The fiscal policy of the Spanish government was in early years not unfavorable to Cuba. Apart from a royalty of from five to ten per cent on precious metalsmined, and on copper, and the royalty already described on the importation of negro slaves, and a customs duty of seven and a half per cent ad valorem on all imports, the island was free from taxation. The royalties in question were certainly not oppressive, and the fact that the Seville government imposed the same customs duty on all goods imported into Spain from Cuba made the tariff seem entirely just. Indeed, Cuba was favored above all other islands In the West Indies for many years. Thus after the middle of the sixteenth century one-third of what had been the import duty on goods received in Spain from the West Indies was required to be paid in the Indies as an export tax; but Cuba alone of all the islands was exempted from this arrangement. It was not, indeed, until the decline of Spain herself set in, with increasing expenses for maintaining an inefficient and often corrupt bureaucracy, and with sorely diminishing resources and revenues, that Cuba began to be detrimentally exploited for the sake of the Mother Country.
Wehave said that the administration of Angulo marked the nadir of early Cuban history. It also marked the turning point, and the entrance of the island into international affairs. Not yet had the great duel between Spain and England begun; which in the next century was to have so momentous results. France was the enemy. Francis I became King of that country in 1515, when Velasquez was beginning the settlement of Cuba, and Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) became King of Spain in the following year; and in 1521, while Velasquez was still governor of Cuba, those two monarchs began the first of their series of six wars. Adopting the policy which was afterward pursued by England against Spain and against France, and by France against England, France struck at Spain in her American colonies. During the first, second and third wars, French attention was chiefly given to conquests in North America, with occasional raids against Spanish commerce in the Caribbean and along the coast of Mexico. Cuba appears to have remained unscathed.
With the outbreak of the fourth war in 1536, however, trouble for Cuba began. French privateers, little better than pirates in their practices, sometimes, swarmed the Caribbean and the Gulf, preying upon Spanish commerce and raiding Spanish seacoast towns. The first such blow was struck at Cuba in 1537. A fleet of five Spanish ships, richly laden, was about to set forth from Havana for Spain, by way of the Bahama Channel. Just as they spread their sails and weighed their anchors, a venturesome French privateer entered the harbor's mouth. The intruder hesitated at sight of so many vessels, whereupon three of the Spaniards, being well armed as well as laden,as most ships had to be in those troublous days, gave chase. The Frenchman retired, fighting stubbornly, as far as the harbor of Mariel, where he turned at bay and for three days kept up the unequal conflict. Then, just as he seemed preparing to give up the fight and flee, an unfavorable wind struck the Spanish ships, placing them at such disadvantage that their captains ordered them to be abandoned and burned. This was done, but the French boarded one before the flames had made headway, extinguished the fire, and sailed away with the prize. The daring Frenchman then returned to Havana, entered the harbor with the two ships, and proclaimed to the alcaldes and citizens that he would do the place no harm if none was done to him, but that if any attack was made upon his ships, he would sack the town. After a while he went out and sailed away to the west.
At that same time all commerce out of and into Santiago was practically blocked by the presence of French privateers hovering off that port. In April, 1538, an attack was made upon Santiago, and the place was defended in a most extraordinary fashion. A Spanish vessel tried to leave port, met a French vessel returning from a raid on Hispaniola, and tried to scuttle back, but was overtaken and captured at the entrance to the harbor. Next day, having despoiled the prize, the Frenchman sailed into the deep harbor, which never before had been thus invaded, and menaced the town. The town had no defences whatever, and the citizens were unarmed. Guzman, then just at the end of his administration, was furious at his helplessness. He railed against the citizens because they would not rush down to the wharf and repel the invader with clubs and stones. But railing was in vain, and so there was nothing to do but to take to flight inland, which most of the officials and citizens did, carrying all portable treasure with them.
The Frenchman then threatened to burn the town, which Guzman wished he would do, in order to bring the King's government to its senses and arouse it to the necessity of defending Cuba. But there chanced to be in the port a certain merchant of Seville, by name Diego Perez, who was at least as daring as the Frenchman himself. He had a little merchant sloop, not more than half the size of the Frenchman, but well armed, with guns that would carry at least as far as the Frenchman's. He ran his little craft into water too shallow for the bigger Frenchman, where he would be secure against ramming or boarding, and there began peppering the enemy with his long range guns, Perez himself aiming the best of them. The fight lasted all day, and Perez was ready to resume it next morning. But in the darkness of the night the Frenchman stole away and was seen no more in Santiago harbor. Perez had three men killed, and his vessel was badly damaged; but the Frenchman probably suffered heavier losses, since two of his men who were killed fell overboard and were picked up and buried by the Spaniards, and there were almost certainly others killed. For his valor on thus saving the capital of Cuba from destruction, Perez received from the King a coat of arms with a device emblematic of his achievement.
That same Frenchman a little later, having repaired his vessel, wreaked his revenge upon Havana. When he entered the harbor there the people fled and left the town for him to loot at his leisure. It is recorded that he took even the church bells. Moreover, being a truculent Huguenot, he took an image of Saint Peter from the church and let his men use it as a target to pelt with oranges! This incident caused De Soto, who arrived at Havana a little later, to hasten work on the defences of the place. For some time there had been talk of building a fort, but no agreement had been reached as to where it should be; whether at the Cabana, or the Morro, or on the hill in what is now Central Park. But the Frenchman's raid brought the controversy to an end, and De Soto was authorized to build wherever he thought best. The result was the building of La Fuerza. It was hastily built, and therefore badly, so that ten years later partof it had to be torn down and the whole remodelled into its present form.
By this time it was considered certain that Havana would one day become the capital and chief city of Cuba, wherefore it was decided to fortify it rather than Santiago or any other port. Beside, it was the most convenient port of call for treasure ships and others plying between Mexico and Spain. A battery of cannon was therefore placed upon the Morro headland, long before the building of the castle, and La Fuerza was strongly armed. It became the custom for treasure ships to put into Havana harbor, and if pursued to unload their treasure there, for safe keeping on shore until the danger was past. But no further attack was made upon Havana or any other Cuban port, and in 1544 the war was ended.
The prospect of Havana's becoming the capital seemed temporarily to be realized in 1550, when Angulo established his permanent residence there—the first governor so to do, though some of his predecessors had spent some time there, and De Avila had actually established a residence there. Angulo began building a large stone church at Havana, in place of the wooden thatched hut which had served the purpose before him; he built an addition to the hospital, two store houses and a slaughter house, and rebuilt the jail. He also regulated the prices of food, so as to put a stop to the artificial raising of prices whenever ships came in for supplies. Yet when, in obedience to the orders of the crown, in November, 1552, he issued an emancipation proclamation in favor of the Indians, a storm of abuse broke upon him, in Havana as well as elsewhere. Santiago, piqued because he had spent so much time away from that place, took the initiative in demanding a judicial investigation of his conduct, charging him with venality and peculations. But the city council of Havana quickly followed suit, made more than fifty specific charges against him, and provided a ship to fetch a judge from Hispaniola to try him.
MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA
A grim guardian, seated on the headland at one side of the entrance to Havana's peerless harbor; founded to protect the city from the sixteenth-century corsairs; captured in the seventeenth century by the British and the American Colonists after the most stubborn resistance; and in later years the prison in which many Cuban patriots were immured.
MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA
Curiously enough, while Santiago was hostile to him because he would not live there, Havana was hostile because he would live there. It was specifically complained that he persisted in living at Havana against the will of the people of that place. They did not want him there, they said, because they were convinced that he was there for his own profit. So they besought the court to compel him to return to Santiago. Other complaints were that he had imposed various new-fangled devices upon the city, that he was a gambler, that he engaged in trade for his own profit, that he permitted his wife to decide suits at law, and that he had instructed one of his officers to strike with a club anyone who did not rise to his feet when the governor entered the church.
Angulo denied all the charges, and declared that they had been trumped up against him because he had obeyed the King in emancipating the Indians. He went to Hispaniola in person to argue his cause before the Supreme Court, the chief counsel against him being Alfonso de Rojas. The court decided in his favor so far as to suspend all action and let him return to Havana, until the King could pass upon the case. No judge would be appointed to investigate him, the court added, unless one were sent from Spain. So the governor returned to Cuba in triumph. Landing at Santiago, he proclaimed the freedom of all Indians there. Thence he proceeded to Baracoa, to Bayamo, to Trinidad, and to Puerto Principe, repeating the emancipation proclamation at each place. At the midsummer of 1553 he reached Havana, to find that the town council had "deposed" him, on the ground that he had been absent from his jurisdiction without leave for more than ninety days; a decree which he ignored. Meanwhile the crown had appointed a judge to investigate him, but the judge did not come and the inquest was not held. Soon after his arrival at Havana, finding that he would not give up the governorship at its word, the town council begged the Hispaniola court tohave him investigated, and the court commissioned a judge for that purpose, who declined or at least failed to act. This was in August, 1554.
Now trouble was renewed with France, the sixth war between Henry II, who had succeeded Francis, and Charles beginning in 1552 and continuing until 1559, Charles meanwhile abdicating in favor of Philip II in 1556. The French navy was more potent than ever, and French privateers swarmed the Spanish Main. Every Cuban port was warned to be on its guard against attack, Havana most of all, since it was now the richest and was in the most exposed situation. It was not until the fall of 1553 that the official news of the renewal of hostilities reached Cuba, and great was the consternation which it caused.
Juan de Lobera was at that time the commander of the fortifications of Havana, to wit, La Fuerza. He appears to have been a man of strangely mingled temperament, at times fearful and timorous, at others resolute and valiant. At the beginning the former characteristics prevailed. He realized, only too truly, that the fortifications and petty garrison would be entirely insufficient for the protection of the place against any considerable force, such as even a single French ship might bring against it, and he fell into something like a panic. Happily, however, he did not desert his post, but made passionate demands upon the governor and the town council for additional guards. Happily, too, in the presence of menace the animosities of faction were stilled, and the council cooperated heartily with the governor whom it had just been trying to depose and whom only a little later it denounced to the court as worthy of investigation and indictment.
New guards were supplied. Day and night the beach was patrolled. Watchmen were stationed on the Morro headland to espy approaching vessels and to signal the tidings to the fort and city. At the mouth of the Almendares River, where it was supposed that invaders were likely to land, horsemen were stationed, to hasten back tothe city with news of any such landing or of the appearance of a hostile vessel. Twelve men, expert in arms, were held in readiness day and night to man the fort the moment a strange vessel was reported; La Fuerza being otherwise without a garrison—which amply justified the commander's lack of faith in its defensive efficiency. In case of an attack, all able-bodied citizens were to present themselves in a massed levy under command of the governor. Every man was to be armed, at least with a sword, day and night, and none was to absent himself from the city without the permission of the governor. Every vessel of any kind that approached the harbor was signalled to stop outside until it could be visited and its identity be established; though if any refused thus to halt there was no adequate power to compel it to do so. However, refusal to stop would of course be regarded as proof of hostile character.
With all these preparations the defensive ability of Havana was pitifully if not ludicrously slight. Three small cannon manned by twelve volunteers constituted the armament of a fort which might be attacked by a ship of twenty guns and two hundred men. The "army" of the place comprised sixteen horsemen and less than seventy footmen, scarcely any two of them armed alike. The chief commander under the governor was Juan de Rojas, who was the governor's bitterest political enemy, though he had once been his close friend and deputy. He was a brother of the former governor, Manuel de Rojas. In these circumstances the commander of the fort awaited with unspeakable trepidation the anticipated approach of the enemy.
His fears were presently realized in the coming of perhaps the most formidable of all the Frenchmen then scouring the seas; the famous Jacques Sores. This daring captain was not only a Frenchman and therefore hostile to Spaniards on racial and political grounds, but he was also a Huguenot, like many other French seamen of that day, and therefore hostile to them on religiousgrounds. He was supposed to be under the patronage of the great Condé, and also at one time to have received material aid from Queen Elizabeth of England. Indeed, he was at this time regarded as the foremost champion of the Protestant cause at sea. Although a privateer, he commanded not a single vessel but a squadron of three, which he handled with the skill of a master mariner.
Sores did not, however, deem it needful to bring his whole array against Havana. A single vessel, a brigantine, would be sufficient. So it came to pass that in the early morning of July 10, 1554, a signal came from the watchers on the Morro headland, that a strange sail, probably French, was approaching. A shot was fired from La Fuerza, to summon the men of Havana to arms. Lobera led his garrison of twelve men to their places within the fort. Angulo took command outside. For an hour or two there was uncertainty as to the identity of the vessel, and horsemen were dispatched to the beach to watch its movements. They presently hastened back with the news that the brigantine had cast anchor off what is now San Lazaro and had sent ashore two boatloads of armed men, who were now approaching the city through the jungle. This indicated treachery, for the jungle was impenetrable save by a certain secret path which no strangers could know, and indeed it was presently disclosed that the invaders were guided by two men who had formerly lived in Havana, one of whom had been a harbor pilot.
The governor unhesitatingly considered discretion to be the better part of valor, and betook himself to instant flight, conveying his family and such of his property as he could carry to the native village of Guanabacoa, at the other side of the bay, where he was joined during the day by a majority of the residents of Havana. Lobera, on the other hand, now that he was face to face with a great crisis, forgot his fears and acquitted himself as a man of valor. With his little garrison, half of whom were negro slaves, and with a score of refugees, old men,women and children, he shut himself within the fort, with its walls of stone and gates of timber, and prepared to fight to the death. He had found three more cannon and had taken them into the fort, thus totalling six, with a good supply of ammunition and provisions. He dispatched a message to Angulo, reproaching him for his cowardly flight and imploring him to send all able bodied men to the aid of the garrison, for the honor of Spain. This the governor promised to do at or before nightfall; a promise which was not kept.
The invaders were commanded by Captain Sores in person. They took possession of the town without resistance, and then summoned the fort to surrender; expecting to find in it much treasure from Spanish vessels which had recently been wrecked on the Florida coast, though in fact no such treasure was there. Lobera unhesitatingly refused to surrender, and the fight began. The first assault upon the fort, from the landward side, was repulsed. Then the brigantine was seen to be approaching at the other side, accompanied by another and larger vessel of Sores's squadron, which had just arrived; wherefore Lobera had to transfer two of his cannon to that side of the fort to prevent a landing of more troops. A second assault was repulsed, during which a Spanish gunner shot down the French flag from the staff on which Sores had raised it at the stone house of Juan de Rojas, which the French had occupied as headquarters. A third assault, near nightfall, was also repulsed, but the two wooden gates of La Fuerza were burned with nearly all the contents of the tower. The little garrison and the refugees spent the night on an open terrace, with only a little powder and shot and not a day's food left. Hoping for help from the governor and citizens, Lobera fired his largest gun at intervals during the night, beat the drums and sounded bugle calls; but all in vain. "The darkness gave no token."
The French demanded his surrender, promising good treatment, but threatening a ruthless assault which wouldmean death if he persisted in trying to hold his indefensible position. Lobera refused, until the break of day. Then he saw that no help was approaching from Angulo, that an overwhelming force of French soldiers surrounded him on all sides, and that successful defence was impossible. His ammunition was all but gone. The cords of the crossbows with which his men were armed were frayed and broken. Some of his men were slain, while some of the survivors, especially one German gunner, mutinously held converse with the enemy. The refugees fell on their knees before him bidding him die fighting if he would, but to let their lives be spared. In this desperate plight Lobera yielded, offering to surrender on honorable terms, if the lives of his men were spared and the women were protected from dishonor. To this Sores gave his word, and the fort capitulated. The flag of France was raised over La Fuerza, and twenty-odd Spanish subjects were prisoners.
The women and children were quickly released, but all the men were locked up in the house of Juan de Rojas, which was the strongest stone building in the city. About a score more were added to their number, of Spaniards and Portuguese whom Sores had captured elsewhere.
A few hours after the surrender, word was received from Angulo. He had at last organized a force of about fifty men, chiefly Indians, and had started to the relief of the fort when he heard of its capitulation. At this he realized that all was lost, and retired to Guanabacoa, there to seek negotiations with the French for the ransom of Havana. A truce was declared, and the prisoners were released from Rojas's house on parole, pledged not to fight, or to leave town, and to return to their prison at nightfall. Angulo offered a ransom of three thousand ducats, declaring that no more could be raised. The Frenchmen scorned the offer, and demanded thirty thousand pesos—eighty thousand had been collected at Santiago the year before—and a hundred loads of bread. Angulo protested his inability to raise such an amount, but begged for time in which to see what he could do.
A week passed, the French occupying Havana at their ease and Angulo scouring the surrounding country, ostensibly for ransom money but in fact for men and arms. By the end of the week he had surreptitiously collected a force of 335 men, of whom about thirty-five were Spaniards and the rest negroes and Indians. They were armed chiefly with clubs and stones. Himself and eight others were mounted on horseback. With this motley force he hoped to surprise the French by night, and to capture Rojas's house, where he would take Sores himself prisoner and release the Spanish captives.
The desperate plan would probably have succeeded had not some of the Indians indiscreetly uttered their war cry as they rushed upon the house, arousing the Frenchmen and giving them time to close and bar the massive doors. The few Frenchmen who were sleeping outside of the house were quickly overcome and slain, and Angulo laid siege to the house itself, summoning Sores to surrender. The French commander was furious at what he not unreasonably regarded as a breach of the truce. Moreover, his brother was among those who had been killed outside the house. In a fury he ordered that all the Spanish prisoners in the house be put to death. This was quickly done, with the exception of Lobera, who was confined in an upper room. Sores reserved the killing of him for himself, and entered the room where Lobera was for that purpose. Lobera defended himself, meanwhile protesting that he had had no part in the treachery; and his evidently honest pleas moved a French officer to intervene in his behalf and to disarm Sores. Then, at the direction of Sores, Lobera showed himself at a window and addressed Angulo, reproaching him for the breach of truce, and imploring him to withdraw. Angulo refused, declaring that he had already recaptured the town, and that at daylight he would complete the work by capturing the Rojas house and its inmates.
With the coming of daylight, however, the folly of this course became apparent. Angulo had, indeed, a larger force than the Frenchmen still remaining in Havana; though as the latter were far the better armed a conflict between them would probably have been disastrous to the Spaniards. But the two ships in the harbor were now aroused and began firing upon the Spaniards with their artillery, while reenforcements of men for Sores put off for shore in boats. Sores and his companions made a fierce sally from the house. The few Spaniards made a stand, but the negroes and most of the Indians would not oppose clubs and stones to swords and arquebuses. They fled incontinently to the jungle, followed by Angulo himself.
His victory thus completed, Sores returned to the house where he had left Lobera locked in a room with the dead and dying. He absolved the commander from all responsibility for Angulo's treacherous conduct, and complimented him upon the valor with which he had defended La Fuerza as well as upon his good faith. He would not, however, release him without a ransom, according to the custom of the times. In default of the ransom, he would take him to France as a prisoner, though treated with all consideration. Lobera was without means, but his friends with whom he was permitted to communicate soon raised the required sum of two thousand two hundred pesos, and he was set at liberty. He thereafter went to Spain, carrying with him the news of what had happened to Havana.
The negotiations for the ransom of the town were less successful. Angulo had fled far inland, and could not be reached, and the Spaniards who remained could not offer more than a thousand pesos, a sum which Sores scorned. In default of ransom, therefore, the place was looted and burned. Three buildings alone remained standing: La Fuerza, the church, and the hospital. Indeed, the interior of the church was almost entirely destroyed. Sores and his men were fierce Huguenots, and they tore downthe images of saints and took the robes and altar vestments to make cloaks for themselves. All the boats found in the harbor were burned. The neighboring estates for miles around were destroyed, and some of the negroes who offered resistance were hanged. The harbor was carefully surveyed and sounded, to facilitate future entries. Finally, his work being thus thoroughly done, Sores sailed away at midnight of August 5, less than a month after his arrival.
At the end of September a little French vessel, containing only a dozen men, entered the harbor, inspected the ruins of the city, and seized a Spanish caravel which lay there, taking it away with them to the harbor of Mariel, where there were several French ships. Ten days later the entire French force entered the harbor of Havana and landed many men. They did not, however, molest the Spanish residents nor destroy the new buildings which they were beginning to erect, but seemed to regard them with good humored tolerance, as too insignificant to merit attention. Indeed, there were only a few dozen of the Spanish, all told, and they were helpless and disheartened. The Frenchmen contented themselves with going to several of the outlying farms and taking all the hides they could find to add to the cargo which they were already carrying. They remained there, on amicable terms with the Spanish, for more than a fortnight, and then sailed away.
These things occurred at the time when Philip of Spain was marrying Queen Mary of England and was taking possession of the Netherlands, and when Spain vaunted herself as the foremost military power of the world. It must not be wondered at that the people of Cuba, and particularly of Havana, regarded themselves as grievously neglected by those who should have been their protectors, and bitterly reproached not alone the governor but even the King himself for not having afforded them more ample protection. The explanation was, doubtless, that Spain regarded Mexico, South America, and of course her European possessions, as of far greater importance than the island whose gold mines were about exhausted, which had failed to provide iron for Spanish artillery, and which had served chiefly as a stepping stone to more valuable lands. It was a strange irony of fate that the island which was thus slighted was destined to be the most faithful and the longest held of all the colonial possessions of Spain.
Thedisastrous events which have been related in the preceding chapter suggested to the Spaniards in Cuba and also to the government at Seville the desirability, if not the necessity, of establishing a more militant administration of affairs if the island was not to be the prey of all comers and perhaps ultimately be lost to the Spanish crown. Thitherto, with the exception of Velasquez and the possible exception of De Soto, every governor of the island had been a civilian and a lawyer. It seemed an experiment worth making, then, to appoint a military man to the office, in the hope that he would be better fitted to provide for the protection of the island against the privateers and corsairs who roved the seas in increasing numbers and with increasing boldness. True, immediately after the abdication of Charles I and the accession of Philip II, in 1556, a truce was concluded between France and Spain, which was to last five years. But few expected that it would last so long, as indeed it did not, being broken in two years; and even while it did last privateering was by no means abolished. In any case, be it peace or be it war, Spain had tried to hold her western empire by virtue of Divine Right and ecclesiastical decrees, and had failed. Now she would try holding what was left of it with military and naval force; and to that end would have a soldier for governor of Cuba.
The man chosen was indeed an expert and competent soldier, by no means devoid of statesmanship. Diego de Mazariegos had been one of the most efficient lieutenants of Cortez in Mexico, and distinguished himself as a brave and skilful fighter against the Indians. He had also given much attention to international relations, and to the privateering which had become such a scourge of theseas. Indeed, it was through some of his writings on this latter subject that the court of Seville was led to consider him as a candidate for the Cuban governorship. Dr. Angulo had been appointed in 1550, and five years was long enough, it was thought, for a man to serve, unless he served better than Angulo had done in the latter part of his term. So Mazariegos was selected to succeed him, in March, 1555. Juan Martinez, a lawyer, was selected to go with him as lieutenant governor. These were the last appointments made in Cuba by King Charles before his retirement from the throne.
Some time was required for preparations for the voyage and for residence in a new land, so that Mazariegos and Martinez did not sail from Spain until late in the summer. On the way they suffered shipwreck and Martinez and all his family were drowned. Mazariegos escaped, but lost everything he had with him save the clothes which he was wearing. This disaster made it necessary still further to postpone his assumption of the governorship, so that he did not reach Cuba until March 7, 1556. It is noteworthy that instead of landing at Santiago, as every other governor had done, he went straight to Havana, where Angulo awaited him, and the very next day, March 8, he was installed as governor. In accordance with custom he conducted an investigation of Angulo's accounts and general administration, which was permitted to pass as a merely formal and perfunctory performance. The passionate demands for Angulo's indictment and punishment were by this time forgotten.
Havana had been partially rebuilt since the raid of Captain Sores, and had been completely transformed in character. It had a very much larger population than before, and that population was restless and turbulent to a degree. It contained adventurers from every country and of every type; fortune hunters, fugitive criminals, gamblers, bankrupts, the shady output of Mexico, Darien and Peru, who sought in Cuba a No Man's Land in which they would not be troubled with law and order. In thisexpectation they reckoned without their host. Or perhaps they counted upon the rough and ready soldier as likely to countenance a large degree of laxity. If so, they were mistaken. Mazariegos had indeed the personal morals of a soldier of fortune. Soon after the death of Angulo he took the latter's widow for his mistress and lived with her openly, to the great scandal of the church, until after the death of the lady's mother, when he married her, as he said he had all along intended to do; the delay being due to his unwillingness to have a mother-in-law. But this was regarded by the governor as a trifling peccadillo. Upon graver offenses, murder, robbery, brawling and what not, he frowned with the wrath of a Precisian.
Nor was he any respecter of persons. When Francisco de Angulo, the son of the lady whom he had taken as his mistress and was soon to make his wife, scandalized law and order with his drunkenness and brawling, he exiled him to Mexico. For like offenses he also banished Gomez de Rojas, the youngest brother of Juan de Rojas, one of the foremost citizens of Havana; expressing as he did so a fervent wish that the young man might quickly meet with an evil death. As for his own nephew, Francisco de Mazariegos, when he became notorious for gambling, lechery and fighting, he inflicted upon him with his own hands a physical chastisement which was a more than nine days' example to all the other youth of the town.
Santiago still being the nominal capital of the island, the new governor thought it incumbent upon him at least to visit it. In fact, he spent nearly the whole year 1557 there, endeavoring to provide it with means of defence against French privateers. He stationed a captain of the army there, with four small cannon, some muskets and pikes, and a supply of gunpowder, urging the citizens to learn to fight so as to defend themselves. Then, in January, 1558, he hastened back to Havana to defend it against raiders who were said to be on their way thither. Five months later a French privateer visited Santiago, took the place without so much as a blow from the captain, considered it too small and poor to be worth looting or burning, and sailed away again after collecting only 400 pesos ransom; probably the smallest ransom on record for a capital city!
On his return to Havana, Mazariegos showed the value of a military governor for the protection of a city. For six weeks that summer a French squadron of four vessels lay off Havana, without venturing to attack the place, knowing that Mazariegos had mobilized and trained for fighting every able-bodied man in the place, and even some robust and athletic negro women. But the governor was not satisfied with defence alone. He contrived to get word to some Spanish captains at Nombre de Dios, who were going to convoy treasure ships to Spain, with the result that they presently came up unannounced and captured the whole French squadron. Again and again thereafter Havana was menaced, even attacked, but invariably Mazariegos repulsed the enemy, generally with heavy loss to the latter.
He felt, however, the need of better equipment, particularly of more cannon, and asked the crown to provide it. The crown declined or at any rate failed to do so, whereupon he set about doing it himself, and succeeded in getting, sometimes by rather strenuous means, a number of cannon and a good supply of powder. But a better fort than the ruins of La Fuerza was also needed, and to that enterprise he turned his attention with zeal. At the beginning of his administration Geronimo Bustamente de Herrera was commissioned by the crown to build a new fort, but after making plans and engaging workmen he fell ill and had to abandon the job. At the beginning of 1558, just as Mazariegos returned thither from Santiago, Herrera was replaced by Bartolome Sanchez, a competent engineer; who prepared new plans for the rebuilding of La Fuerza as it stands to this day. The Viceroy of Mexico, who was much interested in the safety of Mexican treasure ships which might put in at Havana, contributed 12,000 pesos in gold for the beginning of thework. There was much trouble in getting laborers for the work, in Spain. Sanchez wanted at least a hundred negro slaves. The government thought the number excessive, and gave him authorization for only thirty; whereupon he declared that the enterprise might as well be given up. In fact he secured in Spain only fifteen workmen, and with them he sailed for Cuba, hoping to secure the rest there, or elsewhere in the West Indies.
The work began early in December, 1558. A stone quarry was opened near Guanabacoa, and a kiln for making lime was built. But labor was still lacking. Sanchez wanted two hundred, negro slaves or others, and appealed to the people of the town to help him get them. In response they procured for him thirty slaves—their own, whom they were willing to turn over to him "for a consideration." Then the governor took a hand in the game. There were forty slaves at Santiago, who had been brought thither without the proper shipping papers, and were being held for that reason. Mazariegos sent to Santiago, confiscated them all, and brought them up to Havana, to work on the new fort. Some French prisoners who had been taken in a fight off Matanzas were also set at work on it. All tramps and vagabonds who were arrested were sent to La Fuerza or to the quarry, and for a time, until the crown stopped it, one third of the Indian village of Guanabacoa were kept at work on the fort.
Although Sanchez was in charge of the work and was responsible for it, Mazariegos spent much of his time there, watching it, directing it, and chastising with tongue and sometimes even with rod all who seemed laggards at the job. In time he succeeded Sanchez in authority. For Sanchez incurred much enmity on the part of some influential citizens, whose houses he took in order to make an open place about the fort. They accused him of corruption, of making gross errors in the plans for the fort, of fomenting discord, and of wasting money. He was too busy with building the fort to pay much attention to these things, even when they took the form of letters to theKing. The outcome of it was that in the summer of 1560 Sanchez was removed from his place, and Mazariegos was put in charge of the completion of La Fuerza. A few months later Sanchez reached Seville, and pleaded his case to so good effect that the crown was convinced that injustice had been done him, and that he should not have been discharged. However, it was not practicable to reinstate him, though he was sent back a few years later to make an official inspection of the completed fort.
In addition to La Fuerza, Mazariegos built the first forerunner of the Morro Castle. In 1563 he built on the Morro headland a tower of masonry more than thirty feet high. It was intended primarily as a landmark, and was therefore painted white in order to make it visible at the greatest possible distance. But a watchman was generally kept in it, to espy approaching vessels and to signal to the city news of their approach. The tower is said to have cost only 200 pesos, and was paid for by the city of Havana.
Mazariegos presently became involved in affairs outside of Cuba. Many men deserted at Havana from the vessels of Angelo de Villafane, governor of Florida. Villafane complained and wanted Mazariegos to capture and return them. Mazariegos replied that he could not do it; to which we may doubtless add that he would not have done so if he could. He was desirous of increasing the population of Cuba, even in that way. When Villafane attempted to plant a Spanish colony at what is now Port Royal, South Carolina, and failed, Mazariegos had some correspondence with the King, and probably acquiesced in the royal opinion, that it would be impracticable to establish a colony at that point. In 1563, however, the King learned that the French had been quite successful in planting a colony on that very spot where the Spaniards under Villafane had failed, and he informed Mazariegos of the fact. The governor, acting upon his own initiative, but shrewdly guessing what would be acceptable to the King, sent Hernando de Rojas thither with afrigate and twenty-five soldiers, to see how much of a settlement the French had made, and to destroy it if he was able to do so with that force. In the summer of 1564 Rojas returned, reporting that the settlement had been abandoned by the French. He brought back with him one young Frenchman as a prisoner, and also a memorial stone which the French had set up to commemorate the founding of the place, bearing the date, 1561. Mazariegos commended Rojas for his work, sent the memorial stone to Seville, and then began planning to go in person or to send an expedition to search the Carolina and other coasts in quest of new French colonies. His theory was that the more French settlements there were, the more French vessels there would be, and therefore the more subject Cuba would be to alien annoyance.
This, however, was not to be. The end of Mazariegos's administration was already drawing near. He fell into some violent disputes with the citizens of Havana, over the appointment of alcaldes, a duty which they charged him with neglecting. He was also charged with packing the town council with his own creatures, with tampering with the mails so as to prevent people from writing to Spain any complaints of his maladministration, and of other misdemeanors. Bartolome Sanchez, who had returned from Spain and who had a bitter personal grudge against the governor for supplanting him as builder of the fort, petitioned the King to have a judge sent from Hispaniola to investigate him, but the King refused. Mazariegos, learning this, and feeling unwarrantably secure in royal favor, adopted a more arrogant attitude toward his opponents and critics, which did him no good.
In the spring of 1565, Garcia Osorio de Sandoval was appointed to succeed him as governor. Mazariegos thereupon wrote to the King, asking that there be no unnecessary law suits brought against him, as he was old, and ill, and poor. (He was not yet fifty years of age!) The King granted his request, and in consequence instructed Osorio to make his investigation as little annoying as possible. Osorio obeyed, and although the report of the inquest filled three big volumes, Mazariegos was not brought to trial on any charges and had no fines assessed against him. He remained living at Havana for some time, and then completed his career in the King's service as governor of Caracas, Venezuela. His administration had been a stormy one, but on the whole advantageous to Cuba, and had confirmed the Seville government in its policy of appointing others than mere lawyers to the insular governorship.
Garcia Osorio de Sandoval became governor of Cuba on September 12, 1565. As he was not a lawyer, the precedent which had been set in Mazariegos's case was followed in his, of appointing a lieutenant governor who was a lawyer to serve with him. His lieutenant was Luis Cabrera, who did not reach Cuba until later in the year, having suffered shipwreck and been obliged to put back to Spain and await the sailing of another vessel.
Osorio appears to have been a soldier, though probably retired from active service at the time of his appointment to the governorship. At any rate he made it his first care to improve the defences of the island. It is related that he bore with him from Spain to Havana a cargo of arms and munitions, including four brass cannon. These he placed upon the fortification, thus making a battery of eight pieces, and built a substantial platform of timber for them to stand upon. La Fuerza was not yet completed, but he took measures to expedite the work and hoped to have it finished in a year. In order to protect the place from possible raids by land, he closed and blocked all roads and trails leading into it from the west excepting the one along the beach. He organized a force of seventy men armed with arquebuses, to be quickly summoned in an emergency, and required them and all citizens to assemble for service whenever a strange sail was sighted. In addition, as a permanent contribution to defence, a spacious arsenal was built near the waterfront, to contain the stores of ammunition and to shelter the guards and citizens.
There was thus much promise that Osorio would prove to be an energetic and useful governor. Unfortunately, at the very beginning of his administration he came into conflict with another and much stronger functionary of the Spanish crown; indeed, one of the most formidable figures of the time. This was none other than Pedro Menendez de Aviles, whose record fills so large a place in the early annals of Florida and the West Indies. He took to the sea in boyhood, and became one of the most expert navigators of Spain. At the age of thirty he was captain of his own ship, and it was one of the most active and efficient vessels among all that guarded and convoyed the treasure ships and fleets of the Spanish Main. At that time he warned the government of Hispaniola and also that of Mexico of the grave danger of letting the French get any foothold upon those shores, or even of navigating those waters. The Bahama Channel, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea should all, he insisted, be declared and kept closed seas, into which no vessels but those of Spain should enter save by special license.
PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES.PEDRO MENENDEZ DE AVILES.
Menendez was, moreover, an ardent and indeed fanatical Catholic, who deemed it a duty to extirpate "Lutheran dogs," as he termed the French Huguenots and other Protestants; and as most of the French seamen and foreign adventurers at that time were of the Huguenot faith, he cherished a special animosity against them.
Now, his recommendations to the governments of Hispaniola and Mexico were transmitted to Seville and were laid before the King. Charles was at that time weary of royal cares and was about to resign them, and he paidlittle or no attention to the letters of the young captain. But when Philip II came to the throne, attention was given to them. That painstaking monarch read them and was much struck by them, both in their warning of military danger from the French and in their zealous animosity against heretics. Their writer was evidently, he thought, a man after his own heart. So he sent for Menendez, talked with him, and commissioned him to be the guardian of the highway to the Indies, with the title of captain-general. It was his function to guard Spanish treasure ships all the way across the Atlantic, from Mexico to Spain, as he had formerly guarded them in the narrow seas about the Indies. It was thus that he was serving during a part of Mazariegos's administration in Cuba, and in that capacity he spent much time at Havana. On one or two occasions he took charge of the few little vessels which formed Mazariegos's navy, and did good service with them. At this time, also, he wrote to the King about the increasing ravages and peril of French privateers in those waters, very much as he had written to the local governments years before.
The result was that the King in March, 1565, appointed him to be Adelantado of Florida, and captain-general of the Spanish fleet in that part of the world specially commissioned to guard the coasts and ports of the Indies. That was six months before Osorio became governor of Cuba.
The commission of Menendez bade him to "guard the coasts and ports of the Indies." Very well. Cuba was certainly one of the Indies. Therefore he was commissioned to guard the ports and coasts of Cuba. Being familiar with Cuba, and recognizing its very great importance, he naturally deemed the guarding of that island as one of the very first of his duties. Mazariegos did not demur, since he was himself soon to retire from the governorship. But when Osorio came to Havana six months later, and found Menendez in command of all that pertained to harbor and coast defence, there was trouble.Osorio asserted his rights and authority as governor of Cuba. Menendez replied with an assertion of his as captain-general "to guard the coasts and ports."
The first clash came because Menendez interpreted his jurisdiction as extending to fortifications on land as well as to shipping; which we must regard as extreme if not overstrained. He assumed direction of the garrison of Havana, and had two hundred men sent thither from a large detachment which was sent to Florida. As La Fuerza was not yet finished sufficiently to accommodate them, houses were hired to receive them. Osorio was not notified in advance that they were coming, or that they had arrived; and after they were there they refused to regard his authority but took orders solely from Baltazar Barreda, a captain whom Menendez had assigned to their command. Presently Barreda took charge of La Fuerza and began moving thither the artillery, including the four pieces which Osorio had brought with him from Spain. Osorio remonstrated, saying that the fort was not yet sufficiently completed for use. Barreda defied his authority, and was sustained by Menendez, who happened to be in Havana at the time. The governor yielded, for the time. But as soon as Menendez was out of the city he clapped Barreda into jail, after a violent physical struggle, and appointed Pedro de Redroban to the command of the fort in his stead. News of this reached Menendez and he hastened back and released Barreda. As for Redroban, he and half a dozen of his men fled to the woods, in well-founded fear of Menendez.
Now, Redroban was one of Menendez's soldiers, just as much as Barreda, and was probably as loyal to him as Barreda. But he had deemed it incumbent upon himself to obey the commands of the governor of the island. Nevertheless, Menendez charged Osorio with having incited mutiny in the garrison, and he denounced Redroban as a deserter and traitor, who should be captured and put to death, and his head exhibited in the market-place with an inscription proclaiming him a traitor to the King anddisobedient to his commander. Redroban and some of his comrades were captured, tried, and condemned to death; but on appeal to the crown their sentences were commuted. Menendez then ordered Barreda to set the garrison at work digging a moat about the fort, and demanded picks and shovels from the governor for the purpose. These Osorio refused to supply, and Barreda thereupon secured them from the people of the town. Still another cause of friction was found in the coming to Cuba of many men, both civilians and runaway soldiers, from Florida. These Osorio received and sent to the interior of Cuba to engage in agriculture. Menendez complained that Osorio was inciting and assisting desertions from Florida; and Osorio bitterly replied that affairs were so bad in Florida under Menendez's rule that people had to flee from the place to save their lives from starvation and pestilence.
Whatever were the general merits of the controversy between the two men, it was certain from the beginning that Menendez would win. He had the higher official rank, and he enjoyed the special favor of the King. More and more he made Havana his headquarters, preferring it to any port on the Florida coast; to which it was, of course, naturally much superior. More and more, too, he assumed authority in Havana, not alone in military but even in civil affairs. More and more Osorio was ignored. And as Menendez had the stronger force of men, and was backed by the approval and favor of the King, it was in vain that Osorio resented the slights which were heaped upon him.
Matters reached their climax in the matter of further fortifications. Osorio wanted to build a sea wall in front of the city, such as the engineer Sanchez had planned years before, at the beginning of Mazariegos's administration. Menendez curtly dismissed that scheme, and commissioned his son-in-law, Pedro de Valdes, with some other officers from Florida, to survey the waterfront of the city and recommend additional fortifications. They reported that it would be folly to build a sea wall, and that all that was needed was a round tower, about thirty-seven feet high, on the headland opposite the Morro, on which latter an observation tower had already been erected. Valdes suggested that the tower might be built by the garrison of La Fuerza, at no cost, if the governor would provide the materials. This Osorio refused to do. He had no money for such a purpose, and no authority to spend any for it. Moreover, he condemned the plan of thus dividing the garrison, holding that it would be far better to finish La Fuerza and concentrate all the forces there. The outcome of it was, therefore, that the proposed Punta Castle had to be for the time abandoned; Menendez perforce contenting himself with some earth-works on Punta, in which he placed a couple of cannons.
At the same time other friction arose at Santiago, a place which could not yet be altogether neglected. Menendez's attention was called to that place by having one of his own ships chased into Santiago harbor by a French privateer. The captain of that ship reported to him that Santiago had a fine harbor but practically no defences. A fort had indeed been begun on the headland at one side of the harbor entrance, but had not been finished, and the sea wall for which the people had petitioned had not been started. Menendez thereupon sent thither a company of fifty men with four cannon, under command of Captain Godoy; without, of course, consulting Osorio as governor of the island.
This force remained there about three months, in the summer of 1567. It saw nothing of French privateers, or of any menace of an attack upon the town. But it did see a good deal of merchant ships of various nations, French, Scottish and Portuguese, which came thither with slaves and merchandise, but which seldom ventured in for fear of Godoy and his men. For such trade with foreigners, and particularly with those who were or were suspected to be heretics was strictly forbidden. Godoy and his men were therefore most unwelcome visitors, tothe merchants and people of Santiago, and to the lieutenant of the governor, Martin de Mendoza. It was suspected, not without reason, that Osorio had sent word to Mendoza to antagonize Godoy as much as possible. At any rate, one day a particularly big French merchant vessel came into the harbor; Godoy rallied his men to the battery near the wharf, to prevent it from landing its cargo; and Mendoza arrested Godoy and sent him to jail, where he kept him until the cargo had been discharged and another taken on in its place, amid the jubilations of the people. Then Godoy was released, with profound apologies for the error which had been committed in arresting him!
Godoy remained for some time thereafter at Santiago, though much against his will. His superior officer commanded him to remain. But he sent an appeal for relief to the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, with the result that Mendoza was removed from office, in the winter of 1557-58. This was a relief to both Mendoza and Godoy, though it did not make their feelings less bitter. On Palm Sunday the two met at church, Mendoza accompanied by his wife and Godoy by a friend named Cordoba. The latter two grossly insulted both Mendoza and his wife, then ran into the church for security from chastisement, forcibly resisted arrest, and committed acts of sacrilege. They were finally overpowered, and on being brought to trial before the local court were condemned, Godoy to be hanged and his body quartered, and Cordoba to be flogged and sent to the galleys. The sentence was executed, Godoy being hanged on a gallows at the door of the church the sanctity of which he had violated. When Menendez heard of this he was furious. He instituted proceedings against Mendoza and the local alcaldes at Santiago, charging them with conspiracy to destroy Godoy so that their illegal traffic with Frenchmen and other foreigners would not be molested. Mendoza thought it prudent to remove to Carthagena, in New Granada, for fear of personal violence; whence he proceededto Spain, where he was acquitted of all the charges which Menendez had made against him.
Meantime, the governorship of Osorio had ended. Early in 1567, at the time when the controversy arose over the sea wall and the Punta fortifications, he had realized that his usefulness as governor was ended, and had asked the King to accept his resignation; declaring that his presence there was no longer of value to his majesty. In August, 1567, the King appointed Diego de Santillan to be governor in his stead, and commissioned him to investigate Osorio's stewardship, and particularly to bring him to trial on certain charges of false arrest and cruelty to a prisoner. But just as Santillan was about to embark for Cuba, in October, 1567, his commission was revoked and Menendez was appointed governor of Cuba in his stead. It has been said that this appointment was made by the fanatical King to show his approval and appreciation of Menendez's act on September 20, 1565, when he massacred the French garrison of Fort Caroline, Florida, "not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans."
Menendez was not able, however, as Adelantado of Florida, to reside permanently in Cuba, or indeed to spend much time there; wherefore it was arranged that a lieutenant governor should be the actual administrator in his stead. The man chosen was Francisco Zayas, a lawyer, who had been selected by the King to be lieutenant governor with Santillan. He reached Havana in July, 1568, and at once assumed the office which Osorio was glad to relinquish. It cannot be said that he was greatly welcomed by the people of Havana or of any part of Cuba, since it was assumed that he would be a mere puppet acting for Menendez, and it was feared that Menendez would use Cuba as a mere stepping stone or adjunct to Florida, draining it of men and resources for the benefit of the larger province on the continent. This apprehension, happily, was not realized.
Osorio personally had cause for fear. Zayas was commissioned to conduct the investigation into his affairs,and there was every reason to suppose that Menendez would compel him to make the inquest as drastic as possible and to impose the heaviest possible penalties for any misdemeanors which might be proved against him. But Zayas was after all a just and reasonable man, who was not afraid to assert his independence of Menendez, particularly since, as he pointed out, his commission as lieutenant governor antedated that of Menendez as governor by two months. Moreover the people of Havana, through dislike of Menendez and fear of his policy, gave their strongest support to Osorio, testifying in his behalf, and at the end sending a great memorial to the King, signed by almost every man of consequence in Havana, petitioning for the utmost possible favor for the governor. The result was that the lightest of sentences was passed upon Osorio, two years after his actual retirement from office.
In dealing thus with Osorio, however, Zayas sealed his own fate. Nothing that he could do thereafter pleased Menendez, while he was called upon by the latter to do or to sanction things which offended his sense of right. By the beginning of May, 1569, relations between them reached the breaking point. Menendez caused the city council to protest that Zayas had never filed the bond which was required of a lieutenant governor, and to characterize this as a grave offence, indicating criminal intent. Zayas thereupon resigned his office. Suits were instituted against him and his wife in Spain, by Menendez, and he returned to the country to meet them. He appears to have been successful in his defence, since the King subsequently appointed him to be a judge in the Canary Islands.
Menendez appointed in place of Zayas as lieutenant governor Diego de Cabrera, who had filled that place under Osorio. His term of service was short, however, and no fewer than five others succeeded him, one after another, during the administration of Menendez. They were Diego de Ribera; Pedro Menendez Marquez, anephew of Menendez; Juan de Ynestrosa; Juan Alfonso de Nabia; and Sancho Pardo Osorio.
Diego de Ribera, who served for a brief space under Menendez as lieutenant-governor, was captain of the galleons, and was presently commissioned for an expedition to Florida. He was succeeded by Pedro Menendez Marquez, a nephew of Menendez. He was an accomplished navigator and on that account was directed by his uncle to sound and chart the Old Bahama Channel, a much-frequented route of commerce and approach to Cuba from the north and east. To this undertaking he devoted only a few weeks, but his observations were so exact, thorough and comprehensive that the Council for the Indies, on receiving his charts, immediately approved them and ordered them to be regarded as the authority for navigation of those waters.
The administration of Sancho Pardo Osorio was marked with much energy in advancing the defences of Havana and in caring for the commerce which frequented or touched at Cuban ports. The former work proceeded slowly, because of the necessity of depending almost exclusively upon the local community for aid. At this time also was effected the immensely important reform of codifying the municipal ordinances. This work was done under a commission of the Supreme Court by Dr. Alfonso Casares, of Havana, who on January 14, 1577, presented the results of his labors to a council consisting of Sancho Pardo, the Alcaldes Geronimo de Rojas Avellaneda, and Alfonso Velasquez de Cuellar, and the Regidores Diego Lopez Duran, Juan Bautista de Rojas, Baltasar de Barreda, Antonio Recio, and Rodrigo Carreño. The code was unanimously approved by them, and it remained in force and active practice until the War of Independence in 1898.
Menendezwas governor of Cuba for a little more than six years, from October 24, 1567, to December 13, 1573. Those were important years for the world at large. They saw the Duke of Alva, as governor of the Netherlands, establish there the Bloody Tribunal, and in return the "Beggars of the Sea" engage in their indomitable campaigns against the oppressor, extending even to the coasts of Cuba. Spain engaged in a great war with the Ottoman Turks. France had the second and third civil wars, culminating in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. Elizabeth of England fully committed herself to the Protestant cause and was excommunicated by the Pope. Mary of Scotland fled from her throne and was succeeded by young James VI.
Menendez, more a statesman of world-wide vision than any of his predecessors, was not unmindful of these transactions, or of the far greater events which they portended, and he strove after his fashion to prepare Cuba for her part in great affairs. He realized that in the wars of the European powers their American possessions were increasingly likely to become implicated. Despite his utmost efforts, various other nations sent vessels to West Indian waters, to harry the fleets of Spain. The numbers of such intruders were increasing. His utmost efforts had not been sufficient to drive the French away and to keep them away. Now others than the French began to appear. The "Sea Beggars" of the Netherlands were daring navigators and formidable fighters, and they began to prowl around the coasts of Cuba. English captains had found their way to the Spanish Main, and Hawkins made his way to Vera Cruz, and Drake plundered Nombre de Dios.
Finding himself unable to protect the Spanish treasure ships and to keep all enemies away from West Indian waters, Menendez sought at least to make Cuba secure against invasion, or its capital—for such Havana was about to become in name as well as in fact—secure against capture and looting by buccaneers. To this work he gave his chief attention, and, above all else, to the completion of La Fuerza. The rebuilding of that fortification dragged scandalously. Sometimes it was for lack of money, sometimes for lack of workmen. Menendez told the Council for the Indies that in its unfinished state it was an actual menace to the town, because a hostile force could easily land and capture it, and having done this, they could quickly complete it and make it almost impregnable against any attempt to drive them out. He did not explain why he could not complete it as quickly as an invading force could, but he asked for a force of three hundred negro slaves to work on it. With them, he said, it would be possible to finish the fort in two years. The Council was not favorably impressed. It could not understand how a few score buccaneers, landing and seizing the fort, could finish it in a few days, while it would take Menendez with three hundred slaves two years to do the work.
Diego de Ribera, as Acting Governor, also took up the matter. The fort was already sufficiently advanced to permit him to mount eight pieces of artillery, but he wanted twenty more. Also, he wanted a large permanent garrison of professional soldiers. It was unsatisfactory to have to depend upon a rallying of the citizens, because it interfered with the occupations of the citizens, because they were not expert in arms, and because when they were summoned not more than half their number responded, so that the commander never knew how many he could depend upon. There should, he urged, be a permanent garrison of two hundred men, under the command of the governor. Of course such a garrison could not be furnished by the town itself, because there were not in allHavana more than two hundred fighting men, all told. This gives, by the way, a hint concerning the rapid growth of the place at the time of Mazariegos. A town containing two hundred men capable of bearing arms must have had a total population approximating two thousand.
Ribera's arguments and appeals appear to have been more effective than those of Menendez. The Council for the Indies, and the King, too, ordered practical steps to be taken for finishing and equipping the building which had so long been neglected. As Cuba, or perhaps especially the port of Havana, was of no great importance to the Spanish colonies on the mainland, for the safeguarding of their shipping, and also as Cuba had been so drained of men and supplies in former years for the exploitation of colonies on the main land, it was but justice as it was a matter of practical convenience and expediency for the government to call upon Mexico and Castilla del Oro to contribute largely to the payment of the cost of fortifying Havana. That place was a little later called, by royal decree, "Llave del Nuevo Mundo y Antemural de las Indias Occidentales," or Key of the New World and Bulwark of the West Indies. Certainly it was fitting that the New World should pay for its key and that the Indies should pay for their bulwark.
So Mexico was required to contribute four thousand ducats, and Florida to provide fifty good men to form the garrison of La Fuerza. The cost of maintaining the garrison was charged against Venezuela and Darien. The providing of labor was a more difficult matter. It seemed to be settled that negro slave labor must be employed. In order to secure it at little cost it was proposed to give slave-traders the privilege of taking as many slaves as they pleased to Cuba, provided that they would lend them to the government to work on La Fuerza until its completion; after which they might be sold or otherwise disposed of at the traders' will. The objection to this from the traders' point of view was the length of time that it was expected to take to finish the fort. The government estimated it at three years. Now the traders would have been willing thus to lend their slaves for a shorter time, for six months, or for a year. But they considered three years entirely too long. After working for so long a time, under a rigorous taskmaster, the average slave would be so nearly worn out that his value would be much impaired. So that scheme failed.
The next plan for getting labor for the fort was disastrous. A contract was made with a trader to provide three hundred negro slaves, by the end of 1572. He did deliver 191 of them in the summer of that year, and later sent the rest but they never got further than Hispaniola. The 191 whom he did deliver were, however, infected with small pox. A number of them died of that plague after their arrival at Havana, and the contagion got abroad in the city with the result that many other slaves and a number of the Spaniards also perished from it. Still, enough of the slaves in that plague-stricken cargo survived to cause the authorities of Havana much embarrassment in feeding and clothing them. Agriculture was not yet receiving the attention which it deserved, and even a hundred or a hundred and fifty more mouths to feed overtaxed the local resources. Requisition was therefore made upon the government of Yucatan to send a sufficient supply of corn and meat to feed the slaves, while the king himself undertook to clothe them. He was led to do this in a way which strikingly indicates the limitations of Philip's mind. To all appeals for clothing for their comfort or for decent appearance's sake, he was deaf. But when it represented to him that they must have clothes in order to be able to attend mass, he at once ordered them to be clad from his royal bounty!
More money was needed, and was raised in various ways. An examiner went about the island, looking into the accounts of public officials. Generally he found that there was something due to the state from them. Of the money thus collected, nearly all, to the amount of nearly four thousand pesos, was devoted to the costs of the fort.Other funds were taken for the purpose, and when there was still a deficit it was actually proposed to sell some of the slaves to pay for the maintenance of the rest. This counsel of despair was not, however, acted upon. Instead, Sancho Pardo Osorio when acting governor, near the end of Menendez's administration, advanced much money from his own purse, trusting to the government to reimburse him. Another draft of four thousand ducats was finally obtained from Mexico, and smaller sums came from Venezuela and Darien. Thus the enterprise dragged on, until the summer of 1573 found the fort still far from finished, the builders of it heavily in debt for labor, materials and maintenance, and the garrison, workmen, and citizens of Havana all profoundly dissatisfied.
Naturally, and inevitably, this state of affairs reflected upon Menendez, and compassed his downfall. He was not merely governor of Cuba. He was Adelantado of Florida, and he gave to Florida his first thought and chief attention. He spent most of his time there, leaving Cuban affairs to be administered by acting governors of his own selection. This was altogether unsatisfactory to the people of Cuba, and especially of Havana. They wanted their governor to live among them, where he would be accessible, and pay much more attention to them and their interests. So they began agitating against him, and demanded a governor who should not be Adelantado of Florida, nor subject to that functionary. They did more than complain. They refused supplies. They would not send to Florida the supplies which Menendez urgently needed for his enterprises there. When the King reprimanded them and bade them do their duty, they replied with surprising defiance that they wanted payment, first, for supplies long ago furnished to the Havana garrison. They also wanted to be relieved of the burden of being compelled to guard or to watch the coast themselves, at their own cost for arms and ammunition. They wanted these things done for them before they would troublethemselves for the furtherance of the Adelantado's enterprises in Florida.
Meantime, the Council for the Indies, at Seville, was also unfriendly to Menendez. Tired of the delay in building La Fuerza, it recommended to the king his removal in favor of someone who would more vigorously expedite that essential work. It was the bitter irony of fate that he should thus be condemned for failing to do the very thing upon which he had most set his heart to do. The Council also condemned him for faults of administration which were due, it held, to his personal neglect through absence from the island, and it therefore urged that a governor be appointed in his place who would spend his time chiefly in Cuba and would give to that island and its interests his first and best thoughts. These representations were made to the King as early as the spring of 1571, and they had much weight with him.
The sequel was that in 1572 Menendez was recalled to Spain, and was commissioned for a work similar to that in which he had first won distinction, to wit, the protection of Spanish commerce against hostile privateers; only it was not now the commerce between Spain and Mexico which he was to safeguard in the West Indian seas, but that between Spain and the Netherlands, along the coast of France and in the British Channel. In that capacity he was commander of a considerable fleet, and the work was doubtless in itself congenial to him, and one which he was well fitted to perform with success. But his heart was set on Florida, with which he aspired to be identified as Cortez had been with Mexico and Pizarro with Peru; and he bitterly lamented his being so far separated from that country.
So far as his governorship of Cuba was concerned, which is all in which we need here be interested, he had at this time reached the beginning of the end. The king decided to remove him from that office, though probably not so much to get rid of him there as to be able to keephis valuable talents continually employed nearer home. He had decided that Menendez was of more value to him as a captain of his fleet than as a civil administrator. Accordingly at the beginning of 1573 Alfonso de Caceres Ovando, a temporarily retired judge of the Supreme Court of Hispaniola, was commissioned to make the customary investigation of Menendez's administration. He was not, however, appointed to succeed Menendez as governor, but the latter was left for the time in office. This was a mark of the high favor in which Menendez was held by the king; and another token to the same effect was the provision that Menendez need not personally appear to answer any charges which might be made against him, but might, if he preferred, send an attorney in his stead. A third and perhaps still more notable indication of royal favor was in the fact that when Menendez elected not to appear in person, and not to send an attorney, but to ignore the whole investigation, he was not called to task, but was permitted to go without so much as a reprimand.