Trust me, we all really hated the change to from DF to CDMX when it happened. But it would definitely be nicer to have a State named Anahuac than have a state that shares a name with the country. Also, this was never that big of a concern for us OTL, but could we have a better ARM (Armada Real Mexicana) here?
¡Por la Patria, Viva México Fuerte! A Mexican TL Mk. II
- Thread starter Arkhangelsk
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- strong mexico
Oh I second your feelings... we got really uncreative when naming or renaming most post-independence names (either after the capital or a "hero of independence"). And when they finally divided the state of Mexico all they could figure out was: Hidalgo, Morelos, and... Mexico for state names.
Also, what could be done to help Mexico City remain an actual Federal District is to reduce its size so as to only have an administrative population in the city and have people settled in other parts of the country where growth makes more sense. Like Guadalajara, Querétaro or even San Miguel el Grande.
I totally agree, I feel they missed a great opportunity making it easier for people to not get the State of Mexico confused with the country. Jycee is also right about the lack in creativity lol, something I slowly came to terms with during Mk. I as I had to figure out names for the territories carved out of Alta California and Nuevo Mexico. As for the Navy, rest assured that's a priority. If Mexico is to thrive and stand a chance against the United States, it needs control of the Gulf of Mexico, so a powerful Armada is a must.
That's what I have more or less planned. Mexico City will still be a large world class city, but still significantly smaller than OTL, with the population spread out more evenly across the country.
The Gulf must become a Mexican Lake! 
And I'm happy to see you consider our input in regards to the frankly dull naming conventions for states and cities. Also, I had an idea for further along in the time-line to have the ARM Allende become a recurrent name for flagships in the Armada. It'd be a nice touch methinks.
And I'm happy to see you consider our input in regards to the frankly dull naming conventions for states and cities. Also, I had an idea for further along in the time-line to have the ARM Allende become a recurrent name for flagships in the Armada. It'd be a nice touch methinks.It is a little easier to get creative with the northern territories (there are enough geographical features around: Sacramento, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Yuta/Deseret are all OK to use
) than when the central states/departments are divided. You can also keep some old Spanish names (Nueva Viscaya, Santander, etc.) But I look foward to see what you come up with.I mean, there's still the native names route. It would be nice to have a state called Huasteca and some others named after their most prominent native ethnicity. If Canada has Mississauga, why can't we have a Tzintzuntzan?
I'm all for that!! Battleships named after independence heroes is badass, I've also had this idea where this timeline's equivalent to aircraft carriers are named after Aztec gods or other mythical figures.The Gulf must become a Mexican Lake!
That's very trueIt is a little easier to get creative with the northern territories (there are enough geographical features around: Sacramento, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, Yuta/Deseret are all OK to use
both in regard to the north and the old Spanish names. Sasha does bring up a great point as well about utilizing native place names, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I've been playing around with different provincial/state boundaries for the north so all this brainstorming is great!Also apologies for the month late reply, May was hella busy but thankfully school's done and I'm finally able to work on the timeline. The next update should be up within the next few days, no later than next weekend.
Fun little tidbit here: Since I play a lot of Hearts of Iron and I of course love playing as my beloved Mexico, I developed a naming convention for ships that more or less goes: Super Battleships = 3 cities of the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tacuba, regular battleships = state names, battlecruisers = rivers, aircraft carriers = mountains, heavy cruisers = cities, light cruisers = war heroes/heroic military units and destroyers = battles. Though, of course, your mileage may vary. I had a bit of a hard time naming destroyers since the class name was usually the name of the war, and some wars have way less battles...
Okay that's really fucking cool!! I've figured more or less that I get to that point in the TL Mexico here will have a similar convention. I gotta say though I've never thought of the three cities of the Triple Alliance as name ideas, I love it
I basically picked Tenochtitlan because, since it's supposed to be a massive battleship like the Yamato-class, it both represents the origin of Mexico along with being a legit floating city
That makes sense, I love it heheI basically picked Tenochtitlan because, since it's supposed to be a massive battleship like the Yamato-class, it both represents the origin of Mexico along with being a legit floating city
The allusion to Tenochtitlan as the "floating city" is so cool!I wanna thank y'all once more for your patience. The next update it finally done, I'll have it up shortly.
La Apertura del Carto Sello: 1812-1814
La Apertura del Cuarto Sello
1812-1814
An 18th century print of an apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe amidst a plague in México City. The Virgin's heavenly image would go on to symbolize the cause for independence.
1812-1814
An 18th century print of an apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe amidst a plague in México City. The Virgin's heavenly image would go on to symbolize the cause for independence.
The rebel capture of one the highest ranking Royalist officers was generally considered a crushing blow to the Spanish cause in America, and a deeply personal humiliation for Félix María Calleja in particular, as he had dedicated his lifetime to loyal and unconditional service to the Spanish Crown. Initially held under heavy guard in San Luis Potosí, the Insurgents eventually decided upon sending him to continue his imprisonment in el Polvorin in Monclova. [1] Anecdotal evidence suggests Calleja's eight months of imprisonment only hardened and reinforced his cruel nature and paranoiac tendencies, a distinction noted by various contemporaries upon his coordinated escape and arrival to Monterrey in April 1812, following the recent capitulation of the town's Insurgent defenders. The details of how Calleja escaped remain shrouded in mystery, but the prevailing consensus posits that Ignacio Elizondo, a disgruntled Insurgent commander charged with overseeing the prisoners at Monclova was persuaded to release Calleja in exchange for a higher rank and pay with the Royalists. [2] At the Neoleonese capital both Calleja and Elizondo rendezvoused with Colonel Arredondo and the Royalist leadership in the north managed to rally. Within a matter of weeks Calleja reconstituted most of his army of roughly 4,000 troops and in late May led the bulk of his forces from his base in Nuevo León and successfully recaptured most of San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas over the course of the summer.
The Insurgents were nearly caught by surprise in the immediate aftermath of Calleja's escape, as his restored Army of the Center quickly gained momentum on its trek toward the Bajío. The fall of Zacatecas in August left the Insurgent leadership exposed and plans were quickly drafted to relocate the Congress from Guadalajara to a safer location. The Insurgents under the command of General José María Liceaga slowed Calleja's advance in heated battles across Guanajuato and the Guadalajaran highlands, which allowed the Congress enough time to conduct a fast but orderly evacuation from Guadalajara to Tepic. The evacuation was the brain child of the Lieutenant Colonel José María González Hermosillo and militant priests José Sixto Verduzco and José María Mercado, who prepared temporary accommodations for the Congress at Tepic before making the arduous 230 mile journey north to the relative safety of Durango in Nueva Vizcaya. On the heels of the Congress' retreat came the Spanish onslaught, as Calleja often resorted to cruel and draconian punishments when dealing with captured Insurgents. One example included the dressing of prisoners-of-war in Royalist uniforms and sending them to the front lines armed with nothing but lances or pikes. Calleja eventually settled on public mass executions, often in the central plazas of recently captured towns and villages, as a tool of social control. This campaign of fear initially did have a placating effect on the territories reclaimed by the Royalists, though guerilla warfare persisted in the mountainous terrain of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Calleja's momentum reached its apex near the end of the summer, as the bulk of his army were forced to siege Guadalajara for nearly eleven weeks, which delayed their pursuit of the Insurgent Congress.
General José María Liceaga and Father José Sixto Verduzco
With few options left and operating on borrowed time, the Insurgents in Durango resolved to evacuate themselves further north, deciding to relocate to Saltillo in order to unite with Allende, López Rayón and other rebel elements in the far north. Unbeknownst to the Insurgent leadership, they had been purposefully fed compromised intelligence, as Saltillo was in fact under Royalist control and set to serve as a trap for the oblivious Congress and Insurgent forces charged with protecting them. After quartering in San Pedro el Gallo and hearing conflicting accounts about López Rayón's location and Allende's movements, a suspicious General Liceaga sent reconnaissance scouts and outriders ahead and confirmed the Royalist ruse. After several tense arguments with the President of the Congress, Liceaga convinced them to change course and travel in the opposite direction toward the mining town of Parral, with the goal of eventually reaching Chihuahua. Liceaga for his part maintained the charade for as long as possible, eventually being forced to engage the Royalists outside Saltillo to a very close stalemate. With his numbers dwindling and fearful of losing more of his men in a second engagement, Liceaga ordered a hasty retreat to San Pedro before reuniting with Congress on the road to Parral.
For nearly six weeks the Insurgents and Royalists shadowed each other across the Chihuahua desert, before Calleja grudgingly gave up his chase of the Insurgents. By late November he determined to return to México City in order to regroup and strategize, while at the same time further consolidate control of the reclaimed territories so as to be prepared for a new campaign in the spring. Severe winter storms impeded any further campaigning and it did no favors to his beleaguered army and overstretched supply lines, and to make matters worse dysentery had cut a deadly swath through scores of soldiers on both sides (and to Calleja's own misfortune as he was also afflicted). [3] Upon his arrival to the capital in early 1813, Calleja was greeted with a hero's welcome by Viceroy Venegas, who praised the Royalist commander in an ostentatious celebration of his "valiant escape," his victories on the field of battle, and even recognized him as "savior of New Spain" to cheering crowds of capitalinos. In private it was a completely different matter, however, as Venegas blamed Calleja for failing to stop the rebellion from the beginning and for allowing the Insurgents to grow in power over the course of his imprisonment. The latter point served to be the final straw for Calleja, and after several secret meetings with Royalists within the city who were also deeply dissatisfied with the Viceroy's lack of effective leadership, Calleja was convinced to join a plot to remove Venegas from power. After several days in early February of continuous pressure from both the Royalist public and army, Calleja convinced the Audiencia to remove and arrest Venegas and in what amounted to a bloodless coup, named Calleja as de-facto Viceroy of New Spain in early March. [4]
Félix María Calleja del Rey, 60th Viceroy of New Spain
Without a moment to spare, Calleja dedicated himself to dealing with the dilapidated state of the colony's weak financial and military standing. Venegas' careless mismanagement of the royalist war effort had left the colonial coffers nearly empty, which meant the colony had no means whatsoever to pay its soldier's wages, let alone pay for arms and supplies. The inability of the Royalist leadership to pay their soldiers had begun to have a grave effect on the army's cohesiveness, as desertion skyrocketed in the last year of Venegas' tenure. The exceedingly cold and wet winters of 1811 and 1812 had also taken their toll on the Royalists and Insurgents alike, and for much of the spring of 1813 the vast majority of the fighting was characterized as irregular and intermittent. For the Insurgents, it provided a brief moment to settle the oft-irritable and capricious Congress with some sense of permanence and stability within the mining village of San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua, in the far north of Nueva Vizcaya. The region's isolation was such that the arrival of the forward Insurgent Army train to the village on March 13 struck many of the inhabitants by surprise, a feeling reciprocated by the advancing Insurgent columns as they encountered practically zero resistance from the Spanish garrison, or what little remained of it. As the last of the Insurgents entered Chihuahua, it was revealed that the colony's meager Spanish reserves had been conscripted by the Spanish Commandant of the Internal Provinces General Nemecio Salcedo to fight back Comanche raids in Texas, which had intensified in ferocity that previous winter. [5] After a brief period of stabilization where Royalist incursions from both Nuevo México and Durango were successfully repulsed, attempts to make contact with López Rayón and his army were made, though the constant threat of Comanche raids and the inhospitable nature of the Chihuahua desert both proved to be formidable impediments.
Throughout the Insurgent Congress' flight into the desert, both Generals López Rayón and Allende found themselves face to face with similar dilemmas--should they continue on their original military objectives or yield back recently won territory in order to rush to the Congress' aid? López Rayón had attempted to form a supply line through Nueva Extremadura but was hamstrung by the double threat of Comanche raiders and Royalist militias which made contact with the Insurgents in Chihuahua nearly impossible. To make matters worse, the indiscriminate and absolute nature of Comanche raids on the Texas landscape had brought the region to the brink of starvation, and further threatened López Rayón's heavily depleted force of 3,700 men (roughly one-fifth of his original force) with total annihilation. In early May 1813, López Rayón received word from Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara (one of the diplomats from the Insurgent delegation sent to Washington City) that he had succeeded in raising an army of reinforcements in New Orleans committed to freeing Mexico from Spanish rule. Unable to remain in Béxar and blocked off from moving south by Arredondo's army, López Rayón agreed to rendezvous with Gutierrez de Lara at Nacogdoches, near the aqueous border with Louisiana. [6]
Minister plenipotentiary Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara
After deliberating with Morelos and several trusted sub-lieutenants, Allende resolved to depart Veracruz and marched north with his own diminished force of 7,100 men. Despite holding the numerical advantage over Colonel Arredondo and his eastern army, the Insurgents under Allende attempted multiple crossings through the Sierra Madre Oriental in the late summer and throughout the autumn of 1812 to no avail. Eventually Allende and his men learned of the Congress' relocation to Chihuahua in January 1813, not long after the Battle of San Fernando, which ended in an Insurgent victory and brought much of southern Nuevo Santander under their control. For his part, Morelos held down Veracruz for nearly six months before he was forced by Royalist forces out of México City to evacuate and move his army south toward Puebla in early December. After a brief period of rest, Morelos continued his march south into the mountains of northern Oaxaca and briefly managed to occupy the city of Antequera, before a double-pronged Royalist offensive in the spring of 1813 (spearheaded by Generals Melchor Álvarez from the capital and Agustín de Iturbide from Valladolid) forced the Insurgents back into the Mixteca. At this point the conflict in Oaxaca devolved into internecine guerilla warfare, with Morelos setting up base atop a mountain fortress overlooking the village of Silacayoapan.
By early summer Viceroy Calleja began to feel increased pressure from many of the same populist forces that had flung him into office, with some expressing their frustration with the continuous state of conflict that had permeated much of the colony's countryside. The colonial debt had ballooned to over two million pesos, and with the near total cessation of commerce and trade, Calleja was forced to take drastic measures to remedy the colony's insolvency. In June he expropriated the lands owned by the Inquisition, taking advantage of the institution's abolition as promulgated by the Spanish Constitution the year before, as well as any properties which had been previously administered by Insurgent priests. Calleja still faced some backlash over his requisition of the various ecclesiastical properties, but he managed to assuage some of that consternation by conducting a complete overhaul of the public treasury and the tax code. This vastly improved both tax collection and public trust enough that Calleja managed to obtain loans from the private sector to cover the costs of properly paying and equipping his army, in preparation for the eventual subjugation of the Insurgent forces to the north and south. This came on the heels of Colonel Arredondo's capitulation to a double envelopment by Allende's army and López Rayón's ragtag force of Mexican Insurgents, American volunteers and a mix of Lipan, Comanche, and Tonkawa warriors which had styled itself as the Republican Army of the North. Following the Battle of Cadereyta, Arredondo and nearly 300 Royalists were taken prisoner and the Insurgents triumphantly marched into Monterrey on July 31, which all but shattered what remained of any significant Royalist presence in the northern interior. [7] In early August Allende and López Rayón agreed to split up, with the former resolved to march west toward Saltillo, while the latter remained in Monterrey. From Saltillo, Allende and his army continued their march through the desert, stopping momentarily at Parras and Mapimí in order to rest before they reached the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in late August. At that point they followed the road north the remainder of the way to Chihuahua, where they arrived nearly three weeks after entering Nueva Vizcaya. [8] The effective loss of northern New Spain infuriated Viceroy Calleja, as the news of Arredondo's capitulation broke after significant resources had already been expended in vain in order to quell the southern Insurgency under Morelos. Much like he did when he created the Army of the Center, Calleja concentrated more power in the military-state apparatus, further curtailed the freedom of the press and largely ignored the new Spanish Constitution's provisions on voting rights and separation of powers. By all accounts much of central México had become Calleja's dictatorship, and with the power of the viceroy at his disposal he began to hastily organize the formation of new regiments intent to root out the northern Insurgents, despite growing protests from his staff to focus on the southern threat first due to Morelos' proximity to the capital. To make matters worse, apathy by the general male population toward military service set back Calleja's plans even further, as well as confirmed his growing fear that public opinion had irreparably turned in favor of the Insurgents. Three years of warfare and famine had left much of New Spain in a dilapidated state of ruin and turmoil, with the cycle of death and violence only growing in scope and ferocity. Then came the plague.
The Republican Army of the North
The Great Pestilence of 1813 first appeared in the historical record in the spring, following the Royalist siege of Antequera, with a steady proliferation of the disease over the course of the summer and autumn. Then in late October, it spread like a wildfire throughout much of the Altiplano, inflicting those unlucky enough to get infected with bouts of high fever, delirium, fatigue and hemorrhaging which in many cases proved fatal. The plague, which killed an estimated 9,000 people in the capital alone, forced Calleja to delay his planned offensive until the late spring of 1814 as México City entered a state of quarantine. Most towns and villages were able to implement their own quarantine measures to blunt the impact of the plague, but for the soldiers on campaign, the lack of proper isolatory and hygienic protocols ensured disaster. Both Iturbide and Álvarez's armies were decimated by the hemorrhagic plague, which further stymied their attempts to deal with the insurgency in both the Mixteca and the coastal lowlands. In what was likened to an act of divine providence, the vast majority of Morelos' army did not suffer the same level of devastation, which proved instrumental in Morelos' retaking of Acapulco in December. [9] The same was true of the northern Insurgents, as the Chihuahua desert limited the plague's northern advance to roughly the Tropic of Cancer. In early 1814, Calleja penned a letter to his wife Francisca de la Gándara where he lamented the degenerate state of the colony and poetically remarked that the "fourth seal has been opened," likening the state of the colony's affairs to the apocalyptic narrative of the Book of Revelations. [10]
With his southern flank momentarily secure, Allende had intended to scout for new recruits in order to recoup the losses incurred by nearly two years of campaigning across the country. That task proved to be easier said than done, as the sparsely populated north offered too few numbers to make a significant difference. In what was simultaneously likened to as both acts of pragmatism and desperation, Allende turned his attention to Comanchería as a source of possible support. The delicate peace that had existed between the Spanish and Comanche since the late 18th century was shattered with the start of the rebellion in 1810, as Spanish authorities were no longer able to maintain their treaty commitments to the Comanche. The unjust seizure of a prominent Comanche chief in Béxar by Spanish authorities in 1811 for all intents and purposes sealed the fate of the province, as Texas was subjected to deadly raids which only grew in severity over time. While some Comanche had willingly joined López Rayón's army the previous year during the fight against Arredondo, the raids into Texas continued unabated and the territorial range of the raids had grown to include portions of Nuevo Santander, Nueva Extremadura and Nueva Vizcaya. Many amongst Allende and López Rayón's ranks wanted to retaliate and even take the fight into the heart of Comanchería itself, but Allende cautioned that such drastic action would be reckless, as it would expend valuable men and resources and leave the Insurgents too weak to force back a possible Royalist offensive. The Comanche leadership for their part were initially anxious at Allende's entreaties, but eventually the principal chiefs Vicente, Barbaquiste and Pisinampe agreed to peace talks, and in early 1814 Allende personally made the journey to Texas in order to treat with the Comanche leadership. Flanked by, among others, his eldest son Indalecio (who now held the rank of captain) and his lieutenant José Francisco Ruiz, the Insurgent delegation met with the Comanche chiefs in a remote Wichita village on the Brazos River north of Béxar where the truce was to be agreed upon. [11] Throughout the course of the summit the Insurgents emphasized the role of Spain as a mutual enemy and argued that Comanchería stood to benefit far more from an alliance with an independent México than from continued allegiance to Spain. Despite some initial hesitations by the Comanche, a formal truce was reached in early April which reaffirmed Comanche military and economic hegemony in the north while simultaneously abating the lethal raids across the northern provinces for the time being. Allende was even successful in obtaining a pledge from the Comanche to support the Insurgents in their fight against Spain, so long as the younger Allende and his lieutenant remained in Texas in order to "ensure" the Insurgents did not renege on their promises. [12]
Comanche warriors in full war regalia
After his victory at Acapulco, Morelos proceeded to march north into the coastal mountains, and with fresh recruits in tow he took Chilpancingo in late February. After a string of victories through the Balsas River Valley, Morelos was dealt his first major defeat in May 1814 at the Siege of Valladolid, at which point he was forced to retreat south with General Iturbide in heated pursuit. Morelos succeeded in routing Iturbide at Apatzingán in June, but a second attempt to take Valladolid was thwarted by General Álvarez at the Battle of Acuitzlo several weeks later. Fears of being enveloped by both Álvarez and Iturbide's armies compelled Morelos to retreat back up the Balsas River toward Chilpancingo. In the autumn Morelos launched a new campaign to the east with the intention to encircle and capture Puebla, but after his victory at Atoyac, Morelos changed course and marched his army toward Oaxaca instead. Secondhand accounts attribute a fabled prophetic dream Morelos is claimed to have had, where he witnessed his own execution after his failure to take Puebla, to the sudden shift in course, but what is known is that Morelos was aware of the nascent Insurgent movement in the Captaincy General of Guatemala, which had erupted in San Salvador at the beginning of the year, and he expressed a shared sense of kinship with the Central American rebels. [13] After careful deliberations with his lieutenants, Morelos made his decision to help the Central American Insurgents and in September he marched south from the Mixteca to Antequera, where he split his army of over 11,000 into two portions. Two of Morelos' high ranking lieutenants, Vicente Guerrero and Isidoro Montes de Oca, were charged with roughly 6,000 men reserved to hold back the Royalists in southern New Spain. The roughly 5,000 remaining troops followed Morelos and two other high ranking lieutenants, Hermenegildo Galeana and Mariano Matamoros, south toward Salina Cruz, with the intention of crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and enter Guatemala by the end of the year.
As the four year anniversary of the start of the rebellion loomed over not only México, but most of Spanish America as well, the beleaguered Royalists received word of Napoleon's loss in Europe and with that the return of King Fernando VII to Madrid in April 1814. Immediately upon his restoration the King reneged on his commitments to the Cortes and the new constitution, as conservatives encouraged him to embrace the absolutism that was emblematic of the ancien régime. In one of his first acts following his restoration, the King of Spain decreed the formation of an expeditionary force which would sail to Spanish America at the earliest possible opportunity, with the expressed purpose of subduing the rebellions in México, Nueva Grenada and Río de la Plata. Until this point most of the revolutionary juntas across Spanish America had nominally claimed fealty to Fernando VII as a mark of legitimacy, but the rebellion's longevity only fueled the desire for independence. The King's latest repudiation served to be the last straw. Based largely on an earlier document that Morelos had published and shared with Allende in 1813, the Insurgent Congress convened an extraordinary session at the Portales del Ayuntamiento in Chihuahua on October 6, 1814 and voted in favor of independence from Spain. The Acta Solemne de la Declaración de Independencia de la América Septentrional was then signed by all the delegates and Captain Generals present, thereby formalizing the complete and total separation from Spain. [14] As word of the expeditionary force reached the Americas, the urgency on both sides of the conflict only grew larger. It was however not lost on the minds of the Insurgents, that there was no longer any way out of this war other than to achieve total and unconditional victory.
Acta Solemne de la Declaración de Independencia de la América Septentrional
[2] Ignacio Elizondo in OTL betrayed Hidalgo and Allende while the Insurgents attempted to flee into the United States, which culminated in much of the Insurgent leadership's death. Considered to be the "Mexican Benedict Arnold," in this timeline he proves to be equally treacherous.
[3] In OTL the first couple of winters of the war for independence were known to be unusually cold and wet. This was immediately after a period of drought that extended throughout the first decade of the 19th century.
[4] Calleja in OTL also becomes Viceroy roughly around the same time (March 1813), though the circumstances that lead up to his appointment in this time are vastly different.
[5] If you were curious, Nemecio Salcedo was indeed a blood relative of the last Spanish governor of Texas Manuel María de Salcedo.
[6] Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara also helped organized what was essentially a military filibuster in OTL, though in this timeline they simply meld into López Rayón's force, which if nothing else helps give this otherwise rag tag ensemble more cohesion.
[7] Borrowing this from OTL as well. Republican Army of the North just sounds really cool.
[8] The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was one of the four royal roads that connected México City with the outer reaches of the Viceroyalty.
[9] The plague, which also occurred in OTL, is considered to be an outbreak of cocoliztli or something similar. The disease was known to affect primarily Indians and people with indigenous ancestry. People from the coastal lowlands for some odd reason were more immune or at least suffered only mild symptoms. Many of the men who constituted Morelos' army were from these lowland regions.
[10] Ah so that's where the title come's from. Considering all the war, death and disease, it seems pretty apt.
[11] Ruiz was the former mayor of Béxar and a survivor of the OTL Battle of Medina, where the Spanish defeated the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition.
[12] As ominous as it might first seem, the Younger Allende's time in Texas amongst the Comanche will serve him well in the future.
[13] I admit I had a little bit of fun with this one. Much of Morelos' campaigning in this update has run a similar course to OTL, and perhaps averting his OTL trajectory he also avoids his OTL death the following year. Either way it's one of those things that eventually becomes mythologized over time.
[14] The "first" declaration of independence (In English known as the Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America), which is nearly identical to the one from OTL...down to the name (the name slaps too lol I can't help it). The main difference here is that it's one year later then OTL's, as well as the lack of Morelos at it's signing, amongst others. No worries, he'll add his name to it eventually.
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Wait, so Congress fled from Guadalajara to Tepic, from there to Durango and finally Chihuahua? How many months did this trek take? Also, are the northern and southern insurgents cut off from each other? I don't remember them losing and retaking Acapulco from the royalists in the previous TL.
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The trek in total (from the evacuation of Guadalajara to the arrival at Chihuahua) lasted about nine months. I accidentally put down their arrival in May 1813, it's supposed to be March, so my bad. The first 2/3 of the trek was mostly the Insurgents trying not to get caught by Calleja, once he gave up the goose chase the Insurgents were more or less able to continue the rest of the way north without incident. To answer your second question, the Insurgents are physically separated into northern and southern halves (communication between the two halves is difficult but they've managed to make it work), the next update will bridge that gap though. Oh and concerning Acapulco, the Insurgents under Morelos did take it at that start of the rebellion, but it was retaken by the Royalists after Calleja's installation as Viceroy. The second time around the Insurgents were able to take the city more easily.
Great update. Calleja being Calleja, whatever timeline we're talking about. Looking forward to see how both sides' strategies shift as Spain is preparing an expeditionary force and independence is now the goal of the insurgents.
I'm also really interested in knowing what will come out of Allende Jr.'s sojourn with the Comanches.
I'm also really interested in knowing what will come out of Allende Jr.'s sojourn with the Comanches.
IOTL that expeditionary force was sent to New Granada and Venezuela, right? I'm also curious to see who the author will choose as emperor of Mexico.
Greetings!!
Thank you so much for those kind words Yeah Calleja always struck me as a foul piece of work, considering how he still was replaced despite being much more successful in OTL. The next update shouldn't take me nearly so long to get to now that I'm on summer break, and the setting up of this alt-expeditionary force sounds fun. As for Allende Jr., one of the first things Mexico will have to deal with once independence is achieved will be securing the border with the United States, and for the moment having the Comanche on your side both in order to deter Anglo-American expansion and prevent future raids might be the best thing to do. Any positive relationships Indalecio manages to foster with Comancheria will hopefully contribute to fruitful negotiations with the future empire.
That is correct. I'm sot sure if it can be made any larger than it already was IOTL (if wiki is to be believed it was 10,500) but in general if Spain is doing worse in Mexico it probably isn't doing any better in South America. I'll get to work on that asap. The question of who will be Emperor IS something I have been thinking about a lot. A European house would present the most legitimacy and provide Mexico an easy channel for European capital to flow in (Ferdie VII won't allow a Bourbon so that probably leaves them out). I've also been interested in involving the House of Moctezuma, which did seem to be involved in some sort of independence shenanigans sometime after Morelos' death IOTL.