Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/287

Rh was at hand. The ship Monarch anchored at Vera Cruz, on the 17th of May, 1798, and, on the 31st of the same month, Azanza, the new viceroy who reached America in her, received the viceroyal baton from Branciforte. This supercilious peculator departed from New Spain with five millions of dollars, a large portion of which was his private property, in the vessel that had brought his successor, and arrived at Ferol, after a narrow escape from the English in the waters of Cadiz. But he returned to Spain loaded with wealth and curses, for never had the Mexicans complained so bitterly against any Spaniard who was commissioned to rule them. The respectable and wealthy inhabitants of the colony were loudest in their denunciations of an "Italian adventurer," who enriched himself at the expense of their unfortunate country, nor was his conduct less hateful because he had been the immediate successor of so just and upright a viceroy as Revilla-Gigedo.

The character of Branciforte was keen and hypocritical. He tried, at times, but vainly, to conceal his avarice, while his pretended love for the "Virgin of Guadalupe" and for the royal family, was incessantly reiterated in familiar conversation. Every Saturday during his government, and on the twelfth of every month, he made pious pilgrimages to the sanctuary of the Mexican protectress. He placed a large image of the virgin on the balcony of the palace, and ordered a salute to be fired at daybreak in honor of the saint on the twelfth of every December. With these cheap ceremonials, however, he satisfied his hypocritical piety and absorbing avarice, but he never bestowed a farthing upon the collegiate church of the Virgin. Whenever he spoke in his court of the sovereign of Spain it was with an humble mien, a reverential voice, and all the external manifestations of subserviency for the royal personages who conferred such unmerited honors upon him. Such is the picture which has been left by Mexican annalists of one of their worst rulers.

Azanza, who, as we have related, assumed the viceroyalty in May, 1798, was exceedingly well received in Mexico. His worthy character was already known to the people, and almost any new viceroy would have been hailed as a deliverer from the odious administration of Branciforte. Azanza was urbane towards all classes, and his discreet conversation, at once, secured the respect