The Colony That Fired Its Own Viceroy

Chapters

1. 0:00 Two days, no battle
2. 0:36 Who actually shows up
3. 0:59 An officer breaks his own orders
4. 1:33 Quilmes, then the capital
5. 1:58 The viceroy runs, with the silver
6. 2:32 Forty-six days of free trade
7. 2:52 A Frenchman organizes a militia
8. 3:15 Eight days to take it back
9. 3:44 The cabildo fires the viceroy
10. 4:22 The government built to hold this coast
11. 5:06 Reprimanded, then promoted
12. 5:25 London sends more, not less
13. 5:41 Montevideo falls too
14. 6:04 Eight times the force
15. 6:20 Fighting from the rooftops
16. 6:45 One signature, fourteen months undone
17. 7:29 Who actually fought
18. 8:14 Three men, three punishments
19. 8:56 Cleared, six years later
20. 9:17 The coup that failed in a day
21. 9:50 Eight times the army
22. 10:10 Already acting like it
23. 10:44 Next: the cabildo does it again

Transcript

Two days, no battle 0:00

June twenty-seventh, eighteen oh-six. A British force of about one thousand six hundred men marches into Buenos Aires, capital of a viceroyalty built to hold this coast, and takes it in two days without a real battle. The last episode ended on a warning nobody in power said out loud: the same government built to keep this coastline safe from Portugal already administered a British claim sitting inside its own waters, the Falkland Islands. It would take thirty years for that contradiction to become impossible to ignore. Those thirty years arrive all at once.

Who actually shows up 0:36

This episode is not really about a British invasion. Buenos Aires gets invaded twice in fourteen months, and loses to nobody but itself both times. What decides the outcome is who actually shows up to fight, who runs, and who gets to fire a viceroy without asking the king's permission, for the first time in the history of the Spanish empire.

An officer breaks his own orders 0:59

It starts with an officer breaking his own orders. Commodore Sir Home Popham had been sent to capture the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, with instructions to sail home once that was done. Instead, in January of eighteen oh-six, without authorization from London, he turned his squadron toward the Río de la Plata. Nobody in the British government asked for this war. One officer decided the silver-shipping capital of South America was worth the risk, on his own initiative, and only then wrote home to explain.

Quilmes, then the capital 1:33

His force landed at Quilmes on the twenty-fifth of June and reached Buenos Aires two days later, under General William Carr Beresford. One thousand six hundred soldiers, against a capital that had counted about thirty-seven thousand residents in the census two episodes ago. The city's defenses did not hold. Buenos Aires fell in under a week from the moment the fleet was even sighted.

The viceroy runs, with the silver 1:58

The viceroy, Rafael de Sobremonte, did not stay to organize a defense. He left for Córdoba, far inland, taking the royal treasury with him. It never arrived. British forces caught the convoy on the road and seized it: twenty-seven tons of silver, condemned as a prize in London that December, worth just over one million dollars, something over half a million pounds sterling. The man charged with defending the capital of a silver empire lost the silver before he even reached safety.

Forty-six days of free trade 2:32

Beresford held the city for forty-six days, promising local merchants free trade with Britain, the same thing episode eight's Spanish reforms had only half delivered two decades earlier. Buenos Aires, under foreign military occupation, briefly got the open commerce its own empire had been rationing for two hundred years.

A Frenchman organizes a militia 2:52

The man who ended the occupation was not sent by Madrid, and was not even Spanish by birth. Santiago de Liniers, a French naval officer in Spanish service stationed across the river in Montevideo, organized a militia there almost entirely on his own initiative, crossed the Río de la Plata, and landed at Las Conchas on the fourth of August.

Eight days to take it back 3:15

On the twelfth of August, eighteen oh-six, Liniers's militia retook Buenos Aires by force. Beresford surrendered. The battle cost the British about two hundred dead and wounded and one thousand three hundred captured, most of the force that had marched in six weeks earlier. Spanish and colonial losses were smaller, around one hundred fifty-seven. The city that fell in a week took itself back in eight days of real fighting.

The cabildo fires the viceroy 3:44

Two days later, on the fourteenth of August, the cabildo of Buenos Aires convened as an open assembly, every head of household in the city, not just the appointed council. It stripped Sobremonte, the sitting viceroy appointed directly by the king, of military command, and handed it to Liniers instead. No colonial body had ever done that to a sitting viceroy in the history of Spanish America. The only person who could legally remove a viceroy was the king. Buenos Aires did it anyway, in a public meeting, while Sobremonte was still trying to make his way back into the city.

The government built to hold this coast 4:22

Here is the contradiction the last episode set up without naming it. This viceroyalty was created in seventeen seventy-six for one declared purpose: to make this exact coastline defensible, governed directly, answerable to Madrid. Thirty years later, when a foreign power actually came for it, the vice-regal government did not defend the coastline. It fled inland with the strongbox. The defense came from a city that organized itself, led by a foreigner nobody in Spain had appointed, and then removed the king's own representative without asking permission. The government built to make this coast obey Madrid proved, the first time it mattered, that it answered to the street instead.

Reprimanded, then promoted 5:06

Word reached London that an officer acting entirely on his own had captured the capital of a Spanish viceroyalty, and its silver. Popham, who had disobeyed his orders to start this whole war, was later court-martialed for it, and merely reprimanded. Within months he had a new command.

London sends more, not less 5:25

London's real response was not caution. It was reinforcement. The unauthorized adventure of a single squadron became official policy: a second, much larger expedition, this time with government backing from the start.

Montevideo falls too 5:41

In February of eighteen oh-seven, a British force of roughly fifteen thousand besieged Montevideo, defended by about five thousand Spanish troops. The city fell on the third, after roughly six hundred casualties on each side and two thousand prisoners taken. Britain now held both banks of the river the last two episodes fought over.

Eight times the force 6:04

Lieutenant General John Whitelocke arrived in May with a force that grew past thirteen thousand men for the push on Buenos Aires itself, eight times the size of the force that had taken the same city the year before. He planned to march it straight down the city's streets.

Fighting from the rooftops 6:20

That plan failed on the fourth and fifth of July. Buenos Aires had spent a year building militia companies out of its own residents, several of them carrying muskets captured from Beresford's surrendered garrison the year before. They fought from rooftops and barricaded corners instead of open ground, and Whitelocke's columns, formed for a battlefield that did not exist here, were cut apart street by street.

One signature, fourteen months undone 6:45

The casualty count made the outcome obvious: roughly three hundred eleven British dead, six hundred seventy-nine wounded, and one thousand eight hundred captured or missing, more than a fifth of Whitelocke's entire force, even while his troops still held strongpoints inside the city and fresh reserves outside it. On the seventh of July he signed a capitulation with Liniers anyway. The terms did not just return Buenos Aires. They required Britain to hand back Montevideo too, occupied five months earlier, within about two months. An eight-times-larger army, fully committed, surrendered everything it had taken in fourteen months of campaigning, in a single signature.

Who actually fought 7:29

The second beat that contradicts the premise: this was not a colonial army winning a colonial war. Every male resident between sixteen and fifty was drafted, organized into battalions by casta, separate companies for Spaniards born in the peninsula, for criollos, and for free and enslaved men of African descent. The enslaved men who fought had no promise of freedom waiting for them, the British occupation hadn't offered one either, and after the city was saved, only a handful of those who fought were ever freed. The government that had just been proven unable to hold its own capital was rescued by exactly the population it spent most of its energy keeping in fixed, unequal rank, and it rewarded almost none of them for it.

Three men, three punishments 8:14

The third beat is about who paid for all of this, and who didn't. Popham, who started an unauthorized war, was reprimanded and promoted. Whitelocke, who lost the second one, was court-martialed and stripped of his rank. And Sobremonte, who fled with the treasury and lost it, arguably following the same doctrine that told any viceroy to save the crown's assets first, was quietly removed by a colonial council with no legal standing to do it, and the official record covering the event does not even say that. To avoid admitting a viceroy had been deposed by the will of a crowd, the Real Audiencia recorded that Sobremonte had resigned for reasons of health.

Cleared, six years later 8:56

He spent the next two years effectively under arrest in the city he had failed to defend, was finally allowed to sail home in eighteen oh-nine, and was formally exonerated by a Spanish court in eighteen thirteen, cleared, on paper, of the one thing a colonial crowd had already convicted him of in practice, six years earlier and with no trial at all.

The coup that failed in a day 9:17

Having proven it could organize its own defense and remove its own governor, the city did not stay unified. On the first of January, eighteen oh-nine, Martín de Álzaga, a peninsular merchant uneasy with how much power the criollo-heavy militia now held, tried to force Liniers out by marching his own regiments into the main square. The militia that answered was commanded by Cornelio de Saavedra, and it did not side with Álzaga. The coup collapsed the same day. Remember Saavedra's name.

Eight times the army 9:50

Look at what Britain actually escalated to. One thousand six hundred men in eighteen oh-six. Thirteen thousand in eighteen oh-seven, eight times the force. And the second attempt lost worse, faster, against a city that had already shown it did not need Madrid's army to hold it.

Already acting like it 10:10

So what does this episode actually prove? Not that Britain lost twice, though it did. That the viceroyalty episode eight built to answer to Madrid spent its first real test failing exactly where it mattered, and the coastline held anyway, because a city armed itself, chose its own commander, and disciplined its own viceroy in public, faster and more decisively than the empire that appointed him ever managed to. Nobody called it independence in eighteen oh-seven. The city had simply already started acting like it.

Next: the cabildo does it again 10:44

Next time on Codice: eighteen ten. The same cabildo that fired one viceroy without asking Madrid does it again, permanently, and the militia commander who crushed Álzaga's coup in this episode chairs the government that replaces him.

Description and sources

June 1806. A British force of about sixteen hundred men, led by an officer who diverted his own squadron without authorization from London, lands at Quilmes and occupies Buenos Aires in two days. Viceroy Rafael de Sobremonte does not organize a defense -- he flees inland to Córdoba with the royal treasury, which British forces intercept on the road: twenty-seven tons of silver, condemned as a prize in London that December.

The city retakes itself. Santiago de Liniers, a French naval officer in Spanish service with no orders from Madrid, organizes a militia across the river in Montevideo, crosses back, and storms Buenos Aires on the 12th of August. Two days later, an open cabildo -- every head of household in the city, not just the appointed council -- strips Sobremonte of military command and hands it to Liniers. No colonial body had ever removed a sitting viceroy before. Only the king could do that, in theory.

Britain does not back down -- it escalates. In 1807 it sends a force eight times larger, seizes Montevideo, and marches over thirteen thousand men on Buenos Aires under General John Whitelocke. The result is worse: militia companies organized by casta, some armed with muskets captured from the first invasion, cut Whitelocke's columns apart street by street. He surrenders on the 7th of July, agreeing to hand back not just Buenos Aires but Montevideo too.

What the empire does next is the real story. Popham, who started the whole war without orders, is reprimanded and given a new command within months. Whitelocke, who lost, is court-martialed and cashiered. And Sobremonte -- who only did what doctrine told any viceroy to do, save the crown's assets first -- is quietly deposed by a council with no legal authority to do it, and the official record hides that this happened at all, recording that he 'resigned for reasons of health.' He is exonerated on paper six years later, of a verdict a crowd had already delivered without a trial.

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The Document Set, Vol. 01 — Cajamarca 1532 and Buenos Aires 1595-1680 — the documents at reading size, with author, date, archive and licence

https://therepository.gumroad.com/l/document-set

SOURCES — every image in this video is a public-domain document.

Each plate below is listed with its author, date, holding archive and licence.

• Arrowsmith, Aaron | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Martín Boneo y Villalonga — 1801 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Emeric Essex Vidal — 1818 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Unidentified painter — 1783 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Madrid Martínez — 1807 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• José María Cardano — from 1807 until 1834 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Ignacio Cavicchia — 1925 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Correo de Comercio (Manuel Belgrano) — 1810 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Emeric Essex Vidal — 1817 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Unidentified painter — after 1812 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Emeric Essex Vidal — 1817 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Emeric Essex Vidal — between 1816 and 1817 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Catedral de Buenos Aires, según Eliot | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Emeric Essex Vidal — 1818 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Santiago Liniers, Jefe de Escuadra (anónimo, 1850) | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Emeric Essex Vidal (1791-1861) — 1820 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Anon - Court Martial upon General Whitelocke- Chelsea College, Jan.28t | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Cashiering of John Whitelocke | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain