The City That Executed the Man Who Saved It

Chapters

1. 0:00 Remember his name
2. 0:18 A mechanism, not a victory
3. 0:35 Napoleon takes the king
4. 1:17 The news reaches Buenos Aires
5. 1:37 Cisneros tries to hold on
6. 1:50 The open cabildo
7. 2:26 155 to 69
8. 2:44 Who actually voted
9. 3:07 The junta that kept him anyway
10. 3:40 A threat, and a resignation
11. 3:57 The Primera Junta
12. 4:42 The man who crushed the coup now leads
13. 5:02 Ruling in a prisoner's name
14. 5:38 The hero says no
15. 6:17 The Junta sends an army
16. 6:30 A general refuses to shoot
17. 6:50 Moreno overrules him
18. 7:31 Shot before he arrives
19. 8:01 One signature missing
20. 8:23 Three governments, three days
21. 8:48 What the mechanism proved
22. 9:28 Next: the men who gave the order

Transcript

Remember his name 0:00

The last episode ended with a name to remember: Cornelio de Saavedra, the militia commander who crushed an uprising against Liniers in eighteen oh-nine. This episode is about what he does next, and about what happens to the hero of the last episode once Saavedra is finished doing it.

A mechanism, not a victory 0:18

This is not a story about a revolution succeeding. It is about a mechanism: a city that learned, twice already, how to remove its own government without asking Madrid. In eighteen ten that mechanism finally turns on the one person who taught it how.

Napoleon takes the king 0:35

The trigger comes from six thousand miles away. Napoleon had invaded Spain in eighteen oh-eight, forced the abdication of King Ferdinand the Seventh at Bayonne, and put his own brother on the throne. A Spanish resistance government, the Junta Suprema Central, kept fighting in the king's name from whatever city the French had not yet taken, moving its own capital twice as the ground under it kept disappearing. By January of eighteen ten, that too was collapsing, as French forces closed on Seville. A Council of Regency picked up the claim to represent Spain days later, but the ship carrying that news to Buenos Aires had already left port.

The news reaches Buenos Aires 1:17

The news reaches Buenos Aires in May of eighteen ten: the last government claiming to rule Spain in the king's name no longer exists. Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros held his office as a representative of that government. With it gone, the only authority behind his title was gone too.

Cisneros tries to hold on 1:37

Cisneros did not step aside. He tried to form his own subordinate junta, an attempt to keep the office alive under a new name, answerable to no metropolitan government because there was none left to answer to.

The open cabildo 1:50

On the twenty-second of May, the cabildo convened an open assembly, the same kind of meeting that had already stripped one viceroy of command four years earlier. Four hundred fifty of the city's leading residents were invited. About two hundred fifty-one actually attended, the hall surrounded by roughly six hundred armed men organized by Domingo French and Antonio Beruti, there to make sure the room leaned criollo. Inside, the debate ran for hours, competing proposals piling up over what should replace a viceroy nobody could agree was still a viceroy at all.

155 to 69 2:26

The vote to remove Cisneros passed by one hundred fifty-five to sixty-nine. Among the competing proposals for what came next, the one that won the most support was Saavedra's: a new junta, appointed by the cabildo itself, answerable to no viceroy at all.

Who actually voted 2:44

Notice what actually voted. Not the city -- a city of tens of thousands. Two hundred fifty-one men, in a room whose access was controlled by an armed militia loyal to one faction. The mechanism this series keeps tracking, a small group acting in the name of the whole, is already running before the revolution even has a name.

The junta that kept him anyway 3:07

Here is the first contradiction. Two days after that vote, a cabildo member named Martín de Álzaga's old ally, Juan José de Leiva, engineers a compromise: a new junta, but with Cisneros himself as its president, flanked by criollos Saavedra and Castelli and two peninsular Spaniards. It is, almost word for word, the solution the assembly had just voted down. The cabildo that had recorded a public verdict against Cisneros tried to restore him under a different letterhead, forty-eight hours later.

A threat, and a resignation 3:40

It did not survive a single day. Saavedra and Castelli went to Cisneros directly and told him the population was on the verge of an armed uprising, and that they no longer had the power to stop it. Cisneros resigned before the sun set on the twenty-fifth.

The Primera Junta 3:57

That same day, the Primera Junta was formed. Cornelio de Saavedra as president. Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli, Miguel de Azcuénaga, Domingo Matheu, Juan Larrea and the priest Manuel Alberti as members. Juan José Paso and Mariano Moreno as secretaries. Not one peninsular Spaniard held a seat with real authority. For the first time, this viceroyalty had a government with no representative of the crown inside it at all. It had a president, a name, and a city behind it. What it did not have was any acknowledgment yet from the provinces the viceroyalty was supposed to govern beyond Buenos Aires itself.

The man who crushed the coup now leads 4:42

Remember what Saavedra was doing five months earlier. He was the officer who crushed Álzaga's coup to keep a Spanish-appointed governor in his chair. Now he chairs a government that erases the position that governor answered to. The man who defended the old chain of command becomes the one who ends it.

Ruling in a prisoner's name 5:02

The second contradiction is what this new government does NOT do. It does not declare independence. It governs, on paper, in the name of King Ferdinand the Seventh -- a prisoner in France who will never issue it an instruction, never confirm it, and would have almost certainly opposed its existence had he been free to say so. Historians still argue whether that loyalty was sincere or a shield against calling this what it plainly already was. The shield held for six years. Argentina does not formally declare independence until eighteen sixteen.

The hero says no 5:38

One man did not accept the mask, or the government behind it. Santiago de Liniers -- the hero of the last episode, the officer who retook this same city from the British in eighteen oh-six with no authorization from Madrid at all -- refused to recognize the Junta. To him, a self-appointed council in Buenos Aires had no more legal standing than the French puppet king it claimed to be resisting. The deposed Cisneros sent him instructions authorizing resistance, and Liniers organized it from Córdoba, several hundred kilometers inland, drawing in local officials and the bishop of the city itself.

The Junta sends an army 6:17

The Junta answered with an army. It sent its newly formed Army of the North, under General Francisco Ortiz de Ocampo, to put down the resistance before it could gather strength on the road toward the capital.

A general refuses to shoot 6:30

Ocampo captured Liniers and the other leaders without much of a fight. What he did next was refuse an order. Aware of how popular Liniers still was, he did not have them shot -- he sent them back toward Buenos Aires as prisoners, honoring a plea from the dean of Córdoba's cathedral to spare their lives.

Moreno overrules him 6:50

The third contradiction belongs to Mariano Moreno, the Junta's own secretary. Weeks earlier, on the seventh of June, he had founded the Junta's own newspaper, the Gazeta de Buenos Ayres, with the priest Manuel Alberti helping write it -- the same Alberti who would later refuse to sign what Moreno was about to order. Moreno feared exactly what Ocampo was protecting against: a living, popular Liniers arriving in a capital still unsure of its new government. He had Juan José Castelli sent out to relieve Ocampo of command, carrying an order to execute the prisoners wherever they were found, on the road, before they reached the city.

Shot before he arrives 7:31

On the twenty-sixth of August, eighteen ten, Santiago de Liniers was shot at Cabeza de Tigre, a staging post on the Tercero River in southeastern Córdoba, alongside Juan Antonio Gutiérrez de la Concha and three officers of their militia. He never reached Buenos Aires. Four years after he saved this exact city without waiting for permission from anyone, the government that same principle helped create had him killed before he could argue his case in it.

One signature missing 8:01

On the eighteenth of August, the Junta had reissued the execution order in writing, and every member signed it -- except one. Manuel Alberti, the priest among them, refused, on the grounds that his office forbade him from putting his name to a death sentence. He remained on the Junta. The order was carried out anyway.

Three governments, three days 8:23

Count the turns in three days. May twenty-second: a vote, one hundred fifty-five to sixty-nine, to remove a viceroy. May twenty-fourth: a junta that quietly puts him back as president. May twenty-fifth: a second junta that removes him again, this time for good. Three governments in seventy-two hours, and the third one is the one that lasts.

What the mechanism proved 8:48

So what does this episode actually prove? That the exact mechanism this series has been tracking since the last episode -- a city organizing its own authority without asking permission -- does not stop once it produces a government. It keeps running, and it is not sentimental about who it runs over next. Liniers taught Buenos Aires that it did not need Madrid's permission to act. The Junta that grew out of that lesson decided it did not need his permission either, or his survival. A mechanism that removes a viceroy without a trial can remove a hero without one too -- it was never really about who was in the chair.

Next: the men who gave the order 9:28

Next time on Códice: the Junta does not stay unified for long. By December of eighteen ten, the gradualist Saavedra and the radical Moreno are openly at odds, and the dispute is settled by folding in deputies from the interior provinces -- the very expansion Moreno feared. He resigns within days. In eighteen eleven, sent off on a diplomatic mission to England, he dies at sea, in circumstances never fully explained. The man who demanded Liniers's execution in the name of the revolution does not outlive him by even a year.

Description and sources

May 1810. News reaches Buenos Aires that the last resistance government still fighting Napoleon in Spain's name has collapsed. Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros has nothing left to answer to -- and nothing left to stand on. An open cabildo on the 22nd votes 155 to 69 to remove him. Two days later, the cabildo tries a compromise that keeps Cisneros on as president of a new junta -- the exact arrangement the vote had just rejected. It does not survive a day: under threat of armed uprising, Cisneros resigns, and on the 25th the Primera Junta is born, chaired by Cornelio de Saavedra, with not one peninsular Spaniard holding real power inside it.

The new government does not declare independence. It rules 'in the name of' a king who is a prisoner in France and will never know it exists -- a mask that holds for six years, until 1816.

One man refuses to accept it: Santiago de Liniers, the hero of the previous episode, the officer who retook this same city from the British in 1806 with no orders from Madrid at all. Authorized by the deposed Cisneros, he organizes armed resistance from Córdoba. The Junta sends an army to stop him. The general who captures him refuses to have him shot, and sends him back toward the capital as a prisoner instead -- so the Junta's own secretary, Mariano Moreno, has that general replaced and the execution order carried out on the road. On August 26th, 1810, Liniers is shot at a river crossing in Córdoba province, four years after saving the city that never gets to see him arrive.

PRINT-READY, FROM THIS CHANNEL

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
• Portret van Ferdinand VII, koning van Spanje, RP-P-1905-1274 | Wikimedia Commons | CC0
• El engaño de Napoleón descubierto y castigado (1808) portada | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros (Museo Naval de Madrid) | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Unidentified painter — Unknown date | Wikimedia Commons | CC0
• Juan Manuel Blanes | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Cornelio Saavedra - 1810 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Julio Vila y Prades — 1910 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Print made by: Pablo Guglielmi After: Antonio Solá — 1833 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Unidentified painter — after 1812 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• SantiagoLiniersJefeDeEscuadraAnónimo1850 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Juan de Dios Rivera — 1808 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Fray Pedro Subercaseaux Errázuriz (1880-1956) — 1908 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain

This video also contains 1 synthetic illustration(s), used only for moments no archive covers (an empty square, an empty road). They are generated with Stable Diffusion XL and are marked as synthetic content on YouTube. No identifiable historical person is reconstructed.