Mayorga is represented to have been affable and liberal, possessing a magnanimous charitable heart, and making himself beloved by all, and yet he had to exercise much prudence as well as force of character, his position being an unfortunate one, as will be seen hereafter.
The new viceroy's arrival at the capital occurred just eleven days after the proclamation there, on the 12th, of war having been declared May 18th against Great Britain by King Cárlos III. Assistance secretly afforded by Spain to the British North American colonists to attain their independence,[1] had much to do with the animosity of the day; in which measure Spain did not know how surely she was working her own undoing in the same direction.
The people of Mexico saw in this war nothing but misfortune; their trade would be harassed, and their coasts ravaged. Taxation, loans, and sacrifice of life would naturally follow. Nor were their fears unfounded, for very soon Mexico was called to the aid of Guatemala for the recovery of the port of Omoa in Honduras, which the English had taken. She was also required to take a prominent part in the combined Spanish and French operations against Florida. Those operations were quite active from 1779 to 1781.[2]
Fearing an assault on Vera Cruz, the government
- ↑ Bustamante, the editor of Cavo, Tres Siglos, iii. 31-2, assures us that the policy of the Spanish court in aiding the colonists was intended to avert a dangerous British invasion of New Spain from the North American colonies—a false step in his opinion, which eventually proved injurious not only to the allied powers, the French and Spaniards, but also to the people of New Spain, whose emancipation it retarded 50 years, though not preventing it. The king however, in his manifesto of July 8th to his vassals of America, states as his reasons for the war, among others, the hostile acts of the British authorities in Darien and Honduras. On the first day of the same month ordinances additional to the general regulations to govern the royal navy and letters of marque on the subject of prizes, had been issued. All trade and intercourse with the British had been forbidden in June. Reales Ordenes, iv. 57-84, 192-6, 199-225.
- ↑ Mayorga had been apprised in Puebla of the measures the audiencia had decreed to supply with money Yucatan, New Orleans, Habana, Manila, and other points, which derived their support from Mexico, and might expect an attack by the enemy at any moment. He sent, in various amounts, about $600,000 to Louisiana for the campaign against the English in Florida. Bustamante, Suplem., in Cavo, Tres Siglos, iii. 30-7.
