Revolutions - 9.02- The Cry of Dolores

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

In 1810, Father Hidalgo let forth the Cry of Dolores. 

And welcome to revolutions. Episode 9.2, The Cry of Dolores. Last week, we did a broad survey of the Vice Royalty of New Spain. And as we approached the end of the episode and approached the abdications of Bayonne, we noted that there was a lot of discontentment, resentment, and anger among all classes and cast about the state of the Vice Royalty of New Spain. Well, today, we are going to take all that discontentment, resentment, and anger and use it to blow up the vice royalty of New Spain and turn it into independent Mexico.

Now, this is going to be a necessarily truncated version of events. We are going to do in one single episode what it took more than 20 episodes for me to do down in South America, but we have places to go and things to see in the 20th century. So let's just go ahead and knock this sucker out. Now, fortunately for us, I spent a lot of time in episode 5.6 describing the crucial events back in Spain that led to the abdications of Bayonne and the collapse of the Bourbon Monarchy in 1808. And in episode 5.6, I also talked about the impact of the forced abdications in the Americas. And I touched actually on what happened in New Spain.

I think that was the last time I spent more than a line or two on events in what became Mexico, knowing full well that eventually I would be able to come back to it. But just to briefly review. As in other major cities in both Spain and the Americas, The capture of the Bourbon monarchy led to a movement to create provisional ruling junta's made up of local notables until the crisis passed. So the Crioio leaders in New Spain pressured the viceroy to go along with a plan to convene an assembly of the best families in New Spain and, for the first time in a century, allow Criojo voices into government. Now surprisingly,

the viceroy was prepared to go along with this plan, which freaked out the conservative peninsulari leaders in the city, who, not implausibly, saw, such a junta as the first step towards independence. So in September of 1808, the conservative leaders staged a coup. They arrested the viceroy and his principal Creoyo allies and installed an 80-year-old general as the new viceroy. As chaos reigned back in Europe and rebellions exploded all over South America, the conservatives in Mexico City were mostly successful at holding revolution at bay in New Spain for the next two years. The 80-year-old general was replaced by the Archbishop of Mexico City, who had been in on the

the coup the previous year. The Archbishop would then stay in office until he was replaced in September of 1810 by a career army officer named Francisco Javier Vargas, who had spent the previous two years distinguishing himself in the peninsular war, and he was now being sent across the Atlantic to make sure Spain held on to its American possessions. Vargas had the good fortune to arrive in Mexico City after a very long journey on September the 14th, 1810, literally the day before the long-for-stalled revolution exploded. Now, that revolution exploded in one particular part of New Spain, the Bahia. The Bahiao is that wider region north of Mexico City that was rich in silver. It had become the heart of the bourbon push to revitalize the economy of New Spain. And as we

discussed last week, wealthy peninsulares and Crioio were encouraged to make major investments to increase the amount of silver that was being mined, as well as enlarge and diversify the ASEANDAs that supported them. What followed in the Baha'iho was a century-long economic boom that lasted from about 1700 to about 1800. This mining boom caused a massive influx of migrants into the region, men who were looking for work, either in the mines or on the ASEANDAS. But unfortunately, there was a reason that this area had never been heavily settled before this. The land wasn't that great, and it was susceptible to repeated droughts. Near the end of the 1700s, there were simply too many mouths to feed, and famine became a recurrent problem, especially during major droughts in 1777, 1792, and

79. Tenet and small farmers were hit particularly hard during these times, and they were just squeezed out by the larger Asianda, so by 1800, nearly every independent operator had been turned into a mere wage laborer. The region would also find itself in trouble, every time a mine would shut down, or there would be a flood that wrecked equipment, or a vein was tapped dry. This would lead to slashed wages, reduced hours, and mass layoffs. In those times, you would wind up with a lot of young men just sort of hanging around, which, as we know, going back to the very first episodes of the Revolution's podcast, is never a good thing. These recurrent problems could be absorbed as long as the mining boom went on, and workers

could eventually find new jobs. But after 1800, the mining economy went into a decade-long slump that actually saw silver output not to slow down, but actually decline year over year. Now, the slump was partly the result of simply running into the limits of expansion. But it was also impacted by events back in Europe, where the French Revolutionary Wars are now moving on into the Napoleonic Wars. The global economic uncertainty combined with natural declines and output to create cycles of layoff and famine and displacement among the population of the Bahia that now had nowhere else to go. This is the place they called home. And it wasn't just the wage workers who were being hit hard. Manufacturers, local suppliers, traders, shopkeepers,

they were all pummeled by this prolonged recession. And all of them started to rally around the idea that sinister peninsulari agents and absentee landlords in Mexico City were at least partly to blame for this economic crisis. But even the absentee landlords in Mexico City were getting pretty furious thanks to the very provocative act of consolidation that had been decreed by the Spanish government in 1804. The idea here was to more fully control the national wealth by ordering the Catholic Church to deposit all of their riches with the Crown, who would then pay the Church an annual dividend on their deposit. The problem was that in New Spain the Church had acted as the principal mortgage lender for all of these huge investments that the bourbons had been encouraging.

The active consolidation meant that the church was now going to call in all these loans, and some of them were on 20 or 30-year terms. This would cause nothing less than financial ruin for major mine owners, ostendados, and large merchants. So by the beginning of 1808, you had a pyramid of anger, building from the peasant farmers and wage workers and indigenous villagers, all the way up to the richest Creoleo landlords. and all of them were coming around on the idea that there was something deeply rotten about

the vice-regal government. After news arrived in the behio of the abdications of Bayonne, grumbling turned into active planning to break away from Spain and declare independence. The center of this brewing conspiracy in the behio was the city of Keratar, where the mayor, Miguel Dominguez, and his wife, Jose de Dominguez, were both active sympathizers. Meeting under the cover of liberal society gatherings, they brought together lawyers, priests, businessmen, and army officers, and these disaffected men and women would share their grievances, and then they would start to share their plans. Among this group was Ignacio Allende, a captain in the cavalry, who came from a prominent local family currently being hit hard by the economic recession. He was joined by Juan Aldama, who was also the scion of a prominent local family suffering economic distress. Both of them represented the bitterness of the Crioyo for not having any kind of voice in government.

And these guys looked at the example of the United States for inspiration. They wanted political and economic independence from Europe. And they wanted the commercial wealth and power that would surely come with that independence. They supported equality insofar as they were angry that Crioio like themselves were barred from serving in government. But they also admired the fact that the founding fathers of the government. United States were able to prosecute a political revolution while holding the forces of social revolution at bay. But there were among these conspirators those who had more expansive and ambitious plans and who drew their inspiration not from the American Revolution but from the French Revolution.

They wanted to overturn the caste system. They wanted to dump the aristocracy. They wanted to usher in social justice. They wanted to break up the aciendas and the church land and distribute them equitably to the people. They wanted to abolish slavery. and any vestiges of indigenous tribal tribute. Which brings us to the man in the room who wanted all of that and more, father Idaugo. Miguel Idaigo di Castia was born in 1753. He was the Crio-yo son of a prominent and well-respected family,

though his father was a hacienda manager rather than a major landlord, so the family wasn't at the very top of the caste system, which actually influenced Idauggo's outlook on life. He grew up on the periphery of New Spain. He interacted with mestizo and indigenous workers. He learned native languages and customs and knew how these people lived and worked. The family was rich enough, though, that Miguel got a top-flight education, and after entering seminary, he graduated in 1773 with a degree in both philosophy and theology. By this point, Idaugo had displayed a brightness and intelligence that was both promising and concerning when he was spoken of in the higher ranks of

the church. Ordined a priest in 1778 at the age of 25, Idaulgo stayed in academia. He joined the faculty of the Collegio de San Nicolas Obispo, eventually rising to be appointed dean of the college in 1790. Now, the Inquisition was still alive and well, and on patrol for seditious and heretical ideas, but as a priest specializing in theology and philosophy, Idago was one of the select few who was legally allowed to read the latest Enlightenment tracks, tracks everyone else was forbidden to even possess. Now ostensibly, this is so the ideas could be refuted, but it's pretty clear Hidalgo was doing more spreading of these ideas than he was refuting them. This led to problems with higher-ups in 1792, Idaugo lost his position at the college, partly for altering the

curriculum, and partly after being accused of financial improprieties. He was shuffled around from post to post until his brother, who was also a priest, died in 1802. Idaugo took over his brother's responsibilities in the city of Dolores. Idago was never much interested in the attending two souls part of his job, so he handed most of those responsibilities off to a subordinate, and he focused his attention on business pursuits, on intellectual investigations, and philanthropic activities. As a secular priest, Idaigo had never taken the vow of poverty, so he owned three Asiendas himself and was quite adept at turning a profit. But as a member of the clergy, he had taken a vow of chastity, though that did not stop him from maintaining several long-term

relationships and fathering at least seven children. Now, by now he had developed strongly heretical beliefs, both political and religious. I'dalgo opposed the absolute monarchy, and he despised ignorant superstition. But most acutely, he developed a real sense of egalitarian goodwill. Though he had no interest in tending to his flock by delivering a weekly mass or hearing confession, he did tend to his flock by actively encouraging economic prosperity and social equality for the people of Dolores. He introduced new crops and techniques to the area with the ultimate intention.

of making the land more profitable and the villagers earning a measure of independent self-respect. Now, this was mostly tolerated by the authorities until Idaugo started showing them how to grow grapes and olives, crops that were specifically prohibited so as not to compete with monopoly imports from Spain. So on top of these economic and social reforms, Idago also became a big advocate for political reform, radical political reform. He was an active participant in the revolutionary conspiracies of the Bahia, attending, hosting, and guiding many of their discussions. Though until the moment that he kick-started the revolution, he was really just one conspirator among many. He was not yet the leader that he would be seen as later. So by the fall of 1810, these revolutionary discussions have created a political alliance composed of minor political officials, army officers, lawyers, factory owners, shopkeepers, and, like,

like Idaalgo priests, who believed that they could probably mobilize the displaced peasants and unemployed mine workers and villagers angry about land usurpation into a force that could collectively seize control of New Spain. They were far enough along in their planning that they even set a date for their revolution. A date would be in December of 1810, and they had sent agents up to the United States to secure munitions and financial support for this coming revolution. But this plan was upended in September of 1810 when Josefa Dominguez learned that they had been discovered. Government agents came and alerted her husband that they were onto a major cabal of revolutionaries, not realizing that she herself, Hosepha, the wife of the mayor, was in particular deeply involved in this conspiracy.

So Hosefah managed to get a messenger up to Dolores to warn Hidalgo and the other leaders who were with him. Not bothering to think things through too much. Idago ordered the church bells rung to gather his congregation. Those who did gather after midnight in the wee hours of September the 16th, 1810, were treated to an impassioned speech by Idago, calling for them to join in a mass popular revolt. This is easily the most famous speech in Mexican history. It's called the Crito de Dolores or the cry of Dolores. Unfortunately, however, the speech was not recorded word for word, so we just know the gist of what Idago said. said. But basically, he called on them to overthrow 300 years of oppression, to reclaim the land that had been stolen from them, to destroy the evil politicians and bad government who ruled over them. God and history were now calling on the people to play their part, and they must play their part. The cry of Dolores landed with an electric bang, and the next morning, Idago gave a repeat performance near the market with similar energetic results.

men and women who had been holding long simmering resentments were finally being told it's okay to go crazy. Soon, 600 to 800 volunteers joined what had once been a very small conspiracy. With Hidalgo now clearly the face of the rebellion, they all marched together out of Dolores in the direction of the regional capital of Guantanjato. Once sparked, revolutionary fire in the Bihio spread rapidly. Whatever village or town Hidalgo's army passed through, and it was becoming Hidalgo's army, even though Idaulgo had no military experience whatsoever, they picked up new recruits and attacked Peninsulares and their property. When they captured the city of Salaia on September the 21st, they were 5,000 strong. A week later, as they approached Guantajado, they were reportedly

30,000 strong. But they were not trained at all, and they had no real weapons, were talking sticks and rocks and machetes. What they had, though, was a belief that they were engaged in some kind of messianic uprising that would expel sacrilegious peninsulares. A lot of them believed that they were fighting for the king against his bad counselors. They had no idea, actually, that they were engaged in a movement for independence. So the rebels carried hastily made banners that spoke to this message that Hidalgo and the other leaders were focused on. It was long-lived religion, long-live America, death to bad government. They adopted, as the their symbol, our most holy mother of Guadalupe. And yes, I know I botched it last week. I said

Guadalupe, not Guadalupe. Plain that on the three and a half years I lived in Austin. Anyway, when they all got to Guantanhwato, the small circle of peninsulari administrators and the Krio-a-a-a-allis that they still had barricaded themselves inside a granary, and they held out for two days. But eventually, the crush of the rebels was simply too great. The granary was stormed, and over 500 people were killed, including women and children. Now, this massacre caused problems in the rebel leadership, because this is not what the more elite croyoyo rebels had signed up for. Peasants massacring their social superiors,

that is not what we are supposed to be doing. But after so bloodily taking Guantajato, the army kept marching and it kept growing. They were now widely seen as totally out of control. They're feeding themselves by forced requisitioning or stripping fields clean for food. By now, most other Crioyo and New Spain were siding with the vice regal authorities. Yes, they had their resentments, and yes, they wanted independence.

But this seemed like just a mob of barbaric peasants. And in the midst of all this, Iago issued his first emancipation proclamation for bidding slavery in independent Mexico. And though, as I said, slavery wasn't a huge thing in New Spain. Slaves were used as household staff in prominent families, mostly as status symbols. So the threat to the social order represented by Hidalgo's army was very real and very frightening. Meanwhile, in Mexico City, the new viceroy, Javier Vargas, who had been on the job for exactly one day before the revolution broke out, was now trying to scramble a defense of the city. The vicerigal forces had not been very well run these past few hundred years.

They were not very well organized, and they were dispersed way away from the capital anyway. So Vargas could only muster a couple of thousand men to go out and try to do anything about this flood of humanity, now 60, maybe 80,000 people strong. The largest force that could be mustered on the Viceragal side was just a couple of thousand men. I've seen numbers as low as 1,200 and as high as 7,000. But they rode out to meet Idaugos army, and at Monte de las Cruces on October the 30th, 1810, the rebels and the Viceragle forces met in battle. The rebels took heavy casualties. They were, as I said, not well-trained or armed, but the numbers alone made their defeat practically impossible. So they were not defeated. The Vicerogel forces retreated back to Mexico City, and the road to the capital was now wide open. So that brings us to the

most consequential and controversial moment of the whole struggle for Mexican independence. Father Iago appears to have flinched. Rather than pushing on to Mexico City, Idaugo ordered the army to halt and retreat west towards Guadalajara. Now, there has never, to my knowledge, been a definitive explanation for why he decided to do this. Iyende, for example, was pulling his hair out, trying to get Idago to listen to reason. He was saying, we have to go take the capital now before the vice regal forces can regroup. But Idago stubbornly refused. So, the army halted and retreated. And the most common speculation is that having witnessed the behavior of the rebel army, for the past few weeks, that Idaugo believed storming into Mexico City would simply be the

beginning of mass slaughter and destruction. But whatever the reason, the army did retreat, Mexico City was spared, and the war for independence, which might have been won right there and then, would go on for another 11 tortuous years. The retreat had an immediate impact on the revolution. Peasant rebellions run on momentum, and Idaugo had just killed the momentum. Soon the numbers in the army were down to 40,000, possibly half of what they had claimed just maybe a week earlier. Then the leadership started to splinter with different leaders, leading different groups, and different directions. Yidalgo himself wound up in Guadalajara with only about 7,000 men. Upon arrival, though, he attempted to start up a provisional revolutionary government with himself as the self-proclaimed autocrat.

He set up a little ministry with his personal secretary, a guy named Ignacio Lopez Rayon. He's going to be important here in a second, as Secretary of State. But as Iende predicted, the pause in the action allowed the Vicerogel forces to regroup. Certainly, it allowed the best and most vigorous general in the Vicerigal army, a guy named Felix Maria Caheyha, to organize a 6,000-man army and march them south from where they had been stationed up in San Luis Potosi. But Idago himself was busy trying to recapture the momentum. The area around Guadalajara had faced many of the same difficulties as the Bahia.

And so though the initial rush of volunteers had mostly been killed or deserted, Idago found many new recruits to the cause, and soon he was leading a force tens of thousands strong again. But this rebellion came to an abrupt end just after New Year's in 1811. In early January, Kaya came with his 6,000 men, and he approached Idaugos' position at the bridge on the Caledron River. On January the 17th, 1811, the two sides met in battle, and though the rebels still had a massive numerical advantage, this time they were broken to pieces. Kaya's men were way better armed and way more disciplined, and an explosion of a grenade inside the ranks of Idago's army caused so much fear and confusion that the battle quickly turned into a route. In the wake of this debacle, the leadership of the rebellion gathered and decided to strip

Idauggo of his military responsibilities. He would be kept on as a figurehead and a political leader, but he would have nothing more to do with the tactics and strategy involved in actually running a war, which were all transferred over to Aende. Now, had he had the time, Iende had a plan to pursue a campaign built around a more compact but better-trained army, rather than these huge mobs of reckless peasants that Hidalgo had gathered. But Ianda never really got the chance to do anything. The core group of original leaders, among them, Father Idago, Ayende, and Aldama, decided to abandon their position in central Mexico and make their way to the far north.

If they could make it to the United States, they might find allies and guns and money. I mean, that's what they had been after before the cry of Dolores had prematurely set the revolution in motion. So they headed north, but they never got to the United States. A disgruntled rebel, I believe annoyed that he had been passed over for a promotion, decided to betray his former comrades. When the party reached the wells of Bahan in the state of Coheila, the traitor alerted the vice-regal authorities and all the rebel leaders were arrested. They were not even transported back to Mexico City for their trial. Instead, right there in Coelah, they were tried and found guilty of treason. Ayende and Aldama and most of the rest of the party were executed on June the 26th, 1811, and they were shot in the back to purposefully dishonor them. Father Idago, meanwhile, was defrocked, found guilty, and executed separately on July the 30th, 1811. The heads of the rebel leaders were then cut off and posted on the walls of Guantanajato as a warning to anybody contemplating anything like this ever again. Down in Mexico City, everyone could breathe a little bit easier.

The war for Mexican independence was now over. Except, ha ha, no it's not. That secretary of state, Ignacio Lopez-Reyon, had not been with the party heading north. He had instead stayed behind in the south with a force of about 3,500 men. When he heard that Idaugo and the others had been captured, he pointed this small army south, and between March and July 1811, he fought a a series of skirmishes and battles and defeated the viceregal forces almost every time he faced them. And then, down in south-central Mexico, Rayon opened a whole new front in the war.

The original rebellion had erupted from the Bahiao. The war would now be carried on in the south, in what is today the Mexican states of Borrelos and Guerrera, which of course weren't called that yet because the men who gave them those names are only just now emerging onto the scene. like right now. So let's meet Jose Maria Morelos and Vicente Guerrero. Jose Maria Morelos was born in 1765 in the Bahia, specifically in a city that was then called Valladolid, but which is today called Morelia, because, well, Jose Maria Morales was born there in 1765.

Though he was classified as Creoyo on his birth record, Morillos was probably a mestizo, and his family was of pretty modest means. His father was a carpenter, and Morellos himself started working as a mule tier before transitioning into being a tenant farmer. But he was pretty smart and apparently wanted to better himself, so in 1789, he went off to the local college, which just so happened to be the Collegio de San Nicolas Obispo, where Father Idago taught, and was about to become dean. Morellos graduated and was ordained as a priest, though like Idaulgo, he was a secular priest and not bound by any law of poverty. But also, like Idaogo, he was bound by a vow of chastity, which he ignored, engaging in several long-term relationships that produced a couple of children.

Morelos then spent the next decade and a half in mostly prosperous obscurity, but when he learned in October of 1810 that his old schoolmaster had launched a rebellion, Morelos was inspired to join. Now, it's clear he was steeped in the same enlightenment ideas as Edogo. Marelo was a straight-up Republican. He hated the racial caste system. He was an abolitionist. He advocated justice for the peasants and for the redistribution of land from rich to poor, especially believing in breaking up and parceling out church lands. After joining the rebellion in October of 1810, Marelos displayed an intuitive knack for soldiering in. He was a natural and charismatic leader. When all the original leaders of the revolution were executed in the summer of 1811,

Morelos moved south and gathered up a small army of loyal rebels. This small army, never more than five or six thousand men at any given time, would spend the next four years driving the vicerical forces out of South Central Mexico. Joining Morelos's force is the other guy we need to bring into this, and that's 31-year-old Vicente Correro. Born in 1782, about 100 miles inland from Acapulco, Guerrero was the son of a mestizo father and a mulatto mother. So Guerrero was a dark-skinned mix of all the ethnic groups of New Spain.

His father was a mouleteer, and Guerrero spent his youth working his father's mule trains, traveling all over the vice royalty and picking up new ideas and contacts wherever he went. For obvious reasons, he too wound up hating the caste system and believed that the entire vice regal apparatus was simply one giant exercise in tyranny. Now, Guerrero did not join Idaugos army, but when Morelos moved south and started recruiting, Guerrero was one of the first to join up, and he would soon prove to be one of the most reliable officers in Morelos's army, and as we will see in a moment, it will ultimately be Guerrero, not Morelos, who will be the one marching triumphantly into Mexico City at the end of the war.

With scattered armies of rebels now operating successfully in the south, Ignacio López Rion did his best to bring some kind of central coordination to the very uncoordinated campaigns being waged. So in August of 1811, Rayon invited Morelos and a few other prominent leaders to join what would be called the junta de Cittacaro, named after the city where they first met, and which I almost certainly just mispronounced. Morales agreed that a central rebel committee was a good idea, but he never actually met with the junta himself. He only ever sent a subordinate to represent him. This junta was pretty ineffective anyway, and during the duration of their existence, most commanders in the field most of the time, just sort of did whatever they wanted.

Morelos certainly did, but it was hard to argue with his success because over the next few years, he was uniformly successful. Morelos fought an endless series of skirmishes and battles and sieges and counter-seges that allowed the rebels to claim de facto political control over much of South Central Mexico. In November of 1812, Marilos captured Oaxaca City, which is a very big deal. And then in April of 1813, he delivered the even more dramatic blow. He captured the port of Acapulco. By the summer of 1813, there was a justifiable belief among the rebels that they were on their way to slowly but surely squeezing the vice royalty of New Spain right off the map.

Morelos' success led to the second big attempt to unify the rebellion. Under Morelos' auspices, delegates from various revolutionary factions gathered in Chopencingo in September of 1813 for a Congress that was called, you guessed it, the Congress of Chopencingo. This Congress was tasked with a dual mandate to declare independence and to draft a new constitution. To help guide their deliberations, Morelos presented them with what he dubbed the Sentiments of the Nation, a document that listed the Sentiments of the Nation, at least, according to Morales. It called for full and complete American independence, the supremacy of the Catholic Church and all things religious, popular sovereignty rather than the divine right of kings, the division of political power, regular democratic elections, the rule of law, and the end to all distinctions, privileges, and burdens wrapped up in the caste system. Having delivered these sentiments,

Morelos went back to war, and the Congress deliberated, finally producing in November of 1813, both the solemn declaration of independence of Northern America and a new constitution for that independent North America that was now, not necessarily for the first time, but certainly for the first official time, being called Mexico. But the solemn declaration and the new constitution were dead on arrival, because almost as soon as they were promulgated at the end of 1813, the tide started to turn against the rebellion and against Morrelos.

General Cayetia was promoted to Viceroy, and the point man for the counterinsurgency in the south became a Criojo career army officer named Augustine de Itterbide. Now at this point, Iterbide was already known as the Iron Dragon, and he had a reputation for being totally committed to the ruthless extermination of this rebellion, and also having the skill to exterminate it. Morelos, meanwhile, was trying to wage his own offensive campaigns, defend terror, that he had already liberated and protect this new civilian Congress. Morelos started to lose ground on all fronts through 1814 and 1815, and the Congress was bounced from city to city, never able to stay in one place for long. Then, in November of 1814, Morelos was leading his men in a minor skirmish to buy the civilian Congress time to get away once again when he was captured. The now-imprisoned Morelos was convicted of every civil and

religious crime known to man, and he was executed on December the 22nd, 1815. Up in Mexico City, Viceroy Cayet could breathe a deep sigh of relief. With this great and stubborn thorn Morelos now dead, surely the war for Mexican independence was finally over. But ha-ha, of course it's not. Morelos' most capable subordinate, Vicente Guerrero, took over as commander-in-chief of the rebel forces. But these forces dwindled by the day.

The victories of the Viceragal armies and the death of Morelos were major blows to rebel morale. The civilian Congress attempted to exert its central authority, but they were simply ignored by the remaining commanders in the field, and the Congress wound up simply disbanding, taking their solemn declaration of independence and their enlightened constitution with them into the dustbin of history. The line between rebel army and bandit gang was now getting blurred in. into irrelevance, and the difference between a guerrilla campaign and just robbing and pillaging ceased to have any real functional meaning.

Meanwhile, events back in Europe had taken what you might call a major turn. In 1815, remember, Napoleon has finally been defeated, and the Bourbon King, Ferdinand the seventh, the desired one, was finally returned to the Spanish throne. This watershed of peace and restoration in old Spain, coupled with the death of Brélos and the near disbanding of the rebellion in New Spain, really made it feel like the Spanish Empire was going to continue intact in perpetuity. To change with these new times, the restored monarchy appointed a new viceroy, this time a career naval officer named Juan Ruiz de Apodaca. He arrived in Mexico City in September of 1816, and he represented a real change in

strategy. Plenty of complaints had filtered back across the Atlantic that the harsh tactics, the scorched earth campaigning, the summary execution of prisoners, had prolonged the rebellion rather than hastened its demise. So Apodaca came in with a lighter touch. He offered amnesty to all rebels who laid down their arms. Those who remained under arms but were captured were not to just be summarily executed. Something resembling the rule of law was going to be restored. And after more than five years of fighting and the monarchy and vice regal structure now seemingly stronger than ever, almost everyone took the viceroy up on his clemency. By the end of 1817, only Vicente Guerrero and a small army of hardcore patriots

refused to come in from the cold, maintaining a small force of loyal rebels up in the mountains of what is called today, for reasons you could probably guess, the Mexican state of Guerrero. For three years, Guerrero and his men looked like the deadest part of a dead end. They were hopelessly isolated and fighting for a lost cause that had been lost years ago. I imagine them invoking more pity than fear. I mean, just like, it's over, you guys, go home. But they refused. And they kept refusing right through 1820.

When news came over from Spain, that changed everything overnight. News that turned Guerrero from pathetic deadender into a problem. prophetic legend, the last man brave enough and committed enough to have maintained the flame of liberty through a long and dark night. And what was this magically transformative event? Why? The Mutiny of Cadiz, of course. You will recall the Mutiny of Cadiz from Episode 5.17. This is when the restored Bourbon Monarchy was going to make a fresh play to restore complete control over the American part of the Spanish Empire, and they mustered tens of thousands of soldiers in the port of Cades for a major expedition across the Atlantic.

But instead of sailing for America, this expedition mutinied under the direction of liberal officers, who then ran a rebellion all the way back to Madrid that forced King Ferdinand to adopt the liberal constitution of 1812. As you'll recall from our episodes on South America, this mutiny meant no more reinforcements for the royalist forces in the Americas, and from that point on, Belivir and his gang were able to run the table. While up in New Spain, there's an additional twist, namely that conservative Crioia and even a lot of Peninsulari, who had been steadfastly opposed to independence, now abruptly changed their minds. They were afraid that the new liberal leadership in Spain would undermine the authority of the church, undermine their traditional

systems of power, and break up the largest states. So almost overnight, the conservative of leadership of New Spain. Army officers, high church officials, and major landowners, switched sides. Now, the man who embodied this switch more than anyone else is, of course, Augustine de Iterbide. Iterbide had spent 10 years of his life relentlessly fighting the rebellion. He had joined the army as a teenager and had actually fought in the very first battle at Monte de los Cruces. That's how long he has been fighting rebels. And Iterbide was also a the kind of conservative creoyo that high vice regal officials loved. He was devoutly religious. He believed in the caste system and the role of social hierarchy, and he was dedicated in his

defense of private property rights. He had risen steadily through the ranks, and as I said, was the principal opponent of Morelos from about 1813 to 1815. But though the vice regal officials tended to love him, he was still barred from rising too high in the ranks because Iterbide was a Crioio, and resentment over this blocked ambition, combined with resentment over getting temporarily booted from the army amidst charges of embezzlement and extortion after 1815, led Iterbide to develop a more independent spirit. But he still had plenty of friends in high places who got him his old job back in the army, and in 1820, with the very last remnants of Vicente Guerrero's guerrillas on the verge of a long overdue extinction, Viceroy Apodaca put Iter's

Bide in charge of what was meant to be the very last campaign of this now decade-long war. An interbide's campaign in 1820 would in fact be the final campaign, just not the way the viceroy thought. So as I just said, after news that the king had been forced to accept the liberal constitution of 1812, murmurs race through conservative household and through the officer's quarters of New Spain, and Iterbide realized he had a chance to have an all. He believed in nearly every part of the Vicerigal social and economic apparatus, and now that apparatus was threatened because a bunch of damn liberals had gotten a hold of the king back in Spain.

But the only bit itter bide did not agree with was the unjust treatment of Crioio like himself. So if he became the leader of a new independence movement, he could possibly maintain most of the existing social order by actually breaking with Spain. He found plenty of support inside the officer corps, and when he went out on campaign to, quote-unquote, confront Guerrero. Iturbide was almost certainly already in contact with the rebel leader about forming an alliance with the simple shared goal of independence from Spain. Now, what followed is one of those war and politics makes extremely strange bedfellows. You've got the dark-skinned, lower-class, die-hard rebel Guerrero, accepting an alliance with the white royalist, who had ordered the execution of many of Guerrero's friends and comrades.

But Iterbide offered Guerrero the army and political support necessary to carry out the project of independence, and Guerrero gave Iterbide the credibility he needed to tap the power of the people, not just a narrow slice of Crio-yo elite. So after secret correspondence that basically acted as feeling each other out, Iterbide and Guerrero met at the town of Iwalah, where they fashioned the very simple basis of their alliance. First, the Catholic Church would be supreme and inviolable. Second, the country would accept nothing less than absolute independence. And third, there would be social equality.

The formal caste system would be abolished. These became known as the three guarantees of the Plan de Iguala, which was then promulgated on February the 24th, 1821. The three guarantees offered something for everyone, and it was broad enough and light enough on details that everyone could see in it what they wanted. Then, on a more concrete level, the two leaders merged their armies, and Guerrero agreed to recognize Iterbide as Supreme Commander-in-Chief. There was now, for the first time, a real cross-class, cross-cast, revolutionary alliance,

with the so-called army of the three guarantees now united against the vice royalty, the end game of Mexican independence had arrived. Now, coincidentally enough, in July of 1821, a new Supreme Political Representative from Spain arrived to replace Viceroy Apodaca. Now, I'm not going to bother telling you this guy's name, but just know that because he was sent by a liberal government, they were dropping the rank of Viceroy, and instead he was simply dubbed the Hefe Politico of New Spain. He was there to make sure that New Spain stayed loyal to old Spain. But as soon as he showed up, it was obvious to him that the whole nation,

every peasant and landlord, black, white, indigenous, mestizo, all of them supported the army of the three guarantees, and all of them seemed to think that independence would be coming any day now. So this hefe politico concluded that whatever his orders were, that it would be fruitless, possibly even personally suicidal, to try to hold the country for Old Spain. So he immediately opened up negotiations with Iterbide to secure a peaceful settlement. And on August the 24th, 1821, not six weeks after this guy's arrival, the two leaders signed the Treaty of Cordoba, that recognized the basic framework of the plant Iwava and promised no resistance when the army of the three guarantees approached Mexico City.

And so it was that on September the 27th, 1821, 11 years and 11 days since the cry of Dolores, a victorious Patriot Army entered Mexico City. And the next day, the leaders of that army issued a new, and this time really enforceable, declaration of independence of the Empire of Mexico. Next week, we will pick up with the legacy of independence. It should come as no surprise that the Revolutionary Alliance was very quickly broken, and Vicente Guerrero went into revolt against Iterbide, who was by then styling himself Emperor Augustine I. Then we're going to barrel through the next 50 years of Mexican history, which was defined by a running struggle between conservative and liberal leaders, with constant rebellions and civil wars and secession movements cropping up everywhere, like the one, for example, in Texas. We will also deal with Mexico's increasingly subordinate dealings with major foreign powers

who were looking to dominate and divide the country. And throughout the 19th century, that meant France, of course, but also principally the United States. And we will end next week with the domestic triumph of a patriotic liberal general named Porfirio Diaz.