El Motin de Esquilache, America y Europa

IN March 1766 major rioting occurred in Madrid, with serious political consequences: King Charles III felt sufficiently insecure to flee his capital city. Charles was also obliged to sacrifice the minister he had brought with him to Spain from Naples in 1759, the Sicilian Don Leopoldo de Gregorio, marquis of Squilacci—better known in the hispanised version of his name as Esquilache—whom the king had appointed Secretary for Finance and subsequently for War and the Navy, and who was the de facto chief minister. Not entirely surprisingly, the disgraced Esquilache has given his name to riots which have been described as the most serious threat to any west European monarchy before 1789 (and which soon found an echo in much of provincial Spain). Many contemporaries—including some of the foreign ministers who comprised Madrid's large diplomatic community—soon saw a plot behind the disorders. But just who was responsible has long been a matter of debate. Almost immediately after the conclusion of the riots, Charles III appointed a commission of inquiry under the count of Aranda, whose members included the anti-Jesuit fiscal of the Council of Castile, Pedro de Campomanes, and the equally anti-Jesuit Manuel de Roda, minister of Grace and Justice. The commission's final report (December 1766) fixed the blame for the disorder on the clergy, and above all on the Jesuits, on the basis that the people of Madrid were essentially loyal and incapable of organising the recent riots or of penning the satires and other critical texts which had accompanied them. In February 1767, accordingly, Charles III decreed the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and its overseas empire

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