The regularly appointed successor of Governor Carreno was another
soldier, to wit, Captain Gabriel de Luzan. He was an army veteran who
had performed distinguished service in the Netherlands and elsewhere and
was personally known to and greatly favored by the King. He was selected
for the governorship and was informed of the appointment in the early
fall of 1579, a few weeks before the malodorous Torres was appointed by
the Court of Hispaniola. It was intended, however, that he should not
actually take office until the expiration of the full term for which
Carreno had been appointed, and he accordingly had much time to attend
to his affairs in Spain and elsewhere before removing to Havana. His
duties were not to begin until 1581. But he removed to Cuba in the fall
of 1580 while Torres was being investigated. There came to Cuba with him
Juan Ceballos, who had been selected for Lieutenant-Governor. Both of
these officials were to receive the same salaries that their
predecessors had received, although Rojas, the Royal Treasurer,
vigorously protested that their salaries should be reduced by one-half.
Governor Luzan was very soon involved in numerous controversies, largely
over questions of dignity and precedents among insular officials.
Something of the spirit of the formal Spanish Court appears to have
permeated Cuba at this time, and the insular and municipal officials
became as great sticklers for forms and ceremonies and for recognition
of their comparative ranks as any of the Grandees at Seville or Madrid.
Thus Jorge de Balza, Adjutant General of the Royal Forces in the Island,
insisted upon the privilege of wearing his sword at meetings of the
municipal council of Havana, of which he was ex officio a member,
although it was a penal offense for anyone else, even the Governor
himself, to wear a sword or dagger in that assembly. Another controversy
arose, as might confidently be assumed, over La Fuerza. The office of
captain or commander of that fortress paid a salary of 300 ducats, on
which account several former governors had appointed themselves to the
place and had drawn that salary for themselves. Governor Carreno
regarded this practice as reprehensible. It was not right, he said, for
the Governor to hold another office and to draw a second salary.
Therefore, he appointed his own son, a lad just in his teens, to be
Captain of La Fuerza and to draw the salary. Whether the boy had the
spending of the money himself or dutifully handed it over to his father
is not a matter of record.
Governor Luzan stopped this nonsense and put a real soldier at the head
of the Fort and then quarreled with him. This commander was Captain
Melchior Sarto de Arana, an expert soldier who had been Luzan's comrade
in arms in the wars of Spain, in the Netherlands and in Italy. He and
his family moved into that upper story of La Fuerza which Carreno had
insisted upon building, regarding it as the most desirable place of
residence in Havana. The unhappy garrison in the lower part of the
building was subject to the dampness which there prevailed, to the great
detriment of health. Indeed conditions were so bad that their weapons
became almost ruined with rust and it was almost impossible to keep
gunpowder in condition for use. The Governor appears to have envied
Captain Arana his quarters in the Fort, but he was not able to displace
him, and so he turned his own attention to completing the Custom House
for his own use. Governor Torres had stopped all work upon this latter
building because of some uncertainty concerning the site, and had
appropriated to his own use some of the funds which had been provided
for completing it. But Luzan secured the necessary funds, hurried the
work of construction and soon moved in to the fine new quarters which
that building provided.
This gave great umbrage to the royal accountant of the Island, one Pedro
de Arana, who does not appear to have been related, unless very
remotely, to the Commander of the Fort. He declared that the Governor
had no right to live in the Custom House, that the King's money had not
been appropriated for any such purpose. It was true, he admitted, that a
part of the Custom House building had been designed for an official
residence. But it was not for the Governor, but for one of the royal
officials. Now as Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, had a fine house of his
own, the meaning of this suggestion was obvious. The royal accountant
wanted the place for himself. He indeed went so far as to order the
Governor, in the King's name, to vacate the building. But he did not
venture to move in and take possession himself, and so the Governor
presently returned and remained. In retaliation Luzan personally charged
Pedro de Arana with various illegal acts, particularly in violating the
law which forbade royal officials to encourage any trade. He declared
that Arana was the owner, or half owner, of a vessel trading between
Cuba and Yucatan, a vessel which was built to be chiefly used for
smuggling. He also said that Arana was organizing an expedition to seek
and raise sunken treasure ships along the coast and was planning to
establish cattle ranches in Bermuda. On the strength of these charges,
which were probably true, he began a searching investigation into
Arana's affairs, raided his house and ordered him to be arrested by his
namesake and confined in a cell in La Fuerza. To this, however, Captain
Melchior de Arana demurred. It was not that he did not regard the
accountant as worthy of arrest. But he held that it was beneath his
dignity to arrest a mere civilian and beneath the dignity of the Fort to
serve as a prison for him. The arrest, he said, should be made by the
sheriff, and the prisoner should be confined in the civil jail. At this
the Governor was furious and he retaliated by sending the sheriff to
arrest Captain Melchior de Arana and to confine him not in the military
fortress but in the civil jail. A little later, however, he had the
Captain transferred to a cell in La Fuerza. Then he made his
brother-in-law, Juan de Ferrer, Captain of the Fort in Melchior's place.
In his strenuous dealings with the royal accountant the Governor appears
merely to have anticipated the King himself. At any rate, a very little
while after he had begun his investigation of Pedro de Arana the
instructions came to him from Madrid that he should pursue precisely
that course. This naturally encouraged him to renewed zeal in the
prosecution. And the result was that in March, 1582, he removed Arana
from the office of royal accountant and appointed Manuel Diaz
temporarily to fill his place. At this Arana made his way to Hispaniola,
there to appeal to the Supreme Court against the Governor. He did more
than appeal. He made grave charges against Luzon and got the court to
order an investigation. The court appointed as chief inquisitor into
Luzan's affairs Garcia de Torquemada, who went to Cuba in April, 1583,
taking Arana along with him. Diaz made no attempt to maintain his title
to the office, but, regarding discretion as the better part of valor,
left Havana and repaired to his plantation in the Far West. But the
Governor and also Rojas, the Royal Treasurer, who sided with him against
Arana, stood their ground.
In the meantime, early in 1582, the King became dissatisfied with the
fast and loose game which was being played at Havana, and chiefly at La
Fuerza, and determined to take matters into his own hand. He did so by
appointing a Captain-General to be Commander of the Fortress, who should
be independent of the Governor of Cuba. This involved some awkward
complications. The Governor, Luzan, had been regularly commissioned as
Captain-General as well as Governor. And the King naturally hesitated
for a time over the question of appointing another man to the same
place. He would have preferred that the Governor and Captain-General
should have continued to be one and the same man. But that seemed no
longer practicable, unless indeed he should dismiss Luzan altogether,
which he was not yet prepared to do. He therefore consulted with the
Council for the Indies, and in conjunction with that body finally
decided to make a new appointment. Luzan was to continue to bear the
nominal title of Captain-General, so as to give him rank comparable with
that of the military and naval commanders who might visit Havana with
the fleets of Spain. But the same title with real authority over the
fortifications and defenses of Havana, and indeed a measure of authority
over the fortifications and defenses of the entire Island, was to be
given to another man.
The man selected for the new Captain-Generalship was a practical soldier
of experience named Diego Hernandez de Quinones. He took office in July,
1582, and found La Fuerza substantially complete, save for the
construction of a moat, and containing a garrison of 120 men, the
majority of whom were always more or less sick because of the dampness
and unsanitary conditions of the place. The fortress had been completed,
however, in some respects in a highly unsatisfactory way. Thus there was
no stairway inside the building connecting the lower and upper stories.
There was a stairway on the outside of the building, constructed of wood
and it was obvious that in case of attack that stairway might easily be
destroyed by cannon shot and thus communications between the two stories
of the fortress be cut off. The moat had not yet been constructed, and
numerous wooden and even some masonry houses had been constructed close
to the fort, which might give sheltered approach to an attacking party.
The King and the Council obviously apprehended some friction between the
Governor and the newly appointed Captain-General, and they therefore
prepared an elaborate code of rules and regulations intended to avert
such trouble and to conduce to harmonious co-operation between the two
officials. Thus it was provided that in all matters of law relating
exclusively to the soldiers, the Captain-General should have entire
jurisdiction. In all matters relating entirely to civilians, the
Governor should have jurisdiction. In cases in which both soldiers and
civilians were concerned the two officials should act together with
concurrent jurisdiction, and in case they could not agree the senior
royal official at Havana should act as umpire between them.
This plan seemed fair enough and was expected to work well. But Luzan
immediately protested against the whole scheme with much vigor and even
violence of speech. In this he was heartily supported by the town
council of Havana. When his protests were ignored by the Crown, or at
least were not favorably heeded, he asked to be relieved from office as
Governor and to be assigned to duty elsewhere. This request the King
refused to grant, at the same time bidding Luzan to avoid any quarrel or
disagreement with Quinones. In spite of this admonition within a few
weeks a bitter quarrel arose over the case of a soldier and a civilian
who had had some strife over an alleged insult offered by the soldier to
a young woman. From this there developed a bitter feud between the
Governor and the Captain-General which soon became apparently
irreconcilable. Each reviled the other, not only in his public capacity
but in relation to his private life and morals. The partisans of each
took up the strife and the entire city was soon involved in it.
Such was the deplorable state of affairs, when, as already related,
Torquemada began his investigations. He found affairs in what seemed to
him as bad a state as possible. The City of Havana, and indeed the
entire Island of Cuba, were rent by faction. The Governor and the
Captain-General each had a band of armed retainers in Havana, and these
were at the point of open conflict which would amount practically to
civil war. Regarding the emergency as critical, Torquemada acted
promptly and strenuously. He ordered both the Governor and the
Captain-General under arrest, commanding Luzan to remain within his own
dwelling and Quinones to remain within La Fuerza. Then he literally read
the riot act to them both. He reproved them scathingly for their lack of
loyalty to the King in letting personal animosities and jealousies have
sway over their sense of duty. He secured from each a full statement of
his complaints and grievances against the other. Then he compelled them
to submit their cases to a tribunal consisting of himself, the Captain
of a Mexican fleet who happened to be visiting Havana, and two judges of
the Supreme Court of Hispaniola. As a result of the deliberations of
this tribunal the two men were compelled to shake hands and pledge
friendship and co-operation. They were then released from arrest and
told to attend to their respective duties without any more nonsense.
This did not halt Torquemada, however, in his investigation of the
general conduct of Luzan's administration in other respects than the
quarrel with Quinones. The charges which were made against the Governor
were of a very serious character. It was said that he had interfered
with the administration of justice by preventing people who had
grievances from communicating with the courts or with the royal
government in Spain. He had defied the authority of the Supreme Court in
Hispaniola and treated it with contempt. He had enriched himself by
taking bribes. He had encouraged desertions of soldiers from the
garrison of La Fuerza. He had interfered with the functions of the Royal
Treasurer and other officials. In view of these accusations Torquemada
ordered Luzan to relinquish the exercise of all official functions until
the truth or falsity of the charges could be determined. Then he removed
from Havana to Bayamo and summoned Luzan to follow him thither in order
that the case might be tried in a place free from the local influence of
Havana. Luzan obeyed the order but at the same time sent his sister to
Spain to intercede with the King and the Council for the Indies, and
also sent her husband to Hispaniola to plead his cause before the
Supreme Court.
The result was that in mid August of 1584 the Supreme Court reversed
Torquemada's order and authorized Luzan to resume the full exercise of
his powers and functions as Governor. Luzan at once did so and
immediately the old quarrel with Quinones was resumed. So furious did
their strife become that within three months the Supreme Court reversed
its own orders and restored that of Torquemada. At this Quinones cast
off all restraint and summarily ordered Luzan to leave Havana and to go
to Santiago to protect that place against the hostile raiders who were
hourly expected to descend upon the Cuban coast. Luzan demurred,
whereupon Quinones threatened him with arrest. Thereupon Luzan left
Havana, but instead of going to Santiago went to Guanabacoa and thence
by slow degrees to Bayamo, where he opportunely arrived, as we shall
see, at the beginning of January, 1586.
In the interim the civil affairs of Havana were conducted by the Town
Council until the end of 1585, when one of Menendez's soldiers, Pedro
Guerra de la Vega, was sent by the Supreme Court of Hispaniola to serve
as Mayor. He got on well enough with Quinones, but not with Rojas, the
Royal Treasurer, who frankly declared him unfit for office and charged
him with possessing a too itching palm. His administration of affairs
seems to have been confined to purely local matters and, as we shall
see, in a very short time, before the spring of 1586, Luzan was again
exercising his full civil authority as Governor, though still most of
the time absent from Havana. Quinones was also in full authority as
Captain-General, and these two former enemies were acting together in
complete accord.
This radical change in the aspect of affairs was due to an impending
crisis, the most serious thus far in the history of the Island. A new
enemy had arisen, far more formidable than any the Island had yet
known. For years Cuba had been harried by French privateers often little
better than pirates, but now the English rovers of the sea began to
infest the Spanish Main. In 1577 Sir Francis Drake entered upon his
memorable voyage around the world, defiantly navigating that South Sea
which Spain has regarded as exclusively her own, and ravaging the
Peruvian treasure ships even more ruthlessly than the French had preyed
upon those of Mexico. Early in Luzan's administration warnings were
given that this bold adventurer was planning a descent upon the West
Indies and probably, therefore, upon Cuba.
This menace naturally caused great alarm at Havana and throughout the
Island, and urgent appeals were made to the royal government and also to
the Viceroy in Mexico for aid. It was represented that galleys were
needed to patrol and to defend the coast. Artillery was needed for La
Fuerza and for other fortifications at Havana and elsewhere. A larger
garrison was also needed for La Fuerza. To these and other like appeals
the King made no satisfactory reply. He apparently had no galleys nor
men to spare for the defense of the Island. The best he would do was to
direct Luzan to utilize his own resources to the full. A military census
of the Island was to be taken, the first in its history, and all
available men including Indians and negroes, were to be mustered into
service.
The result of this enrolment, which was made in the spring of 1582, was
unsatisfactory. In Havana itself only 226 men fit for service could be
found, and no other town on the Island could furnish more than a quarter
as many. They were, moreover, chiefly men unused to arms and therefore
of little prospective value against the formidable fighting men whom
Drake was reported to have in his train. As for La Fuerza, sickness and
desertion had so depleted its garrison that not a score of able-bodied
men were left. Quinones gathered in reinforcements of 60 or 70, chiefly
young and inexperienced men and thus raised the apparently effective
strength to something less than 100, when more than 200 were considered
necessary. Two small brass cannon and a supply of powder and small arms
came from Spain, and Luzan either purchased or requisitioned from a
visiting ship four more small cannon. The Governor also destroyed, by
burning, all the houses which had been built close to La Fuerza so as to
leave an open zone of considerable strength around that fortress.
Despite the conflict between Luzan and Quinones already recorded, some
substantial progress was made, especially by the latter, in
strengthening the defenses of Havana to meet the coming storm. La Fuerza
was improved in various respects, though it was impossible to get rid of
the dampness which pervaded the place. On the Punta at the entrance to
the harbor trenches were dug and a gun platform was built. The
efficiency of these was unsparingly ridiculed by the Royal Treasurer,
Rojas, and indeed Quinones himself soon realized their unsatisfactory
character. He therefore undertook the construction of the real fort, and
by the end of 1583 had it sufficiently completed to permit the mounting
of eight pieces of artillery. He then declared that if he were properly
supplied with powder and shot he could defend Havana against all comers.
He did not wish more soldiers, and indeed he strongly protested against
the levies from Mexico for which Luzan had sent. During the spring of
1583 about 100 men did arrive from Mexico under a Captain who looked to
Luzan and not to Quinones for orders; a circumstance which naturally
added to the confusion and conflict of authority. But after a few months
Luzan himself agreed with Quinones in regarding the men as practically
worthless, and assented to their shipment back to Mexico.