History of Mexico: Tome II($19.99Value)

Description

Mexico in 1812 was in a war the royalists were winning but could not finish. Royalist commander Félix María Calleja besieged Cuautla for seventy-two days, starved the garrison to the edge of dissolution, and yet could still not prevent the rebel commander Morelos from escaping in the night. The town fell. The insurgency did not. This volume follows the war through its middle years, from the siege of Cuautla to the collapse of the constitutional project at Apatzingán. Morelos reorganized the rebel forces, took Oaxaca, took Acapulco, and then convened a congress at Chilpancingo which sought to turn a rebellion into a republic. Neither document produced by the new congress governed anything for long. The royalists moved faster than the congress could legislate, forcing Morelos to spend precious months protecting a legislature which had voted to strip him of authority. The insurgency fragmented into regional bands that the royalist army could only suppress one at a time. In Spain, Ferdinand VII returned to power, abolished the Cádiz constitution, and reinvigorated the counterinsurgency with money and reinforcements the liberals had withheld. The volume ends with the insurgency diminished but not extinguished. The republic of Apatzingán was in flight. The constitutional argument it had opened was not closed. This history records how the choices made in these years determined the course of events which came after.