The first years of 1700 opened with some alarm for the Spaniards of Mexico, for England and Spain were at war, and it was feared that British naval operations might be undertaken against the country. The loss of a plate-ship's treasure, due to the war, caused heavier taxes to fall upon the colonists, for continued exactions marked this century, from Spain, for treasure for the prosecution of her wars. The Gulf coast was placed in a position of defence against the British, who, however, after the capture of Habana, in 1762, concluded peace with Spain in the following year. Previous to that the English Admiral Anson had captured a galleon on its way from Acapulco to Manilla, with two and a half million dollars on board. The main events of this century, in addition to the foregoing, were the explorations of the Jesuits in California (1700), the severe earthquake of 1711, the distress among the common people, due to famine and oppression, which the Viceroy, the Duke of Linares, strove to remedy. In 1734 the first creole Viceroy, the Marquis of Casa Fuerte, born in Lima, was appointed, and during his régime the first Mexican newspaper was published. During the war between England and Spain the Viceroy Figueroa, Marquis of Gracia Real, was almost captured by the British, who gave chase to the ship in which he came from Spain. Further events were the singular phenomenon of the forming of the volcano of Jorullo in Michoacan in 1759, the celebration of peace between England and Spain in 1763, the suppression of the Jesuits and their expulsion from the country in 1767, under the Marquis de Croix; the continued exactions of the Council of the Indies for treasure from the colonists, the clearing of the Gulf of Mexico of buccaneers in 1785, the reorganisation and improvement of the city of Mexico under Padilla, Count of Revillagigedo (1789-94); the encouragement of agriculture, mining, manufacturing, road-building, exploration, improvement of sanitary conditions, and amelioration of those concerning the administration of justice, which this good viceroy carried out. But at the close of the century, under his effete successor, Branciforte (1799), a conspiracy was inaugurated, but frustrated, for the massacre of Spaniards, and the establishing of the independence of the country.
At the beginning of the great nineteenth century, the long array of viceroys, governors, and priests nears its close. The imperial authority of the Spanish sovereign, unquestioned since Cortes won the country for it, reached its natural waning, urged on and influenced by world-happenings in European lands reacting upon these remote shores of New Spain. Not only was this the case in Mexico. The decrepitude of the Mother Country, the old age and infirmity which had been creeping upon Castile through the excesses of her rulers, who learnt nothing from time or circumstance, was laid bare to the people of America throughout the vast regions held by Spain. Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Argentina—for the voice of Bolivar was ringing through the Andes—all in the first and second decades of the progressive nineteenth century were bent upon one stern task, the throwing off of the yoke of Spain and the establishing of native administrations. The flower of the earth, the vast and rich tropics and sub-tropics of North and South America, from California, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains, Mexico, Central America, down through the great Andes of Peru and Chile to Cape Horn, was in the hands of Spain, and it slipped from the grasp of a foolish and moribund nation.
But before entering upon these events let us take a final glance and draw a summary of the three long centuries—1521 to 1821—of this great array of Imperial Governors and their rule. Since that day of August 13, 1521, when Cortes unfurled the standard of Spain over the castle of Montezuma: to the consummation of Mexican independence, the entry of Iturbide into the city of Mexico on September 27, 1821: five Governors, two Audiencias, or Royal Commissions, and sixty-two Viceroys had guided the destiny of colonial Mexico. Many of the names of these authorities stand out in lustre as good and humane, tolerant and energetic for the advancement of the colony; merciful to the Indian population, and worthy of the approbation of the history of their time. Others were rapacious and cruel, using their power for their own ends, and showing that ruthless cruelty and indifference to bloodshed and suffering—holding the lives of natives as cheap as that of animals—which has been characteristic of Spaniards of all time. Counts, marquises, Churchmen—all have passed upon the scroll of those three hundred years; some left indelible marks for good, some for evil; whilst others, effete and useless, are buried in forgetfulness. The Spanish character, architecture, institutions, and class distinctions were now indelibly stamped upon the people of Mexico. The Aztec régime had passed for ever; the Indian race was outclassed and subordinate; and the mestizos, the people of mixed native and Hispanic blood, were rapidly becoming the most numerous part of the civilised population of the country. Whatever of good had existed in the Aztec semi-civilisation—and there was much of use in their land laws and other social measures—was entirely stamped out, and the sentiment and practice of European civilisation established. It is to be recollected that Spain adopted nothing, whether in Mexico or in Peru, of the ancient civilisation. Both the Aztecs and Incas lived under a set of laws which in some cases were superior to those of the conquerors, especially those relating to landholding and the payment of taxes and distribution of wealth. Under these primitive civilisations of America poverty or starvation was impossible, as every citizen was provided for. The Spaniards, however, would have none of it, and the land and the Indians, body and soul, were the property of their taskmasters. They might starve or not, as circumstances might dictate, after the fashion of European and American civilisation even of to-day, which denies any inherent right to ownership and enjoyment of the land and its resources on the part of its citizens. But Spain stamped many institutions in Mexico with the beauty and utility of her own civilisation. She endowed it with traditions and culture; she gave it the spirit of Western ambition which bids every citizen assert his right. The Mexican of to-day owes all he has—law, literature, art, and social system, and refinement and religion—to Spain.
But let us now take our stand with Hidalgo, the warrior-priest of Mexico. The hand of Spain is still pressing on the country. The year 1810 has arrived and the father of Mexico's independence is uttering his famous cry, "Viva America! viva religion! death to bad government!" After the native place of Hidalgo this message—for such it rapidly became—was known as el grito de Dolores—"the call of Dolores." The time was ripe for the assertion of independence. Spain was invaded by Napoleon; the King had abdicated. Who was the authority who should carry on the government—or misgovernment—of the colony? asked the city Council of Mexico as they urged the Viceroy to retain his authority against all comers. Unfortunately, the Spaniards, residents of the capital, precipitated lawlessness by rising and seizing the persons of the Viceroy Iturrigaray and high ecclesiastics, and some political murders followed. But the predisposing causes for the assertion of independence were nearer home. The British colonies, away to the north-east on the same continent, had severed the link which bound them to the Mother Country. The embryo of the great republic of the United States—poor and weak then—was established, and the spirit of independence was in the air. Most poignant of all, however, was the feeling caused by Spain's treatment of the Mexicans. Instead of fomenting the industries and trade of her colonies, Spain established amazing monopolies and unjust measures of repression. The trade which had grown between Mexico and China, and the great galleons which came and went from Acapulco—a more important seaport then than now even—was considered detrimental to Spain's own commerce. It was prohibited! The culture of grapes in Mexico, where they had been introduced and flourished exceedingly well, seemed antagonistic to the wine-making industry of Iberia; Hidalgo's vineyard, upon which he had lavished enterprise and care, was forthwith destroyed by the Spanish authorities! Thus industry and commerce were purposely stunted in Mexico, as they had been in Peru, by Imperial policy, and this went hand in hand with the restriction or denial of any political rights, and the oppression of the native population in the mines and plantations. "Learn to be silent and to obey, for which you were born, and not to discuss politics or have opinions," ran the proclamation of a viceroy in the latter half of the eighteenth century, addressed to the Mexicans! Other contributory causes to the revolution were the sentiments of the great French philosophers of the eighteenth century, which had sunk into the Mexican character.
| STATUE OF HIDALGO AT MONTERREY. |
But it would not be just to proclaim that life under Spain's rule was hard or oppressive, or marked by continued ferocity and bloodshed. The Mexicans lived in relative comfort and even luxury, and amassed wealth. Enormous fortunes were made in the mines, and titles of nobility were constantly granted from Spain to fortunate mine-owners who, by means of suddenly-acquired wealth, were enabled to render services to the Crown. Nor can the abuses of the natives be cast at Spain's door altogether. The colonists of Mexico, like those of Peru or, indeed, of any of the communities of the New World themselves, were the greatest oppressors of the natives in extortion, confiscation, forced labour, and the like, and it was the "interference" of the Imperial authorities, viceroy or Archbishop, against the oppression of the encomiendas, which, even in early days, often gave rise to discontent. The sovereigns of Spain enacted laws for the protection of the natives, in many cases, and strove to better their position. Indeed, it may be said that, to the present day, the regulation of affairs between colonists and natives—whether in America, Asia, or Africa—requires the justice of an imperial home Government, however far off from the scene of its "interference." Independence in America, whether in the United States or in the Spanish States, did not necessarily spell liberty, toleration, and brotherhood, whether in civil or religious matters.
From Spain's unlawful king—the brother of Napoleon—or, rather, from the various juntas or bodies formed in Spain to oppose the French domination, came claims for jurisdiction over Mexico, causing confusion in the minds of the colonists, which culminated in the conspiracies of Queretero and Hidalgo's cry, and the proclamation of Independence on September 15, 1810. Under Hidalgo an insurgent band seized various places in the central part of the country, including the great silver-producing town and mines of Guanajuato, where, unfortunately, these first exponents of liberty committed serious excesses. Thence, taking the capital of the State of Michoacan—Morelia—they advanced upon the city of Mexico. They engaged and defeated the royalist forces which had been sent against them by the viceroy Venegas, who had succeeded the Audiencia and the deported Iturrigaray, at Monte de las Cruces, some twenty miles from the capital, after a well-contested battle. To the generalship of Allende was mainly due this great victory, and had Hidalgo followed it up by an attack upon the capital city, subsequent operations might have been favourable to the insurgents. As it was, the royalists under Calleja attacked and captured Guanajuato, taking a terrible revenge upon its people—ruthless cruelties such as, perpetrated by both sides in these struggles, have repeatedly written the history of Mexico's revolution in blood. Finally Hidalgo and his associates, at Guadalajara and elsewhere, were after valiant fighting, discomfited entirely; disaster overtook them, and the warrior-priest, with Allende, Aldama, and Jimenez—valiant generals all—was shot at Chihuahua in July, 1811. There, in the small chapel of San Francisco, his decapitated body was laid, and afterwards removed to Mexico.
Was the spark of liberty extinguished by these reverses? The answer was furnished by yet another militant ecclesiastic—the famous Morelos of Michoacan. Stoutly did he and his insurgents maintain the city of Cuantla against the royalist forces under Calleja, until famine compelled them to evacuate the place under cover of darkness. The defence of Cuantla has covered the name of Morelos with glory in his country's history, and at the time it was watched even from Europe with interest, by the eagle eye of the great Wellington. This remarkable soldier-priest captured various important places—Orizaba, Oaxaca, and Acapulco, and established the first Mexican Congress at the town of Chilpancingo, in the State of Guerrero, in September, 1813. But the star of Mexico's national independence had yet to reach its zenith. Disaster overtook the insurgent forces; all fortune abandoned them and Morelos was captured, court-martialled, judged by the Inquisition, and shot, in December, 1815.
The tyranny of Ferdinand VII. of Spain gave birth to yet another scourge for Spanish rule in Mexico. Mina was a Spaniard, a celebrated guerilla chief in the mountains of Navarre, where he waged war against Napoleon and the French, and that casus belli being terminated, strove to raise a revolution against the Spanish sovereign at Madrid. Frustrated there he fled to London, and Mexican refugees in that city—among them the padre Mier—enlisted his sympathy for Mexican independence; and, having obtained adherents both in England and the United States, Mier landed on the Mexican shores of Tamaulipas and won a series of brilliant victories with his small force against the Spanish royalists. But again history records, as it has ever recorded in the story of freedom throughout the world, that baptism of failure which must ever precede success; and this young adventurer for Mexico's independence—he was but twenty-eight—suffered disaster, was captured, and shot in November, 1817.