The scene now shifts northward to the viceroyalty of New Spain.
Unlike the struggles already described, the uprisings that began
in 1810 in central Mexico were substantially revolts of Indians
and half-castes against white domination. On the 16th of
September, a crowd of natives rose under the leadership of Miguel
Hidalgo, a parish priest of the village of Dolores. Bearing on
their banners the slogan, "Long live Ferdinand VII and down with
bad government, " the undisciplined crowd, soon to number tens of
thousands, aroused such terror by their behavior that the whites
were compelled to unite in self-defense. It mattered not whether
Hidalgo hoped to establish a republic or simply to secure for his
followers relief from oppression: in either case the whites could
expect only Indian domination. Before the trained forces of the
whites a horde of natives, so ignorant of modern warfare that
some of them tried to stop cannon balls by clapping their straw
hats over the mouths of the guns, could not stand their ground.
Hidalgo was captured and shot, but he was succeeded by Jose Maria
Morelos, also a priest. Reviving the old Aztec name for central
Mexico, he summoned a "Congress of Anahuac," which in 1813
asserted that dependence on the throne of Spain was "forever
broken and dissolved." Abler and more humane than Hidalgo, he set
up a revolutionary government that the authorities of Mexico
failed for a while to suppress.

In 1814, therefore, Spain still held the bulk of its dominions.
Trinidad, to be sure, had been lost to Great Britain, and both
Louisiana and West Florida to the United States. Royalist
control, furthermore, had ceased in parts of the viceroyalties of
La Plata and New Granada. To regain Trinidad and Louisiana was
hopeless: but a wise policy conciliation or an overwheming