It mattered not whether Hidalgo hoped to establish a republic or simply to secure for his followers relief from oppression: in either case the whites could expect only Indian domination.

Before the trained forces of the whites a horde of natives, so ignorant of modern warfare that some of them tried to stop cannon balls by clapping their straw hats over the mouths of the guns, could not stand their ground.

Hidalgo was captured and shot, but he was succeeded by Jose Maria Morelos, also a priest.

Reviving the old Aztec name for central Mexico, he summoned a "Congress of Anahuac," which in 1813 asserted that dependence on the throne of Spain was "forever broken and dissolved." Abler and more humane than Hidalgo, he set up a revolutionary government that the authorities of Mexico failed for a while to suppress.
In 1814, therefore, Spain still held the bulk of its dominions.
Trinidad, to be sure, had been lost to Great Britain, and both Louisiana and West Florida to the United States.

Royalist control, furthermore, had ceased in parts of the viceroyalties of La Plata and New Granada.
To regain Trinidad and Louisiana was hopeless: but a wise policy conciliation or an overwhelming display of armed force might yet restore Spanish rule where it had been merely suspended.
Very different was the course of events in Brazil.