Mexican War of Independence: A Visual History

The Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821) began on 16 September 1810 when the priest Miguel Hidalgo rang the church bell at Dolores and called the poor to arms against bad government and the Spanish-born gachupines. His mob of 80,000 sacked Guanajuato and reached the gates of Mexico City before turning back; he was captured and executed in 1811. Jose Maria Morelos, another priest, ran a disciplined southern campaign, held the Congress of Chilpancingo (1813) and was shot in 1815; guerrillas under Vicente Guerrero held out. In 1821, after Spain's liberal revolution, the royalist officer Agustin de Iturbide switched sides, proclaimed the Plan of Iguala with Guerrero, and marched into Mexico City on 27 September 1821. About 250,000 to 500,000 died.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

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Insurgent strength

Timeline of the Mexican War of Independence

1. 1808
   Napoleon deposes Ferdinand VII
2. 1810
   Grito de Dolores; Guanajuato; Monte de las Cruces
3. 1811
   Calderon Bridge; Hidalgo executed
4. 1812
   Siege of Cuautla
5. 1813
   Congress of Chilpancingo declares independence
6. 1815
   Morelos executed
7. 1821
   Plan of Iguala; Treaty of Cordoba; entry into Mexico City
8. 1822
   Iturbide crowned emperor

Hidalgo

Napoleon's removal of the Spanish king in 1808 shook the colonies; creole conspirators at Queretaro were betrayed, and Hidalgo launched the revolt early with the Grito de Dolores. Under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe his peasant horde massacred the Spaniards in the Alhondiga granary at Guanajuato and beat the royalists at Monte de las Cruces, but he did not attack the capital; Calleja routed him at Calderon Bridge in January 1811, and Hidalgo and Allende were captured in the north and shot, their heads hung on the Alhondiga for ten years.

Morelos

Morelos, a mestizo priest and Hidalgo's lieutenant, built a small professional army in the hot country, held Cuautla against a 72-day siege in 1812, took Oaxaca and Acapulco, and convened the Congress of Chilpancingo, which declared independence in November 1813 and drafted a republican constitution at Apatzingan. Defeated at Valladolid by Iturbide, he was captured in November 1815, degraded by the Inquisition and shot. The insurgency shrank to guerrilla bands under Guerrero and Guadalupe Victoria; the Spanish liberal Xavier Mina's expedition of 1817 was crushed.

Iguala and the Trigarantes

The liberal revolution in Spain in 1820, restoring the 1812 constitution, alarmed conservative creoles and the church. Iturbide, sent to finish Guerrero, instead met him at Acatempan and issued the Plan of Iguala in February 1821: independence, Catholicism and union of Spaniards and Americans, the three guarantees. Royalist units defected; the new viceroy O'Donoju signed the Treaty of Cordoba, and the Trigarante army entered Mexico City on 27 September 1821. Iturbide made himself emperor in 1822 and fell in 1823; the republic followed.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• First Mexican Empire (1821 to 1823)
• Aztec Empire (1428 to 1521)

Wars of the same era and region

• French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792 to 1815)
• Colombian War of Independence (1810 to 1825)
• Mexican Revolution (1910 to 1920)
• Spanish conquest of Mexico (1519 to 1521)

8 surprising things about the Mexican War of Independence

1. Mexico's Independence Day is 16 September, the date of Hidalgo's cry, not 27 September when independence was achieved; the president re-enacts the Grito every year.
2. The heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama and Jimenez hung in cages on the Alhondiga in Guanajuato until 1821.
3. Morelos was defrocked by the Inquisition before execution; his son Juan Nepomuceno Almonte later served Emperor Maximilian.
4. The Virgin of Guadalupe on Hidalgo's banner became the emblem of Mexican identity.
5. Iturbide's flag of green, white and red became the Mexican tricolour.
6. Guerrero, the mixed-race guerrilla who kept the fight alive, became president in 1829 and abolished slavery.
7. The Spanish garrison held the island fortress of San Juan de Ulua off Veracruz until 1825.
8. New Spain's silver production, the world's largest, was halved by the war and took decades to recover.

Sources

• Mexican War of Independence Wikipedia
• Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Mexico: The war of independence Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Timothy Anna, The Fall of the Royal Government in Mexico City (1978) University of Nebraska Press

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