The Army of New Spain and the Wars of Independence, 1790-1821

From its inception in the 1760s, the army of New Spain failed to meet the expectations of viceroys, senior military officers, and those it was supposed to protect from foreign invasions, civil unrest, and frontier incursions. Although in 1807 and 1808 Viceroy José de Iturrigaray could assemble a cantonment of some 16, 000 militiamen and regular soldiers to meet a British assault that did not materialize, there were almost no troops available in September 1810 to put down the insurrection led by Padre Miguel Hidalgo. The army appeared to have vanished; officers watched spellbound as the enemy hordes grew and the existing command system collapsed. Rather than marching to raise the siege of Guanajuato, commanders such as Félix María Calleja and Manuel de Flon (Conde de la Cadena) wrote letters begging the defenders of the Alhóndiga to hold out. In the meantime, the royalist officers fretted and vacillated, paralyzed by fears that New Spain was collapsing about them.

At Querétaro, Flon saw the population as “spies for Allende” and he informed Viceroy Javier de Venegas that “there is not an Indian or creole who does not join the insurgents when they go to attack some town.”² His garrison troops from Guanajuato, Celaya, San Miguel, and other insurgent-occupied towns deserted to join the revolution. By early October 1810, the Cavalry Regiment of the Príncipe from Guanajuato was left with only 25 officers and troops, and the Infantry Regiment of Celaya lost so many men that it was disbanded. At San Luis Potosí, Calleja lacked artillery, infantry, and officers. He estimated that he could raise 2, 000 cavalry and 500 badly armed infantry to meet an insurgent force of 30, 000. He reported to Venegas: “the inequality of numbers is great and my people inspire very little confidence.”³ The “torrent” of revolution and its veneno seductor seemed poised to sweep over the viceroyalty and to extinguish the regime.

In examining the weaknesses of their situation, the army officers had reason to feel resentment toward the central government, the viceregal administrations, and the Mexican elites. The regime had not provided adequate funding for military salaries, arms, equipment, barracks, or services. Efforts of viceroys to economize in Mexico to impress Madrid meant cuts in crucial sections of military budgets. In Mexico, the merchants, miners, and others who held special positions and powers resented the existence of the military and campaigned to prevent any intrusions into their financial and judicial domains. The city and town cabildos fought to maintain civilian dominance over the militias through the power of the purse, and the provincial intendants and subdelegates despised a military presence that permitted some members of society to obtain special fueros and privileges.

These resentments weakened the army. It was possibly undermined just as severely by the Spanish officers’ fears of creolization of the military, fears that were exacerbated by the Hidalgo and Morelos revolts. Because of this mistrust, many senior officers supported the concept of a small elite professional army that would be a proportional blend of Europeans and Mexicans. In theory, such a force would serve to impress Mexicans with martial virtues and to lead a loose system of provincial reserves. As late as 1790-94, Viceroy Conde de Revillagigedo attempted to raise such a force. His policies were disastrous because the imperial regime could not send Spanish regiments for colonial duty, and the Mexican elites refused to cooperate in a program that denied them the honor and privilege of holding militia commissions.⁴

In fact, neither the officers nor the soldiers who made up the regular units of the Mexican army were capable of exerting leadership or inculcating martial spirit. Most officers arrived in New Spain between 1765 and 1780, aged in their provincial postings, lost career enthusiasm, married, developed business interests, and became radicados, or “rooted,” to the Mexican soil. The peninsular noncommissioned officers and soldiers were even less effective. The metropolitan army sent petty criminals, troublemakers, and the unambitious into colonial service. Since Mexicans rejected military careers in the regular ranks, the civil authorities used these units as a dumping ground for social misfits, vagabonds, illegal immigrants, thieves, murderers, and even the mentally deficient.⁵ Often, orphan children of eight to fourteen years ended up attached to the infantry battalions.⁶ The regular army offered a permanent means of consuming these people, since yellow fever and other endemic tropical diseases devastated the coastal garrisons where they were stationed. At Veracruz, militiamen earned bounties for arresting regular army deserters who attempted escapes into the interior.⁷

The same impediments affected many of the professional officers, NCOs, and soldiers who accepted postings as majors, adjutants, lieutenants, and training cadres in the provincial militia units. Physical isolation and the loss of normal career advancements caused these men to identify with their adopted regions and to lose discipline. The subalterns, sergeants, and corporals became “schemers, gamblers, and professional drunks,” filled only with empty vainglory. Years of boredom caused them to seek out conflicts with local magistrates and civil authorities, to rent or sell weapons, and to use the leverage provided by their positions to set up cabarets, drinking clubs, and brothels for their part-time troops. Even among the more honorable officers and NCOs, excessive drinking and inertia resulting from dead-end careers were chronic problems.⁸ It was little wonder that viceroys and sub-inspectors general used words like metaphysical,” “chimerical,” and “problematical” to describe their army.⁹

Defensive necessities of the revolutionary age prevented the regime from shelving the idea of a colonial army. Viceroy Marqués de Branciforte (1794-98) countered both regular officers and privileged corporation resistance when he moved to implement a military policy that would creolize the Mexican army. He appealed directly to the vanity and thirst for office of wealthy merchants, miners, hacendados, and others who would donate large sums to raise provincial units in exchange for militia ranks, minor privileges, and the largely honorific fuero militar. The creole-dominated cabildos were granted patronage powers to select officer candidates.¹⁰ While the municipal authorities might not be able to make militia service entirely appealing, duty with relatives and countrymen did not hold the same fears or stigma of regular army enlistment. Neither the members of the elites who donated for commissions, nor the artisans, muleteers, vaqueros, and others who volunteered or were drafted into the ranks, had much martial spirit. It was out of this provincial force, however that Calleja and other officers would weld the army that defeated Hidalgo and Morelos.

Although creolization was anathema to career officers who hated civilian interference in military affairs, Branciforte and his successors did improve the defensive system. During peacetime, when normal communications were open with the capital, the army was kept under tight rein through the central captaincy general and by the civilian auditor de guerra of the audiencia. At the same time, Branciforte projected the creation of ten provincial militia brigades to decentralize some aspects of army organization.¹¹ The new structure created a series of potentially powerful provincial army chiefs. Granted full command of arms in their districts, authority to mediate conflicts between the military jurisdiction and other areas, and the right to propose officer candidates where there were no cabildos, an effective brigade commander like Calleja emerged as a powerful new element in regional politics and administration.¹² In the province of San Luis Potosí, Calleja sought to expand his powers to curtail the military obligations of the provincial intendant and the urban cabildo. In 1805, for example, he challenged the cabildo’s rights to select officer candidates, arguing that a group of merchants lacked the ojo militar to identify martial characteristics. In the view of Calleja and his fellow commanders, the regime kept officers in a straitjacket of corporations and balances. While they could do nothing to alter this situation until 1810, these commanders were critical of Mexico City administrators and could in the face of the Hidalgo revolt lay the blame for unpreparedness at the feet of the regime and of civilians who had kept the army weak.¹³

If the army was slow to respond to insurrection, Calleja and his fellow officers learned quickly from their errors. The desertion of provincial militia units to the insurgent side was confined mainly to the Eighth Militia Brigade, commanded by ancient Brigadier Ignacio García Revollo, who had served in New Spain since the establishment of the army in the 1760s.¹⁴ As of September 19, when he received word of the Hidalgo revolt, Calleja moved to exert supreme command in his province and to mobilize all available resources. He halted silver shipments that might fall into insurgent hands and convened juntas of officers and civilians to discuss the manufacture of arms, higher pay for soldiers, and the recruitment of new infantry and cavalry units.¹⁵ The intendant of San Luis Potosí became little more than an administrative assistant, the cabildo lost all powers, and Indian governors were ordered to dispatch large numbers of laborers to assist the army.¹⁶ Artisans formed juntas under military direction to determine the best means to found artillery and to prepare lance points. Although Calleja attempted to maintain regular correspondence with the viceroy, the proliferation of guerrilla bands disrupted communications. Commanders who had complained about interference in military affairs were free to introduce their own policies and to militarize their provinces. Calleja established special taxes, dealt with unemployment in the mining areas, and even used his own authority to confiscate a portion of the tithes of Guanajuato.¹⁷ Responsible for 11 different units and 199 companies in the Army of the Center, he created a highly loyal autonomous force that owed little allegiance to the old chain of command.

While the royalists discovered that they could smash insurgent formations on the battlefields of Aculco, Guanajuato, and Calderón, the war became increasingly complex and difficult to terminate. The increased number of rebel guerrilla bands led to widespread, if uncoordinated, activities that were much more successful than mass actions in which fire power, discipline, and artillery gave the royalists overwhelming advantage. In many regions, the insurgent irregulars forced the army to divide into many small divisions to defend urban centers and mining districts. Although a new generation of active royalist officers from Spain evolved an effective counterinsurgency response through the dispatch of light mobile cavalry columns and the imposition of draconian measures directed against suspected rebels, many regional commanders refused to cooperate with their colleagues to chase down and liquidate enemy formations. For political reasons, Viceroys Calleja and Juan Ruiz de Apodaca wished to declare that organized rebel forces had been reduced to small bandit gangs. In fact, the insurgents altered their tactics to withdraw into more isolated regions and to operate at the fringes of the royalist military jurisdictions.¹⁸ The rebel use of fortifications further complicated the struggle at Zitácuaro, Cuautla, Isla de Mescala (Laguna de Chapala), and other strongpoints designed to exhaust the royalists in lengthy sieges.¹⁹

As the war dragged on, senior commanders realized that it would take years to extirpate insurgency. The army moved relentlessly into new areas to establish its powers. In many cases, one can identify a garrison mentality among officers who sought to maintain the buena causa against legions of real and imagined enemies. Calleja worried that his army was “surrounded by enemies” and described the population of Mexico as “immoral, without character, and lacking in customs.”²⁰ Towns appeared to be humble, sincere, and loyal when the Army of the Center arrived, but returned to insurrection as soon as it was out of effective range. At Valladolid (Morelia), José de la Cruz, commander of the Army of the Right and of Nueva Galicia, felt the same insecurity. He viewed the country as a “desert” and “filled with monsters” who in their hearts abhorred and hated Europeans and were held in place only by terror.²¹ This was a problem that army officers had to address. In 1818, considerable effort was made to interrogate captured insurgents about how towns could be brought back to loyalty to the crown. One important rebel functionary, Antonio Basilio Vallejo, stated that force and garrisoned soldiers were the only answers. In Vallejo’s opinion, even subjects of apparent loyalty were insurgentes de corazón.²²

At the root of the garrison mentality was the fear of losing a major battle and the prospect of a rapid dispersal of royalist forces. After his victory at Calderón, Calleja was almost as critical of his forces as he was of the enemy. While only 60 to 70 royalists perished as compared with an estimated 6, 000 to 7, 000 casualties on the insurgent side, Calleja had seen some of his units begin a “precipitous flight” and many others had been thrown back in temporary disorder.²³

What appeared most remarkable was the reluctance of Spanish residents to bolster the army. Calleja lashed out at their “lack of patriotism and criminal indifference,” warning them that they could not save themselves at the expense of the creoles who formed his forces. He informed them that if the royalists lost, “in moments, the devouring fire will run to the extremes of the coasts.” Those few peninsulares who did join the army expected special distinctions and acted as if they were doing the military a great favor. As Calleja put it: “their egoism blinds them to their true interests.”²⁴

For Calleja and other embattled royalist commanders, it was essential to invoke esprit de corps in their armies. Officers identified with their troops and even the Spaniards came to accept many creole positions on major questions. Calleja warned that without significant economic and political reforms, New Spain could not remain a Spanish possession. He was angry at the lack of support and recognition accorded to his army, noting that “prizes and recompense so scarce in the colony are prodigal in the metropolis.”²⁵ By marching with his soldiers, suffering dysentery and other hardships of the campaign, Calleja won the respect and loyalty of both officers and troops. Separated for years from their home provinces, his militiamen were hammered into professionals who looked to their commanders for promotion and reward. The ties with the captaincy general, the cabildos, and the home province were severed almost permanently. As early as 1812, soldiers who had served with Calleja since the outset of the conflict viewed their general “as a father rather than as a chief.” When they heard that Calleja planned to resign his command, they asked, “My captain, is it true that our general is leaving?” And receiving a reply in the affirmative, they answered, “God save our general, with him we are invincible, he saves our blood.”²⁶ The war had given both officers and troops an entirely new focus. Threatened by the insurgents and fearful for their own existence, the army supported commanders who could offer security, leadership, and strength. Throughout New Spain, regional commanders created their own centers of power based upon their ability to protect their soldiers. At San Luis Potosí, for example, Brigade Commander Manuel María de Torres paid little heed to Intendant Manuel de Acevedo or the city ayuntamiento. In 1817, Torres prevented the intendant from arresting a young ensign, José Joaquín Basave, who had abandoned his legitimate wife to live with another woman. In this case and in other incidents involving jurisdiction, influence, and gambling, the military commanders had achieved the autonomy they desired.²⁷

Depending upon their political attitudes and motivations, regional chiefs directed their policies toward quite different ends. At the one extreme, commanders such as Melchor Alvarez, who had come to New Spain with his Regiment of Savoya, mined their offices by plundering the provincial treasuries and confiscating what they termed insurgent property.²⁸ In many cases, officers distributed booty to their men without reporting it to the civil authorities and treasury officials.²⁹ At the other extreme were commanders such as José de la Cruz, who created strong regional bases, but directed their energies to the suppression of insurgency and maintenance of Spanish rule. Based at Guadalajara, Cruz commanded Agustín Iturbide, Pedro Celestino Negrete, and other later converts to the insurgent side, but he did not waiver in his own loyalty to Spain. He blamed the Spanish Constitution and the weakness of civil authorities for policies that by 1820 “have made us lose ten years’ work.” When confronted by the alarming news that Negrete and Anastasio Bustamante had gone over to Iturbide, Cruz could do little other than express his shock and dismay. Approached by Iturbide to join the independence movement, Cruz replied, “I cannot enter into any answer that does not have at base loyalty to the King and the Constitution to which we have both sworn allegiance.”³⁰ Cruz suffered what army commanders since 1790 had feared. Creolization of the army extended beyond the Mexicans themselves to influence many Spanish officers who had served long enough in Mexico to become radicados. As Calleja had understood and Cruz stated in 1814, “the worst of evils is the loss of public opinion.”³¹ As the troops went over to Iturbide, Cruz witnessed the shift of many officers who had served Spain with distinction. Once the momentum took hold and the army adopted the separatist view, there could be no return to the past.³²

What of those commanders who had turned upon their old loyalties to embrace the cause of Mexican independence? Many saw the writing on the wall and knew that protection of position required a change of loyalty. Having attained position and developed ties in New Spain, they recognized the growing exhaustion of the populace with war and increasing opposition to military service. At Ciénega de Mata, for example, two-thirds of a reserve division formed to combat the invasion of Francisco Javier Mina deserted. The decade of warfare weakened the will of both royalists and insurgents to continue hostilities.³³ Although Viceroy Apodaca managed to obtain the surrender of many insurgents, even after 1818, Guanajuato, the “seedbed of rebellion,” contained many seeds of revolt. Lists of pardoned revolutionaries made good propaganda, but this did not mean that Apodaca had terminated the general insurgency. Often, the pardons expressed hopes for an end to treacherous behavior and served as an example to those who may have been leaning toward surrender. The fact remained that some towns, villages, and districts had been forgiven for insurgency on several occasions. Although most of the well-known rebel chiefs had been put out of action, many small autonomous bands remained. Royalist forces occupied the cities and mining zones, but had lost the zeal to track guerrilla bands through the sierras until the bands were liquidated or dispersed. In fact, there was not sufficient force to achieve this goal.³⁴ Rather than continue to battle, royalist commanders accepted a status quo and concluded unofficial trading alliances and other mutually profitable agreements with the rebels in the countryside. By 1820, officers were aware that they would have to protect their own positions. At Valladolid, Zacatecas, Guadalajara, and elsewhere, they joined clubs and juntas to discuss independence and the total destruction of the gachupins.³⁵ Lacking an army commited to Spain, New Spain collapsed. For the commanders who remained in Mexico, the new regime consolidated the victories that the military had won since 1810. Pedro Celestino Negrete made handsome profits through 1821 selling passports to merchants and others who wished to depart the new nation.³⁶

Unfortunately for Mexico, the martial spirit and strong corporate feeling that failed to develop in the late colony did find fertile soil during the dislocations of the wars for Independence. Freed from central control, a new generation of officers emerged to advance the causes of the military. They helped to set the new republic on a rocky course toward the attainment of nationhood.

Author notes