As a soldier he had distinguished himself less for daring feats than for prompt execution of cautiously planned movements. This at least inspired confidence in his subordinates; and he supplemented the same with strict discipline, softened by prudent attention to creature comforts; so that while his cold formality of intercourse and studied methods repressed enthusiasm, he nevertheless enjoyed good repute among his men, who manifested their deference and gratitude by calling him Amo Don Felix.[1]
Respect was indeed the only feeling evoked by his positive qualities; it hardly warmed into admiration. Fear and distrust rose as a barrier; and those who ventured near him did so with a motive, prepared with concession or flattery. And Calleja was content; for he loved to be flattered and looked up to as a great man, and that without a too searching or microscopic analysis of the qualities comprising his character. Devoid of magnetism, and with a temperament hardened by sanguinary warfare on the border and by comparative isolation of life among rude soldiers and colonists, his ambitious spirit had come to regard fear as the sweetest of homage and the strongest of influences.
Acknowledged as the foremost soldier in New Spain, his appointment failed not to inspire the army with a wholesome confidence, and the insurgents with a corresponding awe, while the people at large coupled his name only with relentless cruelty. Yet even among the creoles there was a clique which had begun to look upon this new Tamerlane, as Bustamante calls him,[2] as a possible liberator. He had more than once allowed to escape the utterance that independence would benefit the country.[3] Encouraged
- ↑ Amo, meaning the master of an estate, or factory.
- ↑ Campañas de Calleja, sup. 2. Pages 177-8 are laden with choice epithets against him.
- ↑ Even in a private letter to the viceroy, in January 1811, he had written: 'Sus naturales y aun los mismos Europeos estan convencidos de las ventajas que les resultarian de un gobierno independiente.' Bustamante, Cuadro Hist., i. 163.
