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 expected assaults of the English in the Atlantic were not long
withheld, for in this year, on the 20th of October, they seized Omoa
in Guatemala, for the recovery of which the president, Don Matias
Galvez, quitted the capital immediately and demanded succor from
Mexico. The Indians, it is related, aided the British in this attack,
but the assailants abandoned the captured port, after stripping it of
its cannon and munitions of war, in consequence of the insalubrity of
the climate. The British had established a post at a place then called
Wallis, the centre of a region rich in dye-woods, and aptly situated
so as to aid in the contraband trade which they carried on with
Yucatan, Guatemala and Chiapas; and, accordingly Don Roberto Rivas
Vetancourt attacked the settlement successfully, making prisoners of
all the inhabitants, more than three hundred slaves, and capturing a
number of small vessels. But just as hostilities ceased, two English
frigates and another armed vessel, arrived to succor the settlement,
and forced the Spanish governor to abandon his enterprise and depart
with his flotilla. Nevertheless Vetancourt, burned more than forty
different foreign establishments, and succeeded in capturing an
English brigantine of forty-four guns. The commander believed that
this signal devastation of the enemy's settlement and property would
result in freeing the land from such dangerous neighbors.
About this period the Spanish government detached General Solano and a
part of his squadron, with orders for America, to aid in the military
enterprises designed against Florida, in which Mexico was to take a
significant part. This commander was to co-operate with Don Bernardo de
Galvez, and both these personages, in the years 1779, 1780 and 1781,
making common cause with the French against the English, carried the war
actively up the Mississippi and into various portions of Florida. The
remaining period of Mayorga's viceroyalty was chiefly occupied with
preparations in the neighborhood of Vera Cruz against an assault from
the British, and in suppressing, by the aid of the alcalde Urizar, a
trifling revolt among the Indians of Izucar. An unfortunate disagreement
arose between Mayorga and the Spanish minister Galvez, and he was
finally, after many insults from the count, displaced, in order to make
room for Don Matias Galvez. The unfortunate viceroy departed for Spain
but never reached his native land. He died in sight of Cadiz, and his
wife was indemnified for the ill treatment of her husband by the
contemptible gift of twenty thousand dollars.
Mayorga was the victim apparently of an ill disposed minister, who
controlled the pliant mind of Charles. The viceroy in reality had
discharged his duties as lieutenant of the king, with singular
fidelity. All branches of art and industry in Mexico received his
fostering care; but he had enemies who sought his disgrace at court,
and they were finally successful in their shameful efforts.[47]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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