BRANCIFORTE'S CHARACTER AZANZA VICEROY. 269 



was at hand. The ship Monarch anchored at Vera Oruz, on the 

 17th of May, 1798, and, on the 31st of the same month, Azanza, 

 the new viceroy who reached America in her, received the vice- 

 royal baton from Branciforte. This supercilious peculator departed 

 from New Spain with five millions of dollars, a large portion of 

 which was his private property, in the vessel that had brought his 

 successor, and arrived at Ferol, after a narrow escape from the 

 English in the waters of Cadiz. But he returned to Spain loaded 

 with wealth and curses, for never had the Mexicans complained so 

 bitterly against any Spaniard who was commissioned to rule them. 

 The respectable and wealthy inhabitants of the colony were loudest 

 in their denunciations of an "Italian adventurer," who enriched 

 himself at the expense of their unfortunate country, nor was his 

 conduct less hateful because he had been the immediate successor 

 of so just and upright a viceroy as Revilla-Gigedo. 



The character of Branciforte was keen and hypocritical. He 

 tried, at times, but vainly, to conceal his avarice, w r hile his pre- 

 tended love for the " Virgin of Guadalupe " and for the royal 

 family, was incessantly reiterated in familiar conversation. Every 

 Saturday during his government, and on the twelfth of every month, 

 he made pious pilgrimages to the sanctuary of the Mexican pro- 

 tectress. He placed a large image of the virgin on the balcony of 

 the palace, and ordered a salute to be fired at daybreak in honor 

 of the saint on the twelfth of every December. With these cheap 

 ceremonials, however, he satisfied his hypocritical piety and absorb- 

 ing avarice, but he never bestowed a farthing upon the collegiate 

 church of the Virgin. Whenever he spoke in his court of the sov- 

 ereign of Spain it was with an humble mien, a reverential voice, 

 and all the external manifestations of subserviency for the royal per- 

 sonages who conferred such unmerited honors upon him. Such is 

 the picture which has been left by Mexican annalists of one of their 

 worst rulers. 



Don Miguel Jose de Azanza, 

 LIV. Viceroy of New Spain. — 1798— 1800. 



Azanza, who, as we have i elated, assumed the viceroyalty m 

 May, 1798, was exceedingly well received in Mexico. His 

 worthy character was already known to the people, and almost any 

 new viceroy would have been hailed as a deliverer from the odious 

 administration of Branciforte. Azanza was urbane towards all 

 classes, and his discreet conversation, at once, secured the respect 



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