78 MEXICO, CENTEAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



privileges, or money. But they entertained the most divergent views on the 

 general situation. The more daring ventured to foster the idea of independence, 

 which to others seemed a dream, while the majority aspired to nothing higher 

 than a share in the administration of their native land, and the abolition of the 

 absolute commercial monopoly enjoyed by the Cadiz traders. 



On the other hand the great bulk of the native population felt little interest 

 in the form of government. What they wanted was the possession of the land, a 

 little light to relieve their gloomy lives, a modest share of liberty. Under the 

 Spanish regime they had never attempted to revolt, although for two hundred years 

 after the conquest the armed forces consisted only of the Viceroy's bodyguard ; even 

 under the Bourbon dynasty the " greens " — as the regular troops were called, from 

 the green facings of their uniforms — never exceeded 6,000 infantry and cavalry. 



Nevertheless the Indians themselves had also a vague instinct of political inde- 

 pendence, as is evident from the persistent legend about King Montezuma, The 

 name itself they obviously learnt from the Spaniards ; but they eagerly rallied 

 round it as a watchword, and adopted his colours, blue and white, for their 

 standard of battle. To him were attributed all the ruined monuments of the 

 country, and it was said that, like a second Quetzalcoatl, he slept in some cavern 

 awaiting the great day of national awakening. We know wùth what fury the 

 natives fought during the early days of the revolution. Impelled by the frenzy 

 of certain triumph, armed with nothing but clubs or knives, they fell upon solid 

 regiments of well-equipped troops ; they even threw themselves on the guns in 

 order to stop the touch-holes with their rags or straw hats. 



Such was the confusion of ideas and of factions caused by the prevailing 

 ignorance, and the long debasement of the populations, that the revolution began 

 by a rising of some fanatical Indians of Dolores, " in the name of the holy reli- 

 gion and of the good King Ferdinand YII." On the other hand the insurgents 

 suffered their first defeat by troops composed of Creoles and led by a Creole. 



In 1813, two years after the first conflict, independence was for the first time 

 proclaimed by a congress of refugees wandering from mountain to mountain. 

 But this voice of freedom sounded like blasphemy to those accustomed to servitude, 

 and the moderate party hastened to return to obedience. No Indians in the more 

 remote provinces had risen, and the seat of war had hitherto been confined to the 

 central districts, which were more densely peopled than elsewhere. The insur- 

 gents no longer formed regular armies, and had been reduced to mere guerilla 

 bands ; nearly all their prominent leaders had been shot, or were lurking in the 

 woods and marshes ; all seemed lost when, in 1817, Mina, a Spaniard twenty-eight 

 years of age, who had already fought bravely for freedom in Spain, crossed the seas 

 and devoted himself to the same cause in Mexico against his own fellow-countrymen. 



Bat after gaining a few victories he also perished, and the struggle for inde- 

 pendence, so fiercely begun in 181 1 by the priest Hidalgo and his extemporised 

 armies, was reduced to a handful of outlaws and brigands. Nevertheless the old 

 régime suddenly fell with a crash, so to say, under its own weight at the very 

 time when the Viceroy Apodaca was proclaiming the final restoration of order in 



