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COUNT OF LAS LAS CASES MEMORIAL
PRIZE’S
GENERAL LIST OF LAUREATES |
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FOREWORD
By Prof. Eduardo
Garzón-Sobrado
President-founder
of the Mexico-France
Napoleonic Institute
Founder and
General Director
of the Count
of Las Cases
Memorial Prize
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«
The peoples
that do not recognize
their true benefactors
aren’t worth
to be free, nor
shall ever be
» Simon
Bolívar |
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It
is a great honour for
us to present the following
paper, laureate essay
of our II Count
of Las Cases Memorial
Prize, in its
2nd edition 2007.
Unanimously congratulated
by the international
jury, this valuable
dissertation, The
Path to Liberty,
assumes of course a
particular interest
in what refers to its
literal content, but
also, doubtless, a very
special value while
being signalled at an
historic moment of great
importance for Mexico,
when the preparations
for the commemoration
of the bicentenary of
the beginning of our
country’s fight
for the Independence,
to be celebrated in
2010, have officially
begun.
In this unique context,
and facing the alas
inevitable advance of
officialised dismemory
which ineludibly approaches,
it appears to us being
of a particular necessity,
on one side, to seize
the occasion of the
conjuncture of these
celebrations to firmly
emphasize the powerful
influence that the Napoleonic
heritage, and through
it the beneficial ascendant
of generous France,
carried out upon the
men and the events which
at length consumed our
Independence in 1821,
and which gave rise
to our country as a
free and sovereign nation.
On the other side, and
principally, we need
to consolidate and vindicate
the glorious memory
and imperishable legacy
of H.I.H. Augustine
I, Emperor
and liberator of our
Fatherland, a goal that
our text – we
are convinced of it
– brilliantly
contributes to reach.
In effect, today when
our country passes through
moments of a strong
identity crisis, prey
to the continuous assaults
of foreign cultural
and social models that
question our essential
values and traditions,
it turns to be primordial
to clarify and diffuse
the history of our liberator
and first monarch, whose
memory has been clouded
and sullied through
so many decades of disinformation
and iniquities. In this
essential labour for
the recovering and the
revivification of this
fundamental part of
our national patrimony
and identity, historic
clarity, academic analysis,
but before all free
expression, are our
more solid basis in
favour of the vindication
of the Fatherland through
the just retribution
of a debt of honour
which we all Mexican
have towards the memory
of the Father and liberator
of our country.
As well, thanks to this
renewed union, and above
the sectary ideologies
and partisan divisions
that have only ripped
up our country during
two centuries, we will
be able to lay the foundations
for the reconciliation
of our people with its
most glorious past,
a heritage and a tradition
always alive and embodied
today in the illustrious
person of H.I.H.
Count Maximilian of
Götzen-Iturbide,
Imperial Prince of Mexico.
This being said, let
us give way to our author
not without evoking
previously, as truth
and justice demand it,
the last words that
the hero of Iguala expressed
in his memories: «
When you instruct
your children about
the history of the Fatherland,
inspire them love for
the chief of the Trigarant
Army (...) who
spent the best time
of his life for you
to be happy ».
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H.I.H.
Emperor
Augustine
I of Mexico
By the
Divine Providence,
Constitutional
Emperor
of Mexico |
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| Arms
of the First Empire of Mexico |
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“Similar
to this is the story of many minds of our time,
We believe that it's useful to follow, step by step,
all of their phases”.
Víctor Hugo.
From
a historical and sociological point of view, the
XIXth Century can be defined as the milestone which
marks the advent of the Modern Age. Great epics
and huge dreams had resounded on one side of the
world, and have reached the other one, through the
pen, the sword or the cannon.
New
ideas were born, which have forged new men.
Great men made their banner out of them, offering
their own peace and even their own lives themselves
so that they could turn these into palpable
deeds, which were if not perfect, at least
functional for present and future generations,
for their fellow citizens, and for foreign
peoples as well.
Liberty, source
from which the noblest principles spring out,
erects itself as the sovereign, and soon becomes
the standard seized by prodigal beings who,
in spite of the limits of their space, manage
to glimpse, in the twilight of an era, a great
new shaft of light.
This is neither
fortuitous nor against nature. Each epoch
is translated into a series of events finely
intertwined, in which each link precedes the
other: each step determines the following
step, and even, by a strange subversion (which,
in reality, isn’t one), every step forward
that is made in the name of the progress of
nations, as well as that of people’s
destiny permits us at the same time to justify
the steps that precede it, giving to the following
echelon the greatest importance. This is how
history is forged.
Men are the
children of their time; this is an irrefutable
truth. But frequently, those who believe in
this axiom have a tendency to forget another
truth, as important as the first and one that
is inseparable from it: there are men who
engender new times. It is to one of these
men that this essay is dedicated.
Conqueror,
restorer, reformer and creator, a singular
genius of word as well as of action: these
pages are dedicated to a great man and to
his influence, still palpably alive, in the
spirit of Europe and America.
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| H.I.H.
Emperor Augustine I of Mexico |
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On the Old Continent,
he raised the French nation from the ruins of the
Old Regime, and imprinted on it a splendour that,
in his era and even today, seems incredible to us.
But he was still more prodigal, as he dedicated
his life not only to the grandeur of his fatherland,
but also to that of the nations to which the latter
was tied, leaving there that grandeur and that noble
spirit that characterize the Europe that we know
today. Creator of institutions inspired by the Enlightenment,
as important as they were in the past, he obtained
victories quite beyond honour and the battlefield:
in the world of Arts, of Science and in the mentality
of many generations.
In America, in our
America, his voice found a fertile echo in the libertarian
epics of the peoples who, deprived during three
centuries of liberty of expression, had forged an
identity that, by its nature itself, implicated
autonomy and equality for all of those who were
born upon its soil. His image and his glory also
found a worthy reflection in the heart of those
great men (Iturbide, Bolivar, San Martin) who, for
the love and glory of their fatherland, challenged
the whole world, and undertook, with heroism, the
fight for Independence, vanquishing almost insurmountable
obstacles.
He stands, effectively,
among those few giants to whom we owe the modern
world as we know it. The evocation of his name alone
describes equally well his work as well as his person:
Emperor Napoleon I.
I would like to
dedicate this text to the tutelary genius of the
French nation, as well as to the Liberator of the
Mexican Nation: Don Augustine I of Iturbide.
I dedicate these
pages as well to the memory of Dr. Enrique («
Henri ») Sada Quiroga, decorated Mexican,
in 1947, with the Médaille de Bronze
de la Reconnaissance Française, who,
pouring doubtless his inspiration from the great
man of Austerlitz and pushed by the love of liberty,
joined the effort of many men of his time to break
the yoke of usurpation and tyranny which then ripped
off the heart and the greatness of the French people
during the German occupation. It is to him, as well,
that these words are addressed.
Torréon,
Coahuila-México, D.F.,
May 18th 2007,
20th anniversary
of the imperial proclamation of the throne of France;
185th anniversary of the imperial
proclamation of the throne of Mexico.
| THE
NAPOLEONIC ERA: EUROPE AT THE DAWN OF
THE XIXth CENTURY |
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“I want
your descendants to remember me
and say: he is the regenerator of our fatherland”
Napoleon.
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Napoleon
crossing the Alps
Painting by Jacques-Louis David.
First version of Versailles (detail). |
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The
last third of the XVIIIth Century and the first
decades of the XIXth saw the end of the Old Regime
and the transition to the modern age. The political
revolutions that took place during this period put
an end to absolutism and replaced it with new forms
of government founded upon equality before the
law, democracy and individual liberty. France
is the clearest example of the suppression of ancestral
models: it witnessed the crumbling of its out-of-date
feudal social institutions, and saw the violent
fall of its monarchy. The reasons were natural and
evident.
On the legal level,
French society was constituted as an absolute monarchy,
incarnated by a king « by divine right, »
and by a strongly centralized state that leaned
on the division in orders founded upon privileges
and social inequality. The only beneficiaries of
this structure were the nobility and the clergy,
both holders of exemptions. Along with these two
groups, there was a third one that was constituted
by burgers, craftsmen, peasants and other marginal
groups that comprised the great majority of the
population. It is through this heterogeneous ensemble
that taxes and other charges enabled the financial
support of the State.
But, around 1789,
this form of organization had become obsolete, and
the administrative and judiciary apparatus no longer
worked properly. For many people, a deep reform
was necessary, a reform the privileged states were
very little attracted to. The Enlightenment underlined
these contradictions; it criticized and denounced
them, though contributing to mine the social and
political basis of the Ancient Regime. The theories
of Montesquieu and Rousseau, founded upon separation
of powers, national sovereignty and equality
of all citizens before the law, contributed to that
particularly.
That is how the
14th of July, 1789 began in France as an uprising
that would constitute an example for the whole world:
the seizure of the Bastille would mark the beginning
of the French Revolution. A little after that, the
Bourbon banners would be replaced by the tricolour
flag which, taking the colours of the city of Paris
(blue, and red), and adding the royal white, would
embody from then on the guarantees that free people
would adopt as fundamental rights before «
despotism »: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
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| Before
and after: Napoleon on
the bridge of Arcole by Baron
Gros, and as Emperor of the French,
portrayed here on the imperial
Throne of France, by Jean-Baptiste
Ingres. |
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The French Revolution
was the first bourgeois political revolution of
the European continent. It permitted the establishment
of liberalism, and represented a decisive blow for
monarchical absolutism, in that it replaced by such
principles as national sovereignty, the distribution
of powers and the recognition of individual liberties.
It was the abuse of royal power, as well as the
tyranny of the decadent nobility that had caused
the insurrection. The latter would carry, however,
other reactions of a nature that was as contradictory
as disastrous. France went from an excess of power
to an excess of liberty, which degenerated very
soon into anarchy and death with the installation
of the Terror. There was no way out. Neither present
nor past could assure the future: the revolution
seemed destined to tyrannize and devour the common
people, as well as its own children.
Despite their errors
and failures, the very different governments that
had followed one another in power between 1789 and
1800 had contributed to something positive: the
integrity and the independence of the French Nation
had been preserved in spite of the assaults and
the menaces of the neighbouring European powers,
which saw in it a potential menace; the decadent
feudal system represented by the old regime had
been abolished and the best principles of the Enlightenment
were diffused in numerous places. Nevertheless,
the institutions that would permit the safeguarding
of the principles and the interests of the people
were still to be established.
The spirit of Liberty
that had just sprung from the Revolution scared
the various peoples as much as it did the sovereigns.
But fear ended when that spirit, which followed
the French battalions, was held by a man gifted
with military genius, a great natural political
talent and unequalled courage: Napoleon Bonaparte.
It is at Arcole where the epic of a new era begins.
It continues at a fast pace until the campaigns
of Egypt and returns to a France that expected impatiently
the return of the man who seemed to be the depository
of Glory and Triumph.
Once he was in power,
thanks to people’s support, Napoleon quickly
proceeds to the abolition of all arbitrary laws
and anti-social divisions. He closed the wounds,
rewarded merits as well as individual courage, and
kept ties with the best ideals of the Republic,
conducting Frenchmen to their national unification
for the grandeur and the prosperity of the Fatherland.
When he appeared on the political stage, «
he understood that he should represent to the eyes
of his compatriots, just as to those of the whole
world, the trustee of the best principles of the
Revolution and of the Enlightenment » (1).
The Napoleonic legacy
materialized on different levels: on the socio-political
and military level, it permitted the diffusion of
revolutionary forms, of civil liberties (consecrated
by the Civil Code in 1804) and the definitive annihilation
of feudal structures. This work was concretized
by the appearance of a series of moderate liberal
constitutions, such as the Bayonne Constitution,
the uprising of the bourgeoisie as a new dominant
class, before the nobility and the clergy, the introduction
of modern Rights and of innovations in the armies
and in military tactics. His most remarkable achievements
were concretized by the creation of a local administration
of centralized structure, a judiciary organization
in which the judges became functionaries and the
restructuring of the bureaucratic apparatus. The
corollary of this policy appears in the Civil Code,
which guaranteed individual liberty, equality
before the law, private property and economical
liberty.
The result is the
creation of a large empire in Europe directed by
France, organized and governed in person, or through
members of his family or military officers who had
his confidence, along with the collaboration of
the upper classes of the conquered countries, where
constitutions and codes similar to France’s
are promulgated.
Nationalism also
was reinforced. Contrarily to the personal ties
upon which loyalty to the feudal lord or submission
to the absolute monarch was founded, this new hierarchy
opened the way to a new way of relating within society:
that of the free citizen in the framework of the
Nation-State, which constituted a unity around common
elements such as language, culture and history,
and where territorial limits enclosed a State formed
by a community that was clearly different from others.
The French Revolution
reinforced this tendency as a way of exalting the
nation above absolutism. Napoleon encouraged nationalisms:
in Italy, he criticized the presence of the Austrians
and supported the creation of an autonomous realm
of Naples under the aegis of Murat. The promoters
of German unification invoked this kind of nationalism
which, some time later, would also be promoted and
adopted by the Latin-American nations, and more
particularly by the Mexican Empire at the moment
of the proclamation of its independence from Old
Spain.
There’s no
doubt that the Emperor contributed more than any
other man of his time to speeding the pace of Liberty
and of Equality, by preserving the moral influence
of the Revolution and attenuating the fears that
the latter could arouse. Without the Consulate and
without the Empire, the Revolution would have been
but a historic and significant tremor that would
have left a trace, but few concrete benefits. It
is thanks to the fact that Napoleon set himself
up solidly that the revolution could survive to
propagate its ideals throughout Europe and in America.
Such is the reason
why (in additions to the re-establishment of religious
worship) the transition from the Republic to the
Empire, far from producing uncertainty or distrust,
established peace and security, as it corresponded
to the needs and the wishes of the majorities. This
is how we observe that, like never before, such
momentous changes had been introduced with so little
effort.
In
Napoleon’s case, it had been necessary,
in order to palliate this absence of stability
and of national continuity, constantly menaced
by the interests of factions or by a return
to the past, to found a new hereditary order,
the power of which had to be founded upon
the democratic spirit. Therefore, it is not
surprising that such a man had so easily acquired
an immense ascendancy, and this is due to
two reasons: because he was necessary in the
consequent historical order, and because no
one could represent better than he did the
most positive principles of power, as well
as the best ideas of his time
(2).
The laws that
ruled the Empire, as well as the nations that
were under its protection, were built upon
the following principles: civil equality,
in accordance with democratic principles,
and a hierarchy in accordance with the principles
of order and stability.
The power of the family constituted then the
only hereditary dignity, no other post nor
trade was so designated during that period.
It was superiority of merit, courage and personal
virtue that prevailed, and as testimony we
have the creation of the Order of the
Legion of Honour; all occupations, without
any exception, were within reach for all citizens.
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instauration and the recognition
of a new nobility
founded upon personal courage,
merit and virtue
were the fruit of the Napoleonic
inspiration, adopted by Emperor
Augustine I and the Mexican Empire:
The Order of the Legion
of Honour and the Imperial
Order of our Lady of Guadalupe;
its motto: Religion, Independence,
Union. |
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If we analyse the
spirit of the laws that were created by the hand
of a single man, in an epoch when disagreements
were arranged more in terms of spirit of faction
than of justice, in a moment when the rest of the
world constituted a menace to the principles of
Liberty and of Equality, we notice that Napoleon
enacted the settlement of a pluralist system, precursor
of our contemporary democracies, founded upon effective
and permanent institutions, that represented the
best guarantee for the future generations.
The Napoleonic system
outside France consisted of convoking the ecclesiastic
powers, the magistracies, the provincial, municipal,
industrial, academic, and commercial administrations,
and even the military corps, in order that all the
classes which formed society felt represented (3).
Thus, Napoleonic
politics assured the primacy of common good over
individual interests and the ambitions of the factions,
placing the latter under a similar spirit, which
was to find very soon an echo in the mentalities
of the Latin-American peoples in their struggle
for Liberty.
| THE
DAWN OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE |
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“The glory
of Europe is extinguished for ever”
Edmund Burke.
To France’s height under the Napoleonic Empire
is opposed, in Europe, the dawn of the Spanish Empire,
a historic drama which will become the main cause
of the independence of Mexico and of the rest of
America. Some agree that this fall began during
the reign of Philip IV, who begins to suffer military
defeats, as well as a loss of influence in his own
territory, after the separation of the kingdom of
Portugal. Nevertheless, historians –including
the most recalcitrant– agree that the decadence
of the empire that, at other times, didn’t
witness the sunset, begins with the advent of a
new dynasty: the Bourbons.
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our first image, the last of the
Austrias, Charles II
“the bewitched”
(1665-1700),
in front of despotism without
luster (following protraits):
the Bourbons Charles
II (1665-1700), Charles
III (1716–1788),
Charles IV (1748-1819),
and Ferdinand VII
(1784-1833). |
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The death of Charles
II, « the Bewitched », puts an end to
the glorious chapter of the House of Spanish Habsburgs.
As a consequence of last minute changes, the succession
to the throne of the kingdom of Spain goes to the
duke of Anjou, who will be known later as Philip
V of Bourbon, grandson of Louis XIVth and first
monarch of this dynasty to rule the two worlds.
During the first half of the XVIIth Century, the
Spanish empire, its victories over the kingdom of
Naples aside, will remain in some sort of immobility
before its American colonies, where sciences, production
and arts begin to develop and shine in the eyes
of the rest of the world, clearly showing the birth
of what would later constitute its own identity
before that of the metropolitan Spaniard, an identity
that even the Creole, or American-born Spaniard,
will claim. Even if the privileges the Spaniards
benefited from (in opposition to the Creoles) were
already the reason for some trouble, the situation
worsens after the death of Ferdinand VI, first son
of Philip V, who has no heir, and the access to
the throne of his half-brother, Charles VII, king
of Naples, who from then on shall be king of Spain
and the Indies under the name of Charles III.
Subsequently,
the reforms erroneously called « Bourbon
» came from a Masonic origin, awkwardly
promoted by Charles III and his non-Spanish
ministers. These reforms limited, from a economic
and social point of view, the American colonies,
imposing on them productive restrictions and
overloads, in contrast to the natives of metropolitan
Spain. They were badly received and caused,
even though not all of them were applied,
the distrust and suspicion of the American
subjects, who saw in them some injustice.
However, this was but a prelude of what was
to come.
The attitude
of the king and of his ministers towards New
Spain and the other colonies, far from being
rectified, got even worse after the designation
of José de Galvez as Minister of the
Indies. Galvez showed, as visitor and as minister,
nothing but a deep ignorance concerning the
importance of the New World, and of New Spain
particularly, as the main support of the Spanish
Empire on both sides of the Atlantic. He also
showed a great disdain for its inhabitants.
It isn’t surprising that he had established
policies which blocked Creoles and Mestizos
from occupying important posts in the administration.
One of the
greatest offences of both Galvez and the Bourbons
was the expulsion of the Jesuits and the suppression
of the Company of Jesus in the rest of the
Empire. This measure provoked grave consequences,
as well as the discontent of the population,
which found itself deprived not only of moral
and spiritual support, but also of ninety
percent of the educators of New Spain. The
missions were abandoned and, along with them,
the civilizing progress that had already been
accomplished for the benefit of barbarian
Indians in the distant internal and eastern
provinces.
The edict
of the then viceroy Marques de Croix by which
the royal policies of Charles III were executed
not only afflicted the inhabitants of New
Spain, it also offended them: « From
now on, the subjects of the great monarch
who occupies the throne of Spain must know
that they were born to be silent and to
obey, and not to discuss nor give their
opinion about government issues »
(4).
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José
de Gálvez y Gallardo
(1720-1787)
Marquis of Sonora, minister
and henchman to Charles III, natural
enemy of the Spanish America. |
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Around the end of
the XVIIIth Century, the general situation in the
colonies was worrying. Many factors converged towards
a situation which was to prepare the field for the
war of independence. Three different observers,
particularly lucid ones, have left us their points
of view on this critical period. In 1783, the Count
of Aranda, Spain’s ambassador to France, wrote
to the king a secret report concerning the situation
of the colonies after the independence of the United
States. He had the impression that the political
apparatus was weakened and that a radical political
reform was urgent in order to avoid Spain's potential
loss of sovereignty over those territories. He also
anticipated that the United States would become
a menace to the Hispanic world, and more specifically
to Mexico.
In 1799, Monsignor
Abad y Queipo, bishop of Valladolid, sent to the
king a report concerning the situation of New Spain.
He underlined the huge economical inequalities and
assured that a social reform to benefit the poorest
was needed, or otherwise, hatred between castes
would go on growing. Finally, in 1806, Baron Alexander
von Humboldt finished gathering information in order
to create his monumental work, Political Essay
on the Kingdom of New Spain. Although it was
published fifteen years later, its diagnosis was
exact: Mexico was a country of great economic inequalities
and of great opportunities, but an economic reform
was needed in order that the majority of the people
might make the most of prosperity.
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| Noble
visionary favorable to the Spanish
America: Baron Alexander
von Humboldt (1769-1859)
and Count of Aranda (1719-1798). |
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The first report
was perceived as alarmist and wasn’t heeded.
The second one was, but, in the end, didn’t
attain anything concrete. As for Humboldt’s
book, it was published when Mexico was already virtually,
independent, and served only to attract the attention
of the powers to the country’s riches. In
total, the economic growth in the XVIIIth Century,
the unequal distribution of wealth and the lack
of political flexibility of the regime led Creoles
to dispute with metropolitan Spaniards the enjoyment
of the wealth of the vast territory of New Spain,
as David Brading demonstrates (5).
It’s in reaction to the Bourbon absolutism
that what was to be called Creole nationalism,
direct precursor of Mexican nationalism, grew up,
with an irrepressible force, in the whole of New
Spain. The characteristic of this nationalism was
a great fondness for the territory of New Spain
and for its inhabitants, mixed with a spirit of
intellectual and economic liberalism of an autonomous
nature.
Around 1788, the
collapse seems imminent. Charles IV accedes to the
throne, where he proves to be weak and even less
intelligent than his father, to the degree that
he allows an upstart, Manuel Godoy, his bodyguard
and lover of his wife, to hold power. During his
reign, the position of Spain before England, on
one side, and France, on the other, became less
advantageous. The result of these policies was inevitable:
he began a war against England and another against
France, both ruinous for the kingdom. Charles IV
had to cede to England the island of Trinidad and
suffered a defeat at Trafalgar, the 21st of October
1805, a battle during which Admiral Nelson destroyed
the Spanish and French fleets.
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| The
Bournonian decadence:
Manuel Godoy Álvarez
de Faría (1767-1851),
“Prince of
Peace”, main Minister
to Charles III and lover the latter’s
wife, queen Maria Luisa
of Parme
(1751-1819). |
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In the meanwhile,
the war between France and Portugal gave Napoleon
the occasion, which he didn’t expect, to establish
the best ideals of the French Revolution not only
in the Spanish metropolis, but also in its colonies
on the other side of the Atlantic. The influence
of Napoleon, who built a powerful empire upon the
debris of the French Revolution, as well as other
circumstances, discredited Charles IV and the Bourbon
dynasty. The news about the conjugal disputes of
the latter, as well as of Godoy’s and his
regime’s corruption, got to Mexico.
We have to emphasize
that, around 1810, New Spain had a population of
approximately six million inhabitants: a million
Creoles, forty thousand Spaniards, three and a half
million pure Indians, a million and a half Mestizo
and a few less blacks. The unrest of the indigenous
native population was then evident. There were three
causes for that: the former kings and emperors of
the House of Hapsburg in Spain, who had conquered
and brought civilization to the New World, had always
considered America, and Mexico in particular, as
a kingdom or a province of the Spanish metropolis.
The Bourbons, on the contrary, from 1699, with Philip
V, saw it as a colony and had treated it as so.
| INTERLUDE:
THE VOICE OF THE CHAPLAIN OF THE GOD
MARS |
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“Waterloo
had as sole effect that the
revolutionary work continues on the other side
”
Víctor Hugo.
To speak of Liberty
as the ideal cherished by the men of XIXth Century
Spanish America, or to speak about Independence
as the natural emanation of the Napoleonic spirit,
we have to evoke a precedent and mention a key character.
If there’s one man who can be considered as
Napoleon’s titular heir concerning the idea
of the independence of Mexico, and of Spanish America
and its needs, that man is Dominique de Pradt.
His interest in
the condition of the colonies, as well as their
potential future, was as sincere as it was constant
during his whole life. He didn’t even wait
until Europe got interested in the subject. From
1798, Pradt stated in his works that the colonies
were the children of the metropolis and that that’s
why, once grown up, they should be emancipated,
once they had attained their majority.
After the publication,
in 1802, of his book Les trois âges des
colonies où de leur état passé,
présent et à venir, this priest
of noble origin managed to influence Napoleon and
the mentality of his time. His deep analysis of
the condition of the Americas as independent nations,
as well as of the promising future that they offered
to France and to the world, crossed the frontiers
and the oceans. The Emperor felt a deep sympathy
for the priest’s liveliness, to the point
that he decided to make him his personal chaplain,
calling him « mon petit aumônier »,
my little chaplain; to which the priest
replied wryly, designating himself as the «
chaplain of the god Mars » (6).
 |
 |
 |
| The
chaplain of god Mars: abbé
Dominique de Pradt
(1759-1837),
preceding Francisco Primo Verdad
y Ramos (1760-1808), and et au
viceroy
José de Iturrigaray y Aróstegui
(1742-1815),
precursors of the Mexican Independence. |
|
One of the most
remarkable facts of the priest’s life had
been his participation in the negotiations of Bayonne.
Pradt himself tells in his Mémoires historiques
sur la révolution d’Espagne (1816)
how, while in Poitiers, he was surprised to receive
the order of the Emperor to follow him to Bayonne.
He affirms that his mission consisted of convincing
the Prince of the Asturias to abdicate in favour
of his father, and that he even suggested that Napoleon
name Ferdinand VII as Emperor of New Spain in order
to stimulate the independence of the colonies.
This depicts clearly
the reciprocal influence of the priest upon Napoleon,
and of the Napoleonic spirit on the work of the
first. We perceive also the influence of Montesquieu
on these two men. The author of L’Espirit
des lois has affirmed that the independence
of the colonies was written in the inevitable course
of events. The Indies and Spain « are
two powers governed by a single sovereign, but the
Indies are the essential, while Spain is the accessory.
It is in vain that politics will try to subordinate
the main to the secondary: it is not Spain that
attracts the Indies, it’s the Indies that
attract Spain » (7).
The reading of the
priest’s works by the most illustrated American
caudillos, as Iturbide, Bolivar, San Martin and
Pueyrredon, shows us the importance accorded by
the patriots to having an ally and a defender of
their cause in Europe itself. Thanks to the Napoleonic
spirit and Pradt’s ideological presence, our
liberators feel understood and legitimized before
the world.
A pre-eminent idea
that we find in his works is faith in institutions,
and the importance of institutions for man to act
and develop for the best. For Pradt, it is evident
that Spain has not at its disposal any means to
retain its American colonies, as it has become a
mother who « exterminates at the same time
in this fight... her children of America for those
of Europe... in one identical act of suicide and
of parricide » (8).
 |
|
 |
| Pradt’s
avid readers, admirers of Napoleon
and liberator fellows:
Simon Bolivar et
Augustine of Iturbide in
1821. |
|
|
Once the Independence
of the new countries was acquired, what worried
Pradt, as well as Napoleon, was American’s
incapacity to govern itself, which could degenerate
into anarchy, or into a new slavery as ignominious
as that of the colonies, if they didn’t appeal
to European experience and institutions: «
Some of them will want a monarchy, the others a
republic, others even absolute chiefs: what a multiplicity
of things, what a confusion, how much blood and
disgrace before a well-cemented arrangement manages
to sort out all these difficulties... an excess
of oppression is followed, quite frequently, perhaps
always, by an excess of liberty, and the despotism
of a single man is followed by that of many, which
is the worst of all despotisms » (9).
It is undeniable
that the influence that the French priest, as Napoleon’s
counsellor, had in America, made him a visionary,
a precursor and the « prophet » of emancipation
for many illustrious Americans. We see that Bolivar
established a friendly correspondence with him;
Chile, Rio de la Plata, Greater Colombia and other
countries considered him a defender of their cause
in Europe, and a man who possessed « the sacred
fire » so much praised by the Emperor.
We can, however,
assert that it was in Mexico, in the former Vice-kingdom
of New Spain, where the typical objectives of the
Napoleonic spirit and, consequently, of “Pradtian”
thinking, were crystallized. As Fray Servando Teresa
Mier used to say: « In August 1821, the viceroy
O’Donoju and Augustine of Iturbide signed
the Cordoba Treaties. This new document, as the
preamble states, wanted to unfasten, without breaking,
the ties that had been established between Spain
and America. It recognized absolute independence.
The government would be monarchical, moderate and
constitutional, and Ferdinand would be approached
to occupy the throne. Pradt obtained thereby a triumph”.
(10).
“Ferdinand,
with all of his fury, will try to keep his sceptre,
but one of these mornings, it will slip from his
hands as an eel”.
Napoleon.
 |
The
Mexican Empire
Arms and allegoric motives |
|
The Epic that will
begin with the Mexican independence process was
the reflection of all the conflicts and underlying
projects that subsisted in the Old World, essentially,
the fight between liberalism and absolutism. It
is evident that the heritage of the French Emperor,
the ideas of Montesquieu and the ideologists of
the Enlightenment penetrated the vice-royalty through
the news and the books that were well-received by
the Creoles and by the Mestizos. However, we will
notice that the anti-religious way of thinking of
the French Revolution was in no way admitted by
the Spanish-American caudillos of independence,
who adopted only the political ideas. We may add
that what precedes the fact of the contribution
of the Christian-Catholic and Spanish tradition
in the fundamental ideas for the formation of political
criteria, such as essential equality among human
beings, is the belief that each person is free and
that his life isn’t fatally predetermined,
among many others.
However, the dangers
that threatened the Mexican people in its noble
interests, by far more moral than material, also
frightened the Church. That’s the reason why
the thinkers clearly saw that the separation from
Spain was the only way to get rid of them, as the
Metropolis was, from the beginning of the XIXth
Century, in such a state of decrepitude; a decay
that was completely evident in the scandals and
the abuses of the royal Spanish family, along with
those of Godoy, and which occurred at the same time
as the corruption and disrepute of the royal government
in Spain itself, before the eyes of the world.
Precisely because
the important priests used to participate in the
juntas where the emancipation projects were discussed,
they collided with an obstacle of a moral nature:
rebellion against the legitimate authority of the
kings of Spain, an uprising which they believed
to be necessary to reach the only kind of effective
independence. This situation was expressed in the
principle that the king, in view of his quality
of Christian prince, “can force his infidel
subjects into the observance of the natural law”
(11). Happily, this point
was resolved by itself in the course of events,
just at the moment and by the means that were the
least expected: simply because the crown of Spain
had ceased to exist.
The Spanish monarchical
decomposition is reaching its climax and the nationalist
hopes are put upon the Prince of Asturias. In October
1807, Charles IV discovers the elements of a plot
and orders the arrest of his son. Ferdinand, accused
of projecting the death of his father and of having
asked for Napoleon’s help, giving new proof
of the baseness which his reign will confirm, denounced
all of his companions in the conspiracy: his dead
spouse included. The king forgives his son, and
in the midst of a farce -like judgement, all of
those charged are acquitted.
 |
| “Religión,
Yndependencia y Unión”:
the Three Guarantees of the Plan
of Iguala, which represent
the Mexican nationality, fraternized
in essence with the Napoleonic
France in 1821. From left to right:
Pavilion of the Three Guarantees;
Imperial Eagle of Mexico; Arms
of the First Empire of Mexico;
Imperial Eagle of France. |
|
|
Murat is at the
doors of Madrid and Ferdinand believes that he brings
him the crown, but fearing that his father would
speak to Napoleon before he does, he beats him to
it and arrives in Bayonne, where, once the whole
royal family is gathered, including Godoy, one of
the most shameful displays in history would occur:
in the middle of an exchange of insults and accusations
between the father, the mother and the son, they
all demand that Napoleon be their arbiter, in order
to sort out their differences. Charles abdicates
before Napoleon on May the 5th, handing over to
him the Spanish kingdoms and his properties in exchange
for the Compiègne palace, the castle of Chambord
and an annuity that he wouldn’t receive. Next
day, Ferdinand abdicated in favour of Charles IV,
not aware of the earlier abdication of the latter.
In some vile notes,
the prince of Asturias congratulates Napoleon for
his repeated victories in Spain, while signing the
document as “the humblest subject
of His Imperial and Royal Majesty, whose august
brow Providence crowns”. He asks Napoleon
for the hand of one of his nieces, the first born
of Joseph Bonaparte « in order to remove
from a blind and furious people the pretext of continuing
to drench the Fatherland with blood ».
If after that, the Spaniards who supported the Napoleonic
intervention in the Iberian peninsula were disqualified
with the nickname of « afrancesado »,
we can easily speak of Ferdinand VII himself as
the first afrancesado in Spain, particularly if
we consider strictly the facts and the various statements
that he made during his stay at Valençay.
If feeling “respectful”, “in
love with Napoleon” and “proud
of being under his protection” are words
that can be considered as pertaining to someone
who sides with a pro-French liberal political tendency,
it is evident that the first afrancesado
was the prince of Asturias and the future king of
Spain himself, who sent these words and many others
to the Emperor up until 1813. (12)
The
Emperor, although surprised and infuriated,
knew already the low moral value of the father,
as well as of the son, when the two Bourbons,
in the vilest manner, put the crown of Spain
at his feet. In order to justify himself,
Ferdinand signed the 12th of May of that same
year a decree in which the following words
were to be found: “Absolving the
Spaniards of their obligations in this matter
(the fact of being subjects to his person)
and exhorting them to remain calm, expecting
their happiness from the wise dispositions
of the Emperor Napoleon”. (13)
Analyzing
what we just saw, the king freed all of his
subjects from the oath of submission that
was due to him, and exhorted them only, without
commanding it, to submit to Napoleon. Thus,
Ferdinand VII, with this attitude, by the
fact of abandoning his throne and even through
his own words, left his people in full liberty
to choose for themselves their form of government
and their leaders. In these conditions, the
Government Junta that the Emperor
set up as unique, and that was in such condition
authorized by Charles IV and by Ferdinand
VII, together with the Castille Council, the
Municipal Council of Madrid, and even the
former Holy Inquisition itself, considered
as valid the abdication of the Bourbons from
the Spanish throne.
Authority
was recognized in the person of Joseph I Bonaparte,
Napoleon’s brother, but a swarm of regional
juntas stood against him, groups
which called themselves “governmental”,
and which claimed to rule over Spain and America
at the same time, disputing the authority
among them, and without ever reaching a common
agreement. From this situation, one could
very easily infer that the same power that
the different kingdoms of Spain had in order
to establish their juntas, the New World had
to formulate its own. The so called “Junta
Central”, located in Seville, upon a
basis that was both weak and questionable,
was formed in September 1808, and was not
in a position to demand any submission from
the Americas, as no overseas kingdom ever
participated, nor was in any way represented
in it. Napoleon and Murat, when forming their
Cortes (Courts) and the Constitution
of Bayonne, still had had the deference and
the delicacy to appeal to two Americans as
representatives of the overseas kingdoms,
an aspect that wasn’t even considered
in that of Aranjuez. And all this, as one
might expect, was known in Mexico.
|
 |
| A
regenerating option: Joseph
I (1768-1844),
king of Spain and the Indies
in 1808. |
|
|
The juntista
movement of the metropolis would have an echo in
Mexico. After the events in Spain were known, the
viceroy Iturrigaray and the public figure Primo
Verdad began the debate with the auditors and the
members of the Consulate in Mexico. Francisco Primo
Verdad, a very cultivated lawyer, Mexican-born and
trustee of the metropolitan municipal Council, exposed
in his famous discourse that the faculty to form
an autonomous Junta was based upon the
fact that, as the peninsular government had disappeared,
the people, as source of sovereignty, should assume
it once again in order to place it in a provisional
government, which would fill the void caused by
the absence, as well as the voluntary and apparently
perpetual dethronement of the kings of Spain. He
based his thesis as well upon the « Ley de
partidas » which foresaw the potential absence
of a king.
In spite of the
foregoing, the Spaniard auditors refused what they
judged to be contrary to their interests, and stated
it clearly in a phrase so offensive to the honour
of any American-born man, which summarized so well
the worst that they had felt since that old Bourbon
formula that stated “callar y obedecer”
– to shut up and to obey –,
now on the lips of the auditor Aguirre: “If
Spain falls and nothing but a cat should remain,
all Americans should submit to it”
(14). The sentiment of those wrongs
had attained its summit: the American, and particularly
the Mexican, felt not only that the king of Spain
commanded him, but further that each Spaniard considered
him as a vassal and a slave.
| ULTERIOR
PROJECTS:
|
| THE
INSURRECTION MOVEMENT AND THE NAPOLEONIC
CONFEDERATION |
|
“Well, I’ll
go to Mexico: there, I will find Patriots,
and shall put myself at their head to found a new
Empire”.
Napoleon.
In Bayonne, while
Napoleon was occupied in deliberating how inconvenient
the presence of the Bourbon monarchs was, he began
to direct his views towards the New World.
The Emperor considered
that one of the great glories of France had consisted
in providing indispensable help and recognition
in order that a confederation of English colonies,
the United States, could obtain their independence
from Great Britain. Consequently, the path to follow
was very clear: he would also be a new and great
artisan on the other side of the world. He would
enact for the Spanish colonies the same advantages
that Louis XVI had enacted in favour of the Anglo-American
colonies. In order to realize this project, from
1809 on he sent frigates with French agents to the
major capitals of America, so that they could, by
establishing contacts and relations, communicate
to the patriots in each region that he wanted to
free them from the Bourbon despotism and decadence,
and with such a goal he was willing to offer them
troops, material and his moral support for them
to manage to reconquer their independence. The agents
of Napoleon announced a “great progress in
Mexico”, chief among them, general d’Almivart,
who had an interview with no one less than with
friar Miguel Hidalgo, at “la petite France”,
name by which his house in the village of Dolores
was known in 1809. (15)
 |
|
 |
| “Great
progress in Mexico”: the
priest of Dolores, Don Miguel Hidalgo:
contact of General Gaëtan Souchet
D’Almivart, Napoleon’s agent
in 1809. To
the right, the standard of the Virgin
of Guadalupe which the priest
Hidalgo took at Atotonilco, adopting it
as the banner to the insurgent movement. |
|
It was when the
Emperor seemed to have absolute control over Spain,
and that only the so-called Junta of Cadiz defied
the established order, that he announced his support
to the cause of independence: “If the
peoples of Mexico and Peru wish to remain united
to the fatherland or to elevate themselves to the
heights of noble independence, France will not oppose
their will as long as they do not establish relations
with England” (16).
This is how he reaffirmed it in his message of December
the 12th 1809: “It’s in the necessary
order of events, it’s in justice, it’s
in the well understood interest of the powers”
(17). The impact of this declaration
was to be felt in Mexico as well as in the rest
of America shortly before 1810. The proof of this
is the explosion, not at all accidental, of all
the revolutions which aimed at independence.
Just as the autonomous
conspirators and afrancesados of Mexico, Allende
and Hidalgo believed that “all the grandeur
of Spain was inclined, or even better, decided by
Bonaparte” and that the peninsula was lost;
that the authorities were accustomed to the days
of Manuel Godoy, and that consequently they couldn’t
be trusted (18). This isn’t
totally unreasonable, if we consider that even in
the peninsula great characters like Felix Amat,
distinguished bishop and confessor to Charles IV,
himself theologically justified his siding with
Napoleon and Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain by
signalling that the hand of God had decided the
fate of the throne, and that the fact of accepting
Joseph I would “presently prevent Spain
from suffering the horrors of the civil wars, the
bonfires, the ravages and the casualties that it
suffered during the introduction of this dynasty
”(the Bourbon one). (19)
From that moment
on, the independence of the colonies became a strategic
objective to Napoleon. In spite of the failure in
the Iberian Peninsula and the disaster of the Russian
campaign, Spanish America, and Mexico in particular,
remained a priority, as he was fully convinced that
its independence, which was inevitable, would be
“the most important event of the century,”
and that this same event in itself “would
change forever the world’s politics”.
 |
| General
Baron Charles Lallemand (1774-1839):
Promoter of the Confédération
Napoléonienne in Mexico. |
|
|
Contrary
to the Machiavellian politics carried out
by England and the United States towards
Spanish-American Independence, Napoleon
maintained quite invariably his support
for the cause of Liberty. His abdication
of the throne of France in 1814, and his
definitive defeat at Waterloo in 1815 left
the insurgents without their main support
and promoter. Even vanquished and exiled,
Napoleon had not forgotten his great American
dream as, in Elba as much as at Saint-Helena,
he avowed occasionally to many persons that
he had still a “great project for
Mexico.” Concerning this option, the
Emperor had expressed that if ever he got
to Mexico, he would put himself at the head
of the patriots in order to found a new
empire.
When Don
Luís de Onís, Spain’s
Ambassador to the United States, learned
that the Emperor had been confined on Saint-Helena
under the custody of the English government,
he received this news with great relief:
he believed that the great man deposed and
exiled would never intervene again with
his influence in favour of the independence
of the Spanish colonies. Time would demonstrate
to him the exact contrary. In August of
1815 already, the Spaniard diplomat discovered
that the Bonapartist general Humbert had
allied himself with José Álvarez
de Toledo and with Jean Laffite to invade
the province of Texas. The plot combined
a counter-offensive that, along with the
insurgent forces of friar José María
Morelos, would beat the regular Spanish
forces. One had to add to that another major
event: Joseph Bonaparte, Joseph I, briefly
King of Spain and the Indies, had disembarked
in New York to establish his residence there,
as well as that of those of the Imperial
family on American soil. All this, added
to the constant rumours that “some
marshals of Napoleon would come to put themselves
at the head of the conquest of Mexico”
would be for Onís the prelude to
a long nightmare. (20)
|
Lord Holland, another
of the fervent partisans of the independence of
Spanish America, and among the most exalted English
Bonapartists, considered that the politics of direct
non-intervention from the English government was
anti-liberal and contrary to England as much as
to the free world, a reason for which he tried,
along with Lord Cochrane, to correct it in Parliament.
From then on, Holland had taken under his protection
one Francisco Xavier Mina, a young Spanish guerrillero.
Mina’s revolutionary credentials were impeccable:
he had fought against the French forces in the Spanish
peninsula and was imprisoned in France until Napoleon’s
first abdication. A while after his return to Spain,
Mina realized that Ferdinand VII was a much more
despotic and weak ruler than Joseph Bonaparte. Hunted
for his liberal ideas, he ran away to France. According
to the Emperor himself, in March 1815, “Many
Spaniards who had most resolutely opposed my invasion,
who had acquired fame in the resistance, called
me immediately: they had fought me, they said, as
a tyrant; and now they were coming to implore me
to be their liberator”. Among them he
identified Mina as one of those who solicited his
support in order to dethrone Ferdinand VII. (21)
In those moments
Joseph and his generals were analysing many options
to make a palpable reality from the American dream
of Napoleon. Mina met Joseph Bonaparte in Philadelphia
and received his economic and military support for
his expedition. When leaving for Galveston, Mina
took with him two of the closest followers of the
former Joseph I: Noboa, as an agent for negotiations
with the Mexican insurgents, and Jean Arago, a veteran
of the Napoleonic army. The papers in the United
States made public Mina’s project to enact
the independence of the Kingdom of Mexico, the primary
reason why ambassador Onís put them under
surveillance.
 |
|
 |
Bonapartist
and fellows of arms:
the legendaryAdmiral
Lord Thomas Cochrane
Count of Dundonald (1775-1860)
and
the navarrian guerillero Francisco
Xavier Mina (1789-1817)
conceived the project, along
with Joseph Bonaparte,
of the liberation of Napoleon
and the offering of the throne
of an independent Mexico as
part of the Project of the Confédération
Napoléonienne, among
1815 and 1820. |
|
|
In 1817, Napoleon
had received a secret communication from his brother
Joseph, who informed him that the Mexican insurgent
had offered him the Crown of Mexico. This news enlivened
the Emperor’s mood in his exile, but that
which he would receive some months later encouraged
him far more. According to Montholon, the Mexican
patriots extended the same offer directly to Napoleon,
as “they had foreseen all the obstacles that
resulted from the Emperor’s captivity, and
hadn’t forgotten anything in order to ensure
the success of their plan.” (22)
About the end of
the month of August, Hyde de Neuville, ambassador
of Louis XVIII in the United States, intercepted
correspondence that implicated Joseph Bonaparte
in a vast conspiracy which aimed to create the feared
Confédération Napoléonienne
from the West of the Mississippi. The plan was the
same: to put Joseph on the throne of Mexico. Fearing
that it could be too late, the diplomat expressed
his frustration: “I can try to frustrate the
Napoleonic intrigues in the New World, but those
related to Saint-Helena can only be stopped in Europe…
They say that Napoleon is behaving, but that he
refuses to see anyone… With a naval officer,
nothing would prevent him from finding himself in
a latitude agreed upon in advance with a friendly
vessel proceeding from America… Where will
we go if this prodigious man gets to an already-conquered
Mexico?”. (23)
 |
| Lord
Holland (1773–1840),
by François-Xavier
Fabre (1795) |
Was
a British politician, nephew of
Charles James Fox, and member
of the Whig opposition party from
1797. Opposed to England’s
belligerent and purely mercantile
politics, he worked for Catholic
Emancipation and was a partisan
of a politics of conciliation
with Napoleonic France, subscribing
to Byron’s view that the
restoration of the Bourbons represented
« the triumph of tameness
over talent ». The
3 of august 1822, he addressed
to the Parliament the following
words, evoking the Emperor’s
death: « The very persons
who detested this great man have
acknowledged that for ten centuries
there had not appeared upon earth
a more extraordinary character.
All Europe has worn mourning for
the hero; and those who have contributed
to that great sacrifice, are devoted
to the execrations of the present
generation, as well as to those
of posterity ». |
|
|
Consequently,
Luís de Onís advised the vice-regal
authorities, both in Mexico and in Cuba,
warning them in due time about the menace
that was posed for their interests by this
expedition of almost a thousand men, commanded
by the most famous generals of Napoleon,
who were ready to invade the kingdom of
Mexico with the support of Joseph Bonaparte,
who expected to be proclaimed.
(24)
Mina’s
intervention in his campaign to freed Mexico
and his attitude had produced questions
among academic historiographers as he had
himself expressed that “I don’t
love Mexicans, neither a little, nor much.”
(25) This phrase makes
more sense almost two centuries later: Mina
was fighting to achieve the independence
of Mexico more because of ideological reasons,
his loyalty towards Napoleon and the great
project of Joseph Bonaparte’s Confédération
Napoleonienne, which he shared with
Lord Holland and Lord Cochrane in England.
We can’t
be surprised that men working with Mina,
as were Juan Davis Bradburn, James Wilkinson,
and Morelos’ people, such as José
Manuel Herrera, were to be found among the
most faithful partisans of Iturbide, men
who had his confidence even after his abdication.
Bradburn would be the link to rapprochement
between Iturbide and Guerrero, and in the
end would become the counsellor and first
aide-de-camp of the Emperor of Mexico. Wilkinson
was to be the Counsellor of Affairs, and
of Colonisation, proposing a project in
which the Province of Coahuila-Texas would
be populated in order to protect it from
the United States’ incursions, and
called “Provincia de Yturbide”
(26). Don José
Manuel Herrera, editor of the Constitution
of Apatzingán and a link between
Morelos and Joseph Bonaparte, would be the
Minister of Foreign Relations of the Empire.
He was a partisan of Iturbide until his
death, who warned the Libertador («
Liberator ») in time about the expansionist
ambitions of the United States, which, through
Poinsett, conditioned the recognition of
Mexico and of Iturbide as emperor, in exchange
for the sale or the cession of the provinces
of Texas, New Mexico and California. Lord
Cochrane, in that which concerned him, had
the personal charge, given by Iturbide,
of liberating San Juan de Ulúa, ultimate
Spanish stronghold on Mexican soil. But
the death of the Libertador kept
this project from realization. (27)
Mina’s
expedition failed because of his own lack
of foresight, as did the Bonapartist expedition
of José Álvarez de Toledo
and that of Mariano Renovales. The difference
in the failure with these two was very simple:
Toledo and Renovales were infiltrating agents
of the Spanish government. They had previously
betrayed Joseph Bonaparte, just as his companions
did, for money, and in exchange for the
forgiveness of the Spanish Bourbons through
Luis de Onís himself, and Hyde de
Neuville. (28)
|
Once again, at the
end of 1818, a new expedition commanded by the same
Mina was getting prepared in Galveston, after a
request by general Lallemand from the position he
occupied in the Champ d’Asile, on the border
of the province of Texas. From there, they planned
to disembark in Tampico, following the same route
as that of their companion, Francisco Xavier Mina.
Onís wasn’t remiss in sending diplomatic
dispatches, convinced as he was that the true author
of all this was none other than Napoleon himself,
and he wasn’t wrong. From Saint-Helena, sometimes
through ciphered messages that were published in
journals like the Anti-Gallican in London,
some others by means of dispatches sent via emissaries
or administrators who approached the island (among
whom the English were abundant), the Emperor maintained
a network of communications which rendered him able
to emit messages as well as to receive them, along
with news from various places in the world.
In 1819, many London
newspapers announced that the forces of General
Lallemand in Mexico would be joined by those of
the legendary and liberal Lord Cochrane, the Admiral
who not long after that would also consolidate the
independence of South America with his liberating
campaign on the sea. It was openly said that the
Mexican insurgent had signed a unity pact with the
Napoleonic forces of the Champ d’Asile and
was looking forward to offering the Crown of Mexico
to Joseph Bonaparte. (29)
In 1820, Napoleon
was already losing his hopes of his great project
in Mexico, and thus contented himself by simply
reading Pradt. The plans of his brother and of general
Lallemand had been frustrated once again, after
the intervention of the Spanish ambassador to the
United States. Through the signature of the Adams-Onís
Treaty, Spain undertook to sell Florida to the United
States, and thus became an ally to this country,
in order to forestall this republic's support of
the insurgents.
“Bonaparte
in Europe, and Iturbide in America,
are the two most prodigious men,
each one in his way, that modern history presents”.
Simon Bolivar.
 |
The
Empire of Mexico during
the reign of Emperor Augustine I
After the crumbling of the empire,
the country, divided into factions and
antagonistic parties, sank into a chaos
from which it would arise no more. Neglected
and badly taken advantage of, the immense
territory of the empire would be drastically
modified after the United States’
invasions of 1836 and 1846-1847, when
Mexico, aggressed in its borders and ripped
in its bosom by party interests and intestine
wars, was sold out, humiliated and amputated
forevermore. |
|
At the end of the
year 1820, contrary to South America, the cause
of Mexican independence seemed completely lost on
both sides of the sea. Napoleon had already given
up his projects on the one hand, due to the fragile
condition of his health, and on the other hand because
he expected that with his approaching death, his
son, le petit Napoléon, would occupy
the throne of France. In Mexico, most of the insurgents
had resigned themselves to the vice-regal pardon,
and thus the country was pacified. But then, a series
of unexpected events will take place; a military
insurrection in Spain forces Ferdinand VII to re-establish
the Constitution of Cadiz, but this time with a
radical liberal content. The news was received in
Mexico with conflicting sentiments. The Spaniard
businessmen from Veracruz and the Freemasons supported
it, but the population in general looked with a
suspicious eye on the constitution, because of its
radical anti-clericalism, as well as because of
its markedly radical social and racial inequality.
In spite of the
apparent weariness of the country, despite the humane
and political conduct of the viceroy de Apodaca,
the idea of independence had spread even more widely.
In the popular mind, it was an instinct; for cultivated
men, it was already a right, and therefore, they
judged that supporting the nationality of their
fatherland was a duty. That is how, in the church
of La Profesa, in the capital of the vice-regal
state, a plan was forged with the objective of making
Mexico an independent kingdom by maintaining it
under a form of monarchy loyal to Ferdinand VII.
A military man of great prestige was needed to direct
the movement, and one man came to everyone’s
mind: Don Augustine of Iturbide.
The plans for independence
were already well-seasoned in him: like most Creoles,
he sought to attain it since the time when he had
been a royalist colonel. Hidalgo himself, who was
his relative and knew well his valour, conferred
on him when still very young the stripes of a lieutenant
general, a distinction that he refused because he
disagreed with the lack of plans and disapproved
of the methods of the first insurgents against whom
he fought. The desolation, the racial war, the killings
and the pillage were the only visible results of
the first insurrection. This explains why a large
segment of partisans of independence withdrew their
support and preferred to support the viceroy, considering
the danger that a leaderless crowd represented for
their lives, their honour and their property (30).
Nevertheless, it would be during the heroic assault
of Cóporo’s fort, in 1814, that Iturbide
would avow to General Vicente Filisola his idea
of achieving independence without spilling blood,
gathering under the same flag the royalists and
the insurgents..
 |
| To
the left, Napoleonic company and
battalion pavilions and
flags, models which with
no doubt inspired Iturbide in
his elaboration of the Mexican
national flag. |
|
|
Just like Napoleon,
Iturbide, in his position of unvanquished general
in the fight against anarchy and banditry, offered
not only a guarantee of emancipation that would
be crowned by triumph, but also an independence
achieved in order and in respect of the life and
possessions of every Mexican “by virtue
of the honour that he knew how to brand in every
and each of his acts”, as told by Vicente
Guerrero himself, while explaining the reason he
abided by his command and recognized him as Chief,
Liberator and Emperor. Abad y Queipo himself, visionary
as always, predicted to the viceroy Calleja some
years before 1821 that the only man who was able
to enact the independence of Mexico was Iturbide:
“Don’t be surprised that, with time,
he will achieve the liberty of his fatherland”.
(31)
Iturbide was present
at the Profesa meeting, but only to convince himself
that the anti-constitutional reaction would provoke
a new and even bloodier civil war among his compatriots.
The conspiracy would fail very soon, but Iturbide
took his new command as General of the Armies of
the South with a plan conceived by himself, destined
to make Mexico independent from Spain. The merit
of the great genius of Iturbide consisted in the
fact that he knew how to amalgamate the clamours
of the Fatherland without a sectarian or factionary
spirit, in a plan that was modern, feasible, conciliating
and peaceful for everyone, founded upon the following
ideas: Absolute independence from Spain, the
settlement of a new sovereign empire, the validity
of an autonomous and characteristically modern constitutional
order which establishes limits to power and guarantees
the rights of men, the protection of the Catholic
religion along with the rights of the Church, the
Union of all the inhabitants of the new empire and
the most absolute legal equality between its inhabitants,
irrespective of their ethnic, economical or social
origin: Creoles, Spaniards, Mestizo, Indians, castes,
Negroes and Asians.
The
most remarkable aspect of this plan was its
political significance, because, far from
providing constitutional means, or refusing
them, it demanded its own Constitution. Besides,
Iturbide conceived for himself a politically
viable and admirable project which combined
all the wills and answered to the general
aspirations of peace, with an ideological
vision that astonished the Mexican polemicists
of his time: “When reading Pradt, which
has been finely sold in paragraphs in Puebla,
we can confirm that the most serene Mister
Iturbide knew how to take advantage of this
reading and of others of its stature, of the
time, and of the order of things; he is then
worth the highest praise” (32).
The Liberator
of Mexico deployed a skilful diplomatic and
epistolary campaign that, in a period of six
months, and without spilling of blood, obtained
what years of a disastrous civil war couldn’t
achieve. The Plan of Iguala was so
finely wrought that it managed to get the
support of practically all the commanders
and all of the royalist and insurgent troops
with which Iturbide, who accepted the title
of First Chief, formed the Imperial
Army of the Three Guarantees, thus giving
birth to the Mexican Army.
The 24th
of February of 1821 a tricolour flag conceived
by Iturbide, very similar to the Napoleonic
flags, (incarnating the white, green and red
colours, with a later modification in the
order, plus the inclusion of the Mexican imperial
eagle) provided with three diagonal stripes
and a six-branch star on each, fluttered aloft,
representing since that time the Three Guarantees
consecrated in the Plan of Iguala, principles
that were sworn to on that day, and upon which
the new country was founded: Green is Independence,
white, the purity of Catholic Religion,
and red, the Union of everyone; insurgents
and royalists, Mexicans and Spaniards, whites,
various castes and Indians.
|
 |
| Independence
Act of the Mexican Empire |
|
|
The arguments to
justify independence were set by Iturbide in very
conciliating terms, and which revealed their own
philosophical baggage, as well as the influence
of Napoleon and of Pradt: “The nations
that are said to be great upon the expanse of the
globe were first dominated by others; and until
the Enlightenment weren't permitted to set their
own opinions; they did not emancipate…
[but once] the populations and their lights
increased,… [and they surmounted] the
damages generated by the distance from the centre
of unity, and when the branch is already equal to
the trunk, the public opinion and the general opinion
of all people is that of absolute independence from
Spain and from all other nations” (33).
 |
|
 |
| Juan
O’Donojú (1762
-1821), New Spain’s
last
viceroy , signs the Treaties of
Cordoba with the First Chief of
the Imperial Army of the Three
Guarantees: Augustine
of Iturbide. |
|
|
When in August of
1821 the new viceroy Juan de O’Donojú
disembarked in Veracruz, he accepted the established
fact and signed with Iturbide the Treaties of Cordoba,
which recognized independence.
The 27th of September
was the happiest and most glorious day in the national
history of Mexico. The trigarant army made its triumphal
entry into the capital amidst the joy of the population,
and the 28th of September the Independence Act
of the Mexican Empire was finally and formally
proclaimed. This is how Humboldt’s prediction,
Napoleon’s dream and Pradt’s wish became
a reality: an empire, the Mexican Empire, would
establish its limits from Oregon, the Mississipi
and the West Indies to Panama. Three years later,
in his memoirs, the Liberator of Mexico proudly
remembered: “Six months were enough to
untie the tightened knot that joined the two worlds.
Without blood, without arson, without robberies
nor depredations, without misfortunes and for once
without weeping and without mourning, my fatherland
was free and transformed from colony to a great
empire” (34).
 |
|
 |
|
Pacific and festive entry of Iturbide
with the Trigarant Army
into the capital the 27th
of September 1821: Independence
Day of the Empire of Mexico.
|
|
|
The fact that Mexico
was built as an empire must be underlined. The planned
system of government, accepted by everyone, was
a constitutional monarchy, but the monarch acquired
the title of Emperor in the same way that this had
happened in Brazil. The huge dimensions of the territory
were a valid argument to justify the denomination,
as well as the indubitable influence of Napoleon
the Great who, in 1804, established and elevated
the French nation to the rank of a constitutional
and monarchical empire. By his initiative, new possibilities
permitted the establishment of national empires
throughout the Western world. Finally, the chiefs
of staff of the region of the Kingdom of Guatemala
declared its independence and expressed their will
to be integrated into the nascent Mexican Empire,
on the 2nd of January 1822, with the incorporation
of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and
El Salvador.
In Iturbide’s
plans the incorporation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and
Santo Domingo are considered, with the aim of constructing
an immense empire of four million square kilometres,
which would be the master of the Gulf of Mexico
and of the Caribbean Sea, to which would be added
a vast shore on the Pacific Ocean, which would extend
from the north of California to Panama. With a great
vision, Iturbide maintained a constant communication
with these provinces in order to fortify a union
that could paralyze the dismemberment and put an
end to the United States’ expansionism, already
patently obvious.
The first reports received
in the United States concerning the independence
of Mexico and its author were faithfully
transmitted to the Secretary of State by
the agent extraordinary James Smith Wilcox.
Despite the fact that he was an agent in
the service of his government, Wilcox insisted
on narrating as an eyewitness the situation
that was lived in the Empire without prejudice
or deceit (which those who would succeed
him in this task wouldn’t do) in order
that his country would immediately recognize
the Government of Mexico: “Sir:
The love of my country, the spring of every
noble and generous action, induces me to
communicate to you, for the information
of the President, and for the benefit that
may result to the Government and to the
citizens of the United States, the following
circumstantial and exact account of the
happy revolution that has lately occurred
in the kingdom of New Spain, which by the
blessing of God, the intrepidity, talents
and exertions of its patriotic chief, General
Don Agustin Iturbide...” (35).
In his quality of eyewitness of these facts,
who on the other hand had met the first
Minister of Foreign Relations of Mexico,
Wilcox shows himself emotional in his report;
by praising the peaceful and patriotic manner
of the movement he will even proclaim, to
his chiefs’ surprise: “The
more my admiration grows the more I feel
tempted to exclaim that America has produced
two of the greatest heroes who have existed:
Washington and Iturbide” (36).
|
 |
|
Allegory of the crowning
of H.I.H. Augustine I,
celebrated in the Cathedral of Mexico
the 21st of July 1822. |
|
|
After such a great
appraisal of the glory of Mexico, and to the United
States' fear, Wilcox refers to the joy of the Mexican
people in that which concerns its Liberator, and
the reticence of the latter to accept the crown
which, from the start already, was proposed to him.
He finishes his report with an attachment of a copy
translated into English of the Treaties of Cordoba,
in which the independence of Mexico was sealed.
We must add to
the above that contrary to the concept of nobility
of the Old Regime, Iturbide established the primacy
of a new nobility founded not upon the basis of
heredity, but by virtue of merit and personal valour.
For that, on the 21st of February 1822, he instituted
the National and Distinguished Imperial Order
of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a distinction with
which the national identity was reaffirmed and the
spirit of justice was accomplished, by conferring
due recognition and rewarding the individual valour
of Mexicans.
 |
 |
| Augustine
I was proclaimed emperor the
night of the 18th of May 1822, same day
of the imperial proclamation of Napoleon
the Great. As him, the Liberator of Mexico
enjoyed from three irrefutable
legitimacies: Constitutional,
Pontifical, and Popular.
In our pictures we see Napoleon
I during his crowning as King
of Italy, by Appiani; to the right, Augustine
I in imperial coat. In this painting
as in so many other of Mexican workmanship
we observe the evident Napoleonic influence
upon the inspiration of the artists of
that epoch. |
|
The libertarian
epoch would find its end on a night of May 1822,
when it was known that the Spanish Courts didn’t
recognize the independence of Mexico, by refusing
the Treaties of Cordoba and faced with Ferdinand
VII’s disdain. To this, we have to add the
ban that this monarch made to his relations against
accepting the Mexican crown, while Metternich extended
the same proscription to the House of Austria; history
then took a fair and unexpected turn. The people
and the army, united as they would never be again
in the future, converged on the Palace of Iturbide
on the night of the 18th of May, repeating the same
shout that the crowds had cried out in Puebla since
August the 2nd 1821: “Long live Augustine
the First, Emperor of Mexico”.
The Congress gathered
to deliberate, and by majority decided to name the
Liberator first Constitutional Emperor of Mexico.
A few days later, the decision would be ratified,
this time unanimously.
On the 21st of July
1822, amidst the celebrations and the delight of
a thankful nation, he will be crowned with the title
of Augustine the First, by the Divine Providence,
Constitutional Emperor of Mexico. Iturbide,
just as Napoleon, never had the personal desire
nor the need to take on the Crown of the Mexican
Empire; he had refused it consistently. However,
the latter was imposed on him by the people by virtue
of the same reason that Francisco Bulnes states,
along with so many other national and foreign historians:
“Iturbide was Emperor by the unanimous will
of people… He was the national pride become
flesh”. (37)
The words that Iturbide
will pronounce in his famous civic speech of the
27th of September 1821 acquired then a still greater
sense at the moment of his crowning. They were a
hope but at the same time a warning, in the purest
style of the farewell of Fontainebleau: “Mexicans:
you are already in a situation to salute the Independent
Fatherland, as I announced it to you in Iguala…
You know now the means to be free; it depends on
you to choose to be happy”.
| ANECDOTIC
EPILOGUE: THE LIVING HERITAGE |
|
“We must
all obey to our destiny;
Everything is written in the skies”.
Napoleon.
 |
|
 |
| Arms
of the Empire Français
(1804), preceding those of the
Imperio Mexicano
(1821). |
|
|
The terrible voice
that resounded in Dolores, as Lucas Alamán
told it, was extinguished by the noble cry of the
genius who proclaimed the true Liberty at Iguala:
Iturbide, by following Napoleon as the dominant
spirit of his time, guaranteed the equality of all
Mexicans under the Law, he suppressed slavery and
racial inequality, he established a division of
powers when he could easily have retained the power
in his own person, he installed the basis for a
democracy through the plebiscite or the internal
consultation in the provinces when these had never
been considered, he proposed an upright electoral
system for the latter, thus setting the basis that
only the spirit of faction subsequent to his death
has refused to see in Mexico, contrary to those
abroad. Besides, he founded a moderate constitutional
monarchy, bringing forward the events in this aspect
and in all of the above to Europe and Spain itself,
which claimed to be liberal.
Lorenzo de Zavala
does justice by indicating that the will of Iturbide,
just as that of Bolivar: “was to propose
as a model the extraordinary man who had just disappeared
in Saint Helena” (38).
If there was ever a man in Mexico who was able to
conceive and to achieve a politics in accordance
with the historical moment and the legitimating
of the Latin-American peoples, that man was the
Hero of Iguala. William Spence Robertson, who as
a typical American wasn’t precisely an apologist
of the Liberator-Emperor of Mexico, happens to avow
that the latter profits from titles that allow him
to occupy a place among the most remarkable men
of his epoch, and classes him at the high level
of a galaxy of his contemporaries: John Quincy Adams,
James Monroe, Metternich, Simon Bolivar, George
Canning, José de San Martin, Chateaubriand,
the Czar Alexander I and, of course, Napoleon himself.
(39)
 |
|
 |
|
Fraternization of the epoch between Mexico
and France: Augustine
I Liberator, and Napoleon
I in his work cabinet,
by Jacques-Louis David. |
|
His use of diplomacy
through his own person or even via written speech
remains marvellously stated in his Three Guarantees,
in the elaboration of the Plan of Iguala and in
the signature of the Treaties of Cordoba, in such
manner that they arouse admiration among the men
of his time. They would with no doubt amaze Napoleon
in Saint-Helena as much as the academic historians
of our time. (40)
Some have wanted
to compare Napoleon to Louis XIV, as well as Iturbide
to Napoleon, with the objective of diminishing the
merit of both. However, such a comparison, far from
diminishing the glory of one as of the other, contributes
in fact to give them a greater aspect. Napoleon
and Iturbide created from nothing: they forged a
new order, they created institutions and an autonomous
system without inheriting them from anyone, they
built upon ruins, edified upon the rubble and extinguished
ashes that were still burning, by stamping their
glory and their personal seal as much in the work
of their hands as upon that of those who collaborated
in its establishment.
Because of all this,
the United States, contrary to England and the rest
of America, did not celebrate the work and the genius
of the Liberator of Mexico: they saw it with fear
and contempt. Iturbide reminded them of Napoleon
in every sense, according to the results of the
conversations between Thomas Jefferson and President
James Monroe, because they knew that such a man,
both as a First Chief, as Regent or as Emperor,
would be not only an obstacle for the expansionist
plans that they were concocting against Mexico and
Cuba; he appeared to them also as a threat to their
territorial integrity and their system of government.
(41)
The Napoleonic Empire,
and what is more, the Napoleonic era, was the epoch
of libertarian movements. It reflected as well the
fierce fight between the permanence of the worst
that there was in the European feudal system and
the best ideals of the Enlightenment. The Old Regime
prevailed upon the man who had the courage to erase
it, but its victory was ephemeral: even from the
rock that was his prison and his scaffold, even
after his death, the visionary spirit of a single
man had triumphed indeed, because he had wounded
to the death despotism and tyranny, by indicating
for the people the path to follow. Liberty couldn’t
be erased. Even in exile, Napoleon was convinced
that after his passing, the democratic ideals of
the French Revolution would triumph and that his
name would be the symbol itself of the fight for
the rights of man. Those who were the victors couldn’t
avoid the propagation of his ideas, and of his remembrance;
those who followed him, both in the Old as well
as in the New Worlds, adopted his institutions,
his symbols, and embraced the spirit, even after
the sun had set in Saint-Helena, as they were the
best guarantee of order, peace and progress, even
today.
NOTES:
1) Louis Napoléon
III, Idées Napoléoniennes.
2) When the French people proclaimed Napoleon Emperor,
France was so tired of the disorders and the continuous
changes that the majority didn’t hesitate
to invest the one who was at the head of the State
with the dignity of hereditary power. Napoleon didn’t
have any reason to have such an ambition. In the
same way that opinion wished in the first place
to reduce the executive power when it considered
it hostile, in that same manner it asked it to be
increased, when it noticed, with satisfaction, that
the executive power was, in that case, tutelary
and salubrious.
3) Once settled, the system worked very well in
countries as Italy and Switzerland, but was a failure
in Spain.
4) Guadalupe Jiménez Codinach, México:
su tiempo de nacer (1750-1821), México,
Fondo Editorial Banamex, 2001, pp. 33-5.
5) David Brading, Auge y ocaso del Imperio español,
México, Editorial Clío, 1995, p. 12.
6) During the Consecration of Napoleon (an event
that is followed by Simon Bolivar), the priest is
the master of the ceremonies. On this occasion,
Napoleon gave to his chaplain the title of Baron
of the Empire along with a pension of 50 thousand
francs. Two months later, he made him bishop of
Poitiers. In 1805, Pradt accompanied the Emperor
to Italy and officiated in Milan at the mass during
which Napoleon was crowned king of that country.
7) Montesquieu, Del espíritu de las leyes,
México, Porrúa, p. 250.
8) Guadalupe Jiménez Codinach, México
en 1821: el abate Pradt y el Plan de Iguala, México,
Ediciones Caballito / Universidad Iberoamericana,
1984, pp. 70-71.
9) In this sentence, Pradt only directly cite the
great man exiled in Saint-Helena, when he said:
« If there’s anything worse than
the tyranny of a single man, it’s the tyranny
of many men ».
10) Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, prologue
and notes by Edmundo O’Gorman, México,
UNAM, 1945, p. XXXVIII.
11) Instrucciones Catequistas de la Doctrina
Cristiana. R.P. Fr Antonio de Jesús María,
Definidor general, Misionero Apostólico,
y Escritor general en su Religión de Trinitarios
Descalzos. Madrid: Imprenta de Repullés,
Plazuela del Ángel. 1818. pp 110 y 111.
12) Luís Ruora Aulinas. El drama de los
afrancesados.¿Patriotas o traidores?
Clío, 2007.pp 67-72.
13) Mariano Cuevas. Historia de la Nación
Mexicana. Editorial Porrúa, 1987, p
391.
14) Cuevas, Ibidem, p. 395. Let us observe
that farther than its first sense, the word “gato”
(cat) is used in the colloquial Mexican vocabulary
to designate the servants.
15) Jacques Houdaille Gaëtan Souchet D'Alvimart:
The alleged envoy of Napoleon to Mexico, 1807-1809.
The Americas, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Oct., 1959), pp. 109-131.
16) Le Moniteur Universel, París,
diciembre 14, 1809.
17) Carlos Alvear Acevedo. Historia de México.
Editorial Jus. 1994, pp. 209-211.
18) Causa instruida contra el Generalísimo
D. Ignacio de Allende y Unzaga, 10 de mayo-29 de
junio de 1811. Documentos históricos
mexicanos, Colección Genaro García,
INHERM, V: 60-61.
19) Luís Ruora Aulinas, op cit, p. 71.
20) “La Confédération Napoléonienne.
El Desempeño de los conspiradores militares
y las sociedades secretas en la Independencia de
México” Guadalupe Jiménez
Codinach en La revolución de independencia.
Lecturas de historia mexicana. (Compilación
de Virginia Guerrea). México: El Colegio
de México, 1995, pp. 130-155.
21) Barry O’Meara, A Voice of Saint-Helena,
Vol. I, p. 211. London, 4th Edition, 1822.
22) Montholon. History of the Captivity,
Vol II. , pp. 471-472.
23) Emilio Ocampo, La última campaña
del Emperador, Editorial Claridad, Buenos Aires,
2007. páginas 198 y 199.
24) Archivo General de Indias; Estado, 31 (50).
25) Cuevas, op cit, p. 473.
26) Herbert E. Bolton General James Wilkinson
as Advisor to Emperor Iturbide. The Hispanic
American Historical Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (May,
1918), pp. 163-180.
27) Rafael Heliodoro Valle. Iturbide: Varón
de Dios. Artes de México, No. 146, año
XVIII, 1971, p. 95.
28) Parte de virrey Apodaca, Conde de Venadito,
sobre la situación de las Provincias Internas
y proyectos de extranjeros contra ellas. 1819.
Archivo General de Indias, Estado, 33(34).
29) La última campaña del Emperador,
p. 343.
30) Enrique Sada Sandoval. Iturbide: ¿Libertador
de México? Acequias. Universidad Iberoamericana.
México. Año 5, Otoño 2001,
No. 17, pp. 56-57.
31) About this quotation by Abad y Queipo with Calleja,
it is told that once embarked in Veracruz in direction
to Cadiz, he was heard saying that “the only
one to be able of achieving the Independence of
the New Spain was Colonel Iturbide”. And some
years after that, when he learned that Iturbide
was commanding the liberating movement, he believed
the king’s cause to be lost. Mariano Cuevas.
El Libertador: Documentos selectos de Don Agustín
de Iturbide. Editorial Patria, México,
1947, p. 25.
32) Fray Juan de Quatemoctzin Rosillo de Mier, Manifiesto
sobre la inutilidad de los provinciales de las religiones
en América, Puebla, Imprenta de D. Pedro
de la Rosa, 1821.
33) Jaime del Arenal Fenochio. Agustín
de Iturbide. Colección: Grandes protagonistas
de la Historia Mexicana. Editorial Planeta DeAgostini.
México. 2002, p. 77.
34) S.M.I. Don Agustín I de Iturbide. A
statement of some of the principal events in the
public life of Agustín de Iturbide, written
by himself. With a preface by the translator,
and an appendix of documents. London: John Murray,
Albermarle-Street. MDCCCXXIV, pp. 17 y 18.
35) James Smith Wilcox to the Secretary of State
of the United States of America, Mexico, October
25, 1821. American State Papers, Index
to Foreign Relations, Vol. VI.
36) Ibidem.
37) Enrique Sada Sandoval., op cit, p 58.
38) Enrique González Pedrero. País
de un solo hombre: El México de Santa Anna.
Vol. I: La Ronda de los contrarios. Fondo de Cultura
Económica, México, 1993, p. 167.
39) William Spence Robertson. Iturbide of Mexico.
Durham, N.C. Duke University Press, 1952, p. 314.
40) Among these we find Timothy E. Anna, Brian Hamnett,
Nettie Lee Benson, Jaime del Arenal Fenochio, Guadalupe
Jiménez Codinach and Juan Balansó,
among many others.
41) For this precise reason, they reserved to themselves
the tutelage of the American continent as their
own exclusive and private property, conspiring in
Mexico against the Emperor just as they had previously
done it in Argentina and in Chile against the liberator
José de San Martin; just as they would do
with Bolivar: the other great Liberator, admirer
of Iturbide and Napoleon’s follower, who they
would lead to his death, not without making him
witness the death in life of his glory: the Great
Colombia.
