2: "Our Old King or None"
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The movement which led eventually to the emancipation of the
colonies differed from the local uprisings which occurred in
various parts of South America during the eighteenth century.
Either the arbitrary conduct of individual governors or excessive
taxation had caused the earlier revolts. To the final revolution
foreign nations and foreign ideas gave the necessary impulse. A
few members of the intellectual class had read in secret the
writings of French and English philosophers. Others had traveled
abroad and came home to whisper to their countrymen what they had
seen and heard in lands more progressive than Spain and Portugal.
The commercial relations, both licit and illicit, which Great
Britain had maintained with several of the colonies had served to
diffuse among them some notions of what went on in the busy world
outside.
By gaining its independence, the United States had set a
practical example of what might be done elsewhere in America.
Translated into French, the Declaration of Independence was read
and commented upon by enthusiasts who dreamed of the possibility
of applying its principles in their own lands. More powerful
still were the ideas liberated by the French Revolution and
Napoleon. Borne across the ocean, the doctrines of "Liberty,
Fraternity, Equality "stirred the ardent-minded to thoughts of
action, though the Spanish and Portuguese Americans who schemed
and plotted were the merest handful. The seed they planted was
slow to germinate among peoples who had been taught to regard
things foreign as outlandish and heretical. Many years therefore
elapsed before the ideas of the few became the convictions of the
masses, for the conservatism and loyalty of the common people
were unbelievably steadfast.
Not Spanish and Portuguese America, but Santo Domingo, an island
which had been under French rule since 1795 and which was
tenanted chiefly by ignorant and brutalized negro slaves, was the
scene of the first effectual assertion of independence in the
lands originally colonized by Spain. Rising in revolt against
their masters, the negroes had won complete control under their
remarkable commander, Toussaint L'Ouverture, when Napoleon
Bonaparte, then First Consul, decided to restore the old regime.
But the huge expedition which was sent to reduce the island ended
in absolute failure. After a ruthless racial warfare,
characterized by ferocity on both sides, the French retired. In
1804 the negro leaders proclaimed the independence of the island
as the "Republic of Haiti," under a President who, appreciative
of the example just set by Napoleon, informed his followers that
he too had assumed the august title of "Emperor"! His immediate
successor in African royalty was the notorious Henri Christophe,
who gathered about him a nobility garish in color and taste—
including their sable lordships, the "Duke of Marmalade" and the
"Count of Lemonade"; and who built the palace of "Sans Souci" and
the country seats of "Queen's Delight" and "King's Beautiful
View," about which cluster tales of barbaric pleasure that rival
the grim legends clinging to the parapets and enshrouding the
dungeons of his mountain fortress of "La Ferriere." None of these
black or mulatto potentates, however, could expel French
authority from the eastern part of Santo Domingo. That task was
taken in hand by the inhabitants themselves, and in 1809 they
succeeded in restoring the control of Spain. Meanwhile events
which had been occurring in South America prepared the way for
the movement that was ultimately to banish the flags of both
Spain and Portugal from the continents of the New World. As the
one country had fallen more or less tinder the influence of
France, so the other had become practically dependent upon Great
Britain. Interested in the expansion of its commerce and viewing
the outlying possessions of peoples who submitted to French
guidance as legitimate objects for seizure, Great Britain in 1797
wrested Trinidad from the feeble grip of Spain and thus acquired
a strategic position very near South America itself. Haiti,
Trinidad, and Jamaica, in fact, all became Centers of
revolutionary agitation and havens of refuge for. Spanish
American radicals in the troublous years to follow.
Foremost among the early conspirators was the Venezuelan,
Francisco de Miranda, known to his fellow Americans of Spanish
stock as the "Precursor." Napoleon once remarked of him: "He is a
Don Quixote, with this difference—he is not crazy . . . . The
man has sacred fire in his soul." An officer in the armies of
Spain and of revolutionary France and later a resident of London,
Miranda devoted thirty years of his adventurous life to the cause
of independence for his countrymen. With officials of the British
Government he labored long and zealously, eliciting from them
vague promises of armed support and some financial aid. It was in
London, also, that he organized a group of sympathizers into the
secret society called the "Grand Lodge of America." With it, or
with its branches in France and Spain, many of the leaders of the
subsequent revolution came to be identified.
In 1806, availing himself of the negligence of the United States
and having the connivance of the British authorities in Trinidad,
Miranda headed two expeditions to the coast of Venezuela. He had
hoped that his appearance would be the signal for a general
uprising; instead, he was treated with indifference. His
countrymen seemed to regard him as a tool of Great Britain, and
no one felt disposed to accept the blessings of liberty under
that guise. Humiliated, but not despairing, Miranda returned to
London to await a happier day.
Two British expeditions which attempted to conquer the region
about the Rio de la Plata in 1806 and 1807 were also frustrated
by this same stubborn loyalty. When the Spanish viceroy fled, the
inhabitants themselves rallied to the defense of the country and
drove out the invaders. Thereupon the people of Buenos Aires,
assembled in cabildo abierto, or town meeting, deposed the
viceroy and chose their victorious leader in his stead until a
successor could be regularly appointed.
Then, in 1808, fell the blow which was to shatter the bonds
uniting Spain to its continental dominions in America. The
discord and corruption which prevailed in that unfortunate
country afforded Napoleon an opportunity to oust its feeble king
and his incompetent son, Ferdinand, and to place Joseph Bonaparte
on the throne. But the master of Europe underestimated the
fighting ability of Spaniards. Instead of humbly complying with
his mandate, they rose in arms against the usurper and created a
central junta, or revolutionary committee, to govern in the name
of Ferdinand VII, as their rightful ruler.
The news of this French aggression aroused in the colonies a
spirit of resistance as vehement as that in the mother country.
Both Spaniards and Creoles repudiated the "intruder king."
Believing, as did their comrades oversea, that Ferdinand was a
helpless victim in the hands of Napoleon, they recognized the
revolutionary government and sent great sums of money to Spain to
aid in the struggle against the French. Envoys from Joseph
Bonaparte seeking an acknowledgment of his rule were angrily
rejected and were forced to leave.
The situation on both sides of the ocean was now an extraordinary
one. Just as the junta in Spain had no legal right to govern, so
the officials in the colonies, holding their posts by appointment
from a deposed king, had no legal authority, and the people would
not allow them to accept new commissions from a usurper. The
Church, too, detesting Napoleon as the heir of a revolution that
had undermined the Catholic faith and regarding him as a godless
despot who had made the Pope a captive, refused to recognize the
French pretender. Until Ferdinand VII could be restored to his
throne, therefore, the colonists had to choose whether they would
carry on the administration under the guidance of the
self-constituted authorities in Spain, or should themselves
create similar organizations in each of the colonies to take
charge of affairs. The former course was favored by the official
element and its supporters among the conservative classes, the
latter by the liberals, who felt that they had as much right as
the people of the mother country to choose the form of government
best suited to their interests.
Each party viewed the other with distrust. Opposition to the more
democratic procedure, it was felt, could mean nothing less than
secret submission to the pretensions of Joseph Bonaparte; whereas
the establishment in America of any organizations like those in
Spain surely indicated a spirit of disloyalty toward Ferdinand
VII himself. Under circumstances like these, when the junta and
its successor, the council of regency, refused to make
substantial concessions to the colonies, both parties were
inevitably drifting toward independence. In the phrase of Manuel
Belgrano, one of the great leaders in the viceroyalty of La
Plata, "our old King or none" became the watchword that gradually
shaped the thoughts of Spanish Americans.
When, therefore, in 1810, the news came that the French army had
overrun Spain, democratic ideas so long cherished in secret and
propagated so industriously by Miranda and his followers at last
found expression in a series of uprisings in the four
viceroyalties of La Plata, Peru, New Granada, and New Spain. But
in each of these viceroyalties the revolution ran a different
course. Sometimes it was the capital city that led off; sometimes
a provincial town; sometimes a group of individuals in the
country districts. Among the actual participants in the various
movements very little harmony was to be found. Here a particular
leader claimed obedience; there a board of self-chosen
magistrates held sway; elsewhere a town or province refused to
acknowledge the central authority. To add to these complications,
in 1812, a revolutionary Cortés, or legislative body, assembled
at Cádiz, adopted for Spain and its dominions a constitution
providing for direct representation of the colonies in oversea
administration. Since arrangements of this sort contented many of
the Spanish Americans who had protested against existing abuses,
they were quite unwilling to press their grievances further.
Given all these evidences of division in activity and counsel,
one does not find it difficult to foresee the outcome.
On May 25, 1810, popular agitation at Buenos Aires forced the
Spanish viceroy of La Plata to resign. The central authority was
thereupon vested in an elected junta that was to govern in the
name of Ferdinand VII. Opposition broke out immediately. The
northern and eastern parts of the viceroyalty showed themselves
quite unwilling to obey these upstarts. Meantime, urged on by
radicals who revived the Jacobin doctrines of revolutionary
France, the junta strove to suppress in rigorous fashion any
symptoms of disaffection; but it could do nothing to stem the
tide of separation in the rest of the viceroyalty—in Charcas
(Bolivia), Paraguay, and the Banda Oriental, or East Bank, of the
Uruguay.
At Buenos Aires acute difference of opinion—about the extent to
which the movement should be carried and about the permanent form
of government to be adopted as well as the method of establishing
it—produced a series of political commotions little short of
anarchy. Triumvirates followed the junta into power; supreme
directors alternated with triumvirates; and constituent assemblies
came and went. Under one authority or another the name of the
viceroyalty was changed to "United Provinces of La Plata River";
a seal, a flag ,and a coat of arms were chosen; and numerous
features of the Spanish regime were abolished, including titles
of nobility, the Inquisition, the slave trade, and restrictions
on the press. But so chaotic were the conditions within and so
disastrous the campaigns without, that eventually commissioners
were sent to Europe, bearing instructions to seek a king for the
distracted country.
When Charcas fell under the control of the viceroy of Peru,
Paraguay set up a regime for itself. At Asuncion, the capital, a
revolutionary outbreak in 1811 replaced the Spanish intendant by
a triumvirate, of which the most prominent member was Dr. Jose
Gaspar Rodríguez de Francía. A lawyer by profession, familiar
with the history of Rome, an admirer of France and Napoleon, a
misanthrope and a recluse, possessing a blind faith in himself
and actuated by a sense of implacable hatred for all who might
venture to thwart his will, this extraordinary personage speedily
made himself master of the country. A population composed chiefly
of Indians, docile in temperament and submissive for many years
to the paternal rule of Jesuit missionaries, could not fail to
become pliant instruments in his hands. At his direction,
therefore, Paraguay declared itself independent of both Spain and
La Plata. This done, an obedient Congress elected Francía consul
of the republic and later invested him with the title of
dictator. In the Banda Oriental two distinct movements appeared.
Montevideo, the capital, long a center of royalist sympathies and
for some years hostile to the revolutionary government in Buenos
Aires, was reunited with La Plata in 1814. Elsewhere the people
of the province followed the fortunes of José Gervasio Artigas,
an able and valiant cavalry officer, who roamed through it at
will, bidding defiance to any authority not his own. Most of the
former viceroyalty of La Plata had thus, to all intents and
purposes, thrown off the yoke of Spain.
Chile was the only other province that for a while gave promise
of similar action. Here again it was the capital city that took
the lead. On receipt of the news of the occurrences at Buenos
Aires in May, 1810, the people of Santiago forced the captain
general to resign and, on the 18th of September, replaced him by
a junta of their own choosing. But neither this body, nor its
successors, nor even the Congress that assembled the following
year, could establish a permanent and effective government.
Nowhere in Spanish America, perhaps, did the lower classes count
for so little, and the upper class for so much, as in Chile.
Though the great landholders were disposed to favor a reasonable
amount of local autonomy for the country, they refused to heed
the demands of the radicals for complete independence and the
establishwent of a republic. Accordingly, in proportion as their
opponents resorted to measures of compulsion, the gentry
gradually withdrew their support and offered little resistance
when troops dispatched by the viceroy of Peru restored the
Spanish regime in 1814. The irreconcilable among the patriots
fled over the Andes to the western part of La Plata, where they
found hospitable refuge.
But of all the Spanish dominions in South America none witnessed
so desperate a struggle for emancipation as the viceroyalty of
New Granada. Learning of the catastrophe that had befallen the
mother country, the leading citizens of Caracas, acting in
conjunction with the cabildo, deposed the captain general on
April 19, 1810, and created a junta in his stead. The example was
quickly followed by most of the smaller divisions of the
province. Then when Miranda returned from England to head the
revolutionary movement, a Congress, on July 5, 1811, declared
Venezuela independent of Spain. Carried away, also, by the
enthusiasm of the moment, and forgetful of the utter
unpreparedness of the country, the Congress promulgated a federal
constitution modeled on that of the United States, which set
forth all the approved doctrines of the rights of man.
Neither Miranda nor his youthful coadjutor, Simon Bolívar, soon
to become famous in the annals of Spanish American history,
approved of this plunge into democracy. Ardent as their
patriotism was, they knew that the country needed centralized
control and not experiments in confederation or theoretical
liberty. They speedily found out, also, that they could not count
on the support of the people at large. Then, almost as if Nature
herself disapproved of the whole proceeding, a frightful
earthquake in the following year shook many a Venezuelan town
into ruins. Everywhere the royalists took heart. Dissensions
broke out between Miranda and his subordinates. Betrayed into the
hands of his enemies, the old warrior himself was sent away to
die in a Spanish dungeon. And so the "earthquake" republic
collapsed.
But the rigorous measures adopted by the royalists to sustain
their triumph enabled Bolívar to renew the struggle in 1813. He
entered upon a campaign which was signalized by acts of barbarity
on both sides. His declaration of "war to the death" was answered
in kind. Wholesale slaughter of prisoners, indiscriminate
pillage, and wanton destruction of property spread terror and
desolation throughout the country. Acclaimed "Liberator of
Venezuela" and made dictator by the people of Caracas, Bolívar
strove in vain to overcome the half-savage llaneros, or cowboys
of the plains, who despised the innovating aristocrats of the
capital. Though he won a few victories, he did not make the cause
of independence popular, and, realizing his failure, he retired
into New Granada.
In this region an astounding series of revolutions and
counter-revolutions had taken place. Unmindful of pleas for
cooperation, the Creole leaders in town and district, from 1810
onward, seized control of affairs in a fashion that betokened a
speedy disintegration of the country. Though the viceroy was
deposed and a general Congress was summoned to meet at the
capital, Bogota, efforts at centralization encountered opposition
in every quarter. Only the royalists managed to preserve a
semblance of unity. Separate republics sprang into being and in
1813 declared their independence of Spain. Presidents and
congresses were pitted against one another. Towns fought among
themselves. Even parishes demanded local autonomy. For a while
the services of Bolívar were invoked to force rebellious areas
into obedience to the principle of confederation, but with scant
result. Unable to agree with his fellow officers and displaying
traits of moral weakness which at this time as on previous
occasions showed that he had not yet risen to a full sense of
responsibility, the Liberator renounced the task and fled to
Jamaica.
The scene now shifts northward to the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Unlike the struggles already described, the uprisings that began
in 1810 in central Mexico were substantially revolts of Indians
and half-castes against white domination. On the 16th of
September, a crowd of natives rose under the leadership of Miguel
Hidalgo, a parish priest of the village of Dolores. Bearing on
their banners the slogan, "Long live Ferdinand VII and down with
bad government, " the undisciplined crowd, soon to number tens of
thousands, aroused such terror by their behavior that the whites
were compelled to unite in self-defense. It mattered not whether
Hidalgo hoped to establish a republic or simply to secure for his
followers relief from oppression: in either case the whites could
expect only Indian domination. Before the trained forces of the
whites a horde of natives, so ignorant of modern warfare that
some of them tried to stop cannon balls by clapping their straw
hats over the mouths of the guns, could not stand their ground.
Hidalgo was captured and shot, but he was succeeded by Jose Maria
Morelos, also a priest. Reviving the old Aztec name for central
Mexico, he summoned a "Congress of Anahuac," which in 1813
asserted that dependence on the throne of Spain was "forever
broken and dissolved." Abler and more humane than Hidalgo, he set
up a revolutionary government that the authorities of Mexico
failed for a while to suppress.
In 1814, therefore, Spain still held the bulk of its dominions.
Trinidad, to be sure, had been lost to Great Britain, and both
Louisiana and West Florida to the United States. Royalist
control, furthermore, had ceased in parts of the viceroyalties of
La Plata and New Granada. To regain Trinidad and Louisiana was
hopeless: but a wise policy conciliation or an overwheming
display of armed force might yet restore Spanish rule where it
had been merely suspended.
Very different was the course of events in Brazil. Strangely
enough, the first impulse toward independence was given by the
Portuguese royal family. Terrified by the prospective invasion of
the country by a French army, late in 1807 the Prince Regent, the
royal family, and a host of Portuguese nobles and commoners took
passage on British vessels and sailed to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil
thereupon became the seat of royal government and immediately
assumed an importance which it could never have attained as a
mere dependency. Acting under the advice of the British minister,
the Prince Regent threw open the ports of the colony to the ships
of all nations friendly to Portugal, gave his sanction to a
variety of reforms beneficial to commerce and industry, and even
permitted a printing press to be set up, though only for official
purposes. From all these benevolent activities Brazil derived
great advantages. On the other hand, the Prince Regent's aversion
to popular education or anything that might savor of democracy
and the greed of his followers for place and distinction
alienated his colonial subjects. They could not fail to contrast
autocracy in Brazil with the liberal ideas that had made headway
elsewhere in Spanish America. As a consequence a spirit of unrest
arose which boded ill for the maintenance of Portuguese rule.
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