVILLA-GIGEDO.--ARREST OF FUGITIVE LOVERS--PUNISHES THE CULPRITS.

DON BERNARDO DE GALVEZ, COUNT DE GALVEZ, XLIX. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN.

1785-1786.

The Count Galvez, son of the last viceroy, Don Matias, took charge of the government on the 17th of June, 1785, but enjoyed as brief a reign as his respected father. Hardly had he attained power when a great scarcity of food was experienced among the people of New Spain in consequence of an extraordinarily unfavorable season. The excellent disposition of the new officer was shown in his incessant and liberal efforts to relieve the public distress in all parts of the country afflicted by misery. Meetings were held and committees appointed under his auspices, composed of the most distinguished Spanish and native subjects to aid in this beneficent labor; and over four hundred thousand dollars were given by the Archbishop of Mexico, and the bishops of Puebla and Michoacan, to encourage agriculture, as well as to relieve the most pressing wants of the people. In order to afford employment to the indigent, at the same time that he permanently improved and beautified the capital and the country generally, the viceroy either commenced or continued a number of important public works, among which were the national roads and the magnificent palace of Chapultepec, the favorite retreat of his father. This splendid architectural combination of fortress and palace, was a costly luxury to the Spanish government, for the doc.u.ments of the period declare that, up to the month of January, 1787, one hundred and twenty-three thousand and seventy-seven dollars had been expended in its construction. Nor was the ministry well pleased with so lavish an outlay upon this royal domain. Placed on a solitary hill, at a short distance from the capital, and built evidently for the double purpose of defence and dwelling, it created a fear, in the minds of some sensitive persons, that its design might not be altogether so peaceful as was pretended. An ambitious viceroy, surrounded by troops whose attachment and firmness could be relied on, might easily convert the palace into a citadel; and it was noted that Galvez, had upon various occasions played the demagogue among the military men who surrounded him in the capital. All these fears were, however, idle. If the count, in reality, entertained any ambitious projects, or desired to put himself at the head of an American kingdom independent of Spain, these hopes were soon and sadly blighted by his early death. He expired on the 30th of November, 1786, in the archiepiscopal palace of Tacubaya.