 Section 11 of the South American Republics, Volume 1, by Thomas Leland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Argentina, Chapter 9, The Modern Argentine. General Mitres' administration is memorable for the beginning of that tremendous industrial development, which in 30 years made Argentina, in proportion to the population, the greatest exporting country in the world. Foreign capital and immigration were chief factors in the transformation that within a few decades changed an isolated and industrially backwards community into a nation possessing all the appliances and luxuries of the most advanced material civilization. In 1865 circumstances forced Mitres into the Paraguayan War. Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, hated the Buenos Aires quite as much as he did the Brazilians, with whom he was constantly quarreling, and he was only awaiting a favorable opportunity to vent his dislike on either or both. He counted on the coolness that naturally existed between Urquiza and Mitres to ensure him the former's aid. In 1864, Brazil intervened in the affairs of Uruguay by assisting one of the parties in the civil war then raging. Lopez regarded the action of Brazil as endangering the balance of power in the plate regions. In retaliation he seized the Brazilian province of Matogrosso, which lay along the Paraguay north of his own territory. Mitres wished to remain neutral, although he had no sympathy with the brutal despot, and had an understanding about Brazil's action in Uruguay which safeguarded the interests of Argentina. Lopez, however, insolently demanded free passage across Argentine territory for the troops which he wished to send against Brazil and Uruguay. Mitres' refusal was followed by a Paraguayan invasion, and national honour required that this violation of territory be resented. Brazil and the Flores faction in Uruguay welcomed the Alliance of Argentina. The Paraguayan invasion was repulsed by their combined forces, and the Allies advanced up the Parana against Lopez in his own dominions. It was natural that Mitres should be commander-in-chief of the Allied armies, although Brazil furnished the bulk of the troops and bore the brunt of the expense. Urquiza disappointed Lopez in refusing to revolt against Buenos Aires, and although he took no great personal interest in the war he cooperated in many ways with Mitres. The enormous expenditures of the Brazilian government furnished a splendid cash market for Argentine stock and produce, and the resulting profits compensated for the pecuniary sacrifices involved. In two years' fighting, both the Argentine and the Brazilian armies suffered tremendous losses on the field and in the cholera hospitals. After the great repulse at Curupaiti in 1867, the number of Argentine troops was largely reduced. When the Brazilian fleet finally forced the passage of the river, opening the way to Asuncion, Mitres resigned the command into the hands of the Brazilian general Caixas, and the last two years of the war were carried on principally by Brazilian troops. In the piece of 1870, Argentine's title to certain valuable territory was quieted, and she gained an important commercial advantage by the opening of Paraguay to her trade. Her commercial and industrial leadership in the Plate Valley has never since been endangered. Politically also the indirect results were gratifying. The tremendous sacrifices in the man and money had sickened the Brazilian government and people of foreign complications. Thereafter, the emperor pursued a policy of non-interference, which has left to his Spanish neighbors a free hand among themselves. With the withdrawal of the Brazilian troops from Paraguay, the balance of political power began slowly to pass from Rio to Buenos Aires. Saramiento, the quote schoolmaster president, and quote succeeded Mitres in 1868. His election is said to have been the freest and most peaceful ever held in the republic, and to have represented as nearly as any the will of the electors. The development of population, wealth and industry continued in increasing geometrical proportions. During 45 years before 1857, the population had only a little more than doubled. During the 45 years since that date, the increase has been 450%. The yearly increment holds fairly steady at 4%, which is as large as that of any country in the world. In 1869, the city of Buenos Aires had 180,000 people, and in 1902 it contained 850,000. Immigration had begun to pour in at the rate of 20,000 per annum, and had rapidly increased to over 100,000 when the great crisis of 1890 temporarily interrupted the flow. The years from 1869 to 1872 were prosperous over much of the civilized world, but nowhere more so than in Argentina. Saramiento's administration was however characterized by the beginning of that policy of governmental and commercial extravagance, which has so deeply mortgaged the future of Argentina and has repeatedly hampered the legitimate development of this marvelously fertile region. In the ten years prior to 1872, foreign commerce doubled, but the foreign debt increased five fold. The last of the Caudíos, López Hordan of Entrerrios, revolted in 1870 against Urquiza, who was still governor of that province. The redoubtable old patriot was captured by the rebels and assassinated. In 1901 a monument was erected to his memory in the city of Parana, his old capital, and the day of the unveiling was a national festival in all the republic. The federal government avenged his death and suppressed the insurrection after an obstinate, expensive and bloody little war. Saramiento's administration was however not popular, and the news that he had virtually determined to name his successor created much dissatisfaction. Mitre headed the opposition in the city, while in the provinces some of the discontented went so far as to take up arms. Julio Roca, then a young colonel, defeated them at Santa Rosa, and Saramiento was able to hand over the reins of government to Dr. Aveyaneda without any further serious opposition. A commercial crisis was beginning, when the new president took office in 1874. He initiated a policy of retrenchment, under which the government managed to pay its obligations and weather the storm. General Roca was made minister of war, and came into further prominence as the conqueror of the Indians, who had hitherto prevented white men from settling on the vast and valuable southern Pampas. In 1854, after the fall of Rosas, the Indians recovered most of the territory from which he had driven them twenty years before. Later the frontier was advanced very slowly, but in 1877 Alcina, one of the most successful governors when Osiris ever had, undertook a vigorous campaign. In the following year General Roca threw the power of the federal government into this vastly important enterprise. He carried the frontier south to the Rio Negro, and west to the Andes, attacking the Indians and their fortresses, a policy which ensured permanent white domination. The ultimate consequences of opening up to civilized settlement the immense territories comprised in Roca's conquest cannot yet properly be estimated. The vast region of Patagonia, that was marked up on the maps in our boyhood as an unclaimed and uninhabitable arctic waste, has since been added to Argentina as an indirect result of Roca's campaign of 1878. Buenos Aires put in a claim for the whole of the region conquered from the Indians, but the federal statesmen refused to allow one province to become well-died as large as all the rest together. By a compromise her area was increased to 63,000 square miles, while most of the new acquisition was divided into territories under the direct administration of the federal government. As the time for the presidential election of 1880 approached, political matters began to look ugly. It was evident that Aveyaneda intended to choose his successor. Through the provincial governors, the police, the army, the employees on the public works, and the officials of all kinds, he had easy control of the election machinery. Even the most scrupulous president often cannot prevent the excess size of coercion in his name and without his knowledge. The opposition in South America usually refrain from voting. Indeed, it is considered almost indelicate for outsiders to interfere in a matter so strictly official as an election. The privilege of voting is not so highly prized and so jealously guarded as in the United States and the northern countries of Europe. Aveyaneda and his adherents had fixed upon General Roca as the next president. The principal opposing candidate was Dr. Tejedor, governor of Buenos Aires, who was supported by Mitres Party and also by many of the other Buenos Aires party, the autonomists. The contest was really between Buenos Aires and the provinces. General Roca was strong with the army and with the country, but so tremendously had Buenos Aires grown that the result appeared doubtful. Her population, city, and province had in 1880 reached 650,000, more than a quarter of the total in the whole confederation. The next three provinces put together did not equal her numbers and lagged still farther behind in wealth and ability to concentrate their forces. Radical councils prevailed in Buenos Aires. Roca's opponents, seeing that they were at a hopeless disadvantage with the election machinery in Aveyaneda's hands, determined to use violence. In June 1880 the partisans of Tejedor rose against the federal government. The police and militia of the city joined them and paraded the streets, while the alarm flew to the country, and the troops of the line began to concentrate outside the city. Presently the president and his cabinet fled for safety to the federal camp. For a few weeks there was some skirmishing and much negotiating, and in one encounter near the south end of the city a thousand Buenos Arians were killed. Finally the two sides came to an agreement by which the Roca party retained substantially all that they had been contending for. The general succeeded to the presidency without further opposition, and the city of Buenos Aires was detached from the province. The federalization of the great city was the last step in the process of adaptation that had been going on ever since the expulsion of the Spaniards. Political equilibrium between the provinces and Buenos Aires had been reached. Thenceforth the latter's direct predominance was to be purely intellectual, commercial and social. For the privilege of being capital of the republic the city exchanged her provincial autonomy. Buenos Aires province, as formerly constituted, was the greatest menace to a peaceful federal union. In an assembly where the rights and influence of all the provinces were supposed to be equal, the magnitude of Buenos Aires was a constant occasion for the jealousy of her smaller sisters and for aggressions on her own part. Deprived of the city the remainder of the province was not powerful enough to be dangerous. Now that it is federalized the city itself proves to be the strongest tie binding together the different parts of the confederation. The greatest of all the waves of material prosperity reached its culmination during Roca's first administration. Business fairly boomed. Foreign commerce increased 75 percent from 1875 to 1885. The exports of hides, cattle, wool and wheat swelled from year to year. The railroad mileage tripled in 10 years. The revenues mounted 60 percent in five years. The use of the post office, that excellent measure of education, wealth and higher national energies tripled. All danger of disturbances serious enough to affect property rights had long since passed. The provincial governors worked harmoniously with the federal authorities. A part of Roca's system was to rest his power as chief executive on the cooperation of the governors. The members of congress also bore somewhat the same relation to the president. As a rule a majority in congress supported his measures. In spite of present prosperity dangers had been inherited from past administrations. There were weak spots in the political and financial structure that had grown too rapidly to be all together well built. The people still lacked the hard and continued training in business that older nations have had, and the national temperament tended towards a reckless optimism. European moneylenders stood ready to stimulate this tendency by offering easy credit facilities in return for careless promises of exaggerated interest rates. The medium of exchange was a vastly inflated and fluctuating paper currency. From the beginning Argentine rulers had resorted to note issues to tide over their pecciniari difficulties. When Rosas assumed power in 1829 the paper dollar was worth 15 cents and by 1846 he had driven it down to four cents. In 1866 Mitre's administration had established a new arbitrary power at 25 paper dollars per one gold dollar. Sarmientos extravagance made suspension necessary and sent gold to a premium. In 1883 President Roca remodeled the currency issuing new notes convertible into gold and exchanging them for the old paper at the rate of 25 for one. But his effort to contract and steady the circulating medium excited protests from a community that was growing rich in the rapid inflation of values. Foreign money was being loaned to all sorts of Argentine enterprises on a scale that considering the small population of the country has never been precedented anywhere. Railroads, ranches, commercial houses, banks, land schemes, building enterprises were capitalized for the asking. The provincial governments borrowed money recklessly while interest was guaranteed on new railroads and charters granted to all sorts of speculative enterprises. The nation undertook to supply itself in a single decade with the drainage works, the docks, the public buildings, the parks, the railroads that older countries have needed a generation to provide. So much capital was being fixed that the attempt at species resumption cramped the speculative world. Within two years it was given up and issues of paper money resumed. General Roca retired from office in 1886 and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Juarez Thelman. The four years during which the latter remained in office are memorable for reckless private and public borrowing. The healthy activity of General Roca's administration gave place to a mad fever of speculation. Congress passed a National Banking Act and under its provisions banks of issue were established in nearly every province. The paper circulation almost quadrupled and the premium on gold doubled. The federal government followed the examples set by the provinces and municipalities and burdened the country with an indebtedness which has mortgaged the future of the country for years to come. Between 1885 and 1891 the foreign debt was increased nearly threefold. During 1887 and 1888 few apprehensions of the inevitable result of the inflation seem to have been entertained. Up to the very day of the crash of 1889 the government cheerfully continued to borrow, to plan magnificent public improvements and to build expensive railways. The public speculated confidently in the mortgaged script issued through the provincial mortgaged banks. Early in 1889 the government began to have difficulty in meeting some of the enormous obligations which it had undertaken. Conservative people became apprehensive. The independent press raised a warning voice. A ministerial crisis was followed by a panic in the exchange. The new secretary of the treasury in an effort to prevent further depreciation of the currency diverted the redemption fund held by the government for bank issues. The currency dropped with sickening rapidity. The bubble companies collapsed. The public realized that many of the banks were unable to meet their obligations. At this crisis public alarm and indignation found event in the formation of a revolutionary society called the Civic Union which was pledged to overthrow President Thelman. On the 26th of July 1890 disturbances began and there was a little fighting in the streets. Police and troops however put no spirit into their efforts to suppress the rioters. The president's best friends urged him to resign and Congress passed a formal memorial to that effect. There was nothing for him to do but to obey the manifest wish of the people. He handed in his resignation and the vice president, Dr. Carlos Pellegrini, peacefully succeeded him. The situation went from bad to worse. In 1891 the currency dropped to 23 cent on the dollar. The banks failed and the laws for collection of debts were suspended for two months. The most which Dr. Pellegrini could hope to do was to hold things together until the general election should be held 15 months later. No human wisdom could devise measures that would give immediate prosperity and the public would be satisfied with nothing less. Dr. Pellegrini had to wait until later years for a proper appreciation of his labors. The other two great national figures were General Roca and General Mitre. The first had the prestige of his strong and successful administration. He enjoyed the confidence of the army and was the head of the great nationalist party which was especially powerful in the provinces. General Mitre, the most eminent citizen of Buenos Aires and in a way the living embodiment of the previous 40 years of national history, had inevitably been selected as chief of the civic union. He had therefore led the movement through which the public opinion of the capital had overthrown Selman. Mitre and Roca had cooperated in securing a peaceful transfer of the government from Selman to Pellegrini. Roca was inclined to favor Mitre for the presidency but it soon became evident that the latter could not control the more radical members of the civic union and that his candidacy would not reconcile all parties. On the 19th of February 1891 an attempt to assassinate Roca was perpetrated in the streets of Buenos Aires. The spirit of mutiny grew alarmingly and a state of siege was proclaimed. The civic union split into warring camps. Trouble broke out in Cordova and successful revolutions overthrew the legal state governments in Catamarca and Santiago del Estero. Mitre and Roca formally withdrew from active political life in the hope that this might placate the dissident politicians. The candidate fixed upon by the wing of nationalists who adhered to Roca and the moderates of the civic union led by Mitre was Dr. Luis Sainz Pena ex-justice of the Supreme Court. The Pellegrini government gave him its earnest support and the charges were made by the radicals that their votes would be forcibly suppressed in the election of October 1891. They determined to anticipate violence with violence, but on the eve of the election in October 1891 their leaders were imprisoned and a state of siege declared. Sainz Pena was elected, but the radicals began to intrigue to obtain control of the provincial governments, which would enable them to force his resignation or his compliance with their wishes. Serious trouble broke out early in 1892 in the province of Corrientes, with which the Buenos Aires radicals openly sympathized. The new president quickly cut loose from the Roca wing of the nationalist party and allied himself closely with the moderates civic unionists, now usually called Mitristas. The president's own son, who had been a candidate against him, headed the faction of the nationalist party that had renounced Roca's leadership. Revolutionary movements against the governors who belonged to the Roca faction began in several provinces. In February there were armed protests in Santa Fe against a new wheat tax. A revolt broke out in Catamarca in April. By July the Sainz Pena administration was in the gravest difficulties. San Luis and Santa Fe rebelled, and in August Salta and Tucumán followed. It was manifest that the president was not strong enough to hold down the selfish factions who saw in the general dissatisfaction and financial distress only an opportunity to get into office by force of arms. Congress remained neutral until it became evident that no accommodation could be reached between the president and his opponents, and that the latter would press on to overthrowing the government and probably precipitate a serious civil war. In this crisis, however, the majority agreed to laws which authorized armed federal intervention in the troubles in San Luis and Santa Fe. But in September the national troops themselves showed symptoms of mutiny, and by this time most of the provinces were convulsed by revolutionary movements, which the central government was manifestly not strong enough to suppress or control. On the 25th of September General Roca took command of the army, the most dangerous radical leaders in Buenos Aires were thrown into prison, and on the 1st of October he captured Rosario, the second city of the republic, and the chief place in Santa Fe, which for months had been in the hands of revolutionists. This was a beginning of the end of the troubles that managed public order. Six million dollars had been expanded by the government in fruitless marchings to and fro of troops, but no serious harms had been done. The scene of the contest between the ambitious factions was transferred to congress, the cabinet, and the press. Throughout 1893 and 1894 the presidents struggled with his factional and financial difficulties, and gradually lost control of congress and prestige in the country. Meanwhile commercial liquidation was proceeding normally, and as always, painfully. The great provincial mortgage bank, through the agency of which a vast amount of the land script had been issued in the Salman days, was granted emoratorium for five years. Other actual bankruptcies were legally admitted and enforced. The mortgage script, payable in gold, was replaced by currency obligations. The government had proved unequal to the task of balancing its own receipts and expenses. Taxes were increased until rebellion seemed imminent, but expenditures still outran them. The deficits mounted in spite of the efforts toward economy and returning prosperity of the business world. The boundary dispute with Chile had assumed a threatening aspect. War seemed imminent, and the military and naval estimates were largely increased. In January 1895 President Santh Pena called an extra session of congress to vote supplies for the expected war with Chile and to consider the financial proposals of the government. Congress demanded that political grievances should be redressed. The president had been persecuting the army officers, who had been implicated in the revolutionary disturbances, and a vast majority of congress insisted that a complete amnesty be granted to all political offenders. When the president refused, the cabinet resigned in a body, and congress and the opposition brought every pressure to bear. It was soon evident that congress must win, and on the 22nd of January 1895 the president resigned. The vice president, Dr. Uri Buru, succeeded for the unexpired period of three years, during which little progress was made toward a settlement of the nation's financial difficulties. Symptoms of renewed extravagance appeared. In 1897 the issuance of 10 million dollars of Mordgech script was authorized, and the city of Buenos Aires received permission to borrow 5 million. Work on the great docks of Buenos Aires, costing 35 million, was pushed to completion, and in February the paper dollars dropped back to 33 cents, while the deficit for the year was over 20 million. In January 1897 General Roca was nominated for the presidency by the Convention of the National Party, with Dr. Pellegrini in the chair. There was no real opposition to his election. Again and again during a quarter of a century he had proved himself able to cope with the most difficult situations which had arisen in Argentine affairs. In 1890 his firmness and adroitness had saved the country from the agony of a useless political upheaval after the failure of the Thelman administration. During the anxious months that followed the panic his generosity had secured a cooperation of the moderates of Buenos Aires with his own immediate followers in holding back the radicals and revolutionists in check. During the critical year of 1892 the outbreaks against the science-penia administration increased in violence until it seemed as if the country would be convulsed with a serious civil war. But when Roca stepped in the tide of this organization turned and his firm hand re-established the authority of the federal government. His prestige and his personality enabled him to count upon an obedience from the chiefs of the provincial factions which was of inestimable value. He possessed those rare and indispensable qualities which make a man a center around which other men can rally. He had built up the one really national party in the country and was faithful to his friends and his adherents but sufficiently broad-minded to combine with other parties when the interests of the whole country demanded it. General Roca entered upon his second presidential term in the beginning of 1898. One of his first acts was to intervene in Buenos Aires province and put an end to a deadlock between the governor and the provincial assembly. The boundary dispute with Chile, a question which, in spite of the earnest desire of both governments for peace, might at any time precipitate a ruinous war was submitted for settlement by arbitration. W. J. Buchanan, the United States minister at Buenos Aires, named as arbitrator for the northern frontier, quickly announced a decision which was promptly accepted by both parties. The more complicated southern frontier could not so easily be prepared for submission. A serious misunderstanding arose and both countries felt compelled to spend large sums for armaments which they knew they could ill-afford. Happily, a decision was at last rendered in 1902. No question now remains open which is likely to involve the external peace of Argentina. Internal peace has not been menaced during General Roca's term. The commercial situation of the country has vastly improved. Immigration, which had largely ceased after 1890, has again risen to over a hundred thousand a year. Wheat exports rose from four million bushels in 1897 to 61 million in 1900. The local exports in 1899 went 185 million dollars, twice as great per capita as the record exports of the United States. There have been no issue of paper money and the value of the currency has risen to forty cents. The government has established a new artificial power at a little more than this sum and has begun accumulating a gold reserve. A resumption of species payment is soon expected. Nevertheless, the chief difficulties and preoccupations of the Roca administration have been with financial questions. A deficit of 70 million dollars had accumulated in the few years before 1898, and the interest on the immense public debt makes an equilibrium in the budget almost impossible. Many of the provincial governments have defaulted, and the national government has had to carry their burdens in addition to its own to satisfy clamorous foreign creditors. In 1901 it was proposed to unify the debt, refunding the whole at a lower rate of interest and specifically pledging certain sources of public income. This plan had the approval of the government, but the national pride was touched by the latter feature. The populace could not bear the idea of giving a sort of mortgage to a country. The passage of the bill by Congress was met with so many demonstrations of popular disapproval that it was abandoned. This change of front was accompanied by the formation of an alliance between the followers of General Mitre and those of General Roca. The industrial impetus already acquired by the Argentine Republic is sufficient to carry it over all obstacles, and it seems assured that there will be a rapid settlement of the whole of this immense and fertile plain. Here nature has done everything to make communication easy, and a temperate climate ensures crops suited to modern European civilization. Two grave perils have so far been encountered, namely a tendency towards political disintegration and an abuse of the taxing power. The former is now remote, for since the railways began to concentrate wealth and influence at Buenos Aires, and to destroy the prestige and political power of the provincial capitals, the national structure built by the patriots of 1853 has stood firmer each year. The Argentine has had a bitter lesson of the evils of governmental extravagance, and still groans under the burden of a debt which seems disproportionately heavy, but the growth of population and wealth will soon overtake it, and the very difficulties of meeting interest are the cause of an economy in administration of which the good effects will be felt long after the debt itself has been reduced to a reasonable per capita. A nation is in the process of formation in the plate valley, whose material greatness is certain, and whose moral and intellectual characteristics will have the widest influence on the rest of South America. And of Section 11. Section 12 of the South American Republics, Volume 1, by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Pietronater. Part 2, Paraguay. Chapter 1, Paraguay until 1632. The beginnings of the settlement in Paraguay have been sketched in the introductory chapter on the discoveries and conquest. In 1526, Cabot, searching to find a route to the gold and silver mines of the center of the continent, penetrated as far as the site of the present city of Asuncion. He had already, in the exploration of the Upper Parana, scattered the southern and eastern boundary of what has since become the country of Paraguay. Ten years later, the exhausted and discouraged remnants of Mendoza's great expedition saw rest and refuge among the peaceful agricultural tribes of this region. Under Domingos Irala, these 600 surviving Spaniard adventurers founded Asuncion in 1536, the first settlement of the valley of the plate. They reduced the Indians to a mild slavery, compelling them to build houses, perform menial services, and cultivate the soil. The country was divided into great tracts called Encomiendas, which, with the Indians that inhabited them, were distributed among the settlers. Few women have been able to follow Mendoza's expedition, so the Spaniards of Asuncion took wives from among the Indians. Subsequent immigration was small, and the proportion of Spanish blood has always been inconsiderable, compared with the number of Aborigines. The children of the marriages between the Spanish conquerors and Indian women were proud of their white descent. The superior strain of blood easily dominated, and the mixed Paraguayan creoles became Spaniards to all intents and purposes. Spaniards and creoles, however, learned the Indian language. Guarani, rather than Spanish, became and has remained the most usual method of communication. The Spaniards of Asuncion were turbulent and disinclined to submit to authority. They paid scant respect to the Adalantaros, whom the Castilian king sent out one after another as feudal proprietors. Until his death, Irala was the most influential man in the colony, but his power rested on his own energy and capacity, and on the fear and respect in which he was held by his companions, more than on the royal commission, that finally could not be withheld from him. Across the river from Asuncion stretched away to the west the vast and swampy plains of the great Chaco. It was inhabited by wandering tribes of Indians, whom the Spaniards could not subdue. They fled before the expeditions, like scared wild beasts, only to turn and mercilessly massacre every man when a chance was offered for ambush or surprise. To the east of the Paraguay River, the country was dry, rolling, and extremely fertile. Though covered with magnificent forests, it was easily penetrable all the way across to the Parana. Its inhabitants were the docile Guaranis, who knew something of agriculture, and in whose villages considerable stores of food were to be found. The population was dense for savages, but they had no political or military organization. Divided into small tribes, which did not cooperate, they rendered little respect or obedience to their chiefs. Under these conditions, Spanish authority rapidly spread over central and southern Paraguay. Before Irala died in 1557, the settlers had reached the Parana on the western boundary and founded settlements nearly as far north as the Grand Cataract. Shortly afterwards, the creoles of Asuncion began their expeditions to the south. By 1580, they controlled the Parana River from its confluence with the Paraguay to the ocean, had established Santa Fe and Buenos Aires on its right bank, and opened up the southern Pampa. The pastoral provinces on the lower Parana were slowly peopled. A large proportion of the energetic Paraguayan creoles preferred the semi-nomadic life of the plains to indolence among their Indian slaves in the tropical forests of Paraguay. The two regions were distinct in climate, habits of life, social and industrial organization. They became separated in interests, and soon were to be divided politically. Though until 1619, the whole province continued to bear the name of Paraguay, the usual residence of the governor was Buenos Aires. Asuncion was often forced to be content with a lieutenant governor and was fast relegated to the position of a neglected and isolated district. In the days of the Spanish conquest, Franciscan monks were the priests who most often accompanied the expeditions, and they took the most prominent part in the earliest establishment of religion. The members of this order, however, with a few notable exceptions, took no special interest in the evangelization of the Aborigines. On the contrary, they were as fierce as the soldiers themselves in their cruelties to the poor Indians. The shouts of a Franciscan monk set on Pizarro Surafians to the slaughter of the incas that surrounded Atahualpa. Those that came to Paraguay preferred to live in the towns, and their conduct towards the Indians differed little from that of the lay Spaniards. It was the genius of Ignatius Loyola that conceived and perfected a machine able to carry Christianity and civilization to these remote and inaccessible peoples and regions. Within a few years after its foundation, the Society of Jesus turned its attention to the evangelization of South America. In 1550, the Jesuit fathers began their work in Brazil. Their successes and failures in that country had little relation with their work in Spanish South America. It is curious, however, that their most successful early work in Brazil should have been done in São Paulo. On the extreme eastern border of the White Plateau, which drains to the west into the Paraná. For a decade or two after 1550, they labored hard to gather the Indians of that region into villages, to teach them Christianity, and protect them against the tyrannies and exactions of the Portuguese settlers. The contest was unequal, the Jesuits were not long able to prevent the enslavement of their proselytes. The Paulistas destroyed the Jesuit missions in their neighborhood and became the most expert in Indian warfare and the most terrible foes of the Jesuit system of all the colonists of South America. Their determined opposition was the most potent cause in preventing the subjection of South America to a theocratic system of government. About 1586, the Jesuit fathers entered Paraguay for the purpose of beginning the evangelization of the Indians of the Plate Valley. They established a school in Assuncion and pushed out on foot into the remote districts. Their success was phenomenal. They spared no pains to learn the language of the savages so that they might teach them in their own tongue. They approached them with kindness and benevolence, showing in every gesture. They availed themselves of the Indians' love of bright colors and showy processions. They went unarmed and alone, offering useful and attractive presence, conforming to savage customs and prejudices, and imposing on the vivid savage imagination with the pomp of Catholic worship. They taught their savage pupils how to cultivate the ground to get greater results, how to save themselves unnecessary labor, and how to live comfortably. They persuaded them to gather into towns where they built comfortable houses and tight warehouses, while the men cultivated the soil and the women spun and wove cotton. The Jesuits came almost immediately into conflict with the interests of the Spanish colonists. They were welcomed at first, because they were expected to lend themselves to the enslavement of the Indians. When their real purpose was discovered, feeling against them rose high. The Creoles clearly saw that it was going to be far more difficult to extend their power over the Indians gathered together in villages under Jesuit protection, then over unorganized and friendless bands of unconverted savages. Before 1610, the number of Jesuits that had come to Paraguay was very small. Among the first was the father named Thomas Fields, a Scotchman. As a matter of fact, the Jesuits were recruited from all the nations of Europe, and under their military system had to go wherever they might be sent. English, Irish, and German names, as well as Spanish, are to be found in the lists of Jesuits who labored in Paraguay. In 1608, Philip III of Spain attended to the complaints that came to him through the powerful chiefs of the Order of the Indifference and Opposition shown by the settlers and colonial authorities, and gave his royal and official sanction to the Jesuit conversion of the Indians along the Upper Parana. By this time, the fathers had penetrated across to the Parana and had followed up that stream far north of the Grand Cataract in latitude 24 degrees, which marks the southern boundary of Paraguay proper. It is hard to understand how they overcame the difficulties of traveling. To this day it is well nigh impossible to reach the Grand Cataract, and years pass without that wonder of natures being seen by the eyes of civilized men. No part of the world outside the Arctic regions is less accessible than the Parana above the Grand Cataract. Yet these heroic priests made that region the principal theater of their operations in the early years of the 17th century. The territory is now all-Brazilian. The boundaries of that republic extended on to the next bank of the Parana, south nearly to the 26th degree, and on the west bank to the 24th. The rivers Parana-Panema and Iwahi are great tributaries coming down from the east between the 22nd and 23rd degrees, and draining a vast extent of the plateau that extends to the Brazilian coast mountains between Curitiba and Sao Paulo, and on their banks the Jesuits established their principal missions. In those days there were no clearly defined boundaries between the Portuguese and Spanish dominions. From 1580 to 1640 the king of Spain was also the monarch of Portugal. The Jesuits held his royal letters patent for the conversion of the Indians of the province of Guaira, the name which this remote region bore. They had no reason to anticipate that they would be accused of being invaders of Portuguese territory, or that they would be interfered with by any Portuguese subjects of the Spanish crown. The nearest Portuguese settlement was at Sao Paulo, from which Guaira could be reached only by the long and tedious descent of the Tieta river to its confluence with the Parana, and thence down that river to the Iwahi. Months would be necessary to make such a journey, great difficulties encountered with waterfalls and rapids, and great privations from want of food in the vast uninhabited regions on the route. The first Jesuits to arrive after the granting of formal authorization by the Spanish king were two Italians. They left Assuncion October the 10th 1610, and it took them five months of incessant travelling to reach the Parana Panema. The work already done there by earlier fathers had borne some fruit. The Indians were prepared for the coming of the new missionaries and readily gathered into the towns which they founded in rapid succession. For the first few years all went well, and within a very short time they claimed to have at least 40,000 souls under their guidance. In 1614 there were 119 Jesuits in Paraguay and Guaira, and the work of evangelizing and reducing to obedience the Holguarani population of the Paranavali went on a pace. For 20 years these Guaira missions spread and prospered, while to the east and south the Jesuits acquired more and more influence with the Indians in Paraguay proper, and more and more hemmed in the creoles of Assuncion. In 1629 a thunderbolt burst upon Guaira out of a clear sky. The Portuguese from Sao Paulo appeared before the mission of San Antonio and destroyed it utterly, burning the church and houses and driving off the Indians as slaves. Other missions shortly suffered the same fate, and within the short space of three years the towns had been sucked, most of the inhabitants of the region carried off or killed, and the remnants had fled down the river under the leadership of the fathers. The paulistas were animated by motifs, some goods, some bed. Primarily they wished to capture slaves. They hated the Jesuits and had themselves suffered from the latter's system of segregating the Aborigines. Only a few decades before their fathers had destroyed the Jesuit missions near Sao Paulo, and they were determined not to permit themselves to be hemmed in and crowded out by Indians ruled and protected by Jesuits. They believed in the doctrine of Brazil for the white Brazilians, and they regarded the Jesuits and their neophytes as natural enemies and fair prey. The sentiment of nationality also animated them. As descendants of Portuguese, they hated the Spaniards and their rule. Their allegiance to the Spanish dynasty, that had usurped the crown of Portugal, sat lightly. The Jesuits came by way of Assuncion, their communications were with the Spanish authorities, and most of them were Spaniards. The paulistas, as Portuguese, viewed with alarm a rapid spread of Spanish ecclesiastics up the Paraná Valley, which threatened soon to reach their own neighborhood. Avaris, love of adventure, race pride, patriotism, hatred of priestly domination, all cooperated to push them on to undertaking these memorable expeditions. The great extension of the Jesuits over the northern and eastern regions of the Paraná Valley occurred during the period when Hernández was the dominant figure of the plate. Creel though he was, this remarkable man was a friend to the Indian and to the missionary work of the Jesuits. His aid and encouragement in 1609 were essential to the latter's success, for he might easily have nullified the effect of the royal permission to evangelize Guaira, a formal document that would have been of little value against the delays and excuses of an unwilling governor aided by the jealous people. After his first term as governor of Buenos Aires, the Spanish government determined to put a stop to the more flagrant of the abuses practiced against the savages and created the office of protector of the Indians. Hernand Darius was named to fill it, and carried out his instructions in a moderate spirit. He understood the country and the situation of the colony well, and did not undertake to abolish Indian slavery. In that tropical climate, the whites will not labor in the fields so long as there are Indians who can be forced to work, and the Spaniards still regarded the Indian as little better than an animal. On the other hand, Hernand Darius was too intelligent not to see that there must be restraints on the cruelties and executions of the creals if the Indians of Paraguay were to be saved from the extermination that had been the fate of the Haitians a century before. The outcome was that though a new code of laws was promulgated by the impracticable Spanish king, which forbade any further enslavement of the aborigines, its provisions were largely disregarded. At the same time, however, the Indians acquired a legal status, and their condition was gradually improved, until it became not much worse than that of the contemporaneous European peasantry. The Jesuits were guaranteed against interference and allowed to go out into the remote wilderness and give to the yet unslaved inhabitants the invaluable protection of membership in their missions. In 1619, the natural and commercial division between Paraguay proper and the rest of the province was officially recognized. The region between the Paraguay and the Paraná rivers was made a separate province, directly dependent upon the viceroy at Lima and the audiencia at Charcas in Bolivia. It included officially the Jesuit missions southeast of the Paraná, as well as the present territory of Paraguay. When the Paulistas began their terrible attacks on the Guayra missions in 1629, the governor of Paraguay refused to send any assistance to the Jesuits. The latter charged him with a corrupt understanding with the invaders, by which he was to share in the profits of the slaves sold. The order had agreed with the Spanish government not to put any arms into the hands of the Indians, so the latter were defenseless against the Paulistas, who attacked Musket in hand. The Creoles and Spaniards in Asuncion resented more and more the presence and power of the Jesuits, and viewed with ill-concealed satisfaction the misfortunes that now overwhelmed the priests. The governor, in declining to send help, was only carrying out the wishes of the people around him. Had the number of whites in Paraguay not been so very small, the Jesuits might have been expelled as they were in Sao Paulo. End of Section 12. Section 13 of the South American Republics, Volume 1, by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Pieternatter. Part 2, Paraguay. Chapter 2, The Jesuit Republic and Colonial Paraguay. We have no accounts of the Jesuit missions in Guayra, or of the tragedy of their destruction, except those that were written by the fathers themselves. These are filled with manifest exaggerations and marred by omissions, which will have few means of correcting. Nevertheless, the bold outlines of a story that, for bravery, pathos, and devotion, rivals any ever told, are clear and indisputable. Within such a short period as 20 years, the Jesuits had not succeeded in training the Guayra Indians to any very high degree of civilization. They complained that the Indians were still prone to return to their worship of their devils. Nevertheless, the massive walls of churches, which have survived in the devastation wrought by three centuries of tropical rains, bear witness that the Jesuits had gathered together a multitude of people and had taught them a measure of skilled labor. Of the completeness of the victory of the Paulistas, there is no doubt. Within three years, tens of thousands of Indians were carried off to Sao Paulo, and hardly a town was left standing in the province of Guayra. Father Montoya, Chief Jesuit, has left an account of the Hajira, which he led down the river. Though he is silent as to the part he took himself, it is hard to read his pages and not give him a place among the world's great heroes. Twelve thousand Indians of every sex and age assembled on the Paranapanema with the few belongings which they had been able to bring from the homes that they were forced to abandon. The Paulistas were daily expected to return, and the only hope of escape was to float down the river and get beyond the Grand Cataract of the Parana. The journey to the beginning of the falls was made without any great losses. There the difficulties began. Ninety miles of falls and rapids intervene between navigable waters above and below the Grand Cataract. Across the river valley extends a mountain chain with slopes rugged and covered with dense vegetation. The river divides into various channels, and the sides of the gorges are clothed in cane breaks and tangled forests, through which a path had to be cut with machetes. These poor Jesuits and their thousands of scared patient Indians had no boats awaiting them at the foot of the hills, so they had to continue their dreary passage through the gorges and cane breaks, where wild Indians lay in ambush with poisoned arrows, until at last a place was reached where canoes could be built. Still they struggled on, the indomitable Jesuits taking every precaution, though out of immediate danger from the Paulistas when they had passed the Cataract, the Spaniards on the right bank below were hardly less to be feared. They were waiting on the shore of the Parana for news of the fugitives in order to pounce on them and make a rich hole of slaves. The provisions were exhausted, but the Jesuits dared not apply for help to the Creoles. Fever broke out, and, sick and starving, the devoted Jesuits and their uncomplaining followers worked away on their boats and rafts. At last they got them ready, and, slipping past the Spanish supplements in the night, they finally reached some small Jesuit missions near the mouth of the Iguazu, 500 miles from their starting point. The Jesuits resolved to evacuate Guaira completely and to build up their power anew in the country between the Parana and the Uruguay. Within the next few years they had occupied the country that is now the Argentine territory of the missions. This tract lay directly across the Parana, from that part of Paraguay proper in which the Jesuits were most powerful to the other side of the Uruguay, where was a fertile territory which proved an excellent field for the extension of the settlement. Before many years these missions stretched in a broad band from the center of Paraguay 300 miles to the southeast. They dominated southern Paraguay and halved the present Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, with the country that lies between, while their towns lined both banks of the upper Uruguay and the middle Parana, cutting off the Creoles from extending their settlements up either of these great rivers. Now that the priests had concentrated their forces so near, the alarm of the Creoles became acute. The Jesuits managed to obtain the dismissal of the governor who had refused to send them aid when they were attacked by the Paulistas and were driven from the Guaira. But his successor also became a partisan of the Creoles as soon as he reached Asuncion. He visited the missions near the river Parana and ordered that they be secularized on the ground that these regions had already been subjected by Spanish arms before its occupation by the priests. But the Jesuits were good lawyers and had powerful friends at every court, so the governor was forced to reverse his action. The next governor helped to make the Jesuits secure from Paulista's interference below the Grand Cataract by defeating an important expedition which had reached the new missions. The Paulistas did not confine their aggressions to the missions but alarmed the Spanish Creoles themselves by penetrating west of the Parana into Paraguay proper. Even Asuncion did not feel safe for a time. The Jesuits had now begun to arm and drill the Indians. Though the Paulistas made expeditions from time to time and the Spanish and Jesuit frontier settlements were frequently aroused by the news of a bloody raid and of the rapid depredations of a band of these dreaded marauders, there was never again such a wholesale destruction as had taken place in Guaira. The frontiers of the Spanish and Portuguese peoples on the Parana remained to this day substantially as they were fixed by the Paulista expedition of 1630 to 1640. In their conflict with the Jesuits, the Creoles shortly received a valuable reinforcement in Bishop Cardenas, a very able and energetic prelates and a man gifted as a ruler and statesman. Born in the city of Charcas on the Bolivian Plateau, he was a Creole of the Creoles. He became a great missionary and evangelist throughout a Peru of Tucuman, acquiring wonderful fame and popularity by his eloquence. In spite of the fact that he was a Creole, he was immensely popular among the Indians and seems to have been a natural leader of both branches of the native population. He bitterly hated the Jesuits. As a member of the rival Franciscan order, his professional jealousy was aroused by their success and his Creole prejudices were outraged by their efforts to prevent the extension of white power amongst the Alboreans. By sheer force of ability and eloquence, he rose into great prominence in southern Spanish America and was rewarded for his successful labours in Tucuman by being a pointed Bishop of Paraguay. There the Creoles accepted him as their leader and he soon became the dominant figure in the community. He quarreled repeatedly with the governor, but such was his force of character and the skill with which he took advantage of the superstitious reverence for his apostolic office that he invariably achieved his ends. Once the governor, at the head of a file of soldiers, presented himself at the bishop's door to arrest a fugitive whom the bishop had undertaken to protect. When the door was opened, there stood the dauntless priest in full canonicals, defying the governor to cross his threshold. He excommunicated the governor and every soldier who had dared to take part in this affront to his dignity, and, like Hildebrand, he was only appeased when the governor had begged for pardon on his knees. When the governor died, Bishop Cardenas succeeded at Interim. His popularity and prestige were unbounded, and his audacity and courage unprecedented. Uniting in himself the religious, civil and popular power, he controlled the forces of the community more completely than anyone who had preceded him. His great work was the humiliation and destruction of the Jesuits. He hampered their insidious spread on the hither side of the Parana, and attempted the secularization of many of their missions. In 1649 he took the audacious step of issuing a decree expelling all the members of the Society of Jesus, and he actually drove the fathers from their churches and schools in Asuncion itself. The Jesuits appealed to the viceroy, and the governor was sent out to depose him. Twenty years had now elapsed since the Jesuits had armed the mission Indians, and organized them into an efficient militia. An army was, therefore, ready to the new governor's hand. The creals of western Paraguay were riotous and tumultuous, but in that tropical climate they had lost much of the military capacity of their Spanish ancestors. The number of people of Spanish descent was small, and while the secular Indians made admirable soldiers, when disciplined and well-led, they had never been organized by the creals for serious warfare. The military system of the Jesuits immediately proved its superiority. Aided by the prestige of his vice regal commission, the new governor, at the head of the Jesuit army, quickly overcame the hastily gathered levies of the bishop. For the next 120 years the Jesuits maintained their system in southeastern Paraguay, and the regions on both banks of the Parana and the Upper Uruguay. Until 1728 their territory was nominally under the jurisdiction of the governor of Asuncion. Really, however, it was an independent republic ruled by a superior, whose capital was at Candelaria and who was actually responsible to no one except his general at Rome and the authorities at Madrid. In the secular part of Paraguay the formerly turbulent and secular creals sank more and more into the indifference characteristic of the Indians who surrounded them. Early in the 18th century a governor named Antequera, whom the vice regal authorities attempted to depose, was forcibly maintained for a time by the Paraguayan creals, probably the earliest instance of an important movement towards independence which occurred in South America. The Paraguayans only yielded when a compromise was offered. The old ferocity, which the original conquerors had felt against the Indians, gave place gradually to kindlier sentiments. From slaves the Indians rose into serfs and then into peasants, living on good terms with the proprietors of their lands and not more oppressed by Spanish officials than the whites themselves. Secular Paraguay shot in on the west by the impenetrable Chaco with its hordes of dreaded wild Indians, and on the east by the Jesuit territory could not expand. Indeed the impulse towards conquest and exploration which so distinguished the Paraguayan creals in the latter part of the 16th century had completely died out as early as the middle of the 17th century. In 1728 the Jesuit Republic was formally detached from the jurisdiction of Paraguay and placed under that of the government of Buenos Aires. The missions were all situated on or near the banks of the Upper Parana and Uruguay and their line of communication with the outside world ran directly to Buenos Aires. They had few commercial relations with Asuncion and it was inconvenient to maintain even a shadow of political relation with that capital. The Jesuit missions prospered, although curiously enough their population remained stationary. South and east of the Parana, which they occupied, was mostly an open rolling plain admirably suited for pastureage. Herding cattle was the chief employment of the Indians and the chief source of the exports. However, in the forests northwest of the Parana agriculture was more practiced and the principal exports dense were the Mateti and Timber. In the pastoral country the Jesuits did not expand further. They had already gathered most of the Indians who inhabited that region into their missions and the natural increase of population did not justify any new settlements. But in the wooded country across the Parana a few tribes of guaranis had hitherto escaped subjection to either Creoles or Jesuits and farther to the west in the Great Chaco there were many tribes of savage and intractable Indians. In both these directions the Jesuits kept up their missionary efforts. In Paraguay they were successful and converted many tribes of the northern part of that country but in the Chaco they could make little progress. In 1769 the king of Spain issued his famous decree banishing the Jesuits from all his dominions. It was feared that in the center of their power on the Upper Parana they might offer resistance. They commanded a population of more than 200,000 Indians fairly well armed and disciplined and absolutely devoted to them. Nevertheless they submitted quietly. Spanish officials replaced the Jesuits in control of the civil and commercial interests of the mission towns and priests of other orders were sent up to continue spiritual instruction. The Spanish officials were however not successful in holding the Indians together. Their exactions and cruelties drove the Indians to despair and within a very few years emigration began. The seven missions to the east of the Uruguay had been traded by Spain to Portugal in 1750 and most of their inhabitants had been killed or driven across the Uruguay. The most populist missions lay between the Uruguay and the Parana in the territory that today forms the upper part of Corrientes and the missions territory. A large proportion of their inhabitants fled down the Uruguay into Entre Rios and Uruguay proper. Those on the west side of the Parana largely remained or removed only far enough to coalesce with the secular Indians of Paraguay. Some of the outlying and more remote missions were abandoned altogether and Paraguay then assumed its present extent. The population was fairly homogeneous and its vast majority was composed of descendants of the Aborigines with comparatively few Spaniards and Creoles of mixed blood forming the upper strata of society. The country felt few of the quickening and disturbing influences which were already animating the regions at the mouth of the river towards the end of the 18th century. Little effort was necessary to get a subsistence from the teeming soil and content with their luscious oranges, their mate and their unlimited tobacco, the Paraguayans led an idyllic existence. They had little sympathy with the turbulent, active-minded population which was crowding into Buenos Aires and making it a commercial, political and intellectual focus. Agricultural in their habits they disliked the hard-riding gauchos of the southern plains hardly less than the turbulent Indians of the Chaco. In the movements that preceded the revolution of 1810 they took no part. End of section 13. Section 14 of the South American Republics, Volume 1 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, recording by Piotr Natter. Part 2, Paraguay, Chapter 3, Francia's Reign. On the 25th of May 1810 a revolutionary movement in Buenos Aires overthrew the Spanish viceroy. Its leaders were young Creole liberals, natives of Buenos Aires, and a junta was formed from their number which undertook the supreme direction of affairs. Prompt measures were taken to overthrow the Spanish provincial authorities and to secure the cooperation and obedience of all the subdivisions of the vice-royalty. Manuel Belgrano, one of the enthusiastic leaders of the movement, was sent up the river to take possession of Entre Rios and Corrientes for the junta and to attack the Spanish governor of Paraguay. He was accompanied by only a few hundred troops, but he counted on the sympathy and help of the people among whom he was going. In Entre Rios and Corrientes, which were mere administrative divisions of the province of Buenos Aires, he encountered no difficulty. The Gauchos, who formed almost the whole population, hated outside control and cared little who claimed to be supreme at Buenos Aires. Belgrano marched through the center of these districts and reached the Parana at the old Jesuit capital of Candelaria. Once across the river, he found a different atmosphere. The home-loving Indian population regarded Belgrano's band as invaders and responded promptly to the call of the Spanish governor, old Velasco, to take up arms and repel the aggression. The Paraguayans hated the Buenos Aires with an intensity born of ignorance and isolation, and a considerable force of militia assembled for the defense of Asuncion. Among its most popular leaders was a native Paraguayan named Yegros. Belgrano was not opposed until he approached within 60 miles of Asuncion, but on the 19th of January 1811 the Paraguayans turned and crushed his little army. He retreated to the south, and on the 9th of March was captured with his whole force. This repel ended, once and for all, the hope cherished by the Buenos Aires Liberals of persuading or compelling the submission of Paraguay. The Battle of the 19th of January and the hostile attitude of the whole Paraguayan people definitely assures Paraguay's independence from Buenos Aires. It soon became evident that independence from Spain had been secured as well. In contact with their Argentine prisoners, the more intelligent Paraguayan leaders were quickly convinced of the advantages which Home Rule would bring to Paraguay, and that they themselves ought to control the government until affairs in Spain should be settled. The governor had no Spanish troops nor any hope of receiving help either from the distracted mother country or from the governors of other parts of South America. Each of them had enough to do in taking care of themselves. Velazco's secretary was an educated Buenos Arian, a liberal and an autonomous. He plotted the overthrow of his chief in connection with a Paraguayan officer who was popular with the troops in Asuncion. Two months after Belgrano's surrender, a bloodless revolution occurred. The governor offered no resistance. He simply stepped to one side and became a private citizen, while the patriots took possession of the barracks and began casting about blindly for a solid basis for a new government. After a good deal of confusion, the prominent citizens of the province were called in a sort of rude constituent congress and a junta was formed. General Yegros and Dr. Francia were the two most prominent and popular men in the country, and they were naturally and inevitably selected as chief members. Yegros had been the principal leader of the militia, and Francia was considered the most learned and able man in the community. He was a lawyer who has become a sort of demigod to the lower classes by his fearless advocacy of their rights and inspired almost superstitious reverence by his reputation for learning and disinterestedness. He was selected as secretary, while Yegros, an ignorant soldier, became president of the junta. Francia's abilities and courage immediately made him the dominant figure. Jealousy arose, and he stepped out for a while, but the weaker man who succeeded him could not control the situation. Two years later a popular assembly met, which was ready to submit to his advice and everything. The junta was dismissed, and he and Yegros were invested with supreme power under the title of consuls. A year later he forced Yegros out, and with general consent assumed the position of sole executive, and in 1816 he was formally declared supreme and perpetual dictator. For the next 25 years he was the government of Paraguay. History does not record another instance in which a single man so dominated and controlled a people. A solitary, mysterious figure, of whose thoughts, purposes and real character little is known, the worst acts of his life were the most picturesque and alone have been recorded. Although the great Carlisle includes him among the heroes whose memory mankind should worship, the opinion of his detractors is likely to triumph. Francia will go down to history as a bloody-minded, implacable despot whose influence and purposes were wholly evil. After reading all that has been written about this singular character, my mind inclines more to the judgment of Carlisle. I feel that the vivid imagination of the great Scotchman has pierced the clouds which enshrouded the spirit of a great and lonely man, and has seen the soul of Francia as he was. Cruel, suspicious, ruthless and heartless as he undeniably became, his acts will not bear the interpretation that his purposes were selfish or that he was animated by mere vulgar ambition. The population over which he ruled had for centuries been trained to obedience by the Jesuits and the Creole landowners. The Creoles were few and the Spaniards still fewer. Francia based his power upon the Indian population and not on the little aristocracy whose members boasted of white blood. Convinced that the Indians were not fit for self-government, he also believed that it would be disastrous to permit the white oligarchy to rule. He proposed to save Paraguay from the civil disturbances that distracted the rest of South America. He therefore absorbed all power in his own hands and ruthlessly repressed any indications of insubordination among those of Spanish blood. The Indians blindly obeyed him and he relentlessly pursued the Creoles and the priests, seeming to regard them only as dangerous firebrands who might at any time start up a conflagration in the peaceful body politic and not as citizens entitled to the protection of the state. He absorbed in his own person all the functions of government. He had no confidence and no assistance. He allowed no Paraguayan to approach him on terms of equality. When he died, a careful search failed to reveal any records of the immense amount of government business which he had transacted during 30 years. The orders for executions were simple messages signed by him and returned to be destroyed as soon as they had been carried out. The longer he lived, the more completely that he applied his system of absolutism and the more confident he became that he alone could govern his people for his people's good. He adopted a policy of commercial isolation and intercourse with the outside world was absolutely forbidden. Foreigners were not permitted to enter the country without a special permit and once there were rarely allowed to leave. He neither sent nor received consuls nor ministers to foreign nations. Foreign vessels were excluded from the Paraguay River and allowed to visit only one port in the southeastern corner of the country. He was the sole foreign merchant. The communistic system inherited from the Jesuits was developed and extended to the secular parts of the country. The government owned two-thirds of the land and conducted great farms and ranches in various parts of the territory. If labor was needed in gathering crops, Francia had records to forced enlistment. Those Indian missions which remained free, he brought gradually under his own control and followed the old Jesuit policy of compelling the wild Indians to work like other citizens. Dreading interference by Spain, Brazil or Buenos Aires, he improved the military forces and began the organization of the whole population into a militia. His policy however was peaceful and the difficulty of getting arms up the river, passed the forces of the Argentine warring factions, prevented his organizing an army fit for offensive operations even if he had desires to head one. As he grew older, he became more solitary and ferocious. Always a gloomy and peculiar man, absorbed in his studies and making no account of the ordinary pleasures and interests of mankind, he had reached the age of 55 and assumed supreme power without marrying. His public labors still further cut him off from thoughts of family and friends, and although it has become asserted that he married a young French woman when he was past 70, nothing is known about her. It is certain that he left no children and died attended only by servants. His severities against the educated classes increased. He suffered from frequent fits of hypochondria. He ordered wholesale executions and 700 political prisoners filled the jails when he died. His morose-ness increased year by year. He feared assassination and occupied several houses, letting no one know where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and when walking the streets kept his guards at a distance before and behind him. Wooed to the enemy or suspect who attracted his attention, such was the terror inspired by this dreadful old man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan literally dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was, quote, el supremo, end quote, and after he was dead for generations he was referred to simply as, quote, el defunto, end quote. For years when men spoke of him they looked behind them and crossed themselves as if dreading that the mighty old man could send devils to spy upon them. At least this is the story of Francia's enemies who have made it their business to hand his name down to execution. The real reason may have been that Francia's successors regarded defamation of el defunto as an indication of unfriendliness to themselves. Devil or saint, hypochondriac or hero, actuated by morbid vanity or by the purest altruism, there is no difficulty in estimating the results of Francia's work and the extent of his abilities. That he had a will of iron and a capacity beyond the ordinary is proven by his life before he became dictator as well as his successes afterwards. All authorities agree that he had acquired as a lawyer a remarkable ascendancy over the common people by his fearlessness in maintaining their causes before the courts and corrupt officials. He did not rise by any sycopant arts indeed he never veiled the contempt he felt for the party schemers and officials around him. When he had supreme power in his hands he used it for no selfish indulgences. His life was austere and abstemious, parsimonious for himself he was lavish for the public. He would accept no present and either returned those sent him or send back their value in money. Though he had been educated for the priesthood and had never been out of South America he had absorbed liberal religious principles from his reading. Nothing could have been more likely to offend the Catholic Indians upon whose good will his power rested than his refusal to attend mass, but he was honest enough with himself and with them not to simulate a sentiment which he did not feel. In his manners and life he was absolutely modest, he received any who chose to see him. If he was terrible it was to the wealthy and the powerful the humblest Indian received a hearing and justice. During his reign Paraguay remained undisturbed, wrapped in a profound peace. The population rapidly increased and though commerce and manufactures did not flourish nor the new ideas which were transforming the face of the civilized world penetrate within his barriers, food and clothing were plenty and cheap and the Paraguayans prospered in their own humble fashion. Though they might not sell their delicious maté there was no limitation on its domestic use and although money was not plentiful and foreign goods were a rarity a fat steer could be bought for a dollar and want was unknown. The old man lived until 1840 in the full possession of unquestioned supreme power dying at the age of 83 years. His final illness lasted only a few days and he went on attending to business to the very end. When asked to appoint a successor he refused bitterly saying that there would be no lack of heirs. His legitimate and natural successor could only be that man who could raise himself through the mass by his force of character and prove himself capable of dominating the disorganizing elements of Creole society. Section 15 of the South American Republics, Volume 1 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Once the breath was out of the old man's body his secretary attempted to seize the government. He concealed Francia's death for several hours and issued orders in the dead man's name. But as soon as the news came out the army officers whose assistance was essential refused to obey him. The poor secretary escaped a worse fate by hanging himself in prison and the troops amused themselves setting up and pulling down would be dictators. After several months of anarchy it was determined to assemble a congress in imitation of the first congress which had named Francia Consul. A real representative government was of course impossible in Paraguay but the Creoles who naturally formed the bulk of the congress were desirous of insuring themselves against another dictatorship. They wanted a government where the offices would be passed round. However an executive was necessary and the only executive they knew was an irresponsible one. The title born by Yegros and Francia in the early days seemed a good one and so it was agreed that two consuls should be elected for a limited period during which however they were to exercise very limited power. Among the ambitious and turbulent deputies a directing spirit arose in the person of Carlos Antonio Lopez a well-to-do rancher who had received a lawyer's education and had been careful to keep out of public view during Francia's reign. At this juncture he inevitably came to the front because he was the most learned and farsighted among his fellow Creoles. He was a man of great natural ability and shrewdness, highly intelligent, well read, agreeable and affable in his manners. Selected as one of the two consuls by the congress of 1841 he soon pushed his colleague to one side and became dominant. In 1844 an obsequious congress which had been summoned by him and whose members he virtually named conferred upon him the title of president for the nominal term of 10 years which really was intended to be for life. It is however significant of the milder character of Lopez and the increased power of the office-holding class that he preferred the more republican title of the president held for a nominally limited period to the semi-monarchical one of El Supremo born by his terrible predecessor. As a matter of fact Lopez succeeded to all the absolute power and prerogatives of Francia. The new ruler was no such determined doctrinaire as Francia. He was rather a clever opportunist than a gloomy idealist. He adopted many liberal measures such as the law providing that all negros thereafter born should be free and he even attempted to frame a regular constitution. He abandoned the policy of isolation so dear to Francia and opened the country in 1845. He loved appreciation and especially wished the approbation of foreigners. Though cautious and reluctant to engage in outside complications he was by nature and taste a diplomat and he welcomed the opportunity to try his wits in wider competition than Paraguay afforded. In 1844 Rosas the tyrant of Buenos Aires was engaged in a contest with revolutionists in Corrientes. His ultimate purpose was manifestly to unite the whole played valley under his authority. Lopez shared the uneasiness of other neighbouring rulers and the growth of Rosas' power. The latter promulgated a decree forbidding the navigation of the Paraná to any but Argentine vessels. This decree was an attack on Paraguay's very plain and natural right to reach the ocean and absolutely shut her off from the outside world. Lopez resented the aggression and after many protests declared war against Buenos Aires in 1849. Nothing came of it however except to give his oldest son a chance to see actual service and to emphasize Lopez's enmity to Rosas and his policy. The way was prepared for his friendship with Urquiza, the great leader of the Argentine Provincials and for the opening of Paraguay to foreign commerce. Permission was granted in 1845 for foreign ships to ascend the Paraguay as far as Asunción and foreigners were no longer forbidden to enter the country. On the contrary Lopez evinced a marked desire for their society and encouraged them to come and engage in trade. His manners were engaging and his courtesies untiring unless his will was crossed or his suspicion aroused when he could be very unreasonable and arbitrary. The spirit of the Paraguayan Creoles had been so broken by the terrible proscriptions of Francia's reign that Lopez did not experience much difficulty in ruling them. His milder methods and the terror of a renewal of the cruelties of Francia's time succeeded in holding all demonstrations of lawlessness or rebellion in check. He was averse to shedding blood and his subjects enjoyed substantial liberty in their goings and comings. Justice was well and regularly administered and life and property were almost absolutely safe. Over every kind of affairs however he exercised a patriarchal supervision. One trustworthy traveler tells of being quated on at table in the remote part of Paraguay by a fine appearing man whose face was very sad and who seemed very awkward in handling the dishes. On inquiry it turned out that the waiter was the richest man in eastern Paraguay and had been condemned by the president to serve in a menial capacity as a punishment for insulting a woman. Lopez's ideal of freedom did not contemplate that his people might engage in politics or the discussion of any public affairs. During the civil war in Corrientes Paraguayans were forbidden to speak of what was going on across the river. Sometimes farmers were required to cultivate a certain area in a certain crop. He maintained the government monopoly of Gerba and completed Francia's work of incorporating the three Indians. An instance of his ready interest in foreigners was his connection with a young American named Hopkins who had been sent out in 1845 by the United States government to investigate the advisability of recognizing Paraguay then accessible for the first time. This enterprising young man fired Lopez's imagination with his accounts of the material progress of the United States and Lopez even lent him money to return and form a company for the purpose of introducing American goods and cigar manufacture into Paraguay. Hopkins, after several years, succeeded in interesting some American capitalists and came back and established his factory. At first Lopez was delighted but he soon quarreled with the Americans. The etiquette in Paraguay was that the president should remain seated with his head on when he granted an audience and the manners of the visitor were expected to be correspondingly humble. The Americans mortally offended him by forgetting themselves in his presence. The situation soon became intolerable and the company retired. After the overthrow of Rosas in 1851, the Parana was declared free for navigation to vessels of all nations by Argentine law and by treaties to which Brazil and Uruguay were parties although Paraguay was not. Nevertheless, Lopez permitted ships to ascend freely to Asuncion. Lopez wished to concentrate all trade at Asuncion and opened no ports north of his capital. The upper course of the river belonged to Brazil but the boundary between Brazil and Paraguay had remained unsettled from colonial times. In his control of the lower Paraguay, Lopez had a lever to force Brazil to terms. He steadfastly refused to permit ships to ascend into Brazil in spite of the latter's persistent efforts to procure the natural and necessary right of egress to the ocean by an international river. While this matter still remained unsettled, Lieutenant Page of the United States Navy appeared in the water which had Asuncion on his survey of the Paraguay. Lopez was delighted and extended every facility to the officer as far as the northern boundary of Paraguay. Page went on up to Brazil. Lopez was offended for he feared that he would be at a disadvantage in his further negotiations with Brazil by having apparently granted to an American ship the permission which he had steadily refused to Brazilians. Unfortunately, just at this time occurred the quarrel with the American promoter Hopkins. The American officer took his countryman's side, giving him refuge on board the water which. This so enraged Lopez that he issued a decree prohibiting foreign war vessel from entering Paraguayan waters, and one of his forts fired at the lieutenant's vessel, killing a man. This outrage brought about Lopez's ears a naval expedition which compelled him to apologize and to agree to reimburse the Hopkins company. Brazil also sent a fleet up the Parana to coerce Lopez into granting free transit along the Paraguay, but he cleverly held the Brazilians in parlay until he had an opportunity to fortify the river. England's gun boats at Buenos Aires virtually held the Paraguayan flagship with Lopez's eldest son on board as hostage for a young British subject named Constance who had been imprisoned and condemned to death for complicity in a conspiracy at Assunción. Lopez was forced to release him and pay damages. These humiliations changed his love for foreigners into a bitter hatred and he began to prepare his country to resist their aggressions more effectively. From his youth he had trained his sons to succeed him. Francisco, the eldest, early evinced the taste for military affairs. When only 18 years of age he commanded the expedition of 1849 into the Argentine and thence forward continued to be his father's general-in-chief and minister of war and the active agent in improving Paraguay's military resources. The second son, Venancio, was commander of the Garrison at Assunción and the third, Beninio, was admiral. Though so rigid with his other subjects he gave both his sons and daughters unlimited license and they grew up to regard themselves as members of a royal family. They enriched themselves at the public expense. The sons took as many mistresses as they pleased and gave free reign to all their cruel and bad instincts. The selfishness, obstinacy, unspeakable cruelty and hard-heartedness of Francisco were soon to bring the guiltless Paraguayan people to the verge of extinction. In 1854 Lopeth had sent Francisco to Europe as ambassador. The young men spent 18 months in the different courts of Europe and returned an expert in devices of great capitals and enamored of military glory. After seeing the reviews of European armies he became convinced that Paraguay could be made an efficient military power and that he himself might play a Napoleonic role in South America. His father, exasperated by the repeated humiliations put upon him by other countries, gave herty support to his plans for the improvements of the Paraguayan army. In 1862, after a long and painful illness, the elder Lopeth died. Francisco took possession of his effects and papers and produced a will naming himself vice president. Words sent to the military chiefs of the different towns ensured the assembling of an obedient congress at Asuncion by which he was formally elected and proclaimed president and invested with all the absolute power wielded by his father and Francia. End of Section 15. Section 16 of the South American Republics, Volume 1 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 2 Paraguay, Chapter 5 The War The new president was 35 years old, good-looking, careful of his appearance, fond of military finery and strutted as he walked. He spoke French and Spanish fluently, but with his officers and men used only Guarani. He was an eloquent speaker and had the gift of inspiring his troops with confidence in himself and contempt for the enemy. He had a will of iron, his pride was intense, he was absolutely unscrupulous and had no regard for the truth. He never showed any feeling of kindness to his most devoted subjects. He ordered his best friends to execution. He tortured his mother and sisters and murdered his brothers. The only natural affection he ever evinced was a fondness for Madame Lynch, a woman whom he had picked up in Paris and for her children. He seems to have treated her well to the last, but his numerous other mistresses and their children he heartlessly abandoned. Though physically an aren't covered, no defeats could discourage him. He fought to the last against overwhelming odds and was able to retain his personal ascendancy over his followers, even after he had been driven into the woods and all reasonable hope was lost. He began his reign like a Mohammedan sultan by ridding himself of his father's most trusted counsellors, imprisoning and executing the most intelligent and powerful citizens and banishing his brothers. The military preparations which he had begun as his father's minister of war were continued with increased vigor. The warlike Argentines and Uruguayans and the powerful Empire of Brazil laughed at his pretensions to become a real factor in South American international affairs, but their laughter soon cost them dear. He was a monarch of a compact little state whose position behind rivers in the center of the continent made it admirably defensible. Its 800,000 inhabitants were obedient, brave and physically vigorous, accustomed for generations to regard their dictator as the greatest ruler in the world, knowing no duty except absolute compliance with his will, they never doubted that under his leadership they would be invincible. He knew that he could raise an army out of all proportion to the size of his country. The problem was how to arm it. With Buenos Aires commanding the only route of ingress from abroad, it had been difficult for his father and himself to obtain war material from Europe. For years however they had been buying all that they could and had accumulated several hundred canon, most of them antiquated cast iron smoothbores. They had fortified the point of Umaita, which admirably protected the Paraguay river from naval attacks, and had established an arsenal at Asuncion. Against Brazil, Lopez had serious cause of complaint. The boundary question was still unsettled, and his possession of the lower Paraguay placed the greater province of Mato Grosso at his mercy, while the existence of that province, geographically a mere northern extension of Paraguay, was a menace to his own safety. Against the Argentines his hatred was not so well founded, but nonetheless bitter. The usual civil war was going on in Uruguay in 1863. The party which held the capital was out of favor at Rio and at Buenos Aires, and Brazil and Argentina were both inclined to support the pretensions of Flores who led the revolutionists. Lopez thought that his own interests were concerned and asserted his right to be consulted as to the Uruguayan affairs. A mighty shout of laughter went up from the Buenos Aires press at the pretensions of the Cacique of an Indian tribe to the position of guardian of the equilibrium of South America. Brazil ignored his protests and calmly went on with her preparations to establish her protégé in Montevideo. In the beginning of 1864, Lopez began active preparations for war. His army already numbered 28,000 men, and by the end of August 64,000 more had been enrolled and drilled. Although ill provided with artillery and horses, and although the infantry were mostly armed with old-fashioned flintlocks, no such formidable force had ever assembled in South America. The news of Lopez's preparations exasperated and somewhat alarmed the people of Buenos Aires, though no one knew his exact intentions. Lopez had in fact determined to compel the Brazilian and Argentine governments to accept his wishes as to Uruguay or to risk all in the hazard of war. Perhaps Hazy dreams of himself as emperor of a domain extending from the southern source of the Amazon, far down the plate valley and over to the Atlantic coast, passed through his brain. Possibly he foresaw clearly that Paraguay had come to the parting of the ways, and that she must either fight her way to the sea or reconcile herself to slow suffocation between the immense masses of Brazil and Argentina. In such a contest, the only allies he could hope for would be revolutionary factions in Uruguay and Corrientes, and possibly the virtually independent ruler of Entre Rios. In case of a war with Brazil alone, the neutrality of Argentina might have been secured by careful management, but in the freer countries the feeling against him as a despot was strong, and the extension of his system would have been regarded as a menace to civilization. Late in 1864 the Brazilian forces marched into Uruguay and joined Flores. Lopez promptly retaliated by seizing a Brazilian steamer which was passing Asuncion on its way to Mato Grosso, and followed up this aggression by an invasion of the latter province. His forces quickly reduced the towns on the banks of the Paraguay as far as steamers could penetrate. It was impossible to send reinforcements over land from Rio. Brazil's counter-attack must be delivered from the south. The empire was unprepared, but its troops poured into Uruguay and Rio Grande as fast as they could be mobilized. The anti-Flores party was crushed by the siege and capture of Paisandu late in 1864. The Argentine government under Mitre proclaimed its neutrality. Lopez was flushed with his easy success in Mato Grosso. The forces he had on foot overwhelmingly outnumbered those of the Brazilians in Uruguay and Rio Grande. He wished to strike the latter before they could be reinforced over Rio Grande and as master of one of Brazil's most valuable provinces dictate terms. To reach the Brazilians it was necessary to cross the Argentine province of Corrientes. He asked for permission to do so, and Mitre refused. Notwithstanding the risk involved, he promptly decided to finish up both Argentine and Brazil at the same time. Sendekis troops across the Paraná, he virtually annexed Corrientes and declared war on Buenos Aires. Lopez destined 25,000 men for the invasion of Corrientes and the conquest of the lower Uruguay valley, but the difficulties of getting so large an army across the river and ready for an advance into a hostile territory were unexpectedly great. The Gauchos of Corrientes trained for generations in civil wars quickly assembled to oppose the Paraguayans. Meanwhile a Brazilian fleet came up, and on the 2nd of June 1865 at Riachuelo decisively defeated the Paraguayan naval forces. Lopez thereby lost all hope of commanding the river. The communications of his army in Corrientes might be cut off at any time, and an advance became impossible. The battle of Riachuelo threw Paraguay on the defensive, and made Lopez's great plan of carrying the war to the Uruguay impracticable. Nevertheless, Lopez did not recall the 12,000 men he had sent across the missions to invade the valley of the upper Uruguay and the state of Rio Grande. The Brazilians were taken unprepared, and early in August the Paraguayans had captured the chief Brazilian town in that region Uruguayana. The failure of the Corrientes army to reach the lower Uruguay left the route up that river free. The Brazilian and Uruguayan army, which had been victorious at Paisandu, marched up the West Bank and defeated and destroyed the rare guard, which the Paraguayans had left on the Argentine side opposite Uruguayana. Lopez's army was therefore cut off from retreat. It was promptly surrounded, and on the 17th of September 1865 had to surrender. This put an end to Lopez's plan of an offensive campaign. Indignant at the invasion of her soil, Argentina had allied herself with Brazil against him. A secret treaty was signed between Brazil, Argentina and Flores, now recognized as ruler of Uruguay to prosecute the war to a finish, to depose Lopez from his throne, and to disarm the Paraguayan fortifications. Lopez withdrew his army from Corrientes and concentrated all his forces in the southwest angle of his own territory. The position was admirable for defense. North of the Parana, and east of the Paraguay, stretched a low, wooded country subject to overflow and intersected by shallow, mud-bottomed lagoons, which were old, abandoned beds of the rivers. The Paraguay protected his right flank and afforded him a direct and easy communication with Assuncion. Batteries on the point of Umaita, which the Brazilian fleet did not dare to try to pass, ensured this line of communication. West of the Paraguay, the great Chaco, their impenetrable, prevented a movement to get north of Umaita on that side. To the east, the swamps along the Parana extended indefinitely, and an advance of the enemy in that direction would have had its communications cut by an army encamped near Umaita. Umaita was therefore the key to the situation, and the allies could not advance until they captured it, or by running the batteries with their fleet, destroyed Lopez's control of the Paraguay. By March 1866, the allies had concentrated a force of 40,000 men just south of the fork of the rivers. About 25,000 were Brazilians, 12,000 Argentines, and 3,000 Uruguayans. The Brazilian fleet, numbering 18 stream gunboats, carrying 125 guns, lay near at hand, ready to cooperate. Protected by the fire of the gunboats, the whole Allied army had little difficulty in crossing the Parana, and establishing itself on Paraguayan soil. Lopez lost heavily in vain attempts to prevent this landing. On the 2nd of May, a force of Paraguayans surprised the allies a few miles north of the river, and badly cut up the vanguard. The allies, however, continued advancing, and took a strong position just south of a great lagoon. Here, on the 24th of May, they were attacked by the whole Paraguayan army of 25,000 men who fought with desperate valor, but at a hopeless disadvantage. A quarter of the Paraguayan soldiers were left dead on the field, and another quarter were badly wounded, while the loss of the allies was half as great. The Paraguayan army was apparently destroyed, but the allies had suffered so severely, and the difficulties of transportation through the swamps were so great that they did not make the sudden dash upon the trenches at Umaita, which might have ended the war. Lopez did his utmost to reorganize his army. Practically the whole male population was impressed into service. The river line of communication to Asuncion, and the strategic railroad thence, up into the most fertile and populous interior of the country, enabled him comfortably to command all the resources of the country, both in man and provisions. Umaita had already been well fortified on the landside, and Lopez now threw up the trenches at the top of the bluff at Kurupaiti, the first high land on the Paraguay river north of the Allied army and south of Umaita, and connected it with the latter fortress. Lopez had the advantage of the services of a clever English civil engineer, and the fortifications, though rude, were soon made practically impregnable to assault. In spite of their defeats, the Paraguayans were as ready as ever to attack when Lopez commanded, or to stand up and be shot down to the last man. They were the most obedient soldiers imaginable. They never complained of an injustice and never questioned an order when given. Even if a soldier were flogged, he consoled himself by saying, quote, if my father did not flog me, who would? Everyone called his superior officer his father, and Lopez was the great father. Each officer was responsible with his life for the faithfulness and conduct of his men, and had orders to shoot any that wavered. Each soldier knew that the men who touched shoulders with him right and left were instructed to shoot him if he tried to desert or fly, and those two knew that the men beyond them would shoot them if they failed to kill the poor fellow in the center of the five. This cruel system answered perfectly with the Paraguayans, and to the very end of the war, they never refused to fight steadily against the most hopeless odds. Meanwhile the Allies awaited reinforcements and supplies in the noisome swamps, dying meantime by thousands of fever. By the end of June, when the Allies finally determined to assault the fortifications around Umaita, Lopez had 20,000 men on the ground. After some bloody and indecisive fighting in the swamps, General Mitre, the commander-in-chief, ordered a grand attack upon the entrenchments at Curupaiti. On the 22nd of September 1866 it began with the bombardment by the Brazilian iron clads. 18,000 men in four columns advanced from the south, and threw themselves blindly against the fortifications. When they came to close quarters, they were thrown into disorder by the terrible artillery fire from the Paraguayan trenches, which cross-enfiladed them in different directions. The enormous canisters discharged from the eight-inch guns point blank at a distance of two or three hundred yards wrought fearful execution. The rifle fire of the Allies was useless, and the Paraguayans simply waited behind their trenches until the Brazilians and Argentines were close at hand and then fired. The Allies retired in good order after suffering a loss of one-third their number. The soldiers obediently kept rushing on to certain death, until their officers, seeing that success was hopeless, told them that they might retreat. The courage of the Paraguayans had been proved in their unsuccessful assaults on the Allies the year before, and now the Argentines and Brazilians showed even in this awful defeat what a stomach they, too, had for hand-to-hand fighting. After the Battle of Curupaiti nothing was attempted on either side for fourteen months. Both sides had had enough of attacking fortified positions. The Paraguayans lay in Umaita, and the Allies occupied themselves with fortifying their camps. The Imperial government made tremendous exertions to reinforce the army. The Argentines also did their best, but the efforts of both were hardly sufficient to make good the terrible ravages of the cholera, which by the beginning of May 1867 had put thirteen thousand Brazilians in hospitals. It was not until July that the Allies felt themselves again ready to take the offensive. A division marched up the Paraná with the purpose of outflanking Umaita on the east, while cavalry raids were sent out to the north and rendered the outlying positions of the Paraguayans unsafe. Finally, in November 1867 the Brazilian troops succeeded in getting over to the Paraguay River north and in the rare of López, and General Barreto captured and fortified a strong position on the bank fifteen miles north of Umaita. This was fatal to the security and communications of López. He made one more desperate and unsuccessful assault on the main position of the Allies, and then began to plan to retire toward Assunção. At the same time the Brazilian iron clads passed the batteries at Curupaita, compelling López to withdraw his troops up the river to Umaita. The war became virtually a siege of the latter place, which was constantly bombarded by the fleet from the front and by the army from the rear. The Brazilian position on the river to the north cut López off from direct river communication with Assunção, and he had to transport his supplies on a new road built in the Chaco Swamps. He began preparations to evacuate Umaita and retreat to the north. In January 1868 Mitre definitely retired from the command of the Allies, and was succeeded by the Brazilian Marshal Cassias. A month later, February 18th, the Brazilian fleet of iron clads finally succeeded in running the batteries at Umaita, and after throwing a few bombs at Assunção, devoted themselves to the more useful task of cutting off the transports to López's army. López's line of river communication was now completely at the enemy's mercy, and a large force could not be maintained at Umaita. He transported his army to the right bank of the Paraguay, recrossing when he got beyond the Brazilian positions. The garrison of 3,000 men, which he left at Umaita, defended itself for six months. In the meantime, he had fortified a new position less than 50 miles from Assunção, and accessible across the country from his base of supplies in central Paraguay. On his right flank, a river battery was erected, which again prevented the Brazilians from reaching the upper river. Opposite this point, however, the Chaco is penetrable, and Cassias landed a force on the west bank, and marching up crossed the river in the rear of López's position. The Brazilians closed in from the north and south on the few thousand Paraguayans, who were all that survived, and after several days of desperate fighting, December 27th, 1868, the Brazilians carried López's position, and he fled for his life to the interior, followed by a thousand men. Even after such a defeat, he was indomitable, and succeeded in gathering another small army, which was pursued and destroyed in August 1869. López again escaped, and took refuge in the wild and mountainous regions in the north of Paraguay. The Brazilian cavalry pursued him relentlessly, but it was not until the 1st of March 1870 that he was caught. In an attempt to escape, he was speared by a common soldier. End of section 16. Section 17 of the South American Republics, Volume 1, by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 2, Paraguay, Chapter 6, Paraguay since 1870. No modern nation has ever come so near to complete annihilation as Paraguay during her five years' war against the Triple Alliance. Out of 250,000 able-bodied men who were living in 1864, less than 25,000 survived in 1870. No less than 225,000 Paraguayan men, the fathers and breadwinners, the farmers and laborers, had perished in battle by disease or exposure or starvation. 100,000 adult women had died of hardships and hunger, and there were less than 90,000 children under 15 in the country. The surviving women outnumbered the men 5 to 1. The practice of polygamy naturally increased, and women were forced to become the laborers and breadwinners for the community. The slaughter was greatest in proportion among the people of white blood. When Nopeth was waiting in 1868 for the final attack of Brazilians, he made use of the last months of his power to arrest, torture and murder nearly every white man left in Paraguay, including his own brother, his brother-in-law, and the generals who had served him best, and the friends who had enjoyed his most intimate confidence. Even women and foreigners did not escape the cold, deliberate, bloodthirstiness of this demon. He had his own sister beaten with clubs and exposed her naked in the forest, had the wife of the brave general, who was forced to surrender at Umaita, speared and subjected to members of the American legation to the most sickening tortures. The minister himself barely escaped with his life. When the Brazilians captured Assuncion in 1868, they installed a provisional triumvirate of Paraguayans, but the country was really under their military government until after the death of Lopeth. A new constitution was proclaimed on the 25th of November 1870, but it was not until a year later that the provisional government was superseded by Salvatore Jovianos, the first president. The new president had no elements with which to establish a government, neither money nor men. The country Paraguayans refused to recognize his authority, and he was shut up in Assuncion. There were three so-called revolutions in 1872 which were suppressed by the Brazilian troops. The country really remained under a Brazilian protectorate for the first few years after the war, and the government was largely a convenience to make treaties and to try to place loans abroad. Toward the end of 1874 Jovianos was succeeded by Hill, and by 1876 the country was finally enjoying peace and freedom from foreign control. The integrity of Paraguay and her continuance as an independent power had been mutually guaranteed by Brazil and Argentina when they began the war against Lopeth, and neither of them could afford to let the other take possession of her territory. So Paraguay was left substantially intact, although she was compelled to give up the territorial claims the Lopethists had so long made against Brazil and the Argentine. The latter even submitted to arbitration her right to a portion of the Chacon north of the Pilo Comayo. President Hayes was the arbitrator, and he decided in favor of Paraguay in 1878. In the Treaty of Peace Paraguay had agreed to bear the war expenses of all allies, and these immense sums are still nominally due from her. As a matter of fact she has not been able to pay anything thereon, and the matter of forgiving the debts is one frequently discussed in Brazil. Population rapidly increased after peace was thoroughly established, and has more than doubled in the last 30 years. In the late 80s the influence of the Buenos Aires boom extended to Paraguay, and the government offered great inducements to attract immigration. The movement was not very successful, but it had the indirect effect of transferring great tracts of land from government to private ownership. Previously two-thirds of the land belonged to the state. One of the colonies was composed of socialists from Australia, who promptly split on their arrival over the question of total abstinence. Those who insisted on being allowed to drink were obliged to leave. Subsequently disagreements about doctrine and the application of the principles of socialism drove out others. The soil of Paraguay is marvelously fertile, but its isolation and the want of markets for the national products make it unattractive to European immigration. Happily Paraguay has not suffered from civil disorders during the slow process of national regeneration, which has been going on since 1870. Most of the presidents have served out their full four years term, and the one or two changes which have occurred have not been accompanied by any bloodshed or interruption in administration. The chief difficulties of the government have been financial. Revenue is small and paper currency has been issued until it is at a discount of several hundred percent compared with its nominal value in gold. But since foreign commerce is inconsiderable and the population lives off the products of its own farms, the results of inflation have not been so disastrous as they might have been in a commercial country. The wave of 20th century progress and immigration may strike this Arcadian region at any moment, but up to the present time the body of the Paraguayans live much as their ancestors. Existence can be maintained with hardly any effort. The people can always get oranges in default of more nourishing food. The climate is lovely, the forests surrounding the peasant's cabin beautiful. Why should a Paraguayan work when he can live happily and comfortably without labour? Merely to procure things which to him are superfluities. It must be remembered that the bulk of the Paraguayan people are descended from the Indians which were found crowded into these garden spots three centuries ago by the Spaniards and the Jesuits. They have never lost their simple submissive stoical character and the rule of the three dictators did not tend to change them. The modern improvements of which they saw most during the reign of Lopeth were muskets and cannon and they can hardly be blamed for preparing old-fashioned ways after their experience during the war. Though the nation was almost destroyed, the surviving remnants show the same characteristics which distinguished their ancestors. The new Paraguay however is not ruled by any bloody-minded despot and the military possibilities of the people will never again be a menace to the liberties of the surrounding nations. Rather is the present ruling class disposed to welcome foreign influences and immigration and this beautiful fertile and easily accessible country stands open to the world. End of section 17