Revolutions - 5.07- The First Cry For Liberty

Episode Date: July 18, 2016

Further unrest plagued Spanish America in 1809 as the situation deteriorated back in Spain. 

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 5.7, the first cry for liberty. So we left off last time with Napoleon thundering into Spain, now at the head of 275,000 troops, and chasing the central junta down to Seville. With the emperor in Iberia, the French reversed the reverses from the year before, and even the British invasion of the peninsula that had begun so auspiciously back in August ran into major troubles. The British had advanced into Spain after kicking the French out of Portugal and were approaching Madrid in November 1808, just as Napoleon was approaching Madrid from the other direction.

The British Expeditionary Army said, uh-oh, took a hard left and fought a running retreat to the sea, pursued by a much re-energized French army. In early January 1809, the British fought their way to the coast and were then ferried out of Spain by the Royal Navy. So by early 1809, the north of Spain was now firmly in French hands, but the South was still free, and the central junta now scrambled to maintain that freedom. But the arrival of the central junta in Seville meant that there were now two Hunta's in Seville, because though you often see them conflated, the Supreme Hunta, junta of Seville, the one that's been organizing affairs in the Americas, is not the same thing as the

central junta now also of Seville. And it actually took a few weeks of bickering before the Supreme Hunter of Seville agreed to recognize the ultimate authority of the central junta, now also of Seville. This is all very confusing, I know, but, you know, that's history for you. But though they were now recognized as the Supreme Patriotic Government of Spain, the central junta was not a well-oiled machine. As I said last time, the membership was divided between conservatives and liberals and having major difficulty forging a unified plan of action, communicating with the other regional Hunta's, or showing decisive leadership of any kind. Indeed, its leadership was insanely scattershot. They set up all the standard ministries, war, treasury,

foreign affairs, but absolutely could not keep ministers in office for any length of time. There was something like a dozen ministers of war between September 1808 and January 1810, and I mean, you just can't have that much turnover and expect to survive. And they would not survive. British ambassadors to the junta could see how badly the resistance was being run, and they started lobbying for an end to the junta system completely, and in its place appoint a very small regency council, like five or six guys max, who could actually make decisions. The British also started pushing the Spanish to call for an actual representative body to convene,

like a national Congress elected by the people rather than a bunch of self-declared junta's. But for the moment, the central junta did not listen, and they forged on into the wilderness. Now, luckily for the patriotic Spaniards, Napoleon departed. the peninsula in early 1809 to deal with rumblings back east, rumblings that were in fact the direct result of patriotic Spanish resistance to the French, because after learning that the French were getting bogged down in Iberia, the Austrians suddenly showed signs of life. Now, even though the Holy Roman Empire had been dissolved in 1806, the Austrian Empire proper was still a thing, and they had been forced to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on their heads

ever since Austerlitz. While the show of mass resistance to France in Spain gave hope to the men running Austria that they might now be able to break the humiliating chains Napoleon had kept them bound with. And in April 1809, they attacked the French in Bavaria, beginning the war of the Fifth Coalition. Now, as we'll see here, things are not going to go great for the patriotic Spanish in 1809. They are in fact going to go quite badly. But had the Austrians not reopen the eastern front, things could have gone a whole lot worse. Napoleon is now entering the whack-a-mole phase of his career, where he rushes around the continent

trying to beat down anti-French uprisings as they appear. Now, he's mostly going to be successful the next few years, but then in 1812, he winds up chasing one particular mole all the way to Moscow, and yeah, he probably should have just left that one go. Anyway, just as the Austrians were attacking the French in April 1809, word reached the Americas that the Central Junta had invited the Americans to participate in their government. And the process to determine who the American representatives were going to be was intended to be at least kind of semi-participatory. town councils from the principal cities from one of the provinces designated by the central junta for representation, like let's say Venezuela, would meet and drop a list of three potential candidates from their ranks. Then they would draw one of those names out of a hat and send the candidate's name onto the provincial capital, in this case Caracas. There, the Audiencia would meet and choose from the available candidates a further list of three names, one of whom would have his name drawn from a hat,

and that guy would then be the representative of Venezuela to the central junta. Now, this is not democratic in any way, and the fact that the final say was going to the peninsula-dominated Audiencia was telling. But still, in 1809, legitimate participation of Americans in an empire-wide government was underway, and for the rest of 1809, across Spanish America, these little kind of sort of elections unfolded. Now, before we leave off, though, I should mention that events wound up moving too quickly for any of the representatives to actually take their place in the Central Hunter. Only one guy representing New Spain, who was already in Spain when he was elected,

was ever able to show up to work. After sending along the request for American delegates, the Central Hunter also started dispatching their own appointees to start taking over the reins of government in the Americas. Now, they never engaged in anything like a wholesale reappointment of all the officials, but wherever vacancies appeared, the junta took it upon itself to fill them. So down in the Rio de la Plata, for example, Santiago Linier was still only acting viceroy. So shortly after arriving in Seville, the central junta appointed a permanent replacement. Now, Linier had, of course, been nothing but loyal to the patriotic resistance, but he was still French, and so you could never be too sure where his loyalties actually lay.

Then they also appointed a new Captain General for Venezuela, because though I didn't mention this last week, because I didn't want to muddy the picture any more than it already was, but the Captain General of Venezuela was himself technically only the acting Captain General. A permanent replacement was still waiting to be named when the abdications of Bayonne hit. So, in January 1809, the Central Hunta named a new Captain General, for Venezuela. And that guy's name was Vicente and Paran. And he would be the captain general who gets deposed when the funnel really gets going in April 1810. So the thing about Vicente and Peron is that he's not like a

tyrant or a malicious dictator. He was in point of fact a universally well-liked, well-read, well-educated career soldier, very much a man of the Enlightenment. He was a peninsular, but he had served as a regional governor in Venezuela from 1792 to 1804 and was known and pretty well liked by most Venezuelans. He returned to Spain to 1804, though, just in time for Napoleon's envelopment of the continent, and so he was in Spain when the peninsular war began. But the crazy thing here is that it was actually the new government of King Joseph Bonaparte that first nominated Emperor to fill the post of Captain General of Venezuela. But shortly after this appointment, Emperor crossed the lines and pledged his patriotic allegiance to King Ferdinand and the Central Hunter.

But like I say, Emperor was so well liked by everybody that when he crossed over the line, he told the Central Hunter, oh, by the way, Joseph appointed me Captain General of Venezuela, and the Central Hunter said, oh, that's actually a pretty good choice, so why don't you just go for it? And they ratified the decision. Emperor crossed the Atlantic shortly thereafter, arriving in Caracas in May 1809. And attached to his staff was a young inspector general, none other than Simone Bolivar's old friend and traveling buddy, Fernando del Toro. And when Empirond arrived in Venezuela, the people of Caracas, at least the elites in Caracas, were now somewhat mollified politically by the news that they would be able to send a representative back to Spain. And so 1809 was a year of relative peace in Venezuela. But two regions that had been denied the right to send their own representatives back to Spain were not mollified at all.

And I'm speaking here of Upper Peru, aka Modern Bolivia, and then the city of Quito, aka the modern capital of Ecuador. Despite longstanding political and economic autonomy, both interior regions were not included on the Central Hunta's list of additional provinces who deserve to be represented in the Central Hunter. And so Upper Peru and Kito became the leading edge of Spanish-American rebellion in the summer of 1809. So Upper Peru, remember, was first and foremost the seat of the great Potosi Mine. After the conquest, the region had been a part of the vice royalty of Peru and governed out of Lima, but in 1776 had been transferred to the vice royalty of Rio de la Plata, in part to reorient trade in and out of the region towards an Atlantic port rather than a Pacific port. Situated up in the Andean interior, Upper Peru had never really been much directly under the thumb of either Lima or Buenos Aires.

And so there was a certain sense of local independence already floating around out there. Now, being so far removed from everybody else, it did take a while for Upper Peru to learn about the abdications of Bayonne. But when they did learn about them, the Upper Echelon elite were divided about how to respond, especially in the capital city of Chukisaka, which you'll also see referred to as Charkas, but which is today called Sukre, for reasons that will become abundantly clear down the road. Now, not to get too deep into the weeds here, but after the news of the abdications of Bayonne arrived, the intend and bishop of Chukisaka were actually inclined to recognize Princess Charlotte as their sovereign, while the members of the local Audiencia did not think that anybody should make any rash decisions about who to recognize,

since nobody had any idea what the real situation was back in Europe. But they were inclined to recognize the Seville Hunter and through them King Ferdinand. The two camps battled back and forth about what to do until the end of May 1809. Then on either May the 25th or May the 26th, depending on which source you're reading, the members of the Audiencia learned that the intendant planned to arrest them all for obstructing his will, and they decided to make a preemptive strike. The Audiencia ordered the arrest of the intendant and his friend the bishop, and then they formed themselves into an independent junta to run the city.

This little rebellion in Chukisaka is sometimes remembered there as the first cry for liberty. This cry was then taken up six weeks later by an even more. radical uprising in the great city of La Paz. Now, this time, it was the local town council that took the lead, backed by the largely mestizo population. On July the 16th, 1809, these guys rose up against the local intendant and bishop deposed them from office and formed themselves into an independent junta to run the city, just like their neighbors had over in Chukisaka. But unlike the Chukisaka junta, which was largely elite peninsular or creoyo, the junta of La Paz was far more representative of the mixed-raceous misdizo population. They elected as their president, a mixed-race

military officer named Pedro Morillo, who swore loyalty and fealty to King Ferdinand, but nobody else. The La Paz junta refused to even recognize the authority of the viceroys in Buenos Aires and Lima. And then they also started talking about race. and class reforms to forge a more egalitarian society. They issued a plan of government that said, quote, now is the time to organize a new system of government, founded upon the interests of our country, which is so downtrodden by the bastard policy of Madrid. Now is the time to raise the standard of liberty in these unfortunate colonies. And even more than the revolution in Chukisaka, the revolution of La Paz is the first that really captures what would become the tree.

spirit of Spanish-American independence. Meanwhile, over in New Granada, a further rebellion broke out in August 1809. As we discussed in episode 5.3, the city of Kito was one of the earliest cities in Spanish-America to get its own Audiencia, and they had long enjoyed relative autonomy from the vice-regal authorities, first down in Lima, and then up over in Bogota. and the people of Quito considered themselves to be basically their own thing. Shortly after learning about the abdications of Bayonne, elite Crioyo in Quito began meeting amongst themselves to try to create an independent junta,

thinking that this might be an opportunity to seize power because the tensions between the peninsulares and the Crioyo, tensions that had helped incite the rebellion of the barrios back in 1765, had never really gone away. But by the end of 1808, word was out that there would be no independent junta's in the Americas, that the vice regal structure would stay in place. But the Crioio elite kept at it to the point where there were, in fact, a rash of arrest in March 1809 over an alleged conspiracy to seize the government. So tensions continued to simmer under the surface until the summer of 1809 when word arrived that various American provinces had been invited to send a representative to the central.

Hunta, and that Kito was not among them. They would simply be represented by whoever was representing the wider vice royalty of New Granada. With this added snub sticking in their craw, a cabal of Crio-Yo got together on the night of August 9, 1809, and formed a 36-man junta to rule independently in Ferdinand's name, bypassing any other authority. And one thing they really had going for them was the sympathy of the commander of the commander of Kito's regular army garrison, and on August the 10th, that commander put his troops at the junta's disposal, arresting Peninsulares and occupying key points in the city. The junta then defended its conduct by saying that the Spaniards were, quote,

oppressors of the Kriyo and usurpers of their natural rights, and that, quote, Kito has been treated by the Spaniards who monopolize its government as a recently conquered nation. The word Crioyo has been used as a term of abuse and contempt. But unlike the La Paz Revolution, the rebellion in Quito was an elite Criojo affair. This was not about turning the world upside down. So while they implemented the standard big white platform, liberalized trade laws, lower taxes, abolition of all state-run monopolies, and self-government, they were not about to touch the racial caste system or like talk about freeing the slaves or really even invite non-auses. on Criojo to participate in their new little self-government.

The new Quito junta then declared that they were assuming jurisdiction over all the cities that had long fallen under the jurisdiction of the old Audiencia of Quito. But when they sent representatives round to secure the allegiance of those cities, most of those cities refused. The critical port city of Guayaquil, for example, wanted no part of being ruled by Quito, and they were frankly appalled by the rebellion up in the quote, quote, capital. And here I want to make a broader point, because as we will see time and time again, there was just very little solidarity between cities adjacent to one another. In the Rio

de la Plata, for example, Montevideo and Buenos Aires, they were not friends. Their proximity, in fact, made them fierce rivals. And in a little bit, we'll see Bogota and Cartagena fighting each other to become the predominant city of patriotic New Granada. And then most of the peripheral cities in Venezuela are not going to be eager to recognize the supremacy of Caracas. And this is the great problem of federalism in the process of Spanish-American independence. And in this context, it means everyone's unwillingness to submit to the authority of anyone else. The problem of federalism will not only prove Simone Belivar's dream of a United South America to be a complete fantasy, but it would also fatally undermine his even more modest vision of a United

Grand Columbia, because it was just a vision that nobody else really shared. So these first cries of liberty, though, were silenced by the end of 1809. The viceroy in Lima, in particular, took stern measures against the rebellious cities of the interior. In October, 5,000 troops set out from Cusco into Upper Peru, with additional forces coming up from the Rio de la Plata. The Hunta's in La Paz and Chukisaka could not coordinate a defense. They were already succumbing to the disuniting forces of federalism, especially since the La Paz junta represented a broader social revolution promoting the interests of the mestizo, while the Chukisaka junta was an almost exclusively white affair.

After a brief fight, the rebellions of Upper Peru were crushed, and the leaders were all rounded up and mostly executed. The Viceroy of Peru then unilaterally and, upper Peru back under his official jurisdiction. So they're now in the vice royalty of Peru again. Now, while this was all unfolding, the viceroy of Peru also set about crushing the rebellion in Kito, sending troops up the coast, where they were reinforced by eager units from Guaya Kiel. Together they marched on Kito, and in the face of armed attack, the resolve of the Kito-Hunta failed and the whole thing collapsed in October. Keto was occupied and the old order was restored.

So by New Year's 1810, the first cries for liberty were fading echoes. But then out of nowhere, those fading echoes hit a wall and came reverberating back stronger than ever because at that same moment, a major crisis hit patriotic Spain. This crisis would upend Spanish rule in the Americas in the spring of 1810, and suddenly, the cry for liberty became deafening. So to get to that crisis, we must head back to Spain, where the now-Napolian-less French armies continued their slow envelopment of Iberia. With the British having fled the peninsula in January 1809, the French launched their second invasion of Portugal in March, and then also won their

first solid victory in southern Spain, when a 17,000-man French army defeated 27,000 Spaniards at the Battle of Medellín, a bloody affair that saw the French offer. for no quarter even to surrendering Spaniards. But the British were not just going to give up on the war, and in April they re-landed in Portugal, and soon had the French on the run once again, forcing them to retreat out of Portugal for a second time in the middle of May. But then the British made it clear that they were not going to be leaving Portugal any time soon, not even to support a Spanish offensive because it was just too risky at that particular moment. The central Central junta, though, spent the summer of 1809 trying to get their act together.

And in the fall of 1809, they finally organized and launched their one major offensive campaign of the war, driving two armies up towards Madrid, the main army on the right, and then a little flanking army on the left. But this all culminated in November with a spectacular disaster. The main Spanish army was well over 50,000 strong, and they met a much smaller, 30,000 men French army on November the 19th at the Battle of O'Conna. But in that battle, the Spanish army just collapsed. They were unable to make a dent in the French lines, and then the Spanish soldiers fell into uncoordinated retreats, which turned into indiscriminate running for it, and they were just getting pounded by French guns the whole time. The Spanish

lost 4,000 dead or wounded, and fully 14,000 captured. And this left that flanking, Spanish army just hanging out there utterly unprotected, and soon they two were in full disorganized flight. For all intents and purposes, the Spanish army dissolved and now ceased to exist. With no functioning armies now in the field, the Central Junta itself dissolved and ceased to exist. The French army was now able to march south into Andalusia unopposed, and in late January 1810, the members of the Central Hunta recognized that Seville was indefensible, and so they decided to fall back to Cadiz, their last possible refuge. But the members of the junta all made their own individual escape from Seville,

and many never bothered to show up again in Cadiz. Those who did show up convened a rump session of the Central Hunta and dissolved themselves. Passing power, as their British allies had long been recommending, to a small executive regency council. The people of Cadiz then rushed to shore up the defenses of the city before the French arrived. And now the walls were pretty formidable, and they did have the British Navy at their back. So this is not some hopeless last stand here, but it was still pretty ominous when the French showed up on February the 4th and began digging siege lines. So all of this is going to have a devastating effect on Spanish authority in the Americas.

The nascent movements towards American autonomy that have been mostly nipped in the bud in 1808 and 1809 were premised on the viceroys and captain generals and intendants, recognizing and promoting the authority of the central junta as the legitimate keeper of Spanish sovereignty. Well, now that body no longer exists. It's been replaced by a tiny regency council that nobody's ever heard of. And when word of all this hits America, it is going to reopen the debate about American autonomy. economy. Now, this time, it would be Caracas. It gets first bite at the apple, and the long-rumbling crolloe bit off as much as they could chew. Now, though the local creoyo of Venezuela had been partially mollified by the invitation to join the central junta, they still really wanted some

form of self-government. And by the end of the year, they had gotten word at least of the establishment of the Quito junta, though I'm not sure how much they really knew about what was going on in Upper Peru. Lines of communication in South America are long and heavily censored. But the Creole of Caracas were emboldened enough that on December the 14th, they were laying the groundwork for a coup against Captain General M. Peron. This time, Belivar was among the plotters. But the plot was exposed before it could be launched. And possibly, at the request of Inspector General Fernando Del Toro, Captain General Mperon personally took 25-year-old Simone Belivar aside and said, look, you're young, you're reckless, but you have to knock off this kind of thing

or you are going to get in a lot of trouble. Belivar does not listen. Things were mostly calm and Caracas after that, until the big bomb went off on April the 17th, 1810. That was the day the ship arrived from Spain bearing representatives of the new Regency Council. They declared that they were now the Supreme Authority back in Spain, and that they expected Venezuela to recognize. their authority, no questions asked. But Belivar and Del Toro both knew one of these Regency Council representatives from their earlier trips back through Italy, and from him learned the really real truth. The Spanish army has been blasted to Smithereens.

The French pretty much control all of Spain. The Regency Council is a couple of guys hunkered down in Cadiz under siege. I mean, for all anybody knew at this point, the Regency has fallen, and the conquest of of Spain is truly complete. For the Crioyo of Caracas, this was all they needed to hear. With no functioning government back in Spain to recognize, it was finally time to take matters into their own hands. So in the wee morning hours of April the 19th, 1810, which just so happened to be Monday Thursday,

that is the Thursday before Easter, a group of about 100 prominent Criojo leaders met and planned to force the Captain General to convene a governing whom. It is not clear, though, whether Bolivar was among them. At dawn on April the 19th, these guys all marched down to City Hall, banging on doors and rousing the city to life. They then demanded that the Captain General present himself, which, by the by, they had no authority to do. But Emperor on decided to come down and confront the movement head on. He met with the Creoleal leaders who demanded the immediate convening of a representative junta. And Perron said, yeah, listen, we're actually kind of in the middle of Holy Week right now, so this is not a good time. And in fact, today's mass is coming up any minute now. So let's break for that and we'll come back around later. He got up and left his office and tried to make his way down to the cathedral. But in the middle of the town square, the assembled crowd blocked his path and started chanting to City Hall, governor, to City Hall. Unable to go forward, the Captain General had to go backward.

So now back in his office, Emperon was now feeling a wee bit isolated. And then the deacon of the Caracas cathedral showed up, and rather than backing the Captain General's authority, he lambasted the Criojo for not being more decisive about deposing him. I mean, let's get on with the business of seizing our right to self-government. And then, Emperon made one of those mistakes you hear lawyers sometimes talk about, where you're never supposed to ask a question in court you don't already know the answer to. He did not actually think that the people hated him as much as the Crioia were implying. And so he said, we'll see about this. He went out to the balcony and shouted out to the people, do you approve of me? Do you support the new regency? And everybody in the square thundered?

No. So that was kind of that for Captain General Empiron. Bowing to the apparently universal sentiment that his services were no longer required, he gathered up his small staff and two days later set sail for exile in Philadelphia. following on his heels were half the Audiencia and most of the senior peninsular civil servants. The Crioio of Caracas, who had been trying and failing for almost two years to form an independent junta, were finally able to do so, and they declared themselves to be the supreme junta of Caracas, dedicated to preserving the rights of King Ferdinand the 7th.

They recognized no higher authority in Spain and put themselves only below Ferdinand, who, at the moment, was sitting under French House arrest, so this was de facto independence. What followed then was yet another example of the problem of federalism. The Caracas junta sent out representatives to other Venezuelan cities, inviting them to form their own junta's and recognize the supreme authority of the Caracas junta, which some did, but others refused to do. There was a lot of intra-provincial rivalries, and so like the cities over by Maracaiba, were just not going to put themselves under Caracas's rule.

The problem of federalism here is showing itself early, and it will continue to show itself. Plus, just as in the ill-fated central junta, there was disagreement within the Caracas junta about where this was all headed. Many of the older Crioio believed that they really were just holding the fort till Ferdinand could be restored, and when he did, that Venezuela would go back to being one of his domains. And most importantly, these guys wanted to make sure that this did not spill out into Haitian-style racial revolution. But there was a more radical camp, and Belivar was one of its more radical voices. They believed that this was all headed in the direction of true independence and were willing

to do what it took to make that happen. I mean, if not now, then win. Now, at this point, Belivar is still kind of just a kid. He's 26 years old, with a reputation among the older Creos for being an uncompromising hothead. so he was not invited to be a member of the Caracas junta, nor frankly were any of them much interested in having him around. But Belivar was not going to be sidelined that easily, and he quickly figured out that he had something that they needed, and that was a whole bunch of money. The Belivars were still one of the richest families in Venezuela.

Now, the Caracas junta knew that to secure their position and stave off what was likely to be a French attempt to take them over, they would need international. national friends. So they wanted to send out some envoys to the United States and Great Britain, but there was a problem of how to organize it and pay for it. And so Belivar presented himself and said, I will fund the entire embassy to Britain out of my own pocket if you let me go. Now, many in the junta were not keen to let this kid be the face of Venezuela in London, but, you know, he is going to pay for the whole thing. So, okay, you can go. So they formed a little three-man embassy of Simone Bolivar, Andres Beaux, and then an older, more stable hand to hopefully guide their conduct, a former mayor of Caracas named Luis Lopez Mendez. In June 1810, these guys set sail for Britain, hoping to secure British support for their cause.

And next week, we will rejoin them as they arrive in London, where of course Belivar is going to seek out none other than Francisco. Dan Miranda.