Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol. 1 of 2: A Historical, Geographical, Political, Statistical and Social Account of That Country From the Period of the Invasion by the Spaniards to the Present Time.Mayer, Brantz
History
Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol. 1 of 2: A Historical, Geographical, Political, Statistical and Social Account of That Country From the Period of the Invasion by the Spaniards to the Present Time.
The _fiscal_ or attorney general of the Audiencia of Manilla, Don José
Aréché, was ordered officially to examine into the executive conduct of
the Marques de Cruillas who had retired from the city of Mexico to
Cholula, and although it had been universally the custom to permit other
viceroys to answer the charges made against them by attorney, this favor
was denied to the Marques, who was subjected to much inconvenience and
suffering during the long trial that ensued.
DON CARLOS FRANCISCO DE CROIX, MARQUES DE CROIX, XLV. VICEROY OF NEW
SPAIN. 1766-1771.
The Marques de Croix was a native of the city of Lille in Flanders,
and, born of an illustrious family, had obtained his military renown
by a service of fifty years in the command of Ceuta, Santa-Maria, and
the Captaincy General of Galicia. He entered Mexico as viceroy on the
25th of August, 1766.
For many years past, in the old world and in the new, there had been a
silent but increasing fear of the Jesuits. It was known that in
America their missionary zeal among the Indians in the remotest
provinces was unequalled. The winning manners of the cultivated
gentlemen who composed this powerful order in the Catholic church,
gave them a proper and natural influence with the children of the
forest, whom they had withdrawn from idolatry and partially civilized.
But the worthy Jesuits, did not confine their zealous labors to the
wilderness. Members of the order, all of whom were responsible and
implicitly obedient to their great central power, were spread
throughout the world, and were found in courts and camps as well as in
the lonely mission house of the frontier or in the wigwam of the
Indian. They had become rich as well as powerful, for, whilst they
taught christianity, they did not despise the wealth of the world.
Whatever may have been their personal humility, their love for the
progressive power and dignity of the order, was never permitted for a
moment to sleep. A body, stimulated by such a combined political and
ecclesiastical passion, all of whose movements, might be controlled by
a single, central, despotic will, may now be kept in subjection in the
old world, where the civil and military police is ever alert in
support of the national authorities. But, at that epoch of transition
in America whose vast regions were filled with credulous and ignorant
aborigines, and thinly sprinkled with intelligent, educated and loyal
Europeans, it was deemed dangerous to leave the superstitious Indians
to become the prey, rather than the flock,--the instruments, rather
than the acolytes of such insidious shepherds. These fears had seized
the mind of Charles III. who dreaded a divided dominion in America,
with the venerable fathers. We do not believe that there was just
cause for the royal alarm. We do not suppose that the Jesuits whose
members, it is true, were composed of the subjects of all the Catholic
powers of Europe, ever meditated political supremacy in Spanish
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