Don Felix Berenguer de Marquina,
LV. Viceroy of New Spain.
1800–1802.
Marquina took charge of the viceroyalty on the 30th of April 1800, after a sudden and mysterious arrival in New Spain, having passed through the enemy's squadron and been taken prisoner. It was inconceivable to the Mexicans why the vice-admiral of Jamaica deemed it proper to release a Spanish officer who came to America on a warlike mission; yet it is now known that in November, of 1800, the king ordered forty thousand dollars to be paid the viceroy to reimburse the extraordinary expenses of his voyage!
The government of this personage was not remarkable in the development of the colony. The war with England still continued, but it was of a mild character, and vessels constantly passed between the belligerants with flags of truce, through whose intervention the Mexicans were permitted to purchase in Jamaica the paper, quicksilver, and European stuffs, which the British crusiers had captured from Spanish ships in the Gulf.
In 1801, an Indian named Mariano, of Tepic in Jalisco, son of the governor of the village of Tlascala in that department, attempted to excite a revolution among the people of his class, by means of an anonymous circular which proclaimed him king. Measures were immediately taken to suppress this outbreak, and numbers of the natives were apprehended and carried to Guadalajara. The fears of Marquina were greatly excited by this paltry rebellion, which he imagined, or feigned to believe, a wide spread conspiracy excited by the North Americans and designed to overthrow the Spanish power. The viceroy, accordingly, detailed his services in exaggerated terms to the home government, and it is probably owing to the eulogium passed by him upon the conduct of Abascal, president of Guadalaxara, that this personage was made viceroy of Buenos Ayres, and afterwards honored with the government of Peru and created Marques de la Concordia.
A definitive treaty of peace was concluded between the principal European and American belligerants in 1802, and soon after, Marquina, who was offended by some slights received from the Spanish ministry, resigned an office for the performance of whose manifold duties and intricate labors he manifested no ability save that of a good disposition. He was probably better fitted to govern a village of fifty inhabitants than the vast and important empire of New Spain.
Don José Iturrigaray,
Lieutenant General of the Spanish Army,
LVI. Viceroy of New Spain.—1803–1808.
On the morning of the 4th of January, 1803, Don José Iturrigaray reached Guadalupe near Mexico, where he received the staff of office from his predecessor and was welcomed by the Audiencia, tribunals, and nobility of the capital.
The revolution in the British provinces of North America had been successful, and they had consolidated themselves into nationality under the title of United States. France followed in the footsteps of liberty, and, overthrowing the rotten throne of the Bourbons, was the first European state to give an impulse to freedom in the old world. The whole western part of that continent was more or less agitated by the throes of the moral and political volcano whose fiery eruption was soon to cover Europe with destruction. In the midst of this epoch of convulsive change, Spain alone exhibited the aspect of passive insignificance, for the king, queen, and Prince of Peace, still conducted the government of that great nation, and their corrupt rule has become a proverb of imbecility and contempt. Godoy, the misnamed "Prince of Peace," was the virtual ruler of the nation. His administration was, at once, selfish, depraved and silly. The favorite of the king, and the alleged paramour of the queen, he controlled both whenever it was necessary, while the colonies, as well as the parent state, naturally experienced all the evil consequences of his debauched government. Bad as had been the management of affairs in America during the reign of the long series of viceroys who commanded on our continent, it became even worse whilst Godoy swayed Charles IV. through the influence of his dissolute queen. Most of the serious and exciting annoyances which afterwards festered and broke out in the Mexican revolution, owe their origin to this epoch of Spanish misrule.