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 assumed 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 harass 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 space 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 compassion. This indiscriminate mixture of all classes and conditions,—this stupid reunion of the sound and the sick, whose superstitions 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 Señora de Regla."
The expected assaults 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 assailants 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 assault 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]