¡Por la Patria, Viva México Fuerte! A Mexican TL Mk. II

[Arkhangelsk]

Hey y'all! It's been quite a while since I posted anything. Life's been kinda fucking nuts...but I won't get into the minutia of it all as I can imagine I'd only be singing along to the choir...and in that regard I hope you all and your loved ones are doing well and staying safe. Anywho, roughly a decade ago I began my first, and thus far only timeline on a stronger Mexico. I got as far as the 1880's but as I read a lot of my earlier material, I felt I left out a great many details, and that clarity has made me reconsider the path and trajectory I originally had the TL make. Not to mention , my writing was simply atrocious!!!

I'm going to try my best to stick as close as I can to the original TL, but at the same time I hope these new changes I have in store enhances the story. So without any further ado!

¡Por la Patria, Viva México Fuerte!

​

-“My fellow citizens of the Republic, on this most hallowed of occasions, I ask of you all to remember and honor the sacrifices the founders of our great nation made to make us proud to be Mexicans. On this, the Bicentennial of our independence let us all continue to build a just and free society, a society which respects the rights of all peoples and a society that strives to promote life, liberty and the common good of all.”
-President Patricia Jimenez Elba
(Excerpt translated from the El Sol de México, September 16, 2010)

-"Long live Fernando VII! Long live America! Long live religion, and death to bad government!"
-Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
(Reported final appeal of the "original" Grito de Dolores, September 16, 1810)

Part I
Fight for Independence

The Querétaro Conspiracy​

At the dawn of the 19th century, a group of like-minded individuals, prominent among them Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, Captains in their regiment of the Queen's Provincial Dragoons, the Corregidor of Querétaro Miguel Dominguez and his esteemed wife Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, and the famed eccentric priest Father Miguel Hidalgo formed the core of a conspiracy to bring about an end to colonial rule of New Spain. Inspired by the philosophical though of the Enlightenment, as well as the recent eruptions of revolution in the United States, France and Haiti, the group of conspirators frequently met at various safehouses across the Bajío where they discussed politics and contemporary events, and upon recognition that the Viceregal government had failed to properly respect the rights of its colonial subjects, a consensus for greater autonomy and reform was agreed upon by the members of what became known to posterity as the Querétaro Conspiracy.

As Spanish control over its empire deteriorated, culminating with the Napoleonic overthrow of King Fernando VII in May 1808, the time for the conspirators to act seemed eminent. In México City, the predominantly criollo Ayuntamiento rebuked the newly installed King of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, and amongst the sympathetic overtures to their deposed Bourbon monarch the Ayuntamiento proposed the formation of an autonomous representative government charged with administering New Spain in the name of King Fernando VII. [1] While Viceroy José de Iturrigaray gave his assent to the plan, the conservative and peninsular-led Audiencia rejected it outright. Over the course of the summer criollos continued to agitate for autonomy, with both the Ayuntamientos of México City and Veracruz issuing demands to allow the formation of a junta and the convocation of a congress, but the Audiencia continued to oppose all appeals for reform, arguing that it was not New Spain's place as a colony to dictate the terms of its relationship to the crown. Events culminated in September when an armed mob of roughly 500 landowners and merchants, lead by members of the Audiencia and the Archbishop of México City, orchestrated a coup d'état against Viceroy Iturrigaray and conducted a mass arrest of prominent criollos across the city. With New Spain now, for the moment, under their firm control, the Audiencia installed the old and frail Field Marshal Pedro de Garibay as their rubberstamp Viceroy where he served for a little under a year. In July 1809 he was replaced with the Archbishop, Francisco Javier de Lizana y Beaumont. Both men proved utterly inept and incapable of stemming the tide of unrest and in May 1810 the Audiencia relieved Lizana y Beaumont from his Viceregal duties, in the end opting to rule the colony directly until the new Viceroy, Francisco Javier Venegas, assumed power that following September.

By late spring of 1810 it had become abundantly clear that the Spanish government, despite British military aid, was on the verge of total collapse. With support and cover provided by Corrigedor Dominguez, the conspirators in Querétaro and Guanajuato began to assemble armaments, clandestinely recruit supporters, and even go as far as draft the outline of a new government. By the start of summer the conspiracy was in full swing and the date was set for December 8 as the planned start of the uprising, but as several weak links in the Conspiracy betrayed the movement to the Audiencia in August and September, the conspirators were forced to move the start of the uprising to October 1. Events then took an unexpected turn on the evening of September 14 when a rebel priest by the name of Manuel Irriaga bacame gravely ill and during a deathbed confession revealed the conspiracy's existance to his attendant peninsular priest, which precipitated the arrest of Miguel Dominguez and several other conspirators the following day. Despite being confined indoors for her safety, Miguel's wife Josefa alerted her neighbor and fellow conspirator Ignacio Pérez of what had transpired. Without a moment to spare the elderly Pérez embarked on a 40-mile horseride through the night to San Miguel el Grande, where Allende and the Aldama brothers were alerted to the Conspiracy's betrayal. With very little time to spare, Allende and the two Aldamas in turn rode north toward Dolores in order to warn Father Hidalgo.

The conspirators set the plan into motion, September 16, 1810​

Upon arriving at Dolores in the early morning hours of September 16, Allende and his retinue awoke and informed Hidalgo about the course of events in Querétaro. At this point Hidalgo decided the time had come to set the plan into motion. Aided by laborers, parishioners and other local townsfolk, Hidalgo apprehended the Spanish Priest, Father Bustamante, and imprisoned him along with other known Spaniards. As the central plaza in front of the church Nuestra Señora de los Dolores filled with several hundred people, Father Hidalgo issued an impassioned call to arms in defense of King and country and against French invasion. Hidalgo, Allende and Aldama, along with four thousand rebels (mostly indians and mestizos), occupied San Miguel el Grande where Allende’s regiment of the Queen's Provincial Dragoons soon joined the rebel cause. After a heated dispute between Hidalgo and Allende on who should take military command of the Insurgent army, Hidalgo reluctantly conceded to Allende's position and followed the Conspiracy’s original trajectory with Allende and the elder Aldama holding joint command, while Hidalgo served as second in command. [2]

On September 18 the rebels moved on the village of Celaya, which was quickly taken and as news of the revolt radiated out through the Bajío the rebel forces quickly grew tenfold. Allende was initially wary over many of the new recruits capacity for restraint, as the vast majority were indian or mestizo peasant laborers with little or no military training. Regardless of his reservations he decided to make a move on Guanajuato, the capital of the intendancy. The Insurgent leadership promised the Intendant of Guanajuato, Juan Antonio Riaño, that the citizenry would be treated humanely if he were to surrender immediately. Riaño instead vowed never to surrender, as he amassed several thousand people into the city's grain exchange (referred to as the Alhóndiga de Granaditas) and utilized the buildings imposing structure as a impromptu fortress until reinforcements from México City arrived. However, the hills that surrounded the granary gave the Insurgents a strategic edge and quickly turned the battle to their advantage. Coupled with the death of Riaño early in the battle the Insurgents overran the granary and eventually the whole city, but not before massacring great numbers of Spaniards, including many citizens who had already surrendered. Allende and Hidalgo’s efforts to stop the rampage proved futile, and by the end of the day 600 Spaniards and 2,000 Indians lay dead. Allende, angered at what many of his Insurgents had done, began to rein Hidalgo in, cognizant of the fact the priest's inflammatory rhetoric towards Spaniards had whipped many Insurgents into a frenzy of blood-lust and revenge. Hidalgo was made to understand that while his gift for inspirational oratory would continue to serve a valuable service in inviting more people to the rebel cause, further attempts to incite unnecessary violence would be met by Allende's fury. To that end Allende instituted a zero tolerance approach when it came to dealing with the spree of pillaging that arose in the wake of their occupation of the Bajío, which initially hurt soldier retention but had the intended consequence of quelling much of the violence.

Massacre of the Alhóndiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato, September 28, 1810​

Through October 1810, the insurgents made headway in the west, capturing both Guadalajara and Valladolid. At this point Allende was seen universally as the supreme commander of the Insurgent army, and with the aid of the Aldamas and his own son Indalecio began instilling proper military training and tactics as best as they could in preparation for a "true" engagement with Royalist forces, whom had hastily asserted control over Querétaro and San Luis Potosí. In Valladolid, the Insurgents were also empowered by more forces who were led by another militant priest, José María Morelos. Through private funds, Allende and his army, now over 75,000 strong, planned to strike the Royalists at their source--México City. [3] En route to the capital, Allende and his army met with a Royalist force under the command of General Torcuato Trujillo near Toluca, which itself was only 40 miles from México City. Viceroy Venegas had sent Trujillo and roughly 2,500 troops west toward the Toluca Valley in order to form a protective barrier against what the Royalists deemed a mob of rampaging barbarians, and to that end took up positions along the Sierra de las Cruces, which secured the two main roads to the capital. The battle for the sierras began early on the morning of October 30, and despite the numerical advantage the Insurgents failed twice to dislodge the Royalists from the high ground. At Hidalgo's urging the Insurgents sent emissaries to Trujillo to attempt to convince the Royalist leadership to surrender, but Trujillo refused outright to treat with rebels and ordered they be executed. The emissaries were all killed during the resultant melee, but to his misfortune the Royalist commander also suffered mortal wounds. The killings of the emissaries greatly angered and animated the Insurgents and on a third offensive that afternoon they finally managed to break the Royalists lines, securing Toluca and the road to the capital in the process. [4]

Now México City was literally within sight, and despite Hidalgo's reservations over attacking the capital, Allende sent emissaries to Viceroy Venegas imploring him to surrender the city peaceably, but Venegas rebuffed them on threats they be shot as traitors. On November 3 the Insurgents began engaging Royalist forces under the command of Augustín de Iturbide at the Battle of San Cosme, along the western edge of the city. In the meantime, Viceroy Venegas and other senior officials, fearing the worst, took flight to Veracruz. In street battles said to be some of the bloodiest in the war, the Insurgents slowly took the capital one city block at a time. With the few troops available to him in México City, Iturbide fought a battle of attrition against Allende, hoping to make seizure of the city a pyrrhic victory for the Insurgents, but he knew time was running out for a breakthrough to cut his losses and escape. Under the cover of darkness in the early morning hours of November 6, Iturbide and several hundred of his remaining men retreated east to Puebla, and by daybreak had crossed Paso de Cortes with Puebla visible in the distance. There was some initial instances of looting early on in the day, but Allende maintained his draconian countermeasures to abate the worse excesses of his soldiers, simultaneously assuaging many capitalino fears regarding the Insurgents. [5] With the fighting dwindling down over the course of the afternoon, the leaders of the revolt convened at the Palace of the Viceroy and discussed their next course of action. The following day, Allende, Aldama, Hidalgo and Morelos decreed the formation of a "governing junta," along wth a constituent assembly comprised of representatives from all the intendancies and provinces which was to rule the Viceroyalty in the name of Fernando VII. [6] The declaration also promised several things, paramount among them the abolition of slavery and the despised tribute tax. At this point Allende was officially made Capitán-General del America Septentrional (En. Captain General of North America) which made him the highest ranking officer in the Insurgent army. Throughout December Allende continued the monumental task of training and professionalizing his predominantly green forces. Aiding in this venture was the rapid influx of fresh rebel troops from the west and north (a mix of criollos, indians and mestizos, as well as several thousand recently freed negros, or Africans), which brought the Insurgent forces to just below 100,000 fighting men.

Battle of Monte de las Cruces, October 30, 1810 ​

Upon hearing of México City’s capitulation, an infuriated Viceroy Venegas ordered his remaining forces to the north, under the command of Colonel Félix María Calleja to fall back from San Luis Potosí to Veracruz, in order to better calibrate their next course of action. Venegas decided on a renewed assault on the Insurgents in early January 1811, in order to drive them out of México City and extinguish the flames of revolution before they spread any farther, though even that final point proved unavailing. By the start of the new year revolutionary juntas dominated the landscape from Central America to Tejas and beyond.

At the beginning of January, Allende lead the Insurgent army east, occupying Tlaxcala and Puebla in the process, although the latter proved difficult as a sizable contingent of Royalist forces had been left behind by Viceroy Venegas prior to México City’s surrender. With the vast majority of the Valley of México under the Insurgent banner, Allende’s next move was to march on Veracruz. Not only would capture of the strategic port greatly bolster the Insurgent cause, but Allende hoped to apprehend Viceroy Venegas, who proved to be unwilling to any compromise whatsoever. On January 8 the Royalists and Insurgents engaged eachother near the village of Santa Rosa Necoxtla, on the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre Oriental overlooking Veracruz, fighting late into the afternoon with no clear victor. The Insurgents possessed the field advantage of overlooking the enemy, however General Calleja proved to be a formidable opponent and held his lines over repeated Insurgent assaults. After further engagements along the slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental proved ineffective for either side, Allende and Calleja returned to Tlaxcala and Veracruz respectively. The remainder of January would be characterized by sporadic fighting along the eastern rim of the Valley of México and in the foothills east of Puebla.

Capitán-General de America, Ignacio Allende y Unzaga​

Both sides used the remaining winter months as a general reprieve, as well as a moment to reflect and readjust battle plans for future campaigns. Calleja and Venegas began to move Loyalist forces from Central America and Cuba to the Altiplano in order to compensate for their own low numbers. [7] Although Venegas had petitioned the mother country for more troops and supplies just prior to the Insurgent seizure of México City, any help from Spain itself would be trickling in, if any help was sent at all. Spain itself was locked in a struggle for its own independence against Napoleonic France, and coupled with Insurgencies simultaneously breaking out in the other colonies such as New Granada, Perú and Río de la Plata, any help from Europe would be negligible for the foreseeable future.

Allende also began to take advantage of the lull in hostilities by further consolidating control of land already under Insurgent control. As of early February 1811 this included the Intendancies of Guadalajara and Valladolid, portions of Arizpe, Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Extremadura, México, Puebla and Guanajuato, as well as the Provinces of Nuevo Santander, Nuevo León and Texas. Allende also sent Pascasio Ortiz de Letona as liaison to the United States. Upon his arrival in Washington D.C. nearly seven weeks later, Ortiz de Letona and his fellow diplomats consistently petitioned President James Madison and Secretary of State Robert Smith for any support they could provide for what they deemed the “struggle for freedom of all America.” Although Madison was receptive and sympathetic towards the plight of the independence movements sprouting up across Spanish America, his pressing international concerns at the time were primarily with the British. The United Kingdom was technically at peace with its former colony, but for years had upheld the practice of impressing American sailors caught at sea, despite numerous American protests. These events, coupled with Smith's replacement as Secretary of State with James Monroe that following April, made Letona’s progress for diplomatic recognition slow in coming. Meanwhile 1,900 miles away, the Insurgents were about to deal with a turn in their fortunes as the war for independence entered a challenging new phase.

[1] Ayuntamiento (or cabildo) is a Spanish term that translates to "city council" or "town hall."
[2] Point of Divergence: In OTL the argument began over Allende's disaproval of the looting of San Miguel, his hometown. The conspirators felt Hidalgo was the best "face" for the rebellion, as he was admired by many across all the various castes, and in the end he was chosen as Supreme Commander. This was a spur of the moment desicion, as the original plan gave more authority to Allende.
[3] OTL the Insurgents numbered over 80,000 at this point but Allende's draconian deterrants to pillaging and other acts of wonton violence have filtered out a significant chunk of potential fighters.
[4] In OTL Trujillo did order the deaths of the Insurgent emissaries during the ceasefire. This is probably the first "important" butterfly. This time around the Insurgents go in to negociate with some guns or some sort of cover, whatever the case may be, and manage to at least go down fighting. More importantly however is the fact that from this point onward things truly begin to deviate from OTL, as it was originally after the Battle of Monte de las Cruces that Hidalgo had his change of heart over attacking the capital and at the last minute turned his army around to Guadalajara.
[5] Capitalino/a is a term used to refer to someone from México City or "the capital."
[6] It's important to note that at this point in the game the conspirators aren't demanding independence yet, just greater autonomy and guarantees for some basic rights they understandibly feel are being infringed. That's why all of these early appeals both OTL and TTL were done in the name of Fernando VII.
[7] Atiplano is Spanish for plateau, in this case the Plateau of Anahuac or the Mexican Plateau, and is a reference to the Mexican "core" territory.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Because every TL isn't complete without copious amounts of maps. Granted this map isn't too much different than OTL but I figure it might help visualize movements in the TL a little.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

The Supreme Junta and the "First Republic"
1811-1812

The Congress of Anáhuac in session, 1811​

February delivered to the Insurgents their first major setback as the ultra-reactionary Calleja, with support from Royalist troops transferred from Guatemala and Cuba, launched a renewed offensive into the Valley of México from recently captured Puebla. Insurgent forces under the command of Ignacio López Rayón engaged Calleja immediately to the south of México City, but were unable to deter the Royalist advanced, forcing the Insurgent government to flee the capital to Toluca, then further east to Zitácuaro in the Intendancy of Valladolid. Regardless of this victory, reoccupation would prove to be troublesome for the Royalists, as guerrilla bands continued to operate in the sierras, harassing Viceroy Venegas' procession upon his return to México City. Calleja, now a Brigadier general, was keen to pursue Allende and his army into neighboring Valladolid, hopeful that another deathly blow would force the Insurgent cause to crumble. Venegas dissented and advised that while he had no doubt over the Royalist commander's ability to utterly destroy the Insurgents, he expressed his desire to formulate a plan that would not only break the uprising once and for all, but also reduce the risk of rebellion flaring up again in the future.

Undeterred by the Viceroy's apparent hesitation, Calleja marched west into Valladolid with 6,000 troops while a smaller force of 2,500 led by Colonel Manuel de la Concha marched north towards Guanajuato. At the Battle of Taximaroa, the Insurgents managed to decisively halt Calleja’s advance, and despite continuing to suffer heavy losses forced the beaten Royalist army to retreat back to México City. Viceroy Venegas confronted Calleja upon his arrival to the capital, chastising the Royalist commander for his lack of restraint in dealing with the rebels. This incident proved to be the first significant rift amongst the Royalist leadership, and hold major ramifications for the future of the Royalist movement.

For the moment, the Insurgents remained at Zitácuaro where the budding Insurgent government finally took form. The Supreme National Junta of America which was established in México City was comprised of nine voting members, five from the Insurgent military leadership (Ignacio Aldama, José Mariano Jiménez, José María Liceaga and Ignacio López Rayón) and four from the civilian leadership (Andrés Quintana Roo, Carlos María de Bustamante, José Sixto Verduzco and Miguel Hidalgo) and were led by a President elected by a majority of junta members.[1] The Junta served to promulgate and execute laws drafted by the Congress of Anáhuac, the 50-odd member Insurgent legislature which was comprised of delegates from the various intendancies and provinces of the Altiplano and other regions they held sway. The Congress and Junta came into conflict almost immediately over the balance of power between the two governing bodies, after Hidalgo in his capacity as President ordered the seizure and detention of all Spaniards in the city, which led to the indiscriminate apprehension of peninsulares and criollos alike. The timely intervention of Allende and Morelos prevented a bloodbath and settled the political squabbles between the Congress and Junta by forcing each body serve as a check to the other, with the Captain Generals serving as a third check on both bodies for the duration of the national emergency, as deemed by the Congress. The Captain Generals also agreed to force an election on a new President, electing Ignacio López Rayón in a near unanimous vote.

Great Seal of the Supreme National Junta of America​

In the early spring the Insurgents split their forces roughly into three parts, with Morelos and twenty thousand troops marching south from Valladolid intent on capturing the port of Acapulco and dislodge the Royalists from Oaxaca. López Rayón and eighteen thousand of his own troops were to trek north toward Zacatecas in order to secure the region's valuable silver mines, with the added hope his army would incorporate rebel bands operating in the northeastern provinces and establish formal contacts with sympathetic Americans in Louisiana. The remaining thirty-one thousand troops under Allende’s command would push east, with the goal of retaking the capital and push through to Veracruz. By May 1811 the plan was in full motion, with Morelos and his army blitzing their way through the sierras of southern México and Puebla, eventually capturing Acapulco on July 25, 1811 after an arduous nine week siege. Morelos continued to upset the Royalists and by October his army was in control of much of southern New Spain, poised to take Antequera and the Valley of Oaxaca.

The arrival of Morelos to Oaxaca coincided with the onset of revolt in the Captaincy-General of Guatemala. The Royalists in Ciudad Real and Nueva Guatemala warned their citizens of the clear and present threat Morelos and his men posed, often embellishing the tales of looting and rape streaming down from the north in anticipation of the Insurgent push into Chiapas. Coupled with the low number of available Royalists in Central America due to the reshuffling of troops to the Altiplano earlier in the year, rebellion began to fester and spread rapidly from its epicenter in San Salvador into both Comayagua and Nicaragua. Despite their low numbers the Royalists managed to subdue most of San Salvador within a matter of weeks but failed to progress further east and south. Morelos expressed great desire to aid the Central American rebels but felt it prudent to stay the course and push north toward Puebla and México City. The Insurgents had planned to encircle Calleja and attack the capital in a double envelopment, but as the year progressed it became jarringly apparent that the plan was quickly unraveling.

Battle of Zitácuaro, June 1811​

By early summer the Insurgents could no longer protect Zitácuaro from Calleja's onslaught, which compelled Allende and the Insurgent government to evacuate first to Valladolid, then further north to Guadalajara, where some sense of permanency eventually emerged. There was a brief moment after the evacuation of Zitácuaro when the Insurgents felt trepidation at the possibility of succumbing to defeat at the hands of Calleja, due to a slew of defeats incurred by Allende in northwestern Valladolid. The Insurgents eventually managed to halt Calleja's advance near the birthplace of the independence movement itself, south of Guanajuato. Aided by foreknowledge of Calleja's impending attack, Allende managed to deal a decisive blow to Calleja by ambushing the Royalists late into the night of June 30 at the Battle of Yuriria.[2] With the Insurgent army in pursuit throughout July and early August, Calleja was forced to retreat and set up his defense around the city of San Luis Potosí. Engagement would ensue once more in mid-August where the Insurgents and Royalists fought to a stalemate, with Calleja retaining San Luis Potosí while Allende established himself to the south at Santa María del Río near the border with Guanajuato. San Luis Potosí was an ardent Royalist stronghold, so Allende knew he would have to fight hard for every inch of ground in this area of New Spain.

Repeated frontal assaults by the Insurgents proved ineffective, which drove Allende to exploit the geography surrounding San Luis Potosí, reminiscent of the battle of Guanajuato the year before. On the evening of August 30, a contingent of several thousand Insurgents under the command of Juan Aldama made their way around the mountains to the city’s southwest in order to attack Calleja’s southern and western flanks simultaneously. All the while Allende renewed his push into the city. In the early morning hours of September 1 Allende attacked Calleja’s eastern flanks, anticipating that Calleja would act on information given to him by spies on the movements of the Insurgents and focus on his western flank, which proved to be the case. Calleja attempted to supplement his eastern flank with some of the troops available to him, but fearful he would not have enough forces to face the impending attack from the west he refused to spread them out further. When Aldama did attack around noon, Calleja’s western flank managed to hold, as the Insurgents proved incapable of breaching Calleja’s lines. The dynamic changed however around two in the afternoon when Insurgent artillery struck an ammunition wagon, which caused a massive explosion that killed scores of Royalists and injured Calleja himself.[3] This momentary lapse in Royalist organization was all that was needed to break the western flank and allow the Insurgents to capture most of the city. By late afternoon Calleja was in Insurgent custody and Royalists not captured by Allende dispersed into the wilderness of the Sierra Madre Oriental. The Insurgents spent most of September occupying Rioverde, Los Valles and most of the Huasteca potosina.[4] On October 1, one month after the Battle of San Luis Potosí, Allende captured Tampico on the Gulf of México, providing the Insurgents with an Atlantic port. The remainder of 1811 was characterized by the formal establishment of the Mexican Navy in Tampico, utilizing captured Spanish warships as a base to build upon. Consequently the Insurgents gained vital sea access to American goods via New Orleans, and on rare occasions conduct harassment operations on Spanish supply lines.

Capitán-General Ignacio López Rayón​

Further west López Rayón managed to consolidate Insurgent control over much of Zacatecas and southern Nueva Vizcaya, including the Guadiana Valley. From his temporary headquarters at Durango, López Rayón pushed east into Nueva Extremadura and within a matter of weeks united all the Insurgent bands operating in the Comarca Lagunera.[5] The Insurgents spent the remainder of the summer conducting raids into the Bolsón de Mapimí and Nuevo León, in anticipation of the drive into the Río Bravo Valley and the Gulf Coast in the autumn. One such raid on Monclova in July 1811 saw the destruction of the infamous Spanish prison el Polvorín.[6] Many of those jailed within the presidio included Texan rebels who had been condemned to death, such as Juan Bautista de las Casas.

The arrival of Ignacio Aldama with fresh reinforcements tipped the balance in López Rayón's favor and in early September the Insurgents took Saltillo, followed by Monterrey six weeks later on October 12. Assisted by De las Casas, who managed to rally the disparate rebel bands which had been operating in the province since January, the Insurgents took Laredo in early November and quickly occupied the Río Bravo Valley. By the end of the month López Rayón and his army were situated on the southern bank of the Nueces River, not far from the Royalist encampment at Presidio La Bahía. There the few remaining Royalist forces in the region, led by Colonel José Joaquín de Arredondo, banded together to stop the Insurgent advance on San Antonio de Béxar, the provincial capital. Both sides sustained heavy losses at the Battle of La Bahía, but López Rayón managed to take the village and move north. This alarming turn of events prompted Governor Manuel María de Salcedo to evacuate the capital. However, on his flight to the provisional capital at Nacogdoches, Salcedo was intercepted by Insurgents under the command of De las Casas, the very same man Salcedo had imprisoned and condemned to death several months before, and proceeded to execute Salcedo just outside San Marcos on December 15.[7] With Salcedo dead the organization of the Royalist movement in Texas all but crumbled, with Arredondo and the bulk of the remaining Royalist forces retreating south along the coastal plain to Nuevo Santander. López Rayón and De las Casas, now in control of the province, initiated the process of establishing informal connections with the United States. By the dawn of the new year, both Americans and Insurgents freely traveled between the U.S.-Texan border, with the city of New Orleans becoming a major hub for Insurgent activity outside the boundaries of New Spain.

With renewed resolve Allende marched south from Tampico, intent to secure the Gulf coastal plain and the port of Veracruz. In a variation of his original plan to encircle the capital, Allende intended to sever México City's principle connection to the Atlantic Ocean and thus to Spain, as well as deprive the Viceroy of utilizing the port as a place of refuge once more. The Insurgents managed to win a string of battles at Tuxpan, Coatzintla and Teziutlán with relative ease over the course of January 1812, before being halted near Jalapa by Royalist forces under Agustín de Iturbide. The battle at Jalapa served the Insurgents their first major defeat in nearly a year, and forced Allende to retreat back to Tuxpan in early February. Months of near constant fighting had decimated much of Allende's army, and by this point he commanded less than twenty thousand troops. Desperate for aid, Allende commissioned Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara to join the Ortiz de Letona Mission in Washington City to formally petition the United States for military support against Spain.[8]

Capitán-General Morelos fighting at Cuautla, March 1812​

The Insurgency in the south fared no better. After marching north through the Cañada de Cuicatlán, Morelos managed to get as far as Tehuacán before his forces were halted south of Puebla by Colonel Ciriaco del Llano. [9] Morelos was forced to pull back south to Tehuitzingo, then northwest to Cuautla in late January, where he and his seventeen thousand men settled in for a lengthy siege. The Royalist leadership surrounded the city and determined to starve the rebels into submission. In April Morelos' lieutenant Mariano Matamoros managed to break through the siege and rendezvous Vicente Guerrero in Toluca. There both men awaited Hermenegildo Galeana, who was marching south from Guadalajara with an army of eight thousand recently trained soldiers, ready to fight. In April 16 the new Insurgent army marched at lightning speed from Toluca to Cuernavaca, taking the city's Royalist defenders by total surprise. From there Matamoros led the bulk of his forces to attack the Royalist besiegers from behind, while Galeana and Guerrero aided Morelos and his beleaguered army in breaking out from Cuautla.[10] The Insurgents escaped through the Sierra de Huautla with Royalists under Del Llano and José Antonio Andrade in heated pursuit. The chase finally ended at Iguala where the Insurgents, despite all odds, inflicted significant losses on the Royalists and forced them to retreat back north. After a short reprieve Morelos and his forces made their way south to Chilpancingo, where they convalesced for roughly a fortnight before renewing their offensive on Puebla.

The Insurgents under Morelos set out in early May, and in a stunning reversal of their previous campaign overtook Izúcar and Puebla with relative ease, and by the end of the month both Orizaba and Córdoba were in Insurgent hands. With a reaffirmed sense of urgency, the Insurgents attempted once more to strike at Veracruz. From Córdoba Morelos marched toward the sea and attacked Alvarado to the south of Veracruz. Allende, who had been campaigning in northern Puebla and Veracruz throughout the spring of 1812, finally defeated Iturbide on his second attempt to take Jalapa on May 18. Allende was the first to reach Veracruz on May 29, and the following day began to siege the city. Morelos joined the siege a week later in an attack from the south, but even with the combined might of both Insurgent generals, Veracruz remained indomitable. As Insurgent morale once more began to wane, Allende was burdened by two unfortunate pieces of information. The first was a message from his ambassadors in Washington City, informing him of the United States unwillingness to interfere on behalf of the Insurgents, as the threat of war with the United Kingdom loomed on the horizon. The second unfortunate piece of information came to Allende in the form of a rider from San Luis Potosí, who informed the Insurgent commander that Félix María Calleja had escaped imprisonment and was now at the head of an army marching directly toward the heart of the Bajío.

[1] Alternatively known as the Supreme Governing Junta of America, it is similar but not quite the same as its OTL incarnation, the Council of Zitacuaro. Same goes for the Congress of Anáhuac, as the latter replaced the former originally as the Insurgent government. Also known in OTL as the Congress of Chilpancingo.
[2] I imagine Yuriria and San Luis Potosí to kinda-sorta be, drawing an allusion to the ARW, Allende's "crossing the Deleware" moment. Yuriria (or Yuririhapúndaro) is quite the fitting setting as well, as it translates to "Place of the bloody lake" in Purépecha.
[3] Call me lazy lol, it's a near inverse of what happened to the Insurgents at the Battle of Calderón Bridge in OTL.
[4] Huasteca potosina roughly corresponds to the eastern half of San Luis Potosí. Itself part of the greater Huasteca region along the Mexican Gulf Coast.
[5] Comarca Lagunera, which means "region of lagoons," is the name given to the cross border region between Durango and Coahuila where the Aguanaval and Navas rivers drain into.
[6] El Polvorín was Monclova's powder magazine, and in OTL served as the temporary prison of the Insurgent leaders before most of them were transported to Chihuahua to be tried and executed.
[7] Another little bit of irony, as it was Salcedo that originally had got the last laugh over De las Casas. OTL the Texans were executed, as by that point in time the Insurgents had already lost at Calderón Bridge and got captured by Igniacio Elizondo on the march north toward the United States.
[8] In OTL Ortiz de Letona's ship was intercepted by the Spanish en route to the eastern United States, and he was promptly executed. In this timeline he makes it to Washington DC no worse for wear. Also at the time the US capital was only known as Washington City.
[9] Cañada de Cuicatlán is the name of a long, hot, humid and fertile valley in north-central Oaxaca which serves as a corridor between the central valleys of Oaxaca and the Valley of Tehuacán in southern Puebla.
[10] Matamoros does indeed make a break to Toluca in OTL for desperately needed supplies, but much of it gets lost on his return to Cuautla, and there's not back-up waiting and ready in OTL. Butterflies from the Insurgency having an established presence after a couple of years helps a great deal.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

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. ​

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

​

[1] The same powder magazine/prison featured in the previous update. See footnote #6.
[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.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

El Gran Diluvio
1815-1817

Father José Matías Delgado (depicted with his arm extended) and the Grito of San Salvador, November 5th, 1811​

As the Great French War finally began to wane in Europe, the Coalition forces began the gargantuan task of returning the continent to its pre-revolutionary balance of power. Emperor Napoleon, aware that any further attempts to hold onto the Iberian Peninsula would only be futile, signed a formal peace treaty with the imprisoned Spanish monarch at the Château de Valençay in central France, which allowed for the evacuation of French troops north of the Pyrenees in exchange for King Fernando's guaranteed safe passage back to Spain. The Cortes of Cádiz also attempted to extract their own guarantee from Fernando that he be allowed re-entry into Spain only on the condition that he respect the liberal Constitution of Cádiz and rule as a constitutional monarch, but for all their efforts Fernando stopped short of issuing a definitive affirmation in that regard. Nevertheless, Fernando was permitted to return and in early 1814 he was formally transferred from French to Spanish custody in Catalonia and thus began the royal procession back to Madrid. Almost immediately, Fernando was inundated by a multitude of conservative courtiers and sycophant's who eagerly advised him to revoke the Constitution and rule as an absolute monarch, as all Bourbons had before him, as well as an opinion he deeply regarded as well. That spring Fernando followed through and nullified both the Constitution and the Cortes, initially promising to convene a "legitimate" cortes in the near future, though he quickly reneged on that promise as well.[1] It was at this point that any pretense of royal support for any semblance of a liberal cause, let alone support for American autonomy, all but evaporated. In the final months of 1814 Fernando began to plan for a substantial troop deployment of Spanish forces from Europe to the American colonies in order to return all renegade actors back into the Spanish fold, by any means necessary. By the spring of 1815 Spain had organized over 13,900 troops and 76 warships into a formal expeditionary force, which then embarked from Cádiz in April.[2] Chosen to head the American expedition was General Pablo Morillo, a battle hardened veteran of the French Wars, who was appointed by Fernando as Captain-General of Venezuela and led the bulk of the Spanish reinforcements in subduing the nascent United Provinces of Nueva Grenada, while smaller detachments were sent to support Royalist forces in Rio de la Plata, Chile and México.

With the threat of Spanish reinforcements looming over the eastern horizon, the Northern Insurgents under General Allende endeavored to consolidate Insurgent control over the northern territories, with a renewed push into Nuevo México in the early spring of 1815 after reports surfaced of the Royalist governor's struggle to contain rebellion that was brewing amongst the province's disaffected criollos. Royalist resistance to the Insurgent advance soon gave way to the latter's superior numbers and in early May Allende managed to overtake most of the Mesilla Valley, followed soon after by his capture of both Alburquerque and Santa Fé several weeks later. Save for the Californias and portions of Arizpe, Allende's northern flank was by and large secure, which allowed him to focus all his effort into retaking Nueva Galicia and the Bajío that summer. The region was already embroiled in an increasing state of guerrilla warfare, as Viceroy Calleja's reign of terror coupled with King Fernando's formal admonition all but assured further radicalization amongst the population at large and a further swelling of the Insurgent ranks as a result. In early August, as the first Spanish reinforcements began to disembark from Veracruz, Allende made his move and broke out of Nueva Vizcaya, and with the aid of local Insurgent cells much of Zacatecas and the Guadalajaran highlands were retaken within a matter of weeks. General Iturbide hastily marched his Royalist army out from Valladolid, where he forced the Insurgent advance to a halt southeast of Celaya in early October, but instead of forcing a head on battle Allende had a significant portion of his army scatter out into the Sierra Madre Oriental, where he organized a lethal guerrilla campaign which he managed to sustain for nearly seven months. During this time the Insurgents conducted a series of coordinated raids into once safe Royalist territories such as San Luis Potosí and Veracruz, not only to cripple Royalist supply lines but also to spread the Spanish forces as thin as possible. His inability to defeat the Insurgents out in the open field led Iturbide to become more vindictive and arbitrary with regard to captured Insurgents, including a particularly macabre episode where the Royalist general celebrated Good Friday by having nearly 500 prisoners of war publicly executed.

Allende's conquest of Nuevo México​

In an ironic twist the extremity of Iturbide's punitive actions was too severe for even his own Royalist superiors to stomach, and in late August 1815 he was summoned to the capital for a formal disciplinary hearing. After a litany of charges were levied against him, ranging from running various embezzlement schemes throughout Guanajuato to his various abuses of power and authority directed toward non-combatants, Viceroy Calleja determined to relieve Iturbide of his command for his numerous excesses in acts of corruption and overall cruelty, and stripped him of his rank. While many of the charges against Iturbide are verifiably based in fact, there is substantial evidence which suggests there was a more politically vindictive motive to his dismissal by Calleja. With the aid of a royal war auditor, Iturbide appealed the case against him and in early 1816 he was formally absolved of most of his charges and was invited on the authority of King Fernando VII to return to his former command in a blatant override of Calleja's authority, though he ultimately rebuffed the offer. Iturbide felt his honor was deeply wounded by his ordeal and in a final snub at the Viceroy, the former general made the decision to retire to his family estate in Valladolid, content to wait out the war as nothing more than a spectator.[3] Calleja for his part became increasingly more overwhelmed by the criticism mounted upon him over the loss of most of the territorial gains he had made the year before. As far as the royal court in Madrid was concerned, Calleja was to blame for Spain's "repeated military failures" in México, and in the spring of 1816 Fernando VII formally removed Calleja from his role as Viceroy. Calleja's designated successor was to be the now former Captain-General of Cuba Juan Ruiz de Apodaca, who's reputation as a fair and moderate adjudicator convinced the court in Madrid that he was the ideal candidate to help Spain reestablish its hegemony in North America. Calleja for his part did not take the news of his dismissal well, and in a fit of blind rage barricaded himself within the walls of the Viceroy's Palace, which initiated a brief but violent power struggle between Calleja's loyalists and other Royalists allied to the Audiencia. In the end Calleja was permitted to rule as de-facto Viceroy until September, at which point he would be transported back to Spain. Ruiz de Apodaca's delay was also caused in part by volatile clashes in the Sierra Madre Oriental which forced the new Viceroy and his procession to shelter, first at Veracruz and then at Xalapa until the road to México City was safe enough to traverse.

Ruiz de Apodaca began his term by issuing a general amnesty to all Insurgents who lay down their arms and submit to royal authority, in the hope that peaceful reconciliation would take the wind out of the Insurgency's sails. The amnesty initially did have a noticeable impact on Insurgent recruitment and morale within the first six months of its promulgation, but it ultimately did nothing to deter the prevailing spirit of independence simmering amongst the masses. Over the course of Allende's consolidation of the north, General Morelos had managed to accomplish a similar feat to the south in the Central American intendancies. Beginning in early 1815, Morelos marched his army across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and crossed into the Kingdom of Guatemala where the Captain-General in power, José de Bustamante y Guerra, had ruled with an iron fist as he struggled to quell a festering rebellion in San Salvador. In anticipation of Morelos' advance Bustamante heavily fortified the passes leading into the central highlands. however Morelos avoided direct confrontation with the Royalists strongholds of Ciudad Real and Tuxtla and instead overtook the Pacific lowlands with relative ease, entering Tonalá on the Chiapas coast with no resistance whatsoever on January 25. Further along the coast in Soconusco, the Spanish were overthrown by the citizenry of Escuintla and Tapachula as years-worth of discontent had boiled over into public revulsion, and within a matter of weeks Morelos was poised to strike at Quetzaltenango in Guatemala proper.

Bustamante had been consumed with paranoia for much of the previous year, after an attempted coup d'état in December 1813 nearly brought down his government. With an extensive spy network at his disposal he had come to learn of a budding insurgent conspiracy headquartered at the convent of Belén in the Guatemalan capital, which intended to overthrow him on the evening of the nochebuena and proclaim Guatemala's allegiance to the Insurgent General Morelos.[4] Several days before the start of the rebellion, on the night of the winter solstice, one of the leading conspirators, second lieutenant José Francisco Barrundia, was alerted to the conspiracy's discovery by Bustamante's network of spies and informants. With precious time at an absolute premium he ordered the plan be set in motion immediately. Aided by various members of Nueva Guatemala's ayuntamiento, as well as several sympathetic dragoon regiments loyal to Barrundia and his cohorts, the Guatemalan insurgents took control of the city and placed Bustamante under house arrest after a brief but violent struggle. Despite their initial success, control of the city by the Guatemalan Insurgents was always tenuous at best, and Royalist reinforcements from Chiapas and Yucatán eventually retook the city several weeks later, but not before the Guatemalan Insurgents managed to empty the city's prisons and evacuated to the southeast into the intendancy of San Salvador. The events in Guatemala sent ripple effects across the rest of the Captaincy General, first as San Salvador became firmly entrenched in the insurgent camp, then followed by new rebellions that erupted in Tegucigalpa, León, Grenada and Rivas over the course of 1814.[5]

José de Bustamante y Guerra, 41st Captain-General of Guatemala​

After several weeks spent consolidating his territorial gains along the Chiapas coast, Morelos marched into Guatemala proper in late February and took many of the towns lining the road to Quetzaltenango, including San Pablo, San Marcos and San Pedro Sacatepéquez before his army encountered stiff resistance in the mountain passes leading into the Quetzaltenango valley. The Royalists charged with holding back the insurgent advance were known as the Guatemalan Volunteer Corp, an elite royalist force created by Bustamante as a deterrent to any Insurgent activity, and indeed the Volunteer Corp had proven itself multiple times in the wake of repeated attempts at rebellion on the isthmus over the previous few years. While Morelos' army held the advantages of being fully mobilized and in far larger numbers, the Guatemalan Royalists were fighting on familiar terrain which gave them a significant advantage. Nevertheless, Morelos entrenched himself firmly to the west of Quetzaltenango near Concepción Chiquirichapa and over the course of nearly two months his army took control of the towns and villages lining the northern rim of the valley, including Olintepeque, San Andrés Xecul and Salcajá. The Mexican Insurgents were aided in large part by a concurrent uprising comprised of K'iche, Mam and Kaqchikel Maya who constituted a majority of the region's population. The culmination of Morelos' spring campaign came with the capture of Totonicapán in May, which effectively severed Quetzaltenengo's only connection to Nueva Guatemala and allowed Morelos to place the former under siege for several weeks before the few remaining Volunteer Corp members that remained escaped to the south, which allowed the Insurgents to enter the city unopposed in early June.

The Mexican occupation of a significant portion of southern Guatemala sent earth-shattering shockwaves throughout the entire isthmus, as Morelos' intervention sent new life into the rebellions in San Salvador, Comayagua and Nicaragua. Over the course of the summer the Central American Insurgents managed to coalesce around formerly imprisoned leaders such as José Matías Delgado (a Salvadorian criollo who lead the first Central American uprising in December 1811) and Gabriel O'Horan, an Insurgent leader from Masaya (an indian settlement located outside Granada along the northern end of Lake Nicaragua) who had managed to rally much of Nicaragua's Pacific Coast as well as significant portions of the interior as far north as Jinotega and Matagalpa in opposition to Spanish authority. Meanwhile Delgado and Barrundia united the disparate Insurgent fanctions in San Salvador (principally in the north and east of the intendancy such as those at Metapán, Santa Ana and San Miguel) and after subduing a Royalist counter-force from Zacatecoluca, marched nearly unopposed into San Salvador on July 21. The Royalist establishment in Nueva Guatemala grew more fearful by the day, as Morelos and the Central American Insurgents closed in from the east and west respectively. Over the course of August and September, Morelos' army took control of the north shore of Lake Atitlán as well as the towns of Chimaltenango and Antigua Guatemala, which left the Guatemalan capital vulnerable to a siege. These Royalist fears were amplified by Barrundia and Delgado's capture of Sonsonate and Esquintla to the south, and with it much of Guatemala's Pacific Coast. Bustamante's fears of encirclement by the Insurgents were only superseded by his fear over a repeat of the previous winter's attempted coup d'état, and as criollo agitation reached a fever pitch the Royalist captain-general made the decision to abandon the capital and in late October the royalists fled north, with some traveling west toward Huehuetenango and from there to Ciudad Real in Chiapas, while other groups continued their trek north past Cobán and into the Petén Basin.

José Matías Delgado signing the Central American Declaration of Independence, November 7th, 1815​

Amid a celebratory roar were Morelos and the coalition of Mexican and Central American rebels welcomed into Nueva Guatemala, as the city's ayuntamiento (which now endeavored to fill the void left by Bustamante's flight) enthusiastically threw its lot with the Insurgent commander and with him their firm support for the cause of independence. The indigenous Maya leadership, comprised by Manuel Tot, Anastasio Tzul and Narciso Mallol, were initially reserved and anxious over the question of independence, though they also were keenly aware of the evolving social and political landscape and they understood that allying with the Mexicans provided them the chance to renegotiate their relationship with the social contract. On November 7 Morelos issued a formal declaration of independence in Nueva Guatemala's Plaza de Armas, echoing the proclamation issued by Allende the year before in Chihuahua, and flanked by representative from all the Central American provinces who proceeded to swear oaths of fealty to the Mexican republic. The final seven weeks of 1815 saw Morelos, his lieutenants and his new Central American allies make short work of what remained of Spanish resistance on the isthmus, with Comayagua's capture in early December followed by León's capitulation several weeks later in January 1816. With Spanish power in Central America essentially broken , Morelos resolved to race north back into México as soon as he possibly could, which proved easier said than done due to a succession of torrential rains and snowstorms which hammered Guatemala and Chiapas that winter. Although Morelos did spend some time recruiting and reorganizing his army (which was now 7,800 strong) the winter storms seemed to only intensify with the passage of time, and in early March the Insurgents began their trek up the Pacific Coast. Unfortunately for Morelos the extreme weather took its toll on his army and approximately 270 of his soldiers perished while crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec alone, though it also proved deadly for the Royalists whom had evacuated to Chiapas after Guatemala's fall to the Insurgents. An attempt by former captain-general Bustamante to attack Morelos on his march north ended in disaster when fierce winter snow forced Bustamante to march back toward Ciudad Real, where he subsequently contracted a severe case of pneumonia and died that April.[6]

Acting-Viceroy Calleja feared the likelihood of being enveloped by a united Insurgent army, and as Morelos's forces approached Oaxaca he moved to prepare for the worst. In late 1815 an exasperated Calleja had appealed to Madrid yet again for more Spanish troops, evidently dissatisfied with the "paltry" reinforcements that had arrived at the beginning of the year. Evidently there were in fact plans being drawn up to raise second massive armada, this time one which would be sent to fight specifically in México, but in the meantime Fernando VII ordered several thousand troops from the Tierra Firme Expedition be transferred from Nueva Granada to aid the Mexican Royalists, a decision which did not sit at all well with General Morillo, who was barely on the heels of capturing Cartagena de Indias that previous December.[7] In late January one of Morillo's lieutenants, General Pascual Enrile y Acedo was chosen to lead approximately 2,700 troops from Nueva Granada to México, with orders to seek out and destroy the Southern Insurgents lead by Morelos. General Enrile's expeditionary force arrived at the ports of Alvarado and Veracruz on March 13 where he subsumed control of the Division of Veracruz, the largest Royalist army on the Gulf Coast, and with a total of 8,500 men under his command he marched south into the Papaloapan Basin. Much of the Gulf coastal plain had become a major Insurgent haven, and echoing the counterinsurgency measures used by Calleja and Bustamante, Enrile sought to eliminate any and all resistance by whatever means he deemed necessary.

General Pascual Enrile y Acedo, Commander of the Ejercito del Oriente​

On March 20 the newly minted Ejercito del Oriente marched west toward Córdoba in order to strengthen the supply route between Veracruz and the Capital, before turning south toward the Sierra Mazateca, which was the site of massive indigenous resistance.[8] After a month long siege Enrile put the village of Soyaltepec to the torch before continuing toward Tuxtepec, with the goal of luring Morelos into a fight out in the open. Enrile had reason to feel optimistic, as he received reports of Morelos' movements through the Sierra Norte de Oaxaca in late April, and more specifically news that the unusually inclement weather was taking its toll on the Insurgent's numbers and morale, so much so that the Insurgents failed to dislodge Enrile out from Tuxtepec.[9] Ultimately the Insurgents were forced to retreat east where they managed to check Enrile's advance at the Battle of Tesechoacán, before Morelos dispersed his forces into the Sierra Madre del Sur, where guerrilla warfare made the prospect of pursuit too costly on the Royalist's part. The two armies were nearly evenly matched, but it was the Insurgent's mastery of both irregular warfare as much as the terrain that proved to tip the balance in their favor. Undeterred and aware that the Insurgents were retreating towards the coast, Enrile attempted to bypass Morelos by marching through the Tehuantepec lowlands in order to capture Salina Cruz and deprive the Insurgents the chance to rally, but to his profound misfortune he came to deeply regret that decision.

​

The tropical lowlands of southern México receive copious amounts of rainfall year round, a fact which frustrated Enrile but it was something he had prepared for as best as he could. The spring of 1816 proved to be equally historic and unusual for much of the northern hemisphere as erratic climate events wreaked havoc across North America, Europe and Asia, in a period of time that would come to be referred to by posterity as the "year without a summer." Freezing rain and snow wrought devastation on the Royalists who were vastly unprepared to deal with near-polar conditions in the swamps of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as hundreds succumbed to starvation and the extreme cold. To make matters worse for the Royalists, Morelos had managed to reach Salina Cruz first, which meant Enrile's disastrous and costly detour proved to be an exercise of futility. In early June the Royalists attempted to cross the Chivela Pass but Morelos beat them back at the Battle of Iztepeque, dealing Enrile's Army of the East a crippling blow and effectively trapping Enrile and his men in the windswept mountain passes of the isthmus. The Royalist loss at Iztepeque was immediately overshadowed by the arrival of hurricane-force Tehuano winds to the region immediately after the battle, which battered the beleaguered Royalists forces as they attempted a northerly retreat back toward the Gulf Coast.[10] The extreme weather did force the Insurgents to delay their chase by a couple of days, however the battered remains of Enrile's expeditionary force (which now numbered under 5,000) still barely managed to maintain its lead over Morelos as it attempted to make its way back to Alvarado. Despite his own losses Morelos had two of his lieutenants (Guerrero and Montes de Oca) outflank Enrile and in a pincer formation the Insurgents issued another crippling blow to the Army of the East at the Battle of Tlacotalpan, where royalist losses numbered nearly 2,000. On July 12 an exhausted General Enrile reentered Veracruz at the head of an army that was only one-third its original size.

Seven long years of warfare had left New Spain bloody and broken​

Several weeks later in early August, the Insurgents captured Alvarado as well as Espíritu Santo to the southeast, which gave them control of a large swath of the Gulf Coast from Veracruz to the Province of Yucatán.[11] Within the fortnight Ruiz de Apodaca and Calleja briefly crossed paths as the former crossed the mountains into the Valley of México while the latter approached Veracruz, where he was to immediately embark for Spain. The general amnesty which was promulgated by the Viceroy several weeks later was impactful enough that the conflict seemed to freeze over the course of the autumn and early winter. However the lull in hostilities can also be attributed to the dilapidated state of the colony as it entered its sixth year of war, as the extreme weather forced repeated crop yields to suffer catastrophic losses, which in turn led to famine which engulfed nearly all of New Spain by the winter of 1816. Tens of thousands of people would ultimately succumb to the famine by the onset of spring in early 1817, with Insurgents and Royalists alike suffering significant losses, and as war fatigue had begun to set within all the various warring factions the prospect of a "perpetual war" began to haunt the leadership of both sides, to the consternation of all. The Royalists were hell-bent on holding what little territory they still controlled (which by 1817 had been reduced to portions of Nuevo Santander, San Luis Potosí, Nueva Galicia, Valladolid, México, Puebla and Veracruz) with the hope that reinforcements from Spain would arrive in time to turn the tide of the war in their favor. The Insurgents for their part were desperate enough to send Miguel Hidalgo to treat with Agustín de Iturbide in an attempt to persuade the former Royalist commander to join the Insurgents, though in the end he would maintain his neutrality and rebuffed Hidalgo's offers. Then in early April, rumors of a small rebel flotilla in the Gulf of México were confirmed to be fact with known sightings at New Orleans and Galveston indicating a southerly route down the Gulf Coast. The flotilla's rebel inclinations were made all the more clear upon making landings north of Tampico on May 30, where the commanding officer Francisco Javier Mina issued a formal declaration admonishing the tyranny of King Fernando VII and his desire to aid the Mexican Insurgents in their struggle for independence.[12]

[1] Much like OTL, Fernando doesn't count promises made to Liberals.
[2] The army sent to reconquer the Americas in TTL is slightly larger than its OTL counterpart.
[3] This also runs a very similar course to what happened in OTL, especially with regard to the court martial and Iturbide's subsequent appeal.
[4] Here we got another divergence point. In OTL the Conspiracy of Belén never amounted to much and was easily subverted by Bustamante, but TTL's conspiracy has a much larger pool of support to draw upon (a ripple effect from TTL's much more successful Mexican Insurgent movement) which managed to even the field between the Royalists and the Guatemalan Insurgents. The nochebuena is December 24th, essentially Christmas Eve.
[5] Very much like the previous post, the Central American Insurgents of TTL are much more numerous and active, and presumably after many of the region's rebel elite (after languishing in Guatemalan prisons for months or years on end) were suddenly freed, it's possible they'd return to their home bases and rally. With Morelos coming in from the west, the Royalists are not having a good time.
[6] I took some slight artistic license with the effects from the year without a summer, in part because I could not find any information is it pertained to Mexico...other than a sentence on the Spanish wikipedia which mentions that it snowed in southern Mexico and Guatemala. I read somewhere else that New Spain probably experienced dry arid conditions brought on by a stationary high, though when I read about the Yw/oas it sounds like a global event that affected most of the northern hemisphere. Much like the torrential rains of the previous years, I figure New Spain wasn't immune to the sudden bouts of cold and the extreme temperature fluctuations that hit other parts of North America, Europe and Asia.
[7] This probably will not bode well for Morillo's mission in Nueva Granada. Fly butterfly fly
[8] The Mazatecans were a notable indigenous group which put up fierce resistance.
[9] The Sierra Norte of Oaxaca would eventually be renamed the Sierra Juarez in OTL.
[10] Tehuano winds are hurricane force winds which blow down the Isthmus of Tehuantepec when certain climactic conditions are met. Classic case of mother nature beating the enemy while they're down.
[11] Espíritu Santo is the original name for Coatzacoalcos.
[12] Francisco Javier Mina arrives about a month later than OTL, but this time around he has an army roughly 5X larger than OTL. Needless to say the butterflies have been at work.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Thank you everyone for the kind words and well wishes. It means a lot!

Also thank you again for you patience! I know it's been way too long. I'm happy to say the update is here. Hope y'all enjoy it

El Ejercito de la Unión y la Empreza Imperial
1817-1819

The Ejercito de la Unión marching triumphantly into México City, September 1, 1819
​

Despite amassing a string of noteworthy victories throughout the previous year, by the start of 1817 the Mexican Insurgents had lost their momentum and after several attempts by both Allende and Morelos to break into the Altiplano resulted in failure, the Insurgent commanders retreated to Guadalajara and Alvarado respectively to rest and regroup. The Royalists were all too eager to exploit this moment of perceived Insurgent weakness, and after a series of attritious battles they managed to expel the Insurgents from much of Nuevo Santander and Nuevo León in early February. The news of Spanish victories in the north proved to delight Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca, as his hold on power up until that point seemed tenuous and susceptible to the whims of the Audiencia and other ambitious actors amongst the capital's peninsular elite. A handful of victorious engagements however ultimately proved to be of little value as long as resistance to Spanish authority persisted, which forced the new Viceroy (much like the old) to plead with the crown for more reinforcements. In the end 6,200 troops under the command of Field marshal Pascual de Liñán were assembled to assist in the defense of the entire colony, with the vague promise of further levees in the future. For the Insurgents the situation was perhaps more dire, as there was very little they could do in the way of replenishing their exhausted reserves. The general amnesty issued the year prior had started to become a notable hinderance for Insurgent recruitment, though the number of reformed Insurgents did not translate to potential Royalist recruits either. Even through the Insurgent leadership had allies both in Europe and the United States willing to scout potential fighters to join the fight for American independence, the task of convincing any man to join proved to be the more difficult labor. In spite of these challenges a conspiracy based in London had secretly been assembling a force meant to finally break Spanish power in America. Much like the conspiracy which ignited the war for independence, the one based in the United Kingdom was also spearheaded by another famous, albeit eccentric Mexican priest--the Fray Servando Teresa de Mier.

The London conspiracy has its origin in the aftermath of Fernando VII's purges against the constitutionalist Spanish Liberals. Fray Mier had served as a delegate within the Constituent Cortes alongside other Mexican representatives such as Miguel Ramos Arizpe and Lucas Alamán, where they all distinguished themselves as brilliant orators and negotiators. The dissolution of the Cortes and the subsequent purges of both Liberals and other "foreign agents" were a deep moral blow for all three men who, despite their varied political leanings (Mier and Arizpe were Liberals while Alamán was a Conservative) believed México's true potential could only be realized as a free and independent state. Beginning in the summer of 1815 the men began to congregate at the residence of Joseph Blanco White, an Anglo-Spanish émigrés who edited a pro-independence journal called El Español, who clandestinely offered his home in London as the conspiracy's headquarters. These three men (at first, more would join at later dates) worked tirelessly to plan and coordinate the eventual invasion of New Spain in order to aid the Insurgent armies and liberate México from Spain once and for all. [1]

Colonel Francisco Javier Mina​

Despite the proliferation of veteran soldiers across large parts of Europe, the recruitment of potential volunteers to fight in México proved to be difficult at first, but over the course of 1816 Arizpe and Mier managed to assemble a regiment of roughly 900 soldiers willing to fight in México, predominantly comprised of Spanish, British and Italian volunteers who would be joined by another 500 men from the United States and Haiti upon their arrival to North America in the spring of 1817. Fray Mier chose colonel Francisco Javier Mina, himself a veteran from Spain's struggle against Napoleon, to lead the expeditionary force. Famous for his exploits in guerrilla warfare throughout France's occupation of his home in northern Spain, Mina was also disillusioned by Fernando VII's betrayal of the Liberals and had in fact fled from Spain when he became involved in an abortive coup d'état against the king during the autumn of 1814.[2] As the militaristic elements of the conspiracy finally began to take form, several conservative conspirators advocated for the guarantee that the post-war government of Mexico be a monarchy led ideally by a Bourbon prince, or barring that any European lord of noble stock, as a necessary guarantor of their ancient rights and privileges. Alamán would eventually head his very own diplomatic venture through Europe in order to find the appropriate prince to sit the Mexican throne.

After departing from Great Britain in late February, Mina's regiment arrived first in Norfolk, then Baltimore where they were immediately joined by approximately 400 volunteers, before sailing down the east coast of the United States and through the Bahamas in order to evade Spanish patrols of the Cuban coast. With the aid of a French privateer, Mina undertook a harrowing crossing of the Windward Passage on Easter Sunday 1817 and after a brief respite in Port-au-Prince, where they took on roughly 100 more fighting men, they made their way into the western Caribbean Sea before crossing the Yucatan Straits into the Gulf of México. The flotilla made one penultimate stop in New Orleans before finally sailing down the Texas coast and disembarking near Galveston in late May. To their north in Béxar General López Rayón initially viewed the arrival of the flotilla with caution, but tensions were quickly diffused as soon as Mina swore publicly his allegiance to the Insurgent cause. The Spanish had become well aware of the newest threat to their power and acted to neutralize it in the cradle. The onset of summer saw a new offensive spearheaded by the recently liberated General Arredondo north into the Rio Bravo Valley, occupying the villages of Refugio and Reynosa before moving north along the river toward Laredo. It was there that the Insurgents chose to stand their ground, and despite being outnumbered 2 to 1 López Rayón held off the Royalists long enough for Arredondo's forces to be caught in a sweeping double-envelopment by Mina from the southeast and lieutenant colonel Indalecio Allende from the northwest, in the process obliterating what remained of the Army of the Center. Arredondo and a skeleton force attempted a defensive retreat southward while the Insurgents focused on consolidating their gains, but within a matter of weeks the Insurgents managed to regain much of the territories in Nuevo Santander and Nuevo León they had lost at the start of the year.

The Viceroy was indignant at the sudden turn of events in the north, no less due to the limited number of reinforcements he could send without compromising other vital fronts. Field marshal Liñán had already given orders to march north with a force of approximately 5,000 when Arredondo was routed at the Battle of Laredo, ultimately the former resolved to rendezvous with the latter's diminished force in San Luis Potosí. It was from there that the Royalists attempted to recapture Nuevo León in August with a hard push toward Monterrey, but Mina and López Rayón routed the Royalists at the Battle of Linares on August 30, at which point the Insurgents gained the initiative and began to apply pressure on San Luis Potosí from the north and the west. In early autumn the Insurgents made various breakthroughs, first by Mina in the Sierra Madre Oriental followed by Allende coming from the west into the Altiplano. The combined Insurgent armies descending from the north laid siege to the city of San Luis Potosí for roughly six weeks, before the Royalists finally capitulated on November 25. The Insurgent victory over the final Royalist stronghold in the north was soon regarded as a harbinger of good fortune for the Insurgents, no less due to events in Veracruz. General Morelos' spring campaign involved a more methodical approach toward the capture of Veracruz by occupying the lowlands surrounding the port as opposed to leading with a direct attack, which ultimately bore some fruit. The Royalists endeavored to deny Morelos any chance of taking New Spain's principal port even if it meant weakening other fronts, and after several weeks of siege the Insurgents took Jalapa on July 23. Control of Jalapa cut México City's direct link with Spain, and it gave Morelos the needed leverage to occupy most of the Veracruz Lowlands save for the port city itself, which was soon put under siege in early August. Attempts throughout the autumn to lure or force Morelos away proved total failures, and by the end of the year the Insurgents had undoubtedly surrounded Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca and the remaining Royalists forces garrisoned within the Valley of México and Puebla.

Morelos' forces at the Battle of Jalapa, July 23, 1817​

Dread permeated throughout the Royalist camp as it became clear their primary connection to the sea and to Spain was severed. Their only hope it seemed was to hold the Insurgents back long enough for reinforcements from Spain to arrive and pray their intervention prove decisive enough to change the tide of the war. As it happened, King Fernando VII had been preparing another flotilla to send directly to México, though it would not be sail worthy until the following summer. In the meantime Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca hastily reorganized the Royalist army and in a sweep intended to mobilize more men, ordered Agustín de Iturbide out of retirement. Despite his initial recalcitrance Iturbide acquiesced and was readmitted with his old rank of colonel and charged with command of the Royalist southern flank, a front which remained relatively frozen throughout the winter of 1818. To the north Field marshal Liñan initially managed to pin the Insurgents west of Querétaro at Celaya, but as the various Insurgent armies in the north all converged under Allende's command the Royalists were eventually forced out of all of Guanajuato in February and most of Querétaro in early March.

Back in Spain King Fernando VII proved in his ineptitude to bring the Spanish economy, already in total disarray in the aftermath of the French invasion, into a state of bankruptcy. Resentment began to simmer amongst the Spanish bourgeoisie and intelligentsia as the king more often than not awarded titles of state and other important government positions to sycophants and other allies in an arbitrary spoils system which had a deleterious effect on the kingdom's ability to function properly. Fernando's solution to the government's insolvency was to reconquer the American colonies no matter the cost both in money and in blood. The result was the oftentimes unfair taxes levied upon the common people coupled with renewed efforts to mobilize more fighting men to send to America, a combination which served only to further antagonize large swaths of the populace. That antagonism exploded outward in early April following a failed assassination attempt (the fourth in as many years) in the city of Barcelona, which was accompanied by a series of riots that persisted long after the King had fled to the relative safety of Aranjuez. The unrest in Catalonia did not deter Fernando from his fervent desire to reclaim América, conducting the final preparations for the armada destined for México from the relative safety of the Royal Palace. Whether by design or by sheer luck, the former Viceroy of New Spain Felix Maria Calleja was charged with command of the assembled expeditionary force, which was ready to embark for Cuba in early June.[3]

Site of the Battle of Puente del Rey, located between the cities of Veracruz and Jalapa​

In anticipation of the latest Spanish expeditionary force, General Morelos spearheaded the creation of a naval force capable of defending against Spanish naval power. With the aid of Louis-Michel Aury, the French corsair who helped Colonel Mina on his journey to México the year before, Morelos managed to organize an ad-hoc fleet of warships at Alvarado, which until 1815 had reserved their conduct primarily to raiding Spanish military and commercial traffic throughout the Gulf of México.[4] Reports of the Armada's arrival to Habana in July confirmed the Insurgent's worst fears, as attempts to envelope and deny the Spanish utility of Veracruz were impeded by the presence of Spanish forces garrisoned on the island Fort San Juan de Ulúa. Despite attempts to harass the initial wave of Spanish warships as they neared the coast, contact was successfully established with San Juan de Ulúa on July 30. The Spanish then attempted landings in and around the port a couple of days later but were hampered by the significantly smaller Mexican force, the latter effectively utilizing fire ships to sow panic and confusion among the Spanish warship formations, which the Mexicans managed to successfully exploit. Spanish reinforcements soon tipped further engagements in their favor, and despite the delay Calleja managed to disembark with roughly 3,500 troops, from where they began to march northwest toward Jalapa. Morelos anticipated Calleja's advance and in the preceding weeks had fortified the heights north of Puente del Rey, as well as the adjoining Fort Atalaya de la Concepción. After a series of attritious battles on August 24 and 25, Morelos emerged victorious and a mortally wounded Calleja ordered his men to retreat to Veracruz to await reinforcements.[5]

The Mexicans for their part had also received an influx of naval reinforcements, in the form of Spanish exiles under the leadership of Lieutenant Pedro Moctezuma, a veteran naval officer and brother to the Count of Moctezuma de Tultengo Don Alfonso.[6] The Spanish tried to trap the Mexican Navy at their base inside the Alvarado Lagoon but found the base nearly deserted. The Mexicans had sailed out into the Bay of Campeche in force in early September in order to intercept the second wave of the Spanish invasion force sailing from Cuba. The Battle of Campeche Sound not only went down as one of the few naval Mexican victories of the War for Independence, but it proved decisive as it crippled the desperately needed reinforcements the Royalists needed in order to press the Insurgents back. The Battle raged for nearly three days between September 8-10, before rough waters forced a halt to hostilities. The nascent Mexican Navy had nearly been swallowed by what turned out to be a powerful hurricane making its way through Yucatán and the Bay of Campeche, but Commander Moctezuma managed to direct most of his forces back to the relative safety of Espíritu Santo. The Spanish were not as fortunate, as they were unable to avoid the path of the hurricane in their attempt to return to Habana. A small number of warships made it back to Cuba, while the floating wreckage of the lost boats littered the Gulf Coast from Veracruz as far north as Galveston where the hurricane eventually made its final landfall on September 12.[7]

Battle of Campeche Sound, September 10, 1818​

The destruction of much of the expeditionary force was a serious blow to Spanish morale, so much so that it forced many Royalists (including peninsulares) to reconsider continued reliance on the Spanish Crown and by extension the will to prolong the conflict. The Royalists in Veracruz remained under siege by Morelos while the Insurgents under Allende continued to grind slowly through the mountain valleys which separated the Bajío from the capital, but momentum had clearly swung back in the Insurgent's favor. South of Valladolid in the Tierra Caliente, colonel Iturbide had been supposedly on military campaign when in fact he had been secretly negotiating with Morelos' forces beginning in October 1818. After several weeks of strenuous negotiations Iturbide and Morelos both met in person to finalize the terms of their new alliance, soon joined by General Allende in early December. The three men chose Iguala as the location of their summit, where they discussed their common goals, chief among them the belief that México by rights ought to be a free and independent state, though what form that state should take was still up for debate. What was intended to be a fortnight of deliberations resulted in a formal declaration on December 26 of the Plan de Independencia de América Septentrional (Act of Independence of Northern America) by the assembled leaders after nearly a month's work in writing and signing the document which served as the instrument of independence for the united Mexican forces. The Act of Independence not only affirmed the sovereignty of México as an independent constitutional monarchy, but it also established equality amongst all people who lived within the nation's borders, as well as guarantee the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and imperial continuity by offering the Mexican throne to Fernando VII (or any of his brothers if they were so willing). In the event that no member of the House of Bourbon made the choice to sit on the Mexican throne it was stipulated that any prince of European nobility would be sufficient.[8] The alliance of the various Insurgent and Royalists armies was styled the Ejercito de la Unión, or Army of the Union, to commemorate the various different peoples and ideas that made up the whole of Mexico. In early January 1819 three copies of the Act of Independence were drafted and sent in all directions, one to the Insurgent Congress in Guadalajara, one to Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca in México City and one to King Fernando VII in Madrid.

The Insurgent Congress initially viewed Iturbide with heavy suspicion but were persuaded by Allende to duly consider and eventually ratify the Act of Independence on February 12, with the republican camp tempered by the affirmations to social equality and the parliamentary nature of the new state. The other parties to the Act were much less enthused upon their procurement of the document throughout the late winter and into the spring of 1819. Viceroy Ruiz de Apodaca rejected the terms presented to him outright and vowed to continue the fight, though public overtures did little to hide the reality that Spain was losing. Back in Madrid, it was rumored that Fernando VII had descended into an apoplectic rage upon being read the Act and vowed to exact holy vengeance "down to the last rebel." Even before the arrival of the document to Spain the King had begun preparations to assemble yet another expeditionary force intended for the New World. The target for this latest armada was originally planned to be the Rio de la Plata, where a precarious independence had taken hold, but news of the previous armada's destruction changed everything. Fernando VII demanded more men and ships to send once more to México, an action which further incensed the military officers and personnel tasked with organizing the invasion. Furthermore, several warships that Spain had acquired from Russia the previous year were all in varying states of rot and disrepair and ultimately deemed unnavigable. Reports of non-payment to both soldiers and military officers contributed greatly to the great mutiny organized by the multitudes of soldiers garrisoned in the port of Cádiz on the first day of May. The Cádiz Mutiny coincided with another military rising orchestrated by General Luis de Lacy in La Coruña on May 4 which not only denounced Fernando VII and his absolutism, it also called for the reestablishment of the Liberal Constitution. Almost immediately all of Galicia burst into a frenzy of insurrection, as word of Lacy's pronunciamiento made its way across northern Spain. In neighboring Asturias the regiment raised for service in América was soon directed by an officer in the Second Battalion, Lieutenant colonel Rafael de Riego, to march on Madrid instead and in June several Liberal exiles traveled from London to lend their aid to the new revolution. The exiles, led by General Francisco Espoz y Mina, landed off the Vizcayan coast near Bilbao, from where they proliferated and ignited more risings from Pamplona through to Barcelona within a matter of weeks.[9]

Signing of the Act of Independence in Iguala, December 1818​

The collapse of the absolutist regime in Spain served as a death knell for the Royalists still allied to Fernando VII. After Iturbide's defection to the Insurgents, much of his Southern Command followed and over the course of the spring Spanish power in the west and south crumbled. Toluca and Cuernavaca were both taken in early June, which was then followed by the culmination of Morelos' siege of Veracruz. After 299 days Veracruz was finally taken by the Insurgents on June 3, save for San Juan de Ulúa where General Enrile and his remaining Spanish forces continued to resist. Rumors of Fernando VII's capture or capitulation to the Constitutionalists served to sap the Royalists of their support, and as each day passed and more land was lost to the Insurgents, the Viceroy had more than enough reason to fear the thought of being forcibly removed from power. That fear was well founded as a plan to depose him was set into action on the evening of July 5, when several military officers took over command of two regiments stationed in the capital and encircled the Viceregal Palace, upon which they stormed Ruiz de Apodaca's quarters and forced him to step down. Pascual de Liñán was first chosen to replace Ruiz de Apodaca, but the former's refusal prompted the insurrectionists to compromise on colonel Francisco Ignacio de Elizondo.[10] The irony of this endeavor was that Elizondo's imposition was deemed illegitimate by both Fernando VII and the Spanish Liberals, and it ultimately did nothing to alter the tide of the war. By August Puebla had fallen to the Insurgents, which allowed them to completely encircle the Valley of México and apply pressure from all directions. The Insurgent ranks had swelled in the previous months to roughly 18,000, which gave them numerical superiority in the various battles that were fought around the capital. Allende and Iturbide approached México City from Azcapotzalco and Tacubaya respectively on August 23 and 25, while Morelos entered from the north through Villa de Guadalupe two days later, in decisive battles that effectively brought the war to its conclusion. Several days later, on September 1, the victorious Insurgent Army marched into México City without firing a shot. Nine years after the horrific battle which saw the capital nearly destroyed by the Insurgents' and Royalists' fierce fighting, México City was now the scene of joyous celebration as men who had fought on different sides for nearly a decade reveled in victory and reconciliation with parades, public speeches, banquets and even a te deum from the cathedral.

The Spanish King refused to concede defeat against the Mexicans but was hardly in any position to alter the outcome. Even as he struggled to contain the uprisings against him Fernando VII vehemently warned the other European powers against aiding Mexico or any other Spanish colony deemed by him to be in open rebellion. Spain's former ally the United Kingdom was not shaken by these warnings and only further increased its support for the revolutionaries in Mexico and South America. Neither were the great houses of Europe greatly bothered by Fernando VII's vague threats should any of their scions decide to claim the Mexican throne. The Infante Carlos and Infante Francisco de Paula both joined their elder brother in rejecting the terms of the Act of Independence, despite the best efforts of Lucas Alamán and others to convince them of ruling Mexico independently or in personal union with Spain. The French Bourbons were also ruled out as they were primarily occupied with returning to power in Paris instead.[11] The House of Habsburg proved slightly more promising as the younger brother of the Austrian Emperor, the Archduke Karl, Duke of Teschen, expressed interest in the venture but required adequate time to decide. Surprisingly the Duke of Teschen was not the only one to express interest in ruling México, as the London conspirators were also approached by the Count of Moctezuma de Tultengo, who claimed his descent from one of the last Mexica Emperors gave him a clear advantage over any other candidate. Ultimately the decision of who should be made king or emperor came down to the new Congress which was to be elected into power the following year.[12]

The Army of the Union receiving a heroes welcome to the capital​

In the meantime a provisional government was to be established in México City between the Insurgent Congress (in the process of relocation from Guadalajara) and an executive triumvirate made up of the Generals' Allende, Morelos and Iturbide, a body which also served as a regency council until such a time that a monarch is properly chosen. The consummation of independence did not necessarily entail a complete cessation to the fighting, as the Spanish still held onto San Juan de Ulúa and in private discussions the Mexican leadership expressed their fear that Spain would not quit until it had reconquered Mexico and all other territories it felt entitled to. To that end it seemed prudent to launch an invasion of Cuba, as the island was viewed as a natural stepping stone for both past and future Spanish attacks. Despite the inherent challenges of invading such a large island, the Mexican leadership came to understand the importance of securing control of the sea lanes which connected the Gulf of México with the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the right they felt México had to assert its claim to the whole of Cuba as the legal successor to the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In that regard it seemed the war had not quite ended , but instead changed theaters of operation, to say nothing of the ongoing struggles in Nueva Grenada and Rio de la Plata. Despite it all for a brief moment euphoria seemed to permeate the young Mexican nation, as the dream of so many, the dream of independence, had finally been achieved.

[1] A similar conspiracy did exist in OTL but it wasn't as powerful or influential. Again knock on effects from the Mexican rebels being more successful.
[2] This part is mostly from OTL, Mina's life doesn't deviate much until after he's in Mexico.
[3] I have to go back and double check but I recall that Calleja was going to be sent to Mexico by Fernando but Riego's Revolt changed all that. I have to remember where I saw that though.
[4] Morelos had tentative plans for a navy but he was captured and killed in OTL before he could carry any of those plans out. Here of course he lives with the rest of the Insurgent leadership and I figure TTL a navy would be something the Insurgents would all agree is beneficial.
[5] I know it might feel like I killed him off kinda quick but I felt some form of poetic justice having Calleja lose a battle at a famous bridge (call back to Calderon Bridge).
[6] Enter the House of Moctezuma!
[7] OTL an estimated category 2-3 hurricane was observed to have passed through this same area. Say hello to Mexico's divine wind y'all!
[8] Yes this is pretty much exactly the Plan de Iguala, though TTL the official name (Act of Independence) might become just as popular in use.
[9] Basically the various attempts to overthrow or assassinate Fernando VII go down differently between 1814 and 1819, with some like Luis de Lacy living and coordinating with others such as Riego and Espoz y Mina (yes that's Javier Mina's uncle). This alternate "Riego's Revolt" will be going down very differently.
[10] Elizondo was the asshole who turned in Hidalgo and Allende's forces over to the Spanish in OTL which led to their eventual deaths in 1811. Don't let his appointment to Viceroy fool you though, he's more of a puppet than anything else, and all things considered he wasn't 'viceroy" for very long. He just happened to be at the right place at the right time...or wrong place at the wrong time, whatever your fancy.
[11] Oh yeah the Bourbon's aren't in charge of France. I've been very coy with events outside Mexico but now that I've wrapped up this update we'll be seeing more of the world moving forward.
[12] Alfonso Moctezuma may want the Mexican throne pretty bad, but it's not gonna be easy peezy lemon squeezy.

End of Part I​