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Our Catliolic Heritage in T ezas
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He also needed an assistant to whom a salary of five thousand pesos should be assigned. He inadvertently stated that Blanes, the surveyor, resided in Mexico City. The military aid solicited for the execution of his plan was by now equally increased. He requested two companies of seventy-five men each, with the corresponding officers, all to be placed under his immediate command and jurisdiction. He suggested that Diego Menchaca, who lived in San Fernando (Nuevo Santander), and Jose Bustamante y Berroteran, now at Laredo, be given the command of the two companies, both being experienced and reliable frontier captains. He would need a physician and two chaplains to attend him and the troops. He modestly declared that he was not asking any salary for himself, but that he left it to the generosity of His Majesty to reward him as his services might merit. He expected his travelling expenses to be paid by the royal treasury, however, and wanted to be authorized to draw upon it as need arose. 61 The shock of such an ambitious and foolhardy plan upon the astounded fiscal can well be imagined. Only a madman or one totally ignorant could have conceived such an involved, impractical, and impossible scheme. The irate official promptly informed the viceroy that the plan, as detailed by Alberola in his last report, was inordinately ambitious, ambiguous, and absurd, filled with contradictions, and ridiculous in its requests. The commandant general of the Interior Provinces should be consulted at once, the bishops of Sonora and Nuevo Leon be asked to give their opinion, and the guardian of the College of Zacatecas requested to give a confidential report on the character of Fray Jose Maria Alberola. This was the identical opinion of the Fiscal de Hacienda (Royal Advocate of the Treasury). 69 Tlie unraveling of tlie lioax. The suggestions of the Fiscales were followed and the first to report was the guardian of the College ·of Zacatecas, Fray Ignacio del Rio. He was as surprised as the Fiscales had been to learn that a friar of his college had made such absurd requests from the viceroy. He declared that Fray Jose Maria Alberola was a lay brother who bad been in the-order nine years, -and who was now thirty-five years of age. Before joining the Franciscans, he had 61 Jose Maria Alberola to Felix Berenguer de Marquina, October 17, 1801. A.G. I., Papeles de Estado, Ale:i:ico, legafo 10, Num. 113 (Dunn Transcripts, 1795-1817, pp. 60-79). 69 Consulta del fiscal, October 29, 1801. Ibid., pp. 78-79.
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