CHAPTER III
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
The beginning of the nineteenth century saw Spain involved to her ruin in the tremendous struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. Her fleets were destroyed at St. Vincent and Trafalgar; her treasury was emptied; her administration demoralised. Free communication with her American colonies was impossible while British frigates commanded every sea, and both on the Peninsula and in America, Spanish subjects lost their traditional respect for the monarchy. Though the jealousy against their imported rulers which always fermented among Creoles was not so strong in quiet, isolated, and agricultural Ecuador as in the coast provinces and mining regions, the news of Spain's defeats and humiliations awakened ambitious lawyers and wealthy landowners to a realisation that the Spaniards might be ousted from the lucrative offices.
The opportunity came in 1809 with the resignation of Charles IV., the deposition and imprisonment of Ferdinand VII., the usurpation of the Spanish throne by Joseph Bonaparte, and the occupation of the Peninsula by the French. The viceroys and governors of Spanish America refused to recognise Joseph. The many patriots on the Peninsula who resisted the French usurpation organised provisional juntas which assumed to be the supreme depositaries of power pending the expulsion of Joseph and the return of Ferdinand, while the Queen claimed a regency for herself. The Spanish authorities did not know who would come out on top and were principally anxious to maintain themselves in their places, while ambitious leaders among the Creoles immediately began to plot to turn the confusion to their own advantage and to secure autonomy and even independence for the colonies.
In 1809 Don Ruiz de Castilla was president of Quito. His jurisdiction included not only all present Ecuador, but also the southern part of Colombia, extending north three hundred miles along the great Andean plateau through the populous regions of Pasto and Popayan and far down the high and fertile valley of the Cauca. These portions of Colombia are continuous with the table-land on which Quito stands and directly accessible therefrom, while they are separated from the parallel series of plateaux on which Bogotá, Tunja, and Socorro lie, by the deep valley of the Magdalena. Castilla's dependence upon the Bogotá viceroy was therefore largely nominal, and he could expect as little help from New Granada as from Peru. He had only a few troops at Quito—probably not more than two or three hundred,—while the governors of the subordinate provinces, Popayan, Guayaquil, and Cuenca, each could muster only a few dozen armed police. A number of wealthy Creole proprietors and restless lawyers determined in the early part of 1809 to overthrow the president and create a governing junta composed of residents of Ecuador. Castilla was powerless to avert the storm. The handful of troops in barracks was easily suborned by the conspirators, who included the persons of greatest wealth, intelligence, and influence in the community. The mass of the Indian population was inert and would naturally side with their landlords, while the Spanish residents and Creole Tories had formed no plans for common action.
On the night of the 9th of August, 1809, the chiefs of the movement, with the officers of the troops, met in the house of Doña Manuela Canizaries, the Madame Roland of Ecuador, and assigned to each the rôle which he was to play in the coup d'état. The officers went to the barracks, led out the troops, and took possession of the government buildings in the name of the revolutionist committee. The president and those Spanish officials who proved recalcitrant were imprisoned, a governing junta of nine with Juan Montufar as chief was appointed, and an open cabildo summoned which confirmed these acts. The junta notified the viceroys of Bogotá and Lima that it had assumed the government, and sent messengers to the provincial capitals demanding that they expel their Spanish authorities, adhere to the new order of things, and recognise the supremacy of the Quito junta. But the movement met with no favourable response from the rest of the presidency. The governors of Popayan, Cuenca, and Guayaquil immediately began to enlist troops to defend themselves against an attack from Quito. The junta prepared for war, but though plenty of ambitious young Creoles volunteered as officers there were not firearms enough to go around. At last an expedition set off to the north against Pasto and Popayan only to be easily defeated by the hasty levies the Spanish authorities had made among the sturdy Indians of those regions. Frightened by this defeat and their hopeless isolation, the junta resigned under promise of amnesty and in October Castilla returned to Quito and resumed the reins of government. But his position was insecure, and rumors of a fresh conspiracy soon drove him to repressive measures and the imprisonment of leading Creoles. The feeling grew bitter and in August, 1810, a desperate effort was made by the Creoles to get possession of the barracks. Its failure was followed by a frightful massacre in which many of the most popular men in the place were murdered.
Meanwhile, the supreme junta at Seville, anxious to pacify the revolutionary disorders, had commissioned Carlos Montufar, a son of the chief of the fallen Quito junta who then happened to be in Spain, to go to Ecuador and reconcile the factions. Under his advice Castilla resigned to a new junta the direction of affairs, taking, however, the position of its chief member, and sent away his troops. In reality the younger Montufar sympathised with his brother Creoles; the universal indignation at the massacre of 1810 pushed him on to vengeance; Spaniards travelling through the country were waylaid and assassinated; and by the time Molina, appointed by the Spanish government in Castilla's place, had reached Cuenca on his way north to Quito, the old governor had again been deposed and imprisoned and open war existed between Arredondo, the Spaniard commanding the troops who had retired from Quito in accordance with the compromise, and the junta in the latter city. The year 1811 passed without any material change in the situation. The Spanish generals controlled Guayaquil and Cuenca in the south and Pasto and Popayan in the north, practically isolating the revolutionary government at Quito. As the troops of both sides became better trained the war took on a more determined and cruel character. Royalists and revolutionists both raised recruits among the sturdy mountain Indians and half-breeds. In technical knowledge of their profession the Spanish officers were superior to the revolutionary leaders and could procure arms more readily. Their armies were usually better disciplined and more efficient, although more liable to depletion by desertion.