The History of Cuba, vol. 2

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

For the military reorganization of Havana had been appointed Marshal Senor Conde D. Alexandre O'Reilly, who as Inspector-General devoted himself to the organization of line troops and militia and was materially assisted in his work by Aguiar. O'Reilly succeeded in getting the veteran troops and militia of the island into good condition. By studying the city, dividing it into districts, naming the streets—simple requirements which according to Valdes had at that late date not yet been established in Havana—O'Reilly learned that the city alone could raise a battalion of disciplined militia of white men. After organizing two such battalions in Havana and Guanabacoa, he realized that this force was insufficient for the protection of the capital and he raised two more battalions, composed of colored men. When on examining the polls or registers of tax-payers he found that owing to the poverty and also the ignorance of the majority of the people he could not proceed with the draft system without including the married and other classes, he decided to resort to conscription.

In 1764 there was created by royal decree a military and provincial administration for Cuba in the manner of the peninsulas. D. Miguel de Altavilla took charge of it in February, 1765. He established in Havana an accountant's (auditor's) office, a treasury and custom-houses at various points, subject to the department. This organization required many employees, and increased the expenses of the administration. The salaries of the officials amounted to one million two hundred thousand pesos, while until the year 1761 they had been only four hundred and fifty thousand pesos annually. As the Mexican assistant of the director never arrived in time to help with the accounts, the Royal Hacienda, as it was called, was not a sinecure. The revenues rose within a short time to one million two hundred and fifty thousand pesos, but whether this was due to the high duties or to the wise administration of the Intendencia does not appear.

The tentative effort at establishing a mail service during a previous administration was taken up in 1765, when the tax administrator D. José de Armona established the internal and external mail service of the island. It was found that every fortnight there was sent from Havana to Santiago de Cuba the mail, touching at Villa-Clara, Sancti Spiritus, Puerto Principe and Bayamo. According to royal decree of 1718 there should have been sent annually to Spain eight avisos or ships of one hundred tons, carrying letters from the Philippines and America, four of them stopping for provisions and supplies at Havana. These avisos (advice-boats, light vessels for carrying dispatches) sailed at the beginning of January, the end of March, the middle of June, and the first days of November. Most of the letters at that time were carried by smugglers. Armona succeeded in establishing a weekly postal communication between the towns mentioned above and also engaged postillions to carry mail sacks of San Juan de los Remedies, Trinidad and other towns not included in the other line. Every month except September, la Coruna, a vessel with the mail of Cuba and Spanish America, sailed from Havana for Spain. The work of Armona was extraordinary in face of the great difficulties which he had to overcome, both in regard to the lack of sufficient funds and to the lack of efficient and reliable officials. When he retired from the department the mail service of Cuba was neglected and even the line established between Havana and other towns of the island reduced its operation to one mail a month.

In the meantime the tragedy of the siege of Havana was being discussed in Spain before the tribunal charged with the investigation of the conduct of the men then at the head of the government in Havana and supposed to be responsible for its defeat by the British. After many months of tedious conferences, the Military Council, according to Alcazar, condemned Ex-Governor Prado to degradation of rank and banishment, Conde de Superanda and Tavares likewise, and the colonel of engineers Ricaut to ten years' suspension from office. The Teniente-Rey Soler, the colonels Caro and Arroyo and the artillery-commander Crel de la Hoz escaped with severe admonitions. Thus was the curtain rung down upon the epilogue to the tragedy of that siege.

After two years, during which he administered the affairs of the government with great sagacity and introduced many valuable reforms, Conde de Ricla asked permission to retire from his office and return to Spain. The Court accepted his resignation and appointed as his successor the Field Marshal D. Diego Manrique, who took charge of the government on the thirtieth of June, 1765. But he was almost immediately taken sick of yellow fever and died on the thirteenth of July, a few days after his inauguration. The Municipio of Havana urgently requested Ricla to resume the duties of governor, but he firmly refused and embarked for Spain. There may have been reasons for his determination not to continue in office, that are not mentioned by Valdes and Alcazar. For Blanchet remarks that the Conde de Ricla, though a man of action and efficiency, seems in the awarding of privileges and assignment of punishments not to have conducted himself quite properly. Ricla is described as having been a man of small stature, and grave but not unpleasant manner. He died in 1780 as minister of war in Spain.

There is a memorial to his services in carrying through the extensive work on the fortifications of Havana in the chapel of Cabana, where on a block is found this inscription:

"During the reign in Spain of His Catholic Majesty Senor D. Carlos III. and the government in this island of the Count de Ricla, Grandee of Spain and Lieutenant-General of the Royal Armies, was begun, in the year 1763, this fort of San Carlos, that of Atares in the Loma de Sota and the rebuilding and enlargement of el Morro. The works of this fort were continued and those of el Morro and Atares were finished during the government of the Lieutenant-General of the Royal Army Senor Baylio D. Antonio Maria Buccarelli, etc."

The provisional governorship of the Teniente de Rey, the King's Lieutenant, D. Pascal Jiminez de Cisneros, lasted from the thirteenth of July, 1765, to the nineteenth of March, 1766. He conscientiously endeavored to continue to rule in the spirit of his predecessor and to carry out the instructions given him by Ricla before he left for Spain. Some disturbances took place during that time, caused by the tobacco-planters and by the soldiers. The former began to object to selling their entire harvest to the factory. The latter had become dissatisfied on account of the irregularity with which they were paid.

The new governor appointed by the court of Madrid for Cuba was the Field Marshal Senor Baylio D. Antonio Maria Buccarelli, a native of Sevilla. He entered upon his office on the nineteenth of March, 1766, and was evidently determined to continue and if possible improve upon the many reforms and improvements that had been introduced by Ricla. Among them were certain police regulations which tended to insure the safety of the residents, as well as order and cleanliness on the streets. He also resolved to abolish the abuses of the bar, by putting a stop to the extortions practised by unscrupulous lawyers on ignorant clients. This decidedly new departure from any precedent was outlined in a proclamation of good government, which he published according to Valdes on the seventh, according to Alcazar on the twelfth of April, 1766. In this memorable address to the people, he announced that he would devote two hours daily to giving hearing to complainants; at this hearing were to be present attorneys and clerks to take down the depositions and render advice, and the judgments there delivered were to be signed without delay, except on holidays. By these verbal audiences he succeeded in clearing up many cases before they went to the regular courts, thus protecting the people against exploitation by the numerous officials attached to the lower courts and avoiding expensive lawsuits. This new reform in the judicial department of the island especially benefited the slaves, whose rights he endeavored to protect and insure. The extraordinary discretion with which he performed this function of his office, preserving his dignity and affability in the most trying situations, endeared him to the people.

The most difficult task before him, and one calling for unusual prudence and tact, was the execution of the royal decree concerning the expulsion of certain religious orders against whom drastic measures had been taken in Europe. The movement began in Portugal in 1759, when the Jesuits were expelled from that country. Two years later the society was dissolved and its members banished from France. Then the opposition to them made itself felt in Spain. King Carlos III. had always been their zealous protector, but he suddenly turned against them after the curious Sombrero-and-Manta revolution in Madrid in 1766. His favorite, the Marquis Squilaci, a Neapolitan, had tried to inaugurate various reforms in the city, among them the cleaning of the streets, which were in an unspeakable state of filth, the regulation of the prices of food and the installment of a lighting system. Simple and reasonable as were these innovations, they met with furious opposition on the part of certain classes of the people. This opposition was fanned into open revolt by another ordinance which he issued. It was directed against the enormous sombreros and voluminous mantas (cape cloaks) worn with preference by individuals who could thus easily disguise themselves, hide their identity and carry dangerous weapons which played a dismal part in the numerous assassinations that had shocked the authorities. An organized revolt against these measures took place in Madrid and led to considerable bloodshed. The king was made to believe that the Jesuits were the prime agents in that insurrection, and at midnight of the seventeenth of February, 1767, Carlos III. signed a decree ordering their immediate expulsion from Spain. In this decree, the execution of which was entrusted to Count Aranda, the king gave as reason for this step, the necessity to maintain among his subjects order, obedience, quiet and justice. At the same time he ordered the temporal property of the society of Jesuits in the dominions of Spain to be adjudged to the treasury. The order was executed with a promptness and a quiet deserving especial comment. On the same day were sent to all judges, governors, regents and viceroys a secret message, accompanied by a circular letter saying that the message containing royal instructions to be obeyed by every one should not be opened before April 1. Those officials were moreover warned not to communicate the contents of the message to any one, and should the public by some chance obtain such knowledge, those responsible were to be treated as though they had violated the secret and were guilty of opposition to the Sovereign's orders. This measure was so effectively executed that the padres of the order were taken by surprise, and were speedily sent on their way out of the country without the slightest disorder. On the day of this expulsion the king had affixed a "pragmatica" on the doors of the palace and public buildings in the principal streets, in which it was said among other things, that the individual priests would be given seventy-two pesos annually for their means of subsistence, and the lay brothers sixty-five, that their pensions would be paid out of the property of the Society, and that it was prohibited in the whole monarchy to receive any individual of the Society in particular, or to admit them into any community, or any court or tribunal, or to appeal in their behalf. It was also prohibited to write or influence the minds of the people for or against this pragmatica or to enter into any correspondence with the members of the expelled order. This royal decree was carried into effect in all the colonies of Spanish America, and in Cuba it was Buccarelli to whom credit was due for the tact displayed in performing this extremely difficult duty. The proceeds of the property of the Society, which reverted to the state, were devoted by Buccarelli to the endowment of three professorships at the university, two for law and one for mathematics. The decision of the King met with no open opposition among the residents, although the Jesuit College, since then called the Seminario de San Carlos, and their church, actually the Cathedral, had been a center of interest to the society of Havana, and the much esteemed and beloved Senor D. Pedro Agostine Morell was reported to have been responsible for the coming of the order to Havana. Senor Morell died on the twenty-ninth of December, 1769, and was succeeded in his diocese by D. José Echeverria.