MEXICO AND THE VICEROYS
General considerations--Character of Viceroy rule--Spanish
civilisation--Administration of Cortes--Torture of Guatemoc--Conquests
of Guatemala and Honduras--Murder of Guatemoc--Fall of Cortes--First
viceroy Mendoza--His good administration--Misrule of the _Audiencias_--
Slavery and abuse of the Indians--The Philippine islands--Progress
under the Viceroys--Plans for draining the Valley of Mexico--British
buccaneers--Priestly excesses--Raid of Agramonte--Exploration of
California--Spain and England at war--Improvements and progress in the
eighteenth century--Waning of Spanish power--Decrepitude of Spain--
Summary of Spanish rule--Spanish gifts to Mexico--The rising of
Hidalgo--Spanish oppression of the colonists--Oppression by the
colonists of the Indians--Republicanism and liberty--Operations and
death of Hidalgo--The revolution of Morelos--Mier--The dawn of
Independence--The birth of Spanish-American nations.
The history of Mexico, like its topography, shows a series of intense
and varied pictures. Indeed, it ever occurs to the student of the
Spanish-American past, and observer of Spanish-American hills and
valleys, that the diverse physical changes seem to have had some
analogy with or to have exercised some influence upon the acts of
mankind there. Whether in Mexico, Peru, or other parts of North,
Central, and South America, formed by the rugged ranges of the Andes,
the accompaniments of prehistoric civilisation, daring conquest, bloody
and picturesque revolution, and social turmoil are found. Amid these
great mountain peaks and profound valleys strange semi-civilised
barbarians raised their temples, and European men, arriving thither in
armed bands, have torn both themselves and their predecessors to
pieces, as if some dictate of Nature had said, "Fight; for here is no
peace."
Yet what was really destined to take place in Mexico was the evolution
of a distinct civilisation. Three hundred years of the implanting of
the seed of Spanish culture and ideals, and fifty years of drastic
revolutionary tilling of the social soil, wrought a nation at length.
Transplanted from the Old World, the methods and character of Spanish
life, with all its virtues and defects, rapidly took root in Mexico.
The long rule of the Viceroys is steeped in an atmosphere often
brilliant and attractive, often dark and sinister, always romantic and
impressive. The grandees of Spain came out to rule this new country,
and gave it of their best, nor disdained to spend their years therein,
and a stream of capable legislators and erudite professors and devout
ecclesiastics hurried to the new field which lay open to their services
and powers. The patriotism and fervency of their work, whatever defects
they showed from time to time, cannot fail to arouse the applause of
the student of those times. The colonial _regime_ gave solid and
enduring character to the Mexican people. It gave them traditions,
history, refinement, which are a priceless heritage for them, and it
builded beautiful cities and raised up valuable institutions which are
the substratum of their civilisation. The wonderful vitality and extent
of Spanish influence and character which flowed from these
centres--Mexico, Peru, and others--over thousands of miles of rugged
Cordillera and through impassable forests, was, in some respects, the
most notable condition within the shores of all the New World. The
stamp of the great civilisation which Spain, herself the result of a
human blend of undying character, implanted within these continents is
great and imperishable, and holds something for the world at large
which is, as yet, scarcely suspected.
But, to return to history. In 1522 Cortes was appointed Governor and
Captain-General of the great territory which Spain acquired as a result
of the Conquest, and to which the name of "New Spain" was given--a
designation, however, which was never able to usurp its ancient and
natural one of "Mexico." The charges which had been brought against
Cortes by his jealous enemies had been inquired into by an impartial
group of statesmen appointed by the young King of Spain, Charles V.,
and set aside; and thus began the rule of Spain in Mexico. The
Conquistador thus reached the summit of fame and power--the reward of
his indomitable spirit of persistence in the path and project which his
imagination had fired.
The _regime_ of Cortes was not without benefit to the colony. A fine
city arose upon the ruins of Tenochtitlan. Settlement of the country
was carried on; valuable products of the Old World--among them the
sugar-cane and orange and grape-vines--were introduced and cultivated;
exploration of the country was pushed on a considerable scale,
resulting in the discovery of the Pacific coast of Mexico. The conquest
of Guatemala was carried out by Pedro de Alvarado, sent thither by
Cortes, and that of Honduras by Olid. Cortes personally carried an
expedition to Honduras, but disturbances in Mexico obliged him to
return.
Guatemoc, the brave young Aztec defender of Tenochtitlan, fared ill at
the hands of the Spaniards. To their shame it is that, after the fall
of the city, they tortured him--by permission of Cortes--in order to
extract information as to the whereabouts of the Aztec treasure; for
the invaders had obtained disappointingly little gold. In company with
one of his chiefs the Spaniards roasted the feet of Guatemoc before a
fire: "Think you that I am upon some bed of delight?" was the reply of
the stoic Aztec to his groaning companion in torture, who asked if he
did not suffer. Guatemoc remained crippled for life by this barbarous
act, but he accompanied Cortes to Honduras, and upon this expedition it
was that the Spaniards executed--or murdered--him. He was accused of
treachery in having endeavoured to incite a rebellion against the
Spaniards, and they hanged him head downwards from a tree. "Ah!
Malintzin,"[19] the unfortunate Aztec said to Cortes after his mock
trial, "vain I ever knew it to trust in your promises!"
[Footnote 19: The Aztec name for Cortes.]
And now the time arrives when the star of the Conquistador is to wane
and set. The execution of Guatemoc had brought about a reprimand from
Spain; for it is to be recollected that the Spanish sovereigns never
sought the actual destruction of the American princes, and Pizarro,
also, was reprimanded after his murder of Atahualpa, in Peru. Cortes,
upon his return to Mexico from the Honduras expedition, found that
Spain was not pleased with his administration. Enemies had been at
work, and gratitude for his great services was easily set aside in the
fickle favour of the monarch. A special commissioner, in the person of
the licentiate Ponce de Leon, was awaiting him, appointed by Carlos V.
to impeach him, as a result of grave charges of maladministration--true
or untrue--which had been brought against him in Spain. In this
connection it is to be recollected that Cortes, faithful to his
country, had twice refused to be made King of Mexico by his own
followers. Cortes, finding his enemies too strong, went to Spain to lay
his case before the Emperor personally, but was denied the civil
governorship of Mexico, although military control was given him, and
the title of Marques del Valle. But although he returned to Mexico, he
was no longer in the dominant position of former years. Cortes returned
to Spain in 1540 from Mexico, once more to lay the plaint of his unjust
treatment before Carlos V., a result of his disputes with the first
viceroy, Mendoza. He was treated with indifference and coldness; his
life terminated in disappointment and regrets, and he died in Spain in
December, 1547. So pass the actors in the drama of the Conquest. As to
Guatemoc, his memory is perpetuated in the handsome statue in the
_paseo de Colon_ of modern Mexico, whilst--strange sentiment of the
race which Cortes founded--no monument to the bold Conquistador exists
throughout the land.
From the time of the fall of the fortunes of Cortes in 1535 to the
first cry for independence by Hidalgo in 1810, New Spain was
administered by viceroys and _Audiencias_--the latter being a species
of administrative councils consisting of a president and four members,
nominated by royal decree. The first viceroy, Mendoza, and many of the
subsequent officials of this rank governed Mexico for a period, and
were transferred thence to the viceregency of Peru, which latter
country had been brought into Spain's colonial possessions by the
conquest under Pizarro, in 1532. Indeed, Pizarro a short time after
that date had made his second entry into Cuzco, the Inca capital of
Peru, wearing an ermine robe which Cortes had sent him. During
Mendoza's period, printing was first introduced into Mexico--or,
indeed, into the New World--the Mint and the University were founded,
and exploration of the northern part of the country was undertaken. The
rule of the first viceroy, Mendoza, was good; he was upright and
capable, and his methods were in marked contrast to the excesses and
cruelties practised by the first _Audiencia_, which had preceded his
and the second _Audiencia's regime_. Bishops and priests took active
part in the affairs of Mexico from the beginning, and the first
_Audiencia_ had been involved in grave conflict with the clergy. One of
the main features of the period was the system of _repartmientos_ and
_encomiendas_ under which the Indians were portioned out as serfs to
the Spanish colonists. Exceeding brutality marked this system of
slavery; and at an early date it became necessary to abolish the
practice of branding the unfortunate serfs with hot irons, like cattle!
Thus began the system of cruelty and abuse of the natives under Spanish
rule--not from Spain, however, but by the colonists--whose counterpart
was enacted in the South American countries contemporaneously. It is to
the credit of Churchmen that they often took the part of the Indians;
and a venerated name to this day among the natives of Michoacan is that
of Quiroga, the first Bishop of that province, who penetrated there to
endeavour to counteract the effect of the marked abuses of Guzman,
president of the first _Audiencia_, who in 1527 burned to death their
chief, because he would not, or could not, give up his gold. Velasquez,
the second viceroy, succeeding Mendoza, also had grave questions with
the _Audiencia_. He also was an upright man, and his death was hastened
by these matters. Indeed, the _Audiencias_ were singularly unfortunate
in their proceedings, and their rule was almost always marked by a
mistaken policy exaggerated by acts of cruelty and oppression. During
the time of Velasco an expedition sent by him sailed from Mexico
westward, and took possession in 1564 of the Philippine Islands, which
were so named after the reigning King of Spain, Philip II.
Viceroy succeeded viceroy then in the history of Mexico, and tyranny
and benevolence followed each other alternately in the governing of the
people. Under the cruel Munoz, a member of the _Audiencia_, the son of
Cortes was tortured, and gaols were filled and blood was freely shed on
political and other charges. In 1571 another sinister event took
place--the establishing of the Inquisition. A few years later the
foundation of the Cathedral of Mexico was laid, the beautiful structure
which to-day dominates the capital. A matter which was early forced
upon the attention of the viceroys and city councils was the occurrence
of flooding of the city and attendant epidemics and disaster; for the
peculiar hydrographic conditions of the Valley of Mexico rendered it
liable to floods, the first of which had occurred 1553. In 1580 plans
were formulated for drainage by means of a canal which should give
outlet through the surrounding hills. In 1603 this project was again
brought forward and again abandoned; and in 1607 work was actually
begun, with a force of nearly half a million Indians, upon the great
cut of Nochistongo, which still exists and lies open to the view of the
traveller upon the Mexican railway to-day.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century the ports of New Spain,
especially Vera Cruz, were visited by those enterprising and
unscrupulous sea-rovers of Britain, Drake, Cavendish, Hawkins, and
others, who took toll of coast towns and plate-ships throughout the
regions which Spain claimed as her own, but which pretensions were not
respected by others of the maritime nations of Europe. A memorable
period was this in the history of the New World, as of the Old, for
this flood-tide of staunch buccaneers from Britain and Holland did but
swell onward and culminate in the defeat of the Invincible Armada off
the Elizabethan coast, 1588. The student of the history of Spanish
America at this period will not spare much sympathy for Spain and
Spanish misrule. Under Philip II. a constant drain of treasure from
Mexico and Peru for the needy Mother Country had given rise to serious
abuses in the mines, and silver was extracted to fabulous values and
sent to Spain under the system of forced labour.
[Illustration: GUANAJUATO AS SEEN FROM THE HILLS: THE HISTORIC
TREASURE-HOUSE OF MEXICO.]
In 1622 acute questions arose between the Court and ecclesiastical
authorities, as ever inevitably took place in Spain's colonial
dominions. Bishops excommunicated viceroys, and viceroys fulminated
banishment against bishops: riotings and beheadings followed, and royal
interpositions were constantly necessary to uphold or condemn the
action of one or the other side. In 1629 an appalling inundation of the
City of Mexico took place, following a similar occurrence in 1622, due
to the discontinuance of the drainage works which had earlier been
begun; and it is stated that thirty thousand of the poor inhabitants of
the valley perished as a result. Two years later acute dissatisfaction
began to arise at the great acquisition of wealth and power by the
clergy, and a memorial sent to Philip IV. by the municipality of Mexico
begged that no more religious institutions or communities might be
established, asserting that more than half the wealth of the country
was in the hands of these, and that there were more than six thousand
priests--most of them idle--in the country.
From the middle to the close of the seventeenth century the social life
of the people developed but slowly. The main events were the conspiracy
of the Irishman Lampart to secure independence for the country, the
dedication of the cathedral of Mexico, the founding of the town of
Albuquerque in the territory of New Mexico--to-day part of the United
States, the enactment against the violation of private correspondence,
the fortification of the ports on the Gulf coast against the operations
of sea-rovers--among them the famous British buccaneer Morgan, the
eruption of Popocatepetl (1665), the sacking of the town of Campeche by
British ships (1680), the insurrection and murders by the Indians of
Chihuahua and New Mexico, the piratical exploit of Agramonte and his
band, who disembarked at and looted the port of Vera Cruz, imprisoning
the greater part of the population in a church, the exploration of
California, and the operations against the French and English settlers
upon the Mexican Gulf coast. The last years of the century were
disturbed by serious rioting and tumult in the capital, due to scarcity
of food and the inundation of the city.
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 _regime_ 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
_regime_ 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.
[Illustration: 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.
Thus it was that the heroic efforts of all these who had given their
lives for the political dream of an independent Mexico laid them
down--not fruitlessly--upon the morning of its consummation. To the
credit of the Church it is that the spirit of freedom first took
material form in men nourished in the shadow of the aisles. In Mexico's
history eternal laurels have crowned the brows of Hidalgo and Morelos;
their names are perpetuated in the great tracts of land which bear
them, and their memory is indelibly enshrined in their countrymen's
hearts. At this period the feathers of Spain's colonial wing were being
plucked one by one. In all the countries of Latin America the
irresistible spirit of change, development, and independence was
sweeping over the New World, bred of the world-march of new thought
which the French Revolution had set in motion. The great nineteenth
century had dawned, and the effects of the convulsions of social life
had been felt, and had furnished springs of action even in remote towns
of the South American Andes and of the Mexican plateau. Caracas and
Chile in 1810, Buenos Ayres in 1813, Mexico in 1821, Peru in 1824--all
showed that the hour of destiny had arrived and that new nations were
being launched upon the world.