The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

"Your Excellency:

"Yesterday between 4 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon, there called on me on your part a person whose name and nationality I do not know. All I know is that he speaks Spanish, though with a foreign accent and wears golden earrings as is customary with women. He addressed me with 'Usted.' I informed him in the conversation that in speaking to me he had to use a more dignified title. He replied that he would always use 'Usted.' It then occurred to me that this obstinacy might be justified by his higher rank. I asked him and he said that he had no other rank but that of a bomb-thrower in his Majesty's name. He continued in his way of speaking to me with a loud voice, and since in all his conduct he was wanting of the respect due to my dignity, I deem it fair that it should be corrected and that your excellency give me satisfaction."

Lord Albemarle seems to have paid no attention to this letter. But on the same day the Bishop received another urgent order in which Lord Albemarle, as Governor and Captain-General of the island, insisted in his demand to receive a list of all ecclesiastical orders and benefices, in order to know and be the "competent judge" of the persons appointed by the Bishop and be able to consent to their appointment. The Bishop in his reply referred to his previous letter, stating that the Governor could neither before nor after the appointment be a competent judge of the appointees, since ecclesiastics, according to all rights, were exempt of protests by the laity, and their privileges were inviolate.

According to the historian Blanchet, Bishop Morrell was at the end exiled to Florida for having refused to obey certain orders given by the British authorities.

Although Albemarle cannot be said to have governed with the tyranny that characterized the German governors of occupied territories in the recent war, he failed to win the people. Those residents of Havana who were able to leave the place, moved into the country or to towns like Villa-Clara. The peasants of the neighborhood, who had carried on a profitable trade with the city in garden and dairy products, fowl, venison, etc., preferred to renounce these profits rather than go to the market and have the British buy what their soil had raised and their hands had tended. The spirit of the people was unanimous in the hatred of the enemy conquerors. Their intemperance, their customs, and even their language irritated them. Altercations that terminated in bloodshed became more and more numerous as time went on. Any act of violence against the British was severely punished, and not a few Cuban "rebels" were executed; the atmosphere of Havana was soon charged with invisible mines that a spark could set off.

Complying with the orders of the British government, Albemarle had to exact the payment of certain sums from the population, including the clergy and the religious organizations, and found great difficulty in enforcing these orders. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the feelings of the population were being deliberately hurt, especially by the disregard of the British authorities for the institutions maintained by the clergy. Thus a wave of indignation swept over the city, when the beggars and the sick were ejected from the convent of San Juan de Dios, which was turned into a hospital for the British. Without remuneration they occupied almost one-third of the buildings subject to an ecclesiastical tax, they transformed private residences into jails; they seized merchandise and funds that were owned by the Real Compania de Comercio and when these were claimed as private property, they were returned only after payment of one hundred and seventy-five pesos. As the tension grew crimes committed from vindictiveness increased among the population. M. Savine, the French writer referred to previously, reports that the Guajiros of the mountains poisoned the milk furnished to the garrison. A Cuban "rebel" who had escaped from the jail went about in the part of the island not occupied by the British and preached a "holy war" against the invaders of the island. Conditions were such that Havana might have become at any moment the scene of a new Sicilian Vespers.

It was at this time that the Commissary D. Lorenzo de Montalvo wrote to the Minister of War at Madrid under date of October eighteenth, 1762:

"The extraordinary mortality of the British troops has reduced them to the state which Your Excellency will see from the included papers. If at this moment eight or ten vessels arrived with two or three thousand men to debark, it would not be forty eight hours before they would capitulate."

There was indeed a movement on foot in the unoccupied part of Cuba to collect a force, march against Havana and deliver it from the British conquerors. A force of guerilleros was ready for action under command of the intrepid Aguiar. He was only waiting for enforcement promised him by Governor Madriaga of Santiago, who had three hundred and fifty men with two thousand and five hundred guns, collected at Yaguas and Villa-Clara. But he lingered at Yaguas and it was supposed that he was afraid of losing his position if the British should decide upon moving against Santiago. Madriaga was however associated with Aguiar, D. Lorenzo Montalvo, D. Nicolas Rapua, D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, D. Augustin de Cardenas and other prominent citizens and patriots of Cuba in a pact to reconquer Havana at an opportune moment, and action may have been delayed only because rumors were afloat that peace was about to be signed.

In Spain itself feeling ran high. The provinces of Murcia, Granada, Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia sent an address to King Charles III. asking to defend the colonies. It said among other things: