The intriguing notion that he might personally lead an armed uprising against the viceregal government of New Spain apparently struck Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla sometime in 1809 as he was attending a meeting of a provincial literary club. What began as romantic fancy became the call of destiny, however, transforming this obscure country priest into a revolutionary sworn to the cause of Mexican independence.

For 300 years, New Spain had been the most loyal and stable of all of Spain’s American colonies. But once the French Emperor Napoleon’s military juggernaut rolled across the Iberian Peninsula, and Spain’s North American colonists learned that a Bonaparte–Napoleon’s brother Joseph–sat on the Spanish throne, everything changed. Clandestine literary clubs sprang up, attracting restless or openly rebellious men. Flying every ideological flag, they hatched countless conspiracies, from liberating New Spain from Napoleon, to saving it for Ferdinand VII (the ‘rightful’ Spanish king), to demanding outright independence. One near-miss revolt was scotched by Spanish Royalists, but a dozen more were floating on the wind, especially in the Bajío, where Hidalgo’s conspiratorial clique gathered.

Located a four-day horseback ride north from Mexico City, the Bajío was a fertile alluvial plain, called the breadbasket of New Spain. Abounding with thriving towns and flourishing haciendas, the Bajío was further enriched by the presence of Guanajuato in the central sierra. In addition to splendid stone palaces, churches and public buildings, Guanajuato boasted some of the richest silver mines in the world. First discovered in 1548, by 1810 they were producing 64 percent of all the silver in the world, giving employment to large numbers of Indian and mulatto laborers.

Having grown up on a hacienda where his father acted as superintendent in place of the absentee owner, Miguel Hidalgo had always had sympathy for the illiterate and unskilled Indian workers who provided the field labor. His father, a poor Creole in a society of poorer Indians and mestizos, worked to ensure his three sons would rise above his own modest station in life. All attended college. Miguel and an older brother entered the ranks of the clergy, and a third brother studied law.

At age 55, Hidalgo was a tall, gaunt man with a high, domelike forehead and a long, narrow face. He carried his head habitually bent forward, giving him the appearance of a true contemplative. But looks were deceiving. He had a restless, willful nature, and his expressive green eyes shot fire when he argued politics. In his student days, he had won debates and honors; as a theologian he enjoyed considerable local renown. He was a visionary, resentful of authority and with a touch of the crusader about him. When first sent by Church authorities to Dolores, near Guanajuato, he took an avid interest in raising silkworms and cultivating grapes for wine, intending to provide self-supporting cottage industries for his Indian parishioners. With the same laudable intentions, he set up a pottery works and a leather-tanning shop beside his parish house. As his fascination with politics grew, his interest in other projects waned. Still, he did not entirely forget his poorest parishioners. Instead, taking them into his confidence, he set potters and tanners to the secret military task of making lances, slings and wooden swords against the day when he and other rebels would move to overthrow their Royalist oppressors.

Hidalgo was joined in his enthusiasm for revolt by Ignacio Allende, a fiery, multitalented young regimental captain from the nearby Bajío town of San Miguel. With a dashing military figure and Michelangelesque nose–broken during a village bullfight–he was a superb horseman, exemplary soldier, amateur matador, gambler and womanizer. Allende’s Spanish-born father had immigrated to New Spain, married into a prominent family of Creole or Spanish descent, and had become a wealthy merchant.

In New Spain, the social rank of people born in Europe was considered higher than those of European descent who had been born in the New World, though intermarriage between these two groups was a common pattern in the colony. Nevertheless, it was a pattern that created a bitter split in the social elite. The rift was doubly dangerous, since New Spain was already a divided society, in which Indians and persons of mixed blood outnumbered whites 10 to 1. When the ruling class of New Spain–Creoles and Spaniards–planned to square off against one another in full view of the natives, they did so at their own peril.

It was the established policy of the Spanish Crown to entrust the most powerful posts in the colonies to Spanish-born officials. Thus viceroys, treasurers, bishops and generals–who occupied the highest paying and most desirable posts–were sent out from Spain. However ‘pure’ their own European blood, Creole men were barred from these influential positions. Immigrant Spaniards who benefited from the policy reinforced the myth that men born and reared in the tropical climate of the Americas lacked the physical and mental stamina of Europeans. As a consequence, the maligned Creoles (often the sons of influential Spanish fathers) had to seek careers in the lower ranks of the government, military and clergy.

Creoles such as Captain Allende, yearning for advancement in an army top-heavy with Spanish brass, faced this frustration daily. The feud had plagued the white upper class for years, but by 1810, with the once-powerful Spanish monarch now a craven captive in a Bayonne jail, it had reached a flash point. For the first time in three centuries, a power vacuum existed in New Spain, and ambitious, resentful Creole aristocrats meant to fill it.

Allende’s vision of the revolt was that of himself riding at the head of a triumphant rebel army of trained Royalist soldiers–defectors all–drawn from proud provincial regiments. Upper-class Creoles would flock to join an openly anti-Spanish crusade. Hidalgo, however, imagined machete-wielding Indians overthrowing the Spaniards–blind to the fact that formation of such an Indian army would likely drive propertied Creoles straight into the arms of conservative Royalists.

Abad y Quiepo, the 55-year-old bishop-elect of the Diocese of Michoacán, was a Spanish-born prelate who had spent years in New Spain and loved the country and its people. Gifted with a keen mind, a fighting spirit and an eloquent tongue, he was also an ardent advocate of ideas associated with the European Enlightenment and social reform. The racial inequities in America disturbed him deeply. Working tirelessly for the economic and social advancement of the same poor Indians with whom Hidalgo sympathized, Quiepo routinely fired off letters to the viceroy in Mexico City and the king in Madrid, advising drastic changes in oppressive policies. He also expressed grave concern over the social breach between the two white camps and urged lifting the onerous tribute to the Crown that the Indians despised.

This liberal, thoughtful prelate was Hidalgo’s ecclesiastical superior from the early years of his career and had detected in him, as a young man, a disinterest in his priestly role that was alarming. As a result, Quiepo had early on tactfully persuaded Hidalgo to resign a position as college rector (rather than arrange for him to be dismissed from the post), citing long-unpaid debts he owed the school. Reassigned to a village curacy, Hidalgo was later exposed as living a scandalous life of partying, gambling and living openly with a mistress. Mindful of Hidalgo’s sincere charity toward his poorest parishioners, however, Quiepo quietly had him transferred to Dolores. Now, in September 1810, the prelate planned to visit him there, unaware that Hidalgo’s parish house had become a powder keg.

In that same fateful month, Spanish-born Brig. Gen. Don Félix María Calleja del Rey, who had also just turned 55, began eyeing retirement. A career officer, he had come to New Spain 20 years earlier after soldiering in North Africa and Gibraltar, then teaching nine years at a military college in Spain. Appointed viceroy of New Spain, he felt his qualifications were ideal for the post–the army required a firm, experienced hand, for the colony had had no serious need for a military presence since the 16th century.

Calleja proved a dynamic and popular leader. He worked hard at reorganizing the colony’s vulnerable northern frontier defenses and at training the fledgling army. Reflecting the French influence on Spain’s Bourbon kings, he implemented military reforms. He replaced the old brigade structure with regimental and corps units, like those employed by the French; pushed for reductions in the excessive number of generals; and supported the founding of military academies, like the one in Spain where he had taught.

In 1810, Calleja commanded the Army of the Center based in San Luis Potosí, to the north of Bajío. Another Spaniard, General Manuel Flon, was his counterpart in the south. Both armies were well trained, but small. Along with provincial regiments, the Royalists numbered scarcely 30,000 men, but Calleja saw no cause for concern. On the contrary, the colony was peaceful and prospering as never before. As for his own future, he had married into a prominent Creole family and was looking forward to enjoying a comfortable old age on his country estate. His awakening to the political realities in the fall of 1810 would be a rude one.

A fifth man whose personal destiny would be changed by Hidalgo’s revolutionary dream was Don Antonio Riaño, governor of the silver-rich province of Guanajuato. A close friend of Bishop Abad y Quiepo and of General Calleja, he had come to the Americas as a Spanish officer in the mid-1770s, and between 1779 and 1781 he had fought the British in Louisiana and Alabama as an ally of the North American colonists in their war for independence.

Riaño’s charm won the hand of a beautiful Louisiana-French Creole bride, and his signal victories over British troops netted him appointment to a provincial governorship in New Spain. As Riaño was both a military leader and an intellectual, his Guanajuato mansion became a magnet for educational and cultural gatherings in the province. Among the guests who had attended Riaño’s soirees was Father Miguel Hidalgo, who seemed to him to be a mild-mannered country priest who took delight in arguing the fine points of theology.

In the early morning hours of September 16, 1810, a courier who had ridden all night brought Hidalgo and Allende the dismaying news that their planned revolt had become known. On the previous day, one of their co-conspirators had panicked and divulged the arrangements they were making for a December uprising to Riaño. The messenger advised them to flee before the governor could order them hanged for treason. Father Hidalgo, so legend has it, then buckled on a sword and dramatically declared in ringing tones: ‘All may seem lost, but in action, all can still be saved! We now have no choice but to go out and seize the Spaniards!’

When his parishioners, mostly farmers and workers from the countryside around Dolores, gathered for the early Sunday Mass, Hidalgo addressed them. According to witnesses, his Grito, or call to arms, which was to become famous, was: ‘I ask you to join my Reconquísta, to fight at the side of our legitimate ruler, King Ferdinand VII of Spain! I cannot speak longer, for all is being done in great haste and I must go!’ Then, his eyes flashing, he cried, ‘Death to the Gauchupines! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe! Down with bad government! Now let us go and seize the Gauchupines!’

Adopting Hidalgo’s derogatory reference to their Spanish-born overlords, the crowd took up the popular cry. At the same time, his Indian factory workers came racing through the plaza bearing torches and brandishing machetes. Within minutes, the town regiment defected en masse to Captain Allende. The jail was emptied of potential rebel recruits, and shops and businesses owned by Spaniards were broken into and plundered. Bewildered Spaniards were dragged from their beds as the mob rushed in to loot their homes. Creole wives and children looked on helplessly as husbands and fathers were taken hostage, roped together and driven to the next destination, Allende’s home town of San Miguel. There the crowd, now out of control, enacted similar horrific scenes, often over Captain Allende’s vehement protests. Hidalgo’s rampaging Indian horde had swelled to several thousand.

Continuing his march across Bajío, Hidalgo and his followers took town after town without firing a shot. They merely threatened to slit the throats of the 100 or more Spanish hostages if city gates were not opened to him. Everywhere, Spaniards were jailed or taken hostage, their money and properties seized to fund the burgeoning rebel war chest. In the process, Hidalgo dropped his false posture of loyalty to Ferdinand VII, instead declaring openly for an independent Mexico. He also sent a message to Governor Riaño that he was marching on Guanajuato.

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