Chapter 36

An historical Sketch.--Truth seldom spoken of Santa Anna.--Santa Anna's early Life.--Causes of the Revolution.--The Virgin Mary's Approval of King Ferdinand.--The Inquisition imprisons the Vice-King.--Santa Anna enters the King's Army.--The plan of Iguala.--The War of the two Virgins.--Santa Anna pronounces for Independence.

Before commencing our journey to the interior, we must break the thread of our narrative by a brief biographical sketch: for this town is the birth-place, and here began the public career of that man whose life has become the history of his country. With him the Mexican Republic began, and with him it has been terminated. In 1822 he was first to proclaim a Republic in the Plaza of Vera Cruz; and when I stood in the Plaza of the city of Mexico, in the winter of 1854, I heard him proclaimed absolute ruler of a state which had already ceased to be a Republic. This was not the first time that he had been raised to absolute authority in Mexico, but the third time that this had occurred in his checkered career--a career that resembles more the vicissitudes in the life of a hero of Spanish romance than the memoirs of a living politician.

SANTA ANNA.

Santa Anna is a man of whom the truth has seldom been spoken; for no man can raise himself from a humble position to be the embodiment of all the powers of the state without creating a host of enemies; nor can a man be long in possession of absolute authority without raising up a tribe of flatterers. To the one, he is every thing that is shocking to humanity; while to the other he is the perfection of all the moral qualities. This scurrilous manner in which all political discussions are carried on in Mexico, has always furnished a ready apology for the suppression of liberty of speech, and for the enforcement of the Mexican law of ostracism in turn by every party in power.

As we Americans have nothing to hope from his friendship, and nothing to fear from the displeasure of Santa Anna, we are able to take a correct view of his character from the records, and to affirm that he is neither a saint, as represented by one party, nor a monster, as represented by the other; and as greatness is a comparative term, and goodness is often used in a comparative sense, we may also add that he is the first of Mexican statesmen, and as good as the best of his rivals. He has suffered unnumbered and overwhelming defeats, which have so exhibited his recuperative talents as to attract the admiration of foreigners. Other aspirants have risen to popular favor, and then fallen, one after the other, and have disappeared. But Santa Anna's falls have ever been a prelude to his rising again to a greater elevation; and there is no point of elevation to which he has risen from which he has not been ignominiously hurled. He is a politician whose course reminds us of a skillful swimmer in the breakers; half the time he rides the waves and half the time he is submerged, yet never sinks so deep but that he rises again to the surface. When Santa Anna is in authority the fickle multitude cry out against him, and when he is in exile no suffering innocent can compare with him; and the books that at such times sell best in Mexico are those that vindicate his past career. Of such a man something must be said, and to render that something intelligible, a brief account of the social and political changes of his times must be rendered.

Santa Anna was born at Vera Cruz, in the year 1796, in the most prosperous era of the colonial government of the vice-kingdom of New Spain, while Ravillagigedo was Virey. The new and liberal code, regulating mines and mining, was yielding its legitimate fruits in the immensely increased production of silver and gold, while the newly-granted privilege of unrestricted trade with Spain and her other colonies was followed by considerable shipments of grain from the table-lands of Mexico to the West India Islands. The profound peace that had reigned uninterruptedly for two hundred and seventy-five years was still unbroken. Not a word of disloyalty was breathed; while the Inquisition of Mexico watched with the utmost care for the least appearance of rebellion against God or the king. Such was the religious and political stagnation at the time Santa Anna was born; and so it continued for the first twelve years of his life. But his youth was not to be passed in a period of national repose.

THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION.

It was the year 1808 that the news arrived in Mexico of the imprisonment of Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII., the dotard and simpleton who then disputed the Spanish throne, and who had rendered themselves the laughing stock of all Europe by going, each one in person, to advocate his side of a family quarrel before a common enemy, the French Emperor, by whom both had thus been caught like mice in a cage, and compelled to abdicate. At this news a feeling of indignation ran through the vice-kingdom, while all Europe laughed at the strange combination of knave and fool exhibited in the characters of the two Spanish kings. The people of New Spain saw in them only the guardians of the Church in the power of the infidels, and at once forgot the unnatural crimes of their two kings. They thought only of their piety, and with joy the news was carried throughout New Spain, that one of their previous kings had consecrated his imprisonment to embroidering a petticoat for the Virgin Mary; and when this announcement was followed by another, a little more apocryphal, that the most holy image had, by a nod, signified her acceptance of the present, there could no longer be a doubt of his title of Most Catholic King, which might from that time onward be interpreted Most Catholic Mantua-maker. The world might now laugh at him, and hold him up to ridicule. All its ridicule mattered nothing to the Mexicans. It made no difference to them. To revere the king and render him a blind obedience was at all times a part of their religion. Whether either of the two were fit to be kings was not a question for the people to determine; and if the Virgin Mary had not nodded her approval, the solution of this question of competency would still be reserved for the tribunals of God and the Inquisition. It was sufficient for the people to know that both father and son had been compelled to abdicate, and that they no longer were kings of Spain, and that the brother of the French Emperor occupied the vacant throne, which the Inquisition had associated, in their superstition, with the throne of God itself. God and the king were inseparable words in the mouth of a citizen of New Spain, and he that dared to separate them was thought worthy of Inquisitorial fires. They owed the same reverence which the Aztecs rendered to their emperor before the conquest.

Next to God and the king was the vice-king. Yet they had seen their beloved viceroy, Iturrigaray, deposed by a conspiracy of Spanish shop-keepers, which had organized itself in that focus of Mexican trade, the Parian. All this was bewildering to the nation. All New Spain was astonished to see a power sufficiently potent to arrest the vice-king emanate from such a quarter. And not only had they witnessed this, but they had also seen this same officer, whose person was so sacred in their eyes, cast into the prison of the Inquisition among "heretics, and accursed of God, and despised of Christian men," because he had not discriminated in favor of the Spanish-born in his appeal to the patriotism of the people.

Before they had escaped from this bewildering of all their ideas of government, they were suddenly called upon to take sides in a war of races that had sprung up in determining the question, who constituted the people, among the divers races that composed the population of Mexico? The Cortes of Spain had just proclaimed the sovereignty of the people. But who were the people? The solution of this question excited one of the most cruel and envenomed wars on record. The handful of whites who had been born in Spain, and who enjoyed a monopoly of the lucrative offices in Church and in State, as well as a monopoly in trade, claimed it as their exclusive privilege to be considered the people, and they it was who imprisoned the vice-king, because he appeared to have more enlarged views than themselves. The Creoles, as those of pure white blood born in America are called, who were excluded from all places of honor or profit, held the balance of power, and it was doubtful for a long time to which side the Creole soldiers would incline. But they were not long in suspense; for when fired upon by an undisciplined rabble, rather than an army, of Indians, they returned the fire, and there, in sight of the city of Mexico, settled the character of a contest which was, from that time forward, to shake the whole social organization of the vice-kingdom--in which plantations were destroyed, and villages and cities sacked and burned, and the most unheard-of cruelties practiced by one party or the other on the defenseless, until the final triumph of the Creole, or white troops, in the time of the viceroy, Apaduer, over the insurgents, composed chiefly of Indians and those of mixed blood.

RISE OF SANTA ANNA.

While this war was raging in all its fury, Santa Anna arrived at an age to choose an occupation for life; and with the ardor of youth he entered the king's service as a Creole officer, a cadet in the _Fijo de Vera Cruz_. In this fratricidal war he soon distinguished himself by that activity in the performance of the duties of a subaltern which, in more mature years, distinguished him as a leader and a politician. He was at that time in the unhappy dilemma of every man born in Spanish America; he was compelled to choose between two evils--either to join the king's cause, and fight for the Spaniards who oppressed his country, or to run the hazard of seeing re-enacted in Mexico the bloody tragedy of San Domingo, if the colored races should conquer in a contest with the Spaniards. A few Creoles had chosen the side of the insurgents; but they were few; as the Spanish cause could not have been sustained for a day, if it had not been for the want of confidence in the leaders of the insurrection. But it was not in contests with his own countrymen that Santa Anna first won distinction; it was in a battle with the filibustering invaders while yet Mexico was a colony of Spain: it was in the bloody battle of the river Madina, in Texas, where an army of three thousand men (according to Mexican accounts), on their way to join the Mexican insurgents, were totally routed by Aridondo.

The zeal which Santa Anna continually exhibited in almost daily contests with guerillas outside of the walls of Vera Cruz, so long as the contest was confined to a war of races, soon won him distinction. But now he is called to play the part of a military politician; for when the news arrived in Mexico of the new constitutional revolution of 1820 in Spain itself, all the higher classes of society in the vice-kingdom were in terror. Ten years of bloodshed and civil disorder had been the fruits to Mexico of the first revolution of Spain--an insurrection that had not been effectually put down until Spain herself had returned to despotism, and now the newly-restored peace was threatened with a more bloody insurrection than the former, unless there was an entire separation of the two countries. Experience had fully demonstrated that the Spanish colonial system was compatible only with Spanish despotism. All native-born races desired to be free from the political disorders consequent upon the military revolutions of Spain herself. In this desire they were joined by that class who then ruled over the consciences of all men in Mexico, the clergy; for that powerful body preferred to sacrifice the allegiance they owed to the king, from whom they had received their preferments, rather than run the risk of losing their privileges.

THE PLAN OF IGUALA.

That which was the thought of all Mexicans capable of thinking, was not long in receiving a definite shape and form. The _pronunciamiento_ of Colonel Iturbide, at the city of Iguala, on the 24th of February 1821, united all the conflicting elements of Mexican society; for all could agree upon a plan that proposed a separation from Spain, while it gave guarantees to property, to the army, and to the church. Men who had been educated under the fatherly care of the Inquisition, had no idea of religious toleration; toleration for heresy was no part of their creed; nor had their long civil wars produced that alienation from the priesthood which had arisen from this cause in the other Spanish American states. One reason for this was that the first insurrection was headed by the parish priest, Hidalgo; and because the most prominent leaders in it were priests; while the watchword of the insurgents was, "_Viva_ Our Lady of Guadalupe!" who is the patron saint of the colored races of Mexico. The insurrection of Iguala was entirely distinct in its character from the popular insurrection of 1810; for that was an insurrection of the oppressed races against the despotism that was grinding them in the dust. It was a peasant war; but the cry of Iguala rose from the soldiers of the government. It was the first of that long list of military insurrections that have afflicted Mexico. It was an insurrection of the Creole supporters of the government, and rendered the government powerless at once. Colonel Iturbide had distinguished himself, as a Creole soldier, by his courage, and by the cruelty which he exercised toward the first insurgents.

When an officer in the service of the king in the first insurrection obtained a victory, he went to make his offering, not at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, but at the shrine of the Virgin of Remedies, so that as long as the Spanish cause prospered, the shrine of Guadalupe remained in obscurity; but as soon, however, as Iturbide and the Creoles deserted the cause of the king and joined the national standard, the Lady of Guadalupe was made the national patroness, and the order of Guadalupe was established as the first and only order of the empire, while Our Lady of Remedies sank into obscurity. This gave occasion to an unbelieving Mexican to remark that the revolution was a war between the Blessed Virgins, and that she of Guadalupe had triumphed over her that had taken shelter in the plant.

As soon as the tidings of the plan of Iguala reached Vera Cruz, Santa Anna hastened to give in his adhesion to the cause now truly national, which guaranteed equal rights to all under the united leadership of Iturbide and of General Guerrero, the only remaining Creole leader of the first insurrection still in arms. On the 18th day of March, 1821, he was the first to proclaim the plan of Iguala in the Plaza of Vera Cruz. This promptness of Santa Anna in proclaiming the independence determined many who were hesitating in dread of a bombardment from Spanish forces in the Castle of San Juan de Ulua; and this important step it was which first brought him prominently into notice. As a consequence of this political movement, Santa Anna was appointed second in command in Vera Cruz.