I should explain my writing process a little here. I have the story divided into arcs of sorts, with the first one ending with the Treaty of Madrid in 1815. Other than those, however, my chapters are essentially delineated by whatever subject matter I want to address in them. This can result in really lopsided chapter lengths, and before I knew it, this latest update swelled into the longest one yet - almost 3000 words including footnotes. Still, it is what it is. Today, the Spanish Revolution. After this, we'll be returning to the United States for an update. Enjoy, and feel free to comment. Especially in areas like this outside my usual wheelhouse, reader input can be a useful guide.
Chapter Twelve: Of Patriots and Tyrants
Excerpted from The Age of Revolutions by A.F. Stoddard, 2006
The wars for independence in Spanish America were a bitter and acrimonious struggle, to say the least. Although the hardline approach taken by King Ferdinand VII with his colonies deserves much of the blame for this, the conflict was also exacerbated by political, social and economic differences.
The examples of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte certainly loomed large, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that opportunists and adventurers like José Miguel Carrera wanted to emulate these two figures, and conquer their way to power. At the same time, Creole elites within the colonies were dissatisfied with the previous century’s economic reforms, which brought the Spanish Empire more in line with the mercantilist ideals of the British and French Empires. Colonial offices, which until then were commonly purchased by local Creoles, became appointed by the Crown instead, and Madrid-appointed intendencies increased overall tax revenue, albeit at the cost of central authority in each colony. These new arrangements were calculated to benefit Europe at the expense of America, so despite the common tendency to portray the republican revolutionaries as liberals, they were, in large part, fighting to preserve their traditional privileges. [1]
And it’s also important to remember that in times of war, radicals on opposing sides have a symbiotic relationship – if one side adopts a hardline stance, the other can claim vindication for their own position. As a result, the radical republicanism of Juan José Castelli and Simon Bolivar clashed with the firm absolutism of King Ferdinand, each hardening the resolve of the other. Unfortunately, this meant that even victory would not be enough for the royalists – their reprisals would only inspire lingering resentment that would blossom into more revolts in the future. [2] This deadlock could only be broken by the removal of one or the other belligerent, and in 1819, with the Spanish Revolution, that’s exactly what happened.
The Napoleonic Wars had put a heavy strain on the Spanish military, as it did for other combatant nations. Unlike other countries, however, the unrest in the New World required Spain to stay on a war footing for years after the Treaty of Madrid. The list of expeditions seemed endless: to Mexico, New Granada, and Argentina in 1813, to Buenos Aires again the following year, back to New Granada in 1815, and to Chile and Peru for several years after that. For the common soldier, service in the 1810’s entailed one trek after another through mountains and jungles, with no end in sight. Morale slumped, and as it turned out, the commanding officers were equally disillusioned.
The critical figure to the 1819 Revolution was José Palafox y Melci, a general from the Aragonese aristocracy. After commanding royalist forces in New Granada in 1813, Palafox eventually concluded that only a more diplomatic approach to the colonies could regain their trust. In this, he found a kindred spirit in Francisco Javier Calo, the beleaguered President of the Council of the Indies. As a Creole from Santo Domingo, Calo was especially sensitive to the political needs of the colonies, and as the 1810’s dragged on, he became increasingly convinced that Fernando’s intransigence was the main obstacle to peace.
Matters came to a head on July 9th, 1819, when a regiment in Seville, under orders to embark for South America, turned on its officers and imprisoned them. [3] More mutinies followed throughout southern Spain, as soldiers called for higher pay, an end to the American expeditions, and, among more radical units, the abdication of Ferdinand himself. But even at this critical juncture, Ferdinand seems to have only have half-recognized the precariousness of his position. He agreed to raise the army’s wages, but at the same time insisted that the Seville mutineers be punished. More importantly, he made no concessions on the question of the war in the Americas. With this crisis fully exposing the discontent and rot within the Spanish armed forces, Calo, Palafox, and other Spanish generals and notables agreed that the time had come to act.
Ten days after the initial mutiny, Calo offered the king a final lifeline, suggesting that the Cortes be convened to write a Constitution for Spain. This olive branch, however well-intentioned, proved a tactical blunder. For all his heavy-handedness, Ferdinand was, if anything, openly paranoid about the prospects of a republican revolution, and he interpreted Calo’s offer as the prelude to just such a coup. With the help of his conservative supporters, Ferdinand and his family fled Madrid less than a day ahead of Palafox’s soldiers.
This oversight was a hindrance to the coup plotters, who had hoped to coerce Ferdinand into abdicating his throne. Instead, he was able to escape to France, and from there denounced the revolutionary chaos in his country. Nevertheless, the king had ceded Madrid to his enemies. Instead of forming a republic, as the rebels in South America had, Palafox and his fellow generals instead declared a regency, accusing the king of abdicating his responsibility to govern. Calo, as the new Prime Minister, convened the Cortes to discuss plans for a Spanish Constitution to guide future monarchs.
In the meantime, the uprisings in the Spanish colonies still needed to be dealt with. Fortunately, apart from Rio de La Plata and Upper Peru, Spanish armies had the upper hand in most of the New World, despite low morale and fatigue. This gave the new government room to send out peace feelers to the rebel forces, promising both amnesty for recent events as well as a reorganization of the Spanish colonial system to be more responsive to the needs of the colonists.
The Ordinance of 1819, as it was known, was a comprehensive overhaul of the governing of the Spanish Empire. The single monarchy would be replaced by an intricate set of constituent kingdoms established in the American colonies. These kingdoms would all swear fealty to the throne in Madrid as before, but otherwise be given far more internal autonomy, to satisfy the local Creole elites.
As radical as this plan seemed, however, it had precedent in past proposals for reform of Spanish America. In particular, the plan owed a great deal to the Condé de Aranda, who had originally proposed such a reorganization in the wake of the American Revolution, hoping to stave off just such a spate of revolutionary activity. The Ordinance required several modifications from Aranda’s original proposal, however. The trade barriers against the British that the Condé had proposed were far too contentious in the wake of the Continental System. And with the royal family having escaped to France, Bourbon princes would be replaced with appointed viceroys in each of the American kingdoms, with the Spanish king retaining nominal suzerainty. [4]
One final difference was the scope of the plan. Aranda’s original vision only included three new kingdoms, one each in New Spain, New Granada, and Peru. Prime Minister Calo’s amended version had three additions, with kingdom status granted to Chile, Venezuela and Rio de la Plata as well. The latter was a necessary addition given the vehemence of their rebellion, but the first was a political ploy, calculated to drive a wedge between the universalist ambitions of the Buenos Aires clique and the more particularistic nationalism espoused by José Miguel Carrera. If all went according to plan, the Chileans would accept Madrid’s proposal, and leave the recalcitrant La Platans isolated.
To be sure, the Ordinance carried significant drawbacks, the obvious one being the ability of the American kingdoms to inexorably drift away from Madrid’s orbit. This was a price Palafox and the Spanish army was willing to pay, however. After years of fighting, it was imperative to draw down hostilities to preserve Spanish strength, and the proposed arrangements still offered more Spanish influence in the New World than they could expect in the event of a clean break.
The Ordinance received a mixed reception in the New World, with particularly complex results in South America. Things went smoothest in New Spain, where the revolutionary position was the weakest. The most prominent resistance leader was José Maria Morelos, a former member of the Martyrs of Guadalupe.
Morelos was wary of the Spanish peace offer, but replied that he would consider standing down on certain conditions. These included land reform, limits on church privileges, abolition of slavery, and that Francisco Castaños be replaced as Viceroy, as the executioner of Hidalgo had gained notoriety in New Spain as the face of oppression. The Spanish reply offered to appoint Morelos to the Viceroyalty himself, and give him leave to pursue reform agendas as he saw fit. The brazenness of this about-face was enough to sway Morelos, and on September 9th, 1819, he accepted the new appointment as Viceroy of the Kingdom of New Spain. [5]
In New Granada, the Ordinance caused a political split within the independence movement. One of the leading figures among the rebels was the Venezuelan Simon Bolivar, who dreamed of a Grand Columbian state that comprised both New Granada and Venezuela. More importantly, he wished for the new state to be an independent republic. For him, the 1819 Ordinance was an empty promise, designed to quiet calls for freedom by dividing rebels against themselves. As a result, he vehemently opposed accepting the offer from Madrid.
Unfortunately for Bolivar, he found himself in the minority. And as Bolivar’s comrades turned against him, the worst betrayal came from an unexpected source – a 27-year-old soldier named Francisco de Paula Santander. Santander castigated Bolivar for what he called “craven hypocrisy,” noting that the Venezuelan had willingly arranged a ceasefire with Spanish authorities ten years earlier. For him to treat with the Bourbons when it was convenient, only to turn away when the people of Spain were attempting to replace absolute monarchy with a constitutional order was a betrayal of principle. Santander accused Bolivar of opportunism and worse, Bonapartism.
Santander’s invective hit its mark. At his suggestion, Bolivar was incarcerated by his fellow revolutionaries, before eventually being turned over to royal authorities. The erstwhile revolutionary was never heard from again. New Granada and Venezuela would both accept new viceroys by the end of 1819. [6]
In Peru, the political situation was even more fraught. This colony was more conservative and devoted to the monarchy than its neighbors, and to them, the Palafox regency was simply Republicanism hiding behind a thin veneer. They replied that they would accept such an Ordinance only from a Bourbon king, and that their loyalty remained with Ferdinand and his descendants. In doing so, they joined Rio de la Plata as the only colonies to reject the Ordinance outright.
The situation in Chile was rather the inverse of that in New Granada, although this was not obvious to Madrid at the time. Carrera was the most visible face of rebellion here, and his calls for an independent Chile put him at odds with his co-belligerents in Buenos Aires. However, the lengthy stalemate along the Andes finally tipped in favor of the Spanish in August and September 1819, with La Platan forces retreating into Upper Peru, their strength finally spent. With this in mind, Carrera saw little to lose and much to gain in accepting the peace offered by the 1819 Ordinance. His two main stipulations were the departure of Spanish forces in Chile, and that he be appointed Viceroy. With these granted, the deal was struck, and Spanish forces began withdrawing from their last major operation in the Americas.
Carrera’s success was, however, soon revealed to be illusory. Although he believed he had swayed his fellow Chilean Creoles towards his own nationalist stance in his four years among them, this was not the case. A rival faction promoting universalist sentiments also existed, led by Bernardo O’Higgins and other members of the Lodge of Rational Knights, and backed by Buenos Aires. When Carrera and his brothers moved to take charge of the revolutionary movement in 1815, this faction had reluctantly acceded to Carrera’s agenda, but now that peace had been secured with Madrid, the Carrera family had outlived its usefulness. [7]
On the Ides of March 1820, the Lodge and its allies executed a successful coup against Carrera, killing the general along with his most prominent supporters. The new government rejected the Ordinance of 1819, and declared its intention to unite with Rio de la Plata. Two months later, the La Platan army marched into Santiago unopposed.
This reversal was an embarrassment to the government in Madrid, but there were more pressing concerns at home. Although Napoleon Bonaparte had granted sanctuary to Ferdinand and his family, the deposed monarch’s requests for a French army to restore him to power fell on deaf ears for the time being. This didn’t entirely alleviate the sense of insecurity in Spain, where regent Palafox remained ill at ease so long as the Bourbons plotted against him. And while the general had successfully defused most of the violence in Spanish America, external actors further complicated the situation. The Portuguese, previously deterred by threats of war from Ferdinand should they intercede in South America, now mobilized to invade Rio de la Plata. Palafox and Calo, having washed their hands of that part of the continent, raised no objection.
More galling was the situation in Florida. In the fall of 1819, the city of Pensacola was occupied by American forces under General Zebulon Pike. A former explorer, Pike had previously been captured by Spanish authorities on one of his expeditions into New Spain over a decade earlier. Pike’s captivity had taught him much about the fragility of Spanish rule in the New World, something he now sought to exploit. [8]
Because of this insight, Pike felt secure in his unauthorized actions against Madrid, confident that war weariness in Europe would hand him a victory through fait accompli. This confidence was borne out by the subsequent Adams-Cevallos Treaty, acknowledging American control over Florida. The American public had little time to savor this triumph, however, as a more pressing crisis loomed, one that would swiftly eclipse all other concerns.
[1] This is another theme I want to explore with this timeline. The French Revolution is seen as having succeeded, at least in a way, and although the geopolitical implications are limited beyond Europe, the political and cultural ones are enormous. That doesn’t mean that the world is so evenly divided between liberalism and conservatism, however, and that’s very apparent in Latin America ITTL. These revolutionaries are (generally) not psychopaths, but they’re no saints, either.
[2] And this is my best extrapolation of how things would proceed in the absence of Napoleon invading Spain. Without the Peninsular War wrecking the country, Fernando has significantly more strength he can bring to bear against rebels in the New World. That said, his military strength isn’t enough to resolve lingering political questions, and I see that as his real obstacle to long-term success. And because Fernando won’t bend, his kingdom will instead.
[3] This is actually pretty similar to the start of the OTL Trienio Liberal. Fun fact: Seville (unofficially) recorded the hottest ever temperature in Europe in 1881, of 50 degrees Celsius. Combine extreme heat with the tense political climate and low pay, and presto, soldier mutiny.
[4] This is my stab at taking Aranda’s OTL proposals from the 1780’s (which I admittedly only have limited second-hand information about) and tinkering them to fit the needs of the new liberal government. It’s important to keep in mind that Palafox sees himself as having a popular mandate to end the wars in America, so he’s willing to entertain really generous terms, even to the point of a glorified peace at any price deal.
[5] Fortunately for Palafox and Calos, their desperation for the best deal they can get means they can catch the rebels off-guard with their generosity. The contrast between their ideas and Fernando’s enhances their self-presentation as a genuine break from past policy.
[6] An ironic reversal of what Bolivar did to Francisco de Miranda IOTL.
[7] Here Carrera gets screwed over by butterflies. Because he spent a longer period in the army ITTL, he’s seen in Chile as something of a Johnny come lately to the rebel cause. He talks and fights his way to the top in part because of his military skill, in part because the Chileans were desperate enough to entertain a unified front, but less so because his ideas were seen as persuasive. And unfortunately, his ego blinded him to this reality until too late.
[8] In his journals, Pike mentions an encounter he had with a spy sent by the local governor, who posed (very poorly, in Pike’s estimation) as a discontented local, complaining that he and his were prisoners just as much as Pike and his men. The idea apparently being to suss out Pike’s intentions, and whether his expedition was sent to stir up unrest with bait. Whether or not this encounter was real, it at least indicates that Pike was aware of unrest in New Spain, as well as knowing that Spanish authorities were worried about it. And no, the Spanish haven’t heard the last of him yet.
