HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 128

demonstration of his initiative and organi-
zational skill was also responsible for
dividing the country into two sharply
defined factions, leaving no room for neu-
trals or noncombatants. Calleja was in
almost constant action against the rebels
during the next several years, winning
several major victories and earning fur-
ther promotion as well as the title count
of Calderón. The insurgents proved resil-
ient, however, and the conflict continued
throughout the period when Spain herself
was struggling to throw off the French
occupation that Napoléon had imposed in
1808. When the Regency Council at C ÁDIZ
realized that Calleja was being hampered
rather than supported by the incumbent
viceroy, it appointed the general to the
viceregal office in September 1812, permit-
ting him to combine full military and civil
power. With a free hand to shape his own
policy of suppressing the rebellion, Calleja
dealt harshly with armed rebels, who were
executed when captured, while promising
leniency to those who surrendered. To
prominent rebel leaders he showed no
mercy, but he was ready to implement pro-
gressive policies regarding courts, legislative
representation, and other matters decreed
by the Cortes (see CORTES ) in Cádiz.
With the restoration of F ERDINAND VII
in 1814, Calleja became fully committed
to monarchical absolutism and prosecuted
the war in Mexico with all his resources.
With an army now totaling more than
50,000 regulars and militia, he recaptured
the major towns still in rebel hands, dis-
rupted the attempts of nationalists to
organize a Mexican government, and
finally succeeded in capturing Morelos,
the national hero, whom he tried and
executed in 1815. Calleja was not unaware

of the ambivalent loyalties of his com-
manding general in the northern prov-
inces, Agustín de Iturbide, and stripped
him of his duties in 1816. For the moment
the Royalists were in the ascendancy,
although Iturbide would later abandon his
status as a Spanish officer and unite the
fragmented rebel bands into a second
wave of revolution. Calleja returned to
Spain in 1816 to applause and honor as
the man who had saved New Spain for the
empire. Appointed captain general of
A NDALUSIA , he was charged with prepar-
ing an expeditionary force to regain con-
trol of South America but was dismissed
from office and detained in M AJORCA by
the liberal revolutionaries who controlled
Spain between 1820 and 1823. Having
declined to betray the absolutist principles
to which he had become totally committed,
Calleja was not reinstated in his military
rank until Ferdinand VII was back in full
control. During his last years the veteran
general enjoyed a post of honor at V ALEN -
CIA , where he died in 1826. If any one man
can be said to have saved Mexico for Span-
ish rule during the first phase of revolution
in the Americas, it is Calleja. Indefatigable
in his military operations and implacable in
his exercise of governmental power, he suc-
ceeded, as long as he was entrusted with
the means of confronting the nationalists,
in maintaining colonial rule. Ultimately all
his efforts would be swept away by the irre-
sistible forces of history.

Camões, Luíz Vaz de (Camoens)
(1524-1580)
Portuguese poet
Born into a family of minor nobility and,
according to tradition, educated at the Uni-