Nuevo Reino de León (New Kingdom of León, Spanish colony
Years: 1582 - 1821
Capital
Monterrey Nuevo León MexicoRelated Events
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Europeans will often be offered fur, food or other items as gifts when they first encounter a tribe.
The Europeans do not understand they are supposed to take on an alliance with the natives, including helping them against their enemies.
Native tribes regularly practice gift giving as part of their social relations.
Because the Europeans (or most of them) do not, they are considered to be rude and crude.
After observing that Europeans want to trade goods for the skins and other items, natives enter into that commercial relationship.
As a consequence, both sides become involved in the conflicts of the other.
The Europeans in New France, Carolina, Virginia, New England, and New Netherland become drawn into the endemic warfare of their trading partners.
Nuevo Reino de León (The New Kingdom of León) had originally been founded by Alberto del Canto, although frequent raids by Chichimecas, the natives of the north, had prevented the establishment of almost any permanent settlements.
In consideration of the appointment of governor, Luis de Carabajal y Cuevo undertakes to colonize the territory at his own expense, being allowed to repay himself out of the revenues.
His original jurisdiction is to comprise a somewhat ill-defined territory, beginning at the port of Tampico, extending along the River Panuco, and thence turning northward; but it is not to exceed 200 leagues either way.
It would seem to have included Tamaulipas, as well as the present states of Nuevo León and Coahuila, and parts of San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua and Texas.
Nuevo Reino de León will eventually become (along with the provinces of Coahuila, Nuevo Santander and Texas) one of the Eastern Internal Provinces in Northern New Spain.
Carabajal, receiving his royal patent as governor on May 31, 1579, had sailed onboard the Santa Catarina with one hundred families, most of them recruited from his own and his wife's kin.
Arriving in Mexico in 1580, he begins to prepare for his occupancy of the territory.
He plants his colony in 1582 on a site formerly called Santa Lucia, and names the place City of León.
He also establishes a settlement called San Luis Rey de Francia.
Diego de Montemayor, governor of Nuevo León from 1588, establishes the city of Monterrey as the provincial capital on September 20, 1596.
The establishment is officially called Ciudad Metropolitana de Nuestra Señora de Monterrey ("Metropolitan City of Our Lady of Monterrey," partly to curry favor from the Viceroy, Gaspar de Zúñiga y Acevedo, Count of Monterrey.
Montemayor's founding is the third effort.
The two previous ones had borne the names Santa Lucia and San Luis Rey de Francia and were headed by Alberto del Canto, the future arch-enemy of Montemayor, and the second by Luis de Carabajal y Cueva.
Montemayor brings forty people with him from Saltillo to populate Monterrey, mostly of Jewish descent--nine married couples, three men without families, fourteen boys, four girls, and one Indian named Domingo Manuel.
Montemayor, who is likely of Sephardic Jewish descent, has married three times.
His wives are Inez Rodriguez, who had come with him from Spain to the New World in 1548, Maria de Esquivel, and Juana Porcalla de la Cerda.
Montemayor has three children, one from each of his wives.
His children are Inez, Diego, and Estefania.
During the Chichimeca War in 1550, Montemayor had often been away from his third wife, Juana Porcalla de la Cerda, and her attention had soon focused on Alberto del Canto, only a few years her elder.
When Montemayor later confronted her about the ongoing affair, an argument ensued, he drew his sword and killed her.
Montemayor had fled into the wilderness to the north, but was eventually cleared of all charges (perhaps because a law at this time allows a man to kill his unfaithful wife).
His daughter with Juana Porcalla, Estefania, later married Alberto del Canto and had three children with him, though the two separate in 1596.
Estefania moves back to Monterrey with her father, and her children take the last name of Montemayor.
Montemayor is never to meet his vow to kill Alberto del Canto.
Monterrey today has the second largest metropolitan area in Mexico, after Mexico City, and is the country's third most populous city after Mexico City and Guadalajara.
The previously ignored sector to the south of Texas becomes the province of Nuevo Santander, named after Santander, Cantabria, Spain, in 1747 and settled by Spanish American colonists in a concerted settlement campaign peaking in 1748-1750.
Corresponding generally to the modern Mexican state of Tamaulipas and southern Texas, Nuevo Santander spans from the San Antonio river to the north east to the Gulf of Mexico, then south to the Panuco River near Tampico and west to the Sierra Madre Mountains.
The area becomes a haven for rebellious natives who have fled here after increased Spanish settlements in Nuevo Leon and Coahuila.
Many native groups of missions in southern Texas and northeastern Mexico have been displaced recently from their territory through the southward push by the Lipan Apaches and are still hostile toward Apaches, standing with the local Spanish authorities in opposition to their common foe.
Most subjects of Spain do not accept the government of Joseph Bonaparte, placed on the Spanish throne by his brother, Emperor Napoleon of France.
At the same time, the process of creating a stable government in Spain, which will be widely recognized throughout the empire, has taken two years.
This has created a power vacuum in the Spanish possessions in America, which creates further political uncertainty.
Flying a green flag, they had captured the town of Nacogdoches on August 7, 1812.
The Republican Army of the North had then marched to Goliad, where they had captured Presidio La Bahia.
From November 13, 1812, to February 19, 1813, they had been besieged, when the Royalist Army, commanded by Manuel María de Salcedo, the Governor of Texas, and Simón de Herrera, the Governor of Nuevo León, had gathered to confront them.
Unable to defeat the Republican Army, they had retreated back to San Antonio.
Samuel Kemper, who had also been involved in the 1804 rebellion in Florida, had become the commander after the death of Colonel Magee.
The Republican Army, now numbering about nine hundred men, pursues.
On March 29, 1813, the Royalist force, numbering fifteen hundred men, plans to ambush the Republican Army from a ridge overlooking Rosillo Creek, approximately nine miles southeast of San Antonio de Bexar near the confluence of Rosillo Creek and Salado Creek.
Their trap fails when they are detected by the Republican forces, who defeat them in less than an hour.
At a cost of six men, the Republican Army kills one hundred to three hundred and thirty Royalist soldiers and captures materiel including six cannon and fifteen hundred horses.
Two days later Salcedo, Herrera, and twelve others were executed by the victors.
On April 6, the Republican Army issues a draft declaration of independence.
Once in Spain, he had realized that he had significant support from conservatives in the general population and the hierarchy of the Spanish Catholic Church, so on May 4 he had repudiated the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and ordered the arrest of liberal leaders who had created it on May 10.
Ferdinand had justified his actions by stating that the Constitution and other changes had been made by a Cortes assembled in his absence and without his consent.
He had also declared all of the juntas and constitutions written in Spanish America invalid and restored the former law codes and political institutions.
News of the events arrived through Spanish America during the next three weeks to nine months, depending on time it took goods and people to travel from Spain.
This, in effect, constituted a definitive break with two groups that could have been allies of Ferdinand VII: the autonomous governments, which had not yet declared formal independence, and Spanish liberals who had created a representative government that would fully include the overseas possessions and was seen as an alternative to independence by many in New Spain, Central America, the Caribbean, Quito (today Ecuador), Peru, Upper Peru (today, Bolivia) and Chile.
Most Spanish Americans are moderates who have decided to wait and see what will come out of the restoration of normalcy.
Spanish Americans in royalist areas who are committed to independence have already joined guerrilla movements.
Ferdinand's actions do set areas outside of the control of the royalist armies on the path to full independence.
The governments of these regions, which have their origins in the juntas of 1810—and even moderates there who had entertained a reconciliation with the crown—now see the need to separate from Spain, if they are to protect the reforms they had enacted
After leaving the island, Morillo's troops reinforce existing royalist forces in the Venezuelan mainland, entering Cumaná, La Guaira, Caracas, and Puerto Cabello in May.
A small part of the main corps sets off towards Panamá, while the main contingent is directed towards the Neogranadine coastal city of Santa Marta, which is still in royalist hands.
After picking up supplies and militia volunteers in Santa Marta on July 23, the Spanish expeditionary forces besiege Cartagena de Indias.
After a five-month siege the fortified city falls in December 1815.