A late-comer in the privileged corporate structure of New Spain, the army struggled to wrest a position and to gain recognition. Other jurisdictions such as the merchant consulados, the Acordada, the Mining Guild, and the jealous creole-dominated ayuntamientos, contested military pretensions and triggered numerous judicial and jurisdictional disputes over how far the military could extend its legal powers. Representatives of the reformed Bourbon civil administration, unsure in some instances of the limits of their own authority, did not welcome a dynamic and grasping presence. For their own part, the army officers dispatched to command Mexican regular and militia units often represented the aggressively haughty airs of the European Spaniard – attitudes that rasped at the deep-rooted inferiority of the creoles and left them enraged. Little wonder that there was a constant stream of disputes, misunderstandings, and challenges directed against the army and the fucro militar.1

In an age of fiscal and administrative reform, the army of New Spain stood out as an irredeemable drain on the treasury as well as a nightmare for bureaucrats and military planners. No knowledgeable observer could possibly advocate a continuation of the haphazard defenses of previous decades, but there were very few other points of agreement. From the perspective of the mother country, Mexicans had to recognize the need to defend themselves. The British conquests of Canada, the Floridas, and the temporary occupation of Havana, underscored the dangers and the possibilities of Mexicans losing their possessions and liberties. Naturally, the full burden of military finance and service would fall upon the residents of the viceroyalty, not to mention the growing costs of the annual subsidies (situados) sent to help pay for the defense of less advantaged possessions in the Caribbean, Central America, and the Philippines. The problem was how to prevent the army of New Spain from becoming a voracious consumer of money without offering much in the way of a standing defense force. In 1762 for example, Viceroy Marqués de Cruillas spent 3,398,471 pesos extraordinary funds without managing to get the fortifications at Vercruz into a state of readiness or a proper force to defend them. Most viceroys, inspectors general, and senior staff officers confronted with the task of having to inspect Mexican units catalogued a long list of failures. They described a history of constnatly changing military policies that achieved little other than to waste hundreds of thousands of pesos each decade while entrenching numerous chronic defects.

Historians have long grappled with the problem of defining the precise nature of eighteenth-century Mexican society. Not only was the confused tangle of racial types which resulted from the three centuries of miscegenation vitally important in establishing social status, but special corporations further divided the population into privileged groups and jurisdictions. Society was split into three general categories: ethnic whites, criollo (American-born) and gachupín (European-born); Indians; and finally the castas (castes) who belonged to the many racial permutations.

Indian warfare was general in the Internal Provinces of New Spain in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Spain was militarily weak in these frontier provinces so far from Mexico City and, to make matters even more difficult, the barbarian Indian tribes refused to recognize rules of good conduct in war and peace. Where weakness seemed likely to lead to defeat, the Indians thought nothing of employing abject submission, approaching the Spanish authorities with humble requests for peace, conversion, and a place where they might be permitted to settle into a quiet productive existence. Often the Spanish, either exhausted by combat or hopeful of Indian sincerity in such declarations, convinced themselves that the enemy would settle into a sedentary life under the gentle guidance of the friars. Unfortunately for the success of frontier policy, a treaty was only as valid as the number of presidial troops prepared to enforce it. Without force, the Indians, epecially the Apaches, returned to traditional pursuits of rustling livestock and attacks on weakly defended ranches or travellers. A continual history of incidents of this nature brought Spanish governors and frontier soldiers to a state of complete frustration.

Veracruz was the most important strategic point in the defenses of New Spain throughout the three centuries of Spanish occupation. It was the only important commercial center which allowed easy access to the interior highlands of the viceroyalty and as such, attracted any potential invader who might wish either to carry out a raid on commerce or to undertake more ambitious conquests. This study will consider some of the major themes involved in the defense of Veracruz in the last three decades before 1810 to see how such a vital position affected military developments and to test a main theme of recent historical research on the period which has established the origins of praetorian-spirited, privilege-hungry soldiers in the periodfollowing the Seven Years War.