BACKGROUND OF THE WARS OF INDEPENDENCE 161
a force of some two hundred foreign volunteers,
his call for revolution evoked no response, and he
had to make a hasty retreat. Creole timidity and
political inexperience and the apathy of the people
might have long postponed the coming of indepen-
dence if external developments had not hastened
its arrival. The revolution that Miranda and other
forerunners could not set in motion came as a re-
sult of decisions by European powers with very dif-
ferent ends in view.
THE CAUSES OF REVOLUTION
Among the causes of the revolutionary crisis that
matured from 1808 to 1810, the decline of Spain
under the inept Charles IV was certainly a major
one. The European wars unleashed by the French
Revolution glaringly revealed the failure of the
Bourbon reforms to correct the structural defects
in Spanish economic and social life. In 1793, Spain
joined a coalition of England and other states in
war against the French republic. The struggle went
badly for Spain, and in 1795 the royal favorite and
chief minister, Manuel de Godoy, signed the Peace
of Basel. The next year, Spain became France’s ally.
English sea power promptly drove Spanish ship-
ping from the Atlantic, virtually cutting off com-
munication between Spain and its colonies. Hard
necessity compelled Spain to permit neutral ships,
sailing from Spanish for foreign ports, to trade with
its overseas subjects. United States merchants and
shipowners were the principal benefi ciaries of this
departure from the old, restrictive system.
Godoy’s disastrous policy of war with Eng-
land had other results. An English naval offi cer,
Sir Home Popham, undertook on his own initia-
tive to attack Buenos Aires. His fl eet sailed from
the Cape of Good Hope for La Plata in April 1806
with a regiment of soldiers on board. In its wake
followed a great number of English merchant ships
eager to pour a mass of goods through a breach in
the Spanish colonial system. A swift victory fol-
lowed the landing of the British troops. The English
soldiers entered Buenos Aires, meeting only token
resistance. Hoping to obtain the support of the
population, the English commander issued a proc-
lamation that guaranteed the right of private prop-
erty, free trade, and freedom of religion. But creoles
and peninsulars joined to expel their unwanted
liberators. A volunteer army, secretly organized,
attacked and routed the occupation troops, captur-
ing the English general and twelve hundred of his
men. To an English offi cer who tempted him with
ideas of independence under a British protectorate,
the creole Manuel Belgrano replied, “Either our old
master or none at all.”
The British government, meanwhile, had sent
strong reinforcements to La Plata. This second in-
vasion force was met with a murderous hail of fi re
as it tried to advance through the narrow streets
of Buenos Aires and was beaten back with heavy
losses. Impressed by the tenacity of the defense,
the British commander gave up the struggle and
agreed to evacuate Buenos Aires and the previously
captured town of Montevideo. This defeat of a vet-
eran British army by a people’s militia spearheaded
by the legion of patricios (creoles) was a large step
down the road toward Argentine independence.
The creoles of Buenos Aires, having tasted power,
would not willingly relinquish it again.
In Europe, Spain’s distresses now reached a
climax. Napoleon, at the helm of France, gradu-
ally reduced Spain to a helpless satellite. In 1807,
angered by Portugal’s refusal to cooperate with his
Continental System by closing its ports to English
shipping, Napoleon obtained from Charles IV per-
mission to invade Portugal through Spain. French
troops swept across the peninsula; as they ap-
proached Lisbon, the Portuguese royal family and
court escaped to Brazil in a fl eet under British con-
voy. A hundred thousand French troops continued
to occupy Spanish towns. Popular resentment at
their presence, and at the pro-French policies of the
royal favorite Godoy, broke out in stormy riots that
compelled Charles IV to abdicate in favor of his son
Ferdinand. Napoleon now intervened and offered
his services as a mediator in the dispute between
father and son. Foolishly, the trusting pair ac-
cepted Napoleon’s invitation to confer with him in
the French city of Bayonne. There, Napoleon forced
both to abdicate in favor of his brother Joseph, his
candidate for the Spanish throne. Napoleon then
summoned a congress of Spanish grandees, who
meekly approved his dictate.