![]() ![]() ![]() 3 But since many of these troops were native Americans, 4 drawn from the same populations which were now rebelling, observers in Spain felt that the regular units would not be sufficient. 2 In 1808 Spain had about 125,700 men stationed permanently from Mexico to the Río de la Plata. Juan López Cancelada, writing in 1810, called for a mighty “expedition of peace” and other men, also, thought that only through military action could Spain “positively secure” its control over the rebels. Despite the truly desperate situation in Spain itself, the immediate reaction was a general outcry to send an army to crush the revolts. It was at this juncture that word arrived of insurrections in the empire, first in New Spain and Venezuela, then spreading quickly to Peru, Chile, and the Río de la Plata. There in 1810, besieged on several sides, a group of liberals seized the opportunity to turn Spain into a constitutional monarchy. ![]() A new government was formed which proclaimed its loyalty to Ferdinand, but it had to flee to Cádiz before the onrushing armies. The Spanish people watched with smoldering resentment as Joseph Bonaparte arrived with his court, and then, on May 2, rose in revolt and for the next six years fought the invader. In 1808, at a nod from Napoleon, both the aged Charles IV and the new king, Ferdinand VII, voluntarily turned the country over to the French and meekly removed themselves to Bayonne. 1ĭuring the entire revolution Spain was beset with difficulties. A little probing into the contemporary press and into the military archives from 1810 to 1824 reveals peculiar features of the Spanish attitude hard to reconcile with the “national tragedy” then in progress. Popular attitudes in Spain, particularly those of the Spanish army (which was directly concerned with the war), have heretofore been neglected. Yet whatever is known of the subject has generally come from studies of the Latin American participants in the war. S pain’s loss of its Latin American empire was one of the most momentous events of the nineteenth century, with repercussions that can be felt even in the present day. ![]()
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