The History of Cuba Volume II Part 6

"ALBEMARLE."

The Bishop replied that the story about the admission of the discredited Englishman into the Jesuit seminary was altogether untrue, since the authorities of that college could not admit anybody, this being a special privilege of the Provincial residing in Mexico. A somewhat amusing incident of these disputes between the British authorities and the Spanish clergy of Havana is recorded in the following letter of the Bishop dated October twenty-second. It reads:

"Your Excellency:

"Yesterday between 4 and 5 o'clock in the afternoon, there called on me on your part a person whose name and nationality I do not know. All I know is that he speaks Spanish, though with a foreign accent and wears golden earrings as is customary with women. He addressed me with 'Usted.' I informed him in the conversation that in speaking to me he had to use a more dignified t.i.tle. He replied that he would always use 'Usted.' It then occurred to me that this obstinacy might be justified by his higher rank. I asked him and he said that he had no other rank but that of a bomb-thrower in his Majesty's name. He continued in his way of speaking to me with a loud voice, and since in all his conduct he was wanting of the respect due to my dignity, I deem it fair that it should be corrected and that your excellency give me satisfaction."

Lord Albemarle seems to have paid no attention to this letter. But on the same day the Bishop received another urgent order in which Lord Albemarle, as Governor and Captain-General of the island, insisted in his demand to receive a list of all ecclesiastical orders and benefices, in order to know and be the "competent judge" of the persons appointed by the Bishop and be able to consent to their appointment. The Bishop in his reply referred to his previous letter, stating that the Governor could neither before nor after the appointment be a competent judge of the appointees, since ecclesiastics, according to all rights, were exempt of protests by the laity, and their privileges were inviolate.

According to the historian Blanchet, Bishop Morrell was at the end exiled to Florida for having refused to obey certain orders given by the British authorities.

Although Albemarle cannot be said to have governed with the tyranny that characterized the German governors of occupied territories in the recent war, he failed to win the people. Those residents of Havana who were able to leave the place, moved into the country or to towns like Villa-Clara. The peasants of the neighborhood, who had carried on a profitable trade with the city in garden and dairy products, fowl, venison, etc., preferred to renounce these profits rather than go to the market and have the British buy what their soil had raised and their hands had tended. The spirit of the people was unanimous in the hatred of the enemy conquerors. Their intemperance, their customs, and even their language irritated them. Altercations that terminated in bloodshed became more and more numerous as time went on. Any act of violence against the British was severely punished, and not a few Cuban "rebels"

were executed; the atmosphere of Havana was soon charged with invisible mines that a spark could set off.

Complying with the orders of the British government, Albemarle had to exact the payment of certain sums from the population, including the clergy and the religious organizations, and found great difficulty in enforcing these orders. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the feelings of the population were being deliberately hurt, especially by the disregard of the British authorities for the inst.i.tutions maintained by the clergy. Thus a wave of indignation swept over the city, when the beggars and the sick were ejected from the convent of San Juan de Dios, which was turned into a hospital for the British. Without remuneration they occupied almost one-third of the buildings subject to an ecclesiastical tax, they transformed private residences into jails; they seized merchandise and funds that were owned by the Real Compania de Comercio and when these were claimed as private property, they were returned only after payment of one hundred and seventy-five pesos. As the tension grew crimes committed from vindictiveness increased among the population. M. Savine, the French writer referred to previously, reports that the Guajiros of the mountains poisoned the milk furnished to the garrison. A Cuban "rebel" who had escaped from the jail went about in the part of the island not occupied by the British and preached a "holy war" against the invaders of the island. Conditions were such that Havana might have become at any moment the scene of a new Sicilian Vespers.

It was at this time that the Commissary D. Lorenzo de Montalvo wrote to the Minister of War at Madrid under date of October eighteenth, 1762:

"The extraordinary mortality of the British troops has reduced them to the state which Your Excellency will see from the included papers. If at this moment eight or ten vessels arrived with two or three thousand men to debark, it would not be forty eight hours before they would capitulate."

There was indeed a movement on foot in the unoccupied part of Cuba to collect a force, march against Havana and deliver it from the British conquerors. A force of guerilleros was ready for action under command of the intrepid Aguiar. He was only waiting for enforcement promised him by Governor Madriaga of Santiago, who had three hundred and fifty men with two thousand and five hundred guns, collected at Yaguas and Villa-Clara.

But he lingered at Yaguas and it was supposed that he was afraid of losing his position if the British should decide upon moving against Santiago. Madriaga was however a.s.sociated with Aguiar, D. Lorenzo Montalvo, D. Nicolas Rapua, D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, D. Augustin de Cardenas and other prominent citizens and patriots of Cuba in a pact to reconquer Havana at an opportune moment, and action may have been delayed only because rumors were afloat that peace was about to be signed.

In Spain itself feeling ran high. The provinces of Murcia, Granada, Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia sent an address to King Charles III.

asking to defend the colonies. It said among other things:

"Sir:

"Now is the moment to hold high the glory of the nation; let us humiliate under your auspices ambitious England which in her folly proposes nothing less than the ruin of all Europe. As her only aim is commerce, that is sordid gain, she wages a regrettable war upon a warlike nation that does not know meanness and has no other sentiments than the love of her king and her country. Money may be needed in London, as once in Carthage; but virtue, constancy and heroism we shall never lack, as they never failed the ancient Romans."

But there is no record that this address elicited anything more than an appreciative reply from the government at Madrid. For the diplomatic and political world of Spain as of Great Britain was indeed occupied in considering a settlement of the Spanish-British problem.

Nevertheless there were Spaniards, who even at that trying time must have viewed the state of things dispa.s.sionately, for the historian Pezuela gives the British much credit for the moderation and conciliatory tendency of their policy during the occupation. He records that they did not materially alter the general regime of the city, nor even make any radical changes in the munic.i.p.al government. On taking possession of the town, Albemarle named for civil lieutenant-governor the Alderman D. Sebastian Penalver, a prominent lawyer; for the latter's Suplente or alternate, the alferez real or chief ensign D. Gonzale Oquendo, and for common civil judge D. Pedro Calvo de la Puerta, a high-constable and property holder highly esteemed by his fellow citizens. These three officials by their wisdom, unselfishness and impartiality lightened the burden of the foreign yoke.

Both Albemarle and Keppel had soon recognized some of the greatest evils of the colonial administration, among them the corruption of the lower courts and the amazing amount of bribery going on even in the higher departments of the government. They tried to check the malpractice of lawyers, and in a decree dated the fourth of November, 1762, prohibited the making of gifts or presents of any kind to the princ.i.p.al governor and to the inferior authorities, considering such practice as means to promote dishonesty. However, the att.i.tude of the great majority was and remained hostile to the British and it needed all the prudence and tact of men like Oquendo, Penalver and Puerta to avoid conflicts between the citizens and the foreign authorities. Nor should the Intendant Montalvo be forgotten, whose services were highly appreciated by Albemarle.

In the British parliament there existed at that time a state of turmoil.

The Earl of Bute, friend and adviser of George III., did not care for further extension of Britain's colonial possessions in America, saying that it was much greater importance "to bring the old colonies in order than to plant new ones." Others favored the return of Havana to Spain in exchange for Porto Rico and Florida. On the twenty-sixth of October, 1762, the British King expressed his approval of the latter proposal and urged the diplomats engaged in deliberating upon the subject speedily to draft a treaty. He wrote to Bedford, as quoted by Bancroft in his "History of the United States," Vol. III., p. 298:

"The best despatch I can receive from you will be those preliminaries signed. May Providence, in compa.s.sion to human misery, give you the means of executing this great and n.o.ble work."

The terms proposed to the French according to the same authority were severe and even humiliating, and Choiseul is reported as having said:

"But what can we do? The English are furiously imperious; they are drunk with success; and, unfortunately, we are not in a condition to abase their pride."

The preliminaries of a peace which was to bring a certain stability to the colonies in America and permanently settle the claims of the three nations that had for three centuries been striving for supremacy in the New World, were signed on the third of November, 1762. They contained the following stipulations: England was to receive the Floridas and some islands in the West Indies, but abandon Havana; it was to have Louisiana to the Mississippi, but without the island of New Orleans; it was likewise to have all Canada, Acadia, Cape Breton and its independent islands, Newfoundland, except a share of France in the fisheries, with the two islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon as shelter for their fishermen. In Africa England was to have Senegal, which insured for it the monopoly of the slave-trade. In the East Indies, too, France recovered only what she possessed on the first of January, 1749, the rest going to England and a.s.suring its sway over that territory. France, on the other hand, to indemnify Spain for the loss of Florida, ceded to Spain New Orleans and all Louisiana west of the Mississippi. There is no doubt that France came off worst in this settlement; but, as her minister Choiseul said, it was at the time helpless. In England, which by this settlement laid the foundations of her great power, there was a great display of flamboyant oratory. The king was reported to have said:

"England never signed such a peace before, nor, I believe, any other power in Europe."

Granville, then, on his deathbed, exclaimed:

"The country never saw so glorious a war or so honorable a peace," and Bute, roused to defend it against some opponents in Parliament, uttered these words significant of the high esteem in which he held himself and whatever services he rendered England as favorite of the king:

"I wish no better inscription on my tomb than that I was its author."

It is needless to say that the effect of this doc.u.ment upon Spain was of quite a different nature. For it practically checked for all time her ambitions for maintaining supremacy in the world her discoverers and explorers had once claimed under her colors. Cuba, of course, rejoiced at the prospect of the rest.i.tution of Havana. Lord Albemarle, suffering from the strain of the siege and the climate, as no less from the realization that he would never be able to reconcile the Cubans to a recognition of his authority, had left early in the year 1762 and Sir William Keppel occupied his post. The peace was ratified at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763, and the people began to look forward with impatience to the arrival of a new governor from Madrid and to the debarkation of the British. In spite of the hara.s.sing situation which they had endured during the rule of the enemy they had not been idle, but planned many improvements and reforms which they promised themselves to execute as soon as the British domination would end. They had learned, too, to appreciate the advantages of free trade; for during the British occupation no less than nine hundred merchant vessels entered the harbor and not a few cargoes of negroes were landed.

CHAPTER VI

The changes which the island underwent during this time were far-reaching. The British occupation had established a direct contact with the world outside of Spain, which was bound to broaden the narrowly provincial viewpoint of the residents of the colony. For the n.o.bles to whom large tracts of land had been granted in the earlier days of the colony had never permanently resided there but only came over for a short time to occupy their winter residence in Havana and for another brief season to show themselves in all their old-world aristocratic splendor on their haciendas. The great majority of the people, descendants of the adventurers and the poor immigrants of the pioneer period, had acquired the habits of country people so engrossed in their fields, their live stock and the daily labors required to make these possessions profitable, that they had lost any desire to seek the stimulating influence of city life. The cities themselves, Havana not excepted, had a provincial aspect and offered little attraction to the foreign traveler who did not come there exclusively on business.

Nevertheless they left a pleasant memory with many a casual visitor. A Frenchman, who spent some time in Havana about the year 1745, set down his impressions, which with other letters and memoirs of travel were edited by Pierre Jean Baptiste Nougaret and published in Paris in 1783 under the t.i.tle: "Voyages interessans dans differentes Colonies francaises, espagnoles, anglaises, etc." In these reminiscences of Havana some twenty years before the British occupation, he draws a picture of the city, which it is interesting to compare with what other writers have to say of the Havana of 1762. He writes:

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAVANA, FROM CABANAS

"Beautiful for situation" indeed is the Cuban capital, whether it be used as a point from which to view the sea and land, or be itself looked upon from some neighboring or distant height. This view, from the grounds of the great Cabanas fortress, shows the central portion of the city, with the notable public buildings clearly discernible, and nearer at hand the waters of the inner harbor, where occurred in 1898 the memorable and mysterious tragedy of the _Maine_.]

"It is a very s.p.a.cious city, well enough built and among the best fortified in America. In size it compares about with la Roch.e.l.le, but it is far more populated. It is graced with a large number of public buildings, churches, convents and you see there usually more negro slaves than in any other city of Spanish domination. Its harbor especially is one of the largest and most beautiful in America, and they build there wars.h.i.+ps for the construction of which the king of Spain employs a prodigious number of laborers, an a.r.s.enal and an immense workshop. It is the Catholic king's custom to pay one thousand piastres a cannon; so a vessel of eight cannon costs him eight thousand piastres.

There are always on the docks five or six vessels at once; it is a company called the Company of Biscay which attends to the business.

Havana is rather regular in plan; the streets are surveyed by the line, although some of them are not absolutely straight; all houses are of two or three floors, built of masonry and have balconies mostly of wood; the lower part of most houses is terrace-like as in European Spain and altogether they make a respectable impression.

"The city is protected by a numerous garrison of about four thousand regular troops, extremely well kept, who make Havana impregnable in a country where one cannot attack, except with considerable forces. The city which is one of the best located seems an oval; the entrance to her port is advantageously protected by different forts, of which one, the first, is called Morro or port of entrance; the second is opposite; a third has been erected toward the side of the city; it is so large that it seems rather a citadel than a fort. There is besides before the princ.i.p.al section of the city before the palace of the governor which is magnificent, a battery of big guns and of considerable calibre; so one can say that Havana is the best defended of all places in America, the vessels that want to enter being obliged to pa.s.s so close to the forts that it would be easy to sink them.

"The customs of the Spanish are here about the same as in Spain, differing from other colonies of the nation, where frankness, righteousness and probity seem to have been exiled. The Havanese are quite frank, extremely gay, more so than suits the ordinary Spanish gravity which is probably due to the great number of strangers which come there from all parts. The climate is rather good; the s.e.x very handsome and enjoying much more liberty than in the rest of Spanish America.

"Armed cruisers are entertained to keep away strangers from the coast, which does not prevent all the fraudulent operations in which the commandant often shares. Nevertheless life is agreeable for the rich, everything being abundant in Havana; and the residents are far more neatly habited than elsewhere. One does not drink but cistern water, much superior to that of the only fountain which is in the center of a large square; and which serves only as watering trough for animals. You see in Havana many rolling chairs, most of which are rented, which gives the city an air resembling European towns."

Appreciative as this description sounds, which had for its author a M.

Sr. Villiet d'Arignon, the Havana of the time of the British calls forth even more appreciative language from the Spanish historians of Cuba.

They dwell much on the beauty of its location and of the city itself say:

The streets were not large or well leveled, especially those running from north to south, which caused the town to be so great in length; over three thousand houses occupied an expanse of nine hundred fathoms in length and five hundred in width; they were of hewn stone, of graceful form and as a whole afforded a very beautiful appearance. To the beauty of the city contributed eleven churches and convents and two large hospitals; the churches were rich and magnificent, especially those of Recoletos, Santa Clara, San Agustino and San Juan de Dios.

Their interior was adorned with altars, lamps and candelabra of gold and silver of an exquisite taste. There were three princ.i.p.al squares: The Plaza des Armas, which still retains its name, encompa.s.sed by houses of uniform frontage with the metropolitan church. A magnificent aspect was added to this square by the castille de la Fuerza, where resided the Captain-Generals, and the pyramid encompa.s.sed by three luxuriant five-leaved silk cotton trees planted there in memory of the tradition, that the first ma.s.s and town meeting were held in the shadow of a robust tree of that kind; that of San Francisco adorned with two fountains was considered the best place in the city and on it were the houses of the Ayuntamento and the public jail, whose two-story facade with arched entrance contrasted with the severe architecture of the convent after which the square is named; and there was still another, the new square, because it had been opened after the former, with a fountain in the center and all encompa.s.sed with porticos for the convenience of the public, serving also as market-place, where the inhabitants, according to Arrate, provided themselves "copiously" with all they wanted.

Native writers also dwell upon the good manners of the Havanese, calling them the most polite and social people of Spanish America, much given to imitating the French customs and manners, which were then in vogue at the Spanish court of Madrid, both in their dress and their conversation, as also in the furnis.h.i.+ngs of their houses and the good table they set their guests. These descriptions of Cuba and Cuban life tally well with those of the foreigners quoted by the author, and indicate the progress made by the island, and especially by Havana, in the sixth and seventh decades of the century.

The economic conditions of the island underwent a great change during the sixth decade of the century. Up to this time, the majority of the people had been engaged in agriculture and led a more or less simple, rustic life. The products of her soil were consumed on the spot. Her mines were neglected because the gold and silver which had been discovered in the earlier part of Cuba's history and which had roused the jealousy of other countries were not sufficient in quant.i.ty to justify the labor needed for working them. With the increasing number of negro slaves, the possibilities of exploiting all the rich natural resources of the island were multiplied. Among the products that came into prominence was sugar. Not ordinarily consumed, it brought forty three cents a pound. John Atkins, the British surgeon and author of that interesting book of travel in Spanish America referred to in a previous chapter, had declared the sugar of Cuba the best in the world; and it was indeed so considered in the market. It became soon one of the most important articles of Cuba's commerce. The cheapened labor encouraged enterprises which the Spanish would have been physically unable to carry through.

The commerce of Havana had in this epoch increased considerably and the greatest part of it came from the ports of the island itself. Besides supplying with goods the towns of the interior and the littoral, Havana exported great amounts of hides, much esteemed for their excellent quality, and also sugar, tobacco and other articles. The trade was carried on by vessels registered from Cadiz and the Canaries besides those of Spanish merchants who were allowed to trade with the Spanish-American continent. Especially favored were those that returned to Spain from Cartagena, Porto Bello and Vera Cruz and entered Havana to renew their supply of provisions and water, and enjoy the advantage of going out with the convoy which in the month of September returned to the Peninsula with galleons loaded with the riches of Peru and Chile, and the fleet freighted with the treasures of New Spain. This periodical a.s.sembly of a great number of merchant and war vessels in Havana had introduced the custom of holding fairs, during which great animation prevailed in the city. For while they facilitated commercial transactions, they also furnished diversion and entertainment to the sailors and others who were waiting for the sailing of the convoy. At that time an order was published prohibiting on penalty of death any person belonging to the squadron to remain on land over night, and all had to retire on board at the report of a gun. Provisions were then, as also M. d'Arignon reported at his time, very dear. The monopoly which was exercised by the company had unreasonably raised the cost of living.

The flour brought from foreign smugglers at five or six piasters a barrel, was sold at his time at thirty-five and more! Besides the ordinary wages of men hired by the day every male slave day-laborer was paid in excess four pesos a day and every female two pesos.

The description of the defenses of the city during the British invasion suggest that the surrender to the enemy may after all not have been entirely the fault of the procrastination and unconcern of the Cuban governor, as some zealous patriots alleged at the time. The entrance of the port was in the eastern part, defended by the strong fort of el Morro, situated upon an elevated rock of irregular, somewhat triangular form, in the walls and bulwarks of which were forty mounted cannon. It was protected also by the battery of Doce Apostoles, so called for having a dozen mounted cannon, situated toward the interior of the port in the lower parts of the Morro bulwark, which looked to the southeast and were almost at sea-level. There was also the Divina Pastora with fourteen cannon, on a level with the sea at a point a little higher than the former facing the gate of la Punta. Toward the west in the same entrance of the port and about two hundred yards from it with four bulwarks well-mounted with artillery, was la Fuerza with twenty-two cannon. Although not of as solid construction as the others, it served as storehouse for the treasures of the King and was also the residence of the governor. Between these fortresses there were erected along the bay a number of other bulwarks well supplied with artillery. The walls from la Punta to the a.r.s.enal were protected by bulwarks with parapets and a ditch. From the first to the second gate there was considerable territory converted at that time into gardens, and pasture land, and covered with palmettos. In front of the Punta de Tierra was a ravelin.

Nevertheless those fortifications had serious defects of position, because the city as well as the forts were dominated by many hills easy of access. East of the port was Cabanas, where there was a citadel built later, dominating a great part of el Morro and the northeastern part of the city. West of the town was a suburb, called Guadeloupe, the church of which was situated on an eminence half a mile from the gate of Tierra, and on the same level with it, the highest of all fortifications in that direction. From the northern side of this elevation the gate of Punta could be flanked and from the southeast the s.h.i.+pyard was dominated. The zanja real, or royal trench, in the northern part, descended not far from the Punta de Tierra and then ran into the s.h.i.+pyard where its water was employed in running a mill. Half a mile from said church was the Chavez bridge, built over a rivulet flowing into the bay, which served to unite the central road of the island with that of Baracoa; and from the bridge to the Lazareto was a stretch of two miles with an intermediate hill. A trench between these two points could easily cut the communication of Havana with the rest of the island. From this close description it can be seen that in spite of the imposing impression its fortifications made upon foreigners, Havana was by no means an impregnable fortress at the time of the British invasion, which was brought out at the trial of Governor Prado. But whatever may have been the cause of its capitulation to the British, the period of their occupation at the end benefited Cuba, for it opened the eyes of the government to the needs of the island, and prepared a new era, political, social and economic.