 Section 7 of the South American Republics, Volume 1, by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Argentina, Chapter 5, The Beginnings of the Revolution. Device royalty was a heterogeneous mass. The common subjection of its component parts to device-roy gave it a mere appearance of cohesion. The centering of the commercial currents in Buenos Aires did not furnish an organic connection sufficiently strong to united provinces and cities so widely separated and so different in social and industrial constitution. Upper Peru had been a mining region, and its white population was largely of a shifting character. The bulk of the population were Indians, and the inhabitants of Spanish blood were still taskmasters. Society was as yet in unstable equilibrium, and the different elements had not thoroughly coalesced. Paraguay was an isolated and almost self-sufficing Commonwealth. It was essentially theocratic and averse to receiving external impressions. In Salta and Cordoba the proportion of Indian blood was not so preponderant as in Bolivia and Paraguay. Agriculture was the economic basis. The Creoles and Indians had largely amalgamated politically and socially. And though the people of Spanish descent lived mostly in the towns, they were in close and friendly contact with the civilized Indians who labored in the irrigated valleys. On the White Pampas a new race of men had sprung into existence. The Gauchos, whose business was the herding of cattle, whose homes were their saddles, and who were as impatient of control and as hard to deprive of personal liberty as Arabs or Parthians. The proportion of white blood increased towards the coast. Buenos Aires was the boom town of the region and the time. Its population was recruited from among the most adventurous and enterprising Spaniards and Creoles. Lima and Mexico were centers of aristocracy and bureaucracy, while the social organization of Buenos Aires and its surrounding territory was completely democratic. All were equal in fact. Neither nobles nor serfs existed. The viceroy was little more than a new officer, imposed by external authority and having no real support in the country itself. It is not a mere coincidence that the three centers, Caracas, Buenos Aires and Pernambuco, when the revolutionary spirit spread over South America, should all have been democratic in social organization and far distant from the old colonial capitals. In Buenos Aires, the viceroy himself could not find a white coachman. An Argentine Creole would no more serve in a menial capacity than a North American pioneer. And a Creole hated a Spaniard very much as his contemporary, the Scotch-Irish settler of the Appalachians, hated an Englishman. Not even religion furnished a strong bond of union between the widely dispersed cities and provinces of the viceroyalty. The priests had not been organized into a compact hierarchy. They had little class-feeling. They lived the life of the Creoles and shared the same prejudices. Half the members of the First Congress after the revolution were priests, but they pursued no distinctive policy of their own and offered no effective resistance to the growth of the power of the military chiefs. Commerce with Spain had been authorized, but with other nations it was still unlawful. The Cadiz monopolists still fought hard to preserve their privileges and to control the Atlantic trade as they had controlled the route by the Isthmus. Great Britain had enjoyed a monopoly of the traffic in Negroes during most of the colonial period, but in 1784 all foreign ships carrying slaves were allowed to enter, unload and take a return cargo of the, quote, products of the country, unquote. The Cadiz merchants contended that hides, then the principal article of export, were not products within the meaning of this law, and the Spanish courts decided in their favor. This absurd decision created a storm of opposition in Buenos Aires, but even more unreasonable restrictions continued to be insisted upon. The proposition to allow the colonies to trade with one another was vehemently opposed by the people of Cadiz and their agents in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, England's maritime victories in the War of the French Revolution were sweeping Spanish commerce from the sea, and the people of the plate saw themselves again about to be shut off from the sea unless permissions were granted to ship in foreign vessels. This satisfaction grew apace, and the prestige of the vice regal governments and the influence of residents' paniards were seriously compromised. At the same time there were fermenting among the intelligent and educated youth of the city the new ideas of the North American and French revolutions, liberty, the rights of men, representative government and popular sovereignty. For generations England had cast covetous eyes at South Africa and South America, menaced with exclusion from Europe in her giant conflict with Napoleon, her statesmen determined to seize outside markets and possessions. The cape was captured in 1805, and the next year came the turn of Argentina. June 25th 1806 Admiral Popham appeared in the estuary and 1500 troops under the command of General Beresford were disembarked a few miles below Buenos Aires. The viceroy fled without making resistance, and on the 27th the British flag was run up on his official residence. At first the population appeared to acquiesce, but finally Linier, a French officer and a Spanish employee, gathered together at Montevideo a thousand regulars and a small amount of artillery. The militia of Buenos Aires soon proved themselves anxious to rise against the heretic strangers. Linier crossed the estuary and advancing without opposition to the neighborhood of Buenos Aires established a camp to which the patriotic inhabitants flocked. Within a short time he had armed an overwhelming number of the citizens. The scanty British garrison was shut up in the fort and on the 12th of August the Argentines advanced. After some hard street fighting the English were forced to surrender, and the flags which were captured that day are still exhibited in the city of Buenos Aires with just pride as trophies of Argentine valor. The British expedition might have been successful had it been more numerous or had it been promptly reinforced. If the capture of Montevideo had followed that of Buenos Aires the Argentines would have had no base of operations and their militia would have remained without ammunition and artillery stores. It is interesting to speculate what would have been the subsequent history of the temperate part of South America in such a case. It is possible that the plate would have become part of the British Dominion. British immigration would have followed and the plate might have become the greatest of British colonies. But the opportunity was quickly gone. The successes of 1806 so strongly aroused the spirit of national and race pride that thereafter the conquest of Argentina was a task too great for the small armies which in those days could be transported overseas. No sooner was Bérez Ford expelled than the victors met in Open Cabildo, declared the cowardly viceroy suspended from office and installed the royal audiencia in his place. A few months later the dreaded British reinforcement came. 4000 men disembarked in Eastern Uruguay and Montevideo was taken by assault. In Buenos Aires all was confusion but the people were resolute to resist. Again an Open Cabildo assembled and Lignéa the French officer under whose leadership the victory of last year had been won was given supreme authority. Military enthusiasm spread among all classes and the people were rapidly enrolled in volunteer regiments. When General Whitlock approached the city with several thousand regulars the Argentines confidently marched out to meet him. In the Open they stood no chance and they were compelled to fly back to the shelter of their narrow streets and stone houses. On the 5th of July 1807 the British troops disdaining all precautions marched into the city. Both sides of the narrow streets were lined with low fireproof houses whose flat roofs afforded admirable vantage ground. The Buenos Aires men were well supplied with baskets and the women and boys rained down stones, bricks and firebrands on the masses crowding the pavement below. The British could not retaliate on their enemies but pushed stubbornly on towards the center of the city dropping by hundreds on the way. At the main square in front of the fort barricades had been thrown up and there the English met a reception which flesh and blood could not endure. For two days the conflict raged but finally the English general was obliged to give up and ask for terms. He had lost a fourth of his force and was allowed to withdraw the reminder only on agreeing to evacuate Montevideo within two months. The political and commercial consequences of the English invasion were vastly important. The military power of the Argentine Creoles, hitherto unsuspected, stood revealed. Local pride had been stimulated and at the same time the invasions gave a tremendous impulse to foreign commerce. A fleet of English merchant men had followed the warships and trampled commerce with the world at last became a fact. English manufactured goods flooded the market. Articles, until then beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest, now became cheap enough for the purses of the Gauchos. Buenos Aires' trade was boomed by the sales of imported goods to the interior provinces. Creole jealousy of Spaniards rapidly became accentuated. From this time dates general use of Goths applied to Spaniards as a term of a problem and of Argentines as a designation for the natives of the plate. A cognition could no longer be withheld from the men who had organized and commanded victorious troops, and henceforth the Creoles were in fact as well as in law eligible to offices of trust and profit. Even in the Buenos Aires Cabildo, though all the members were native Spaniards, Creole ideas predominated. Scarcely had the English retired from Montevideo when the course of events in Europe precipitated Spanish South America into confusion. Charles IV, the Pucilanimus king of Spain, allied himself with Napoleon and aided the latter's aggressions against Portugal. The Portuguese monarch was driven to Brazil, the latter country thereby gaining complete commercial freedom and virtual political independence. This naturally suggested to the Argentines that they were entitled to the same privileges from Spain. Charles IV and Godoy, the accomplice of his wicked wife, who really governed in his name, were bitterly hated at home. Napoleon's troops swarmed over the country, and the monarchy itself was clearly tottering to its fall. Ferdinand, heir of Charles IV, conspired against his father and forced the latter to resign in his favor. The Spanish governor of Montevideo at once took the oath of allegiance to the new monarch and act of insubordination to his tutular superior, the viceroy. The latter was the Frenchman Linier, who sympathized with the Creole party in desiring to wait and obtain concessions for the colony before recognizing any of the various climates. A dispute over the oath of allegiance to Ferdinand arose, which marked a definite rupture between the Creoles and the old-line Spaniards, between those who regarded the special interests of the colony as paramount and those who wished at all hazards to maintain connection with the mother country. Charles's abdication was only the beginning of complications. He protested that it had been obtained from him by duress, and with Ferdinand, he appealed to Napoleon as arbiter. The latter forced them both to renounce their claims in favor of his brother Joseph. Everyone in South America was agreed not to recognize Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain, but there was wide diversity of opinion as to what affirmative action ought to be taken. Most regarded Ferdinand as the legitimate king, but he was in a French prison. Charles still claimed the throne, while provisional governments were formed in many cities of Spain to resist the enthroning of Joseph. A central junta at Seville claimed to be the depository of supreme executive power pending Ferdinand's return, and to this junta the Spaniards of the plate gave their earnest and unhesitating allegiance. But the Creoles could not see their way clear to an unconditional recognition of such a self-constituted revolutionary body. Few believed that the Spanish Patriots could withstand Napoleon's armies. If Spain had submitted to Joseph, the various parts of South America would have become independent without any serious struggle. The Goths in the plate were united in a definite policy, loyalty to the only Spanish government that was vindicating the nationality. The Creoles could agree on no affirmative program, but all of them were determined that the Goths should not get the upper hand. The latter rose against linear and tried to install a junta on the model of the other Seville. In view of the menacing attitudes of the Creole militia, the attempt was a failure, but the Frenchmen did not have the resolution to maintain his advantage. The Seville junta finally named a viceroy, and though some of the resolute spirits among the militia leaders wished to resist, the majority shrunk from open defiance of the highest existing Spanish authority. On the 30th of July 1809 the new viceroy took possession. He gained popularity by his decree declaring free commerce with all the world, but his next act opened the eyes of the Creoles to the real effect of the re-establishment of the Spanish system. He sent a thousand men to Charcas in the northern part of the viceroyalty to aid in the bloody suppression of a revolutionary movement undertaken by the Creole inhabitants of that city. The story that shortly came back of wholesale confiscations and executions widened the breach between the Spaniards and Creoles. Meanwhile, another crisis in Spanish home affairs was approaching. Napoleon's armies were sweeping the peninsula from end to end. In the early months of 1810 they overran Andalusia, the center of resistance. It seemed as if the subjection of Spain was about to be completed. On the 18th of May viceroy Cisneros issued a proclamation, frankly revealing the critical situation of the Spanish Patriot and of the junta under whose commission he was acting. All classes of Buenos Aires immediately engaged in feverish discussions as the watch would be done. The Spaniards wished to retain their privileged position. The Creoles were determined to put an end to discrimination against themselves. These were the real purposes of the two parties. The Spaniards did not especially favor absolutism, nor did the Creoles in general intend to renounce the sovereignty of Ferdinand should he ever escape from captivity. Among the Creoles were many liberals, mostly young and ardent men, whom study and travel had convinced of the necessity for racial reform and colonial autonomy. Among their leaders were Saavedra, the commander of the most efficient militia regiment, Vietes, at whose house the meetings of the conspirators were held, Manuel Belgrano, afterwards the brains and right arm of the movement, and two eloquent young leaders, Caste and Paso. The active spirits conspired to depose the viceroy, confident that the measure would be popular amongst all classes of Creoles. On the 22nd of May a committee of popular chiefs waited on him to demand his resignation. Resistance was futile, for he could not rely on the troops. They were Creoles and proud of the fact that Argentines had expelled the British. The office holders tried to arrange a compromise by which an open cabildo should elect the ex viceroy president of a new governing junta. The populace and the militia would not submit, and on the 25th of May, now celebrated as the anniversary of the establishment of Argentine liberty, a great armed assembly met in the plaza. The Creole badge was blue and white, then adopted as the Argentine colors. The proceedings were frankly revolutionary, a junta was named from among the Creole leaders, and the Buenos Aires cabildo obediently proclaimed this body the supreme authority of the viceroyalty. There was no pretense of consulting the other provinces. Spanish constitutional law provided no machinery through which they could be heard, and the capital assumed, as a matter of course, the right of governing the dependencies. The events of the 25th of May were not intended to sever relations between Spain and Buenos Aires. The acts of the new government ran in the name of the 39th, King of Castile and Leon. An able and ambitious coterie of young men came to the front, whose achievements in war, administration and diplomacy were to change the face of South America. In the neighboring cities there were no spontaneous uprisings against the Spanish governors, but the Buenos Aires patriots lost no time in sending out armies to spread their liberal and anti-Spanish doctrines. The first movement was towards the old university town of Cordoba. Here ex viceroy linier had managed to get a few troops together, but not enough to make effective resistance. At the first encounter they were all captured, and the Buenos Aires junta immediately ordered the execution of the captured officers and of the anti-Creole chiefs. This barbarous act is a fair sample of the horrible blood thirstiness of the war between Creoles and Spanish sympathizers. As a rule both sides slew their prisoners, and the combats were therefore incredibly bloody for the numbers engaged. The Buenos Aires army continued its triumphal march through the provinces of Cordoba and Salta up to the Bolivian mountains. The Creole townspeople reorganized the municipal governments on an anti-Spanish basis, and the army increased like a rolling snowball. Not until it had reached the highlands of Bolivia was serious resistance encountered. On the 7th of November the Patriots gained the Battle of Swipacha. The Creoles of Bolivia rose, and the Buenos Aires penetrated rapidly as far as the boundaries of device royalty. Meanwhile Manuel Belgrano had led a small expedition to Paraguay. However the inhabitants of that isolated region showed no disposition to join the Buenos Aires in their revolutionary movement. The Spanish governor allowed Belgrano to advance nearly to Asuncion, but there his little army was overpowered and forced to surrender on honorable terms. Montevideo's capture seemed essential to the safety of Buenos Aires itself. Spanish ships under the orders of its governor located the river and constantly menaced an attack on the Patriot capital. Early in 1811 Artigas with a band of Gauchos from Entre Rios crossed the Uruguay and overran the country up to the walls of the fortress, defeating the Spaniards in the Battle of Piedras. Reinforcements came from Buenos Aires and a siege of Montevideo was begun. At this juncture news came of a great disaster in the north. The Argentines had at first been joined by Bolivian Patriots, but the latter were jealous, and the former, bred on the plains, could not well endure the high altitude suffering in health and efficiency. The viceroy of Peru rapidly recruited a considerable army among the sturdy and obedient Indians of the High Peruvian Plateau. On the 20th of June 1811 the Patriot army was attacked at Waki near the southern end of Lake Titicaca and was virtually annihilated. Bolivia was lost to the Patriots and Spanish authority was re-established as far south as the Argentine plains. This great defeat completely changed the attitude of affairs. The Argentines evacuated Uruguay and the Spanish colonial authorities everywhere took the offensive. The heroic resistance which the Spanish people were now making to the Army of Napoleon's Marshals encouraged the viceroy and governor to believe that Ferdinand would soon again be seated on the throne of his fathers. Spanish ships dominated the Delta of the Parana and the Spanish troops from Montevideo descended at pleasure on the banks of the plate or its tributaries. The Spanish residents at Buenos Aires plotted against the junta but their conspiracy was betrayed and in the middle of 1812 their chiefs to the number of 38 mostly wealthy merchants were arrested and garoted. The situation of the revolutionary government was so desperate that it is not hard to understand why the junta ruthlessly repressed all signs of disaffection. Victoria's Spanish armies threatened them from both Bolivia and Montevideo and fire in the rare would have been fatal. In this crisis of their fate Manuel Belgrano, the great leader of the Buenos Aires Creoles came to the front. A native of the city he had been educated in Spain where he had imbibed liberal principles. On his return he threw himself with all the prestige of his learning, talents and wealth on the side of the Creoles. His faith in the triumph of liberal principles was unalterable and he was a more radical advocate of independence than most of his associates. Though without military training and though his expeditions in Paraguay and Uruguay had not been successful his prestige and his unwavering confidence in the patriot cause pointed him out as naturally the fittest leader. Again he was entrusted with the command and went north to Tucumán where the disheartened fragments of all patriot army were fearfully waiting for the descent of the victorious Spaniards. The inhabitants of Jujuy and Salta had been driven from their homes and for the first time Gaucho horsemen appeared as the principal element of the Argentine army. The junta ordered Belgrano to retire so as to protect Buenos Aires but he disobeyed and stuck to Tucumán and let the Spaniards get between him and the capital. With the country up in arms and the exasperated Gauchos harassing his march the Spanish general did not dare leave Belgrano's army behind him. The Spanish army turned back to Tucumán to finish with the mass of militia there before resuming its march to the capital. To the surprise of South America the result was a decisive patriot victory. The Gaucho cavalry armed with knives and bolos mounted on fleet little horses carrying no baggage and living on the cattle they killed at the end of each day's march followed the fleeing Spaniards up into the mountains and inflicted enormous losses. This victory gave the Argentines for another year assurance against invasion by land and Buenos Aires remained a focus whence anti-Spanish influence could spread over the rest of South America. The Patriots again invaded Uruguay, shut up the Spaniards within the walls of Montevideo and prepared once more to carry the war into Bolivia. All this while the government at Buenos Aires was involved in internal quarrels. The first junta soon expelled its fiercest, strongest and most active spirit, Moreno, who seemed to have been the only man of the period who foresaw the necessity of establishing a federative form of government. With the disaster of Joaquí the necessity for a more compact executive became urgent. A triumvirate assumed the direction of affairs. Its policy was at once despotic and feeble and satisfied neither federalists, advanced liberals nor the military element. The latter was becoming daily more predominant. A radical republican society called the Lautaro, composed largely of young officers, was organized and became virtually a ruling oligarchy. San Martín and Alvear arrived from Europe, and the prestige which they had acquired on European battlefields at once secured for them prominent positions. When the news of the victory of Tucumán reached the city, the military classes revolted, deposed the old triumvirate and installed a new one. This revolution marked the final triumph of the sentiment of independence. The new government was active in every sense of the word. Belgrana was reinforced. San Martín was encouraged in his chosen work of forming the nucleus of a disciplined army fit for offensive warfare. The worn out pretense of employing Ferdinand's name on public documents was dropped. The inquisition, the use of torture and the titles of nobility were abolished. The Argentine revolution had finally assumed a military and republican character. Independence was clearly henceforth its end and purpose. End of section 7 Section 8 of the South American Republics, volume 1 by Thomas Clellan Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 1, Argentina, chapter 6, completion of the War of Independence. Belgrano followed up his victory at Tucumán by another invasion of the Bolivian Plateau. Even to a trained general and a regular army, such a campaign would have been difficult. The defective organization of his hastily gathered militia, his own unfamiliarity with the art of war, and the fact that he was opposed by a clever commander whose army was better drilled and better adapted to operations in that high altitude, all conspired to leave the result in no doubt. October 1, 1813 he was badly defeated at Villapuchio and six weeks later his army was nearly destroyed at Ayauma. With the remnant he fled south to Argentine territory and was replaced in his command by San Martin. The advent of this consummate general and single-minded patriot revolutionized the character of the military operations. Unlike his predecessors and colleagues, he did not concern himself with political ambitions. He had but one purpose, to drive the Spaniards from South America. He knew but one way of achieving it, to whip them on the field of battle. He had none of the brilliantly attractive qualities, none of the eloquence of charm of most South American leaders. He had a horror of display and made but one speech in all his life. By sheer force of will and attention to detail he organized an efficient regular army. The victories that followed were as much due to his painstaking care and foresight as to his brilliant strategical combinations and admirable tactical dispositions. Because he thought another could finish his work better than himself, he voluntarily resigned supreme power on the very eve of the campaign which expelled the last Spaniard from South America and disdaining to offer an explanation went into lifelong exile. So modest was he that his name and services well-knife fell into oblivion, that he is now recognized as the saviour of South American liberty is due as much to the literary labours of the greatest of Argentine historians Bartolome Mitre as to the spontaneous opinion of his countrymen during the first decades after his retirement. General San Martin was born on the 25th of February 1778 in a little town which had been one of the Jesuit missions far up the Uruguay river. His mother was a Creole and his father a Spanish officer who destined his son to his own profession. When a child of only eight he was taken to the mother country and educated in the best military schools of Spain. At an early age he entered the army and served in all the many wars in which Spain engaged after the outbreak of the French Revolution. He saw much active service and became a thorough master of his profession. He imbibed liberal ideas and joined a secret society pledged to the work of establishing a republic in Spain and independent governments in her colonies. When the Spanish people rose against the French conquests, San Martin threw himself hard and soul into the conflict on the side of the Patriots and distinguished himself in the battles that opened the way to the recovery of Madrid. He was promoted to the Lieutenant Colonelcy, but the next year he resigned his commission to return to his native land to aid her in her fight for independence. By a curious coincidence, the ship that bore the South American who achieved the independence of his country was called the George Conning, after the European who, 13 years later, did most to secure the independence of South America from external attack. He landed in Buenos Aires in March 1812. At that moment the anti-Spanish revolution seemed everywhere to be on the point of suffocation. Bolivia and Uruguay were lost. The reaction was gaining ground in Venezuela. Chile was menaced by an army from Lima and shortly fell back into Spanish hands. Peru was steady for the old system. Only in Argentina and Nucranada were the fires of insurrection still burning, and between them intervened Peru, the stronghold of Spanish power in South America, a citadel impregnable behind mountains, deserts and the ocean. The war of independence could only succeed by aggressive campaigns, which must be conducted through the fickled country and over the whole continent, and against forces superior in both numbers and equipment. San Martín's first step was to organize and drill some good regiments in Buenos Aires. He selected the finest physical and moral specimens of youth that the province afforded, and subjected them to a rigid discipline. After his ruthless pruning, only the born soldiers remained, and this select corps furnished generals and officers for the wars that followed. On succeeding Belgrano in command of the Army of the North, San Martín saw at once that all attempts at conquer Peru by an advance through Bolivia were fordooms to failure. A campaign over a mountainous plateau, with the Spaniards in possession of the strategic points and the inhabitants divided in their sympathies would be suicidal. On the other hand, to attack and defeat the Spanish forces in Peru itself was absolutely necessary. The 300,000 inhabitants of Argentina, distracted by intestine warfare, could not hope indefinitely to resist the Spanish power, backed by secure possession of the rest of the continent. Decisive victories were necessary to encourage the partisans of independence in Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. San Martín's solution of the problem was to organize an army on the eastern slope of the Andes, to invade Chile, to drive the Spaniards dense, and to make the country the base of further operations, to improve a fleet and with it gain command of the Pacific, and finally to attack Peru from the coast. The scheme seemed complicated, but San Martín was one of those rare geniuses born with a capacity for taking infinite pains, and his pertinacity was indefatigable. He foresaw and provided against every contingency, and carried his plan to a triumphant conclusion. The story of the liberation of South America within the succeeding eight years might be completely told in the form of two biographies, San Martín's and Bolivar's. Trusting the defense of the Bolivian frontier to a few line soldiers and the gauchos of Salta, San Martín solicited and obtained an appointment as governor of Cuyo. This province was directly east of the populous central part of Chile and was the refuge of the Patriot Chileans, who had been compelled to flee into exile after quarrels among themselves had delivered their country to the Spaniards. His authority was purely military and derived only from the dictum of the revolutionary government at Buenos Aires, but San Martín was not a man to hesitate on account of scruples over constitutional questions. He laid the province under contribution and started to create an army capable of crossing the Andes and coping with the Spanish regulars in Chile. The inhabitants of Cuyo were determinately anti-Spanish, brave, enduring and enthusiastic. It was a good recruiting ground in itself. The Chilean exiles were numerous and all anxious to join in an effort to redeem their country. The government at Buenos Aires sent him a valuable addition in a core of manumitted Negro slaves, but his nucleus was the regiments which he himself had drilled at Buenos Aires. Though civil wars went on in the coast provinces, he was not to be diverted from his purpose. He kept aloof from them and for the three years labored steadily, building his great war machine, recruiting, drilling, instructing officers, taxing his province, gathering provisions, building portable bridges, making powder, casting guns, organizing his transports and commissariat. Meanwhile, Alvear, his old colleague in the Spanish army, had assumed the leading position in the oligarchy that ruled at Buenos Aires. He suppressed the triumvirates and placed his relative, Posadas, at the head of the government. Patriot armies were besieging Montevideo from the landside, but it was not until a fighting demon of an Irish merchant captain, William Brown, had been placed in command of a few ships which the Buenos Aires had gathered that there was any hope of reducing the place. The remarkable man was nearly as important a factor as San Martin himself in the war against Spain. With incredible audacity he attacked the Spanish ships wherever he found them. Numbers and odds made no difference, and he was never so dangerous as just after an apparent reverse. His victory on the 14th of June put the Spanish fleet out of commission. The reduction of Montevideo followed as a matter of course, and the destruction of the Spanish seapower on the Atlantic side made San Martin's campaign on the Pacific coast possible. Civil wars broke out between the Buenos Aires oligarchy and local military chiefs in the Gaucho provinces, and soon hurled Posadas from power. He was succeeded by Alvear, but the commanders of the armies refused to recognize the latter's authority and an insurrection in Buenos Aires itself drove him too into exile. One military dictator succeeded another, while the provinces more and more ignored the Buenos Aires' pretensions to hegemony. The frail fabric of the confederation fast crumbled into fragments. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars reinforcements began to arrive from Spain and the royal arms were again victorious and threatened to wipe out the distracted republic. Rondeau, one of the generals who had helped the post-Posadas and Alvear, had been rewarded with command of the army of the north. Disregarding the experience of his predecessors, he made the third great effort to conquer Bolivia and strike at the heart of Spanish power in Peru by the overland route. His campaign ended with the crushing defeat at Sipe Sipe. Considerable Spanish forces followed him down into the Argentine plains, but as San Martín had predicted the Gaucho cavalry under Guémez were able to keep back their advance. Belgrano and Riva Davia had been sent to Spain in 1813 to try and arrange terms on the basis of autonomy or the making of Buenos Aires a separate kingdom under some members of the Spanish family. They were informed that nothing except unconditional submission would be accepted and they were then ordered to leave Madrid. Scheme after scheme was presented in Buenos Aires, discussed and abandoned. Belgrano wanted to make a descendant of the Incas, emperor of South America. Others wished to offer submission to Great Britain in return for a protectorate. The English government rejected the overtures. A more popular idea was to elect a monarch from the Portuguese Braganza family, then reigning in Brazil. The only definite result of all these confused negotiations was a formal declaration of independence made on the 9th of July 1816 by a Congress at which most of the provinces were represented and which met in the city of Tucumán. Many of the members had no hope of being able to enforce such a declaration. However, it cleared the way for obtaining foreign help and negotiations were continued with a view to inducing some European prince to accept the throne. Artigas, the independent military chieftain of Uruguay and Entre Rios attacked in 1813 the missions to the left of Upper Uruguay which the Rio Grande Brazilians had seized 12 years before. He was defeated by the troops of John VI who followed him into Uruguay proper and in 1816 captured Montevideo. Though the Buenos Aires had been compelled to concede Uruguay's independence, the movement excited among them an intense jealousy of the Portuguese. The scheme for a Braganza monarch at once became unpopular and impracticable. The taciturn general in Cuyo was however preparing a thunderbolt that would clear the Argentine sky of all these clouds except that most portentous of all civil war. After three years of incessant preparation San Martín believed that his army was ready to undertake the great campaign. Though it numbered only 4,000 men, it was the most efficient body of troops that ever gathered on South American soil. Among the Argentine contingent were the picked youth of Buenos Aires and the provinces, reckless enthusiastic youths whose ambition patriotism or love of adventure made them willing to follow anywhere San Martín might dare to lead. Not inferior to their white comrades were the manumitted Negroes. The cruelest charges and the heaviest losses fell to their lot and few of them ever returned over the Andes. The Chilean exiles were picked men, those who preferred death to submission or who had offended so deeply that their only hope of seeing their homes was to return sword in hand. This force had been drilled and instructed on all the art of war as practiced during the Napoleonic era by San Martín himself, a veteran soldier of the great European campaigns, one who had fought with Wellington and against Massena and Salt. He was indefatigable in attending to details and he seems to have foreseen everything. The last months were spent in preparing rations of parched corn and dried beef, in gathering mules for mountain transportation and in making sledges to be used on the slopes which were too steep for cannon on wheels. The most careful calculations were made of the distances to be traversed, every route was surveyed, spies were in every pass, the Spaniards were kept in uncertainty as to which of the numerous passes along hundreds of miles of frontier would be used for the attack. San Martín's real intentions were not reviewed by him even to the members of his staff until the very eve of the advance. When summer came in 1817 and all the passes were freed from snow, he was ready. In the middle of January he broke camp at Mendota and divided his army into two divisions. Directly to the west was the Uspayatapas. Then as now the usual route between western Argentina and central Chile. Its Chilean outlet opens into the plain of Aconcogua which is north of Santiago and only separated from that capital by one transverse spur of the Andes. Off to the north was the more difficult pass of Patos. Its eastern entrance also easily accessible from Mendota though by a longer detour and opening at its other end into the same valley of Aconcogua. The smaller of the two divisions was to advance over the Uspayatapas. So timing its movements as to reach the open ground of the Aconcogua valley at the same time as the larger division which under San Martín himself went to the north around the Patos route. The Spaniards had a guard at the summit of the Uspayatapas but the advance troops of the Argentines charged it. Before reinforcements could come up the division was over and advancing confidently down the canyon on the Chilean side. Had the Spaniards sent up a force sufficient to prevent the Uspayatapas division from debouching onto the Aconcogua plain it would have been caught in a trap. The second division could have bottled it up from below by leaving a small body at the mouth of the canyon but before the Spanish commander had made up his mind what to do news came that another army was rapidly coming down the valley leading into the Aconcogua valley from the north. Disconcerted by this attack from an unexpected direction the Spanish commander hastened off with an inadequate force to repel it. He did not reach a defensible point in time. His vanguard was defeated and he retreated along the high road to Santiago leaving San Martín to reunite his two divisions at his leisure to make the broad Aconcogua plain. Though the army had crossed the Andes over two of the loftiest and steepest passes in the world so admirably had all dispositions been made that hardly a stop was necessary to refit and recruit. Artillery and cavalry as well as infantry were ready within four days after reaching the Chilean side to take up the pursuit of the Spaniards. The Spanish general had not had sufficient time to concentrate his scattered regiments since the first news had come that San Martín was coming in force by the northern passes. Of his 5,000 men only 2,000 were able to get between San Martín's advance and Santiago. The Argentine general was sure of having the largest numbers at the point of conflict but the Spanish troops were veterans of the peninsula were commanded by a skillful and resolute general. He concentrated his force in a strong position in a valley on the south side of the transverse range that separates Santiago from the Aconcogua valley. He had hoped to make his stand at the top of the pass there 4,000 feet high but San Martín had been too quick for him. However the position was admirable for a stubborn defense. The high road to Santiago descended from the pass down a narrow valley which just in front of the Spanish position opened into a larger valley running at right angles. The artillery of the Spaniards commanded the narrow mouth of the upper valley and on a side hill there was a room to deploy the infantry and cavalry. The Argentine troops would be infillated in a close gut before they could form in line of battle. San Martín employed the tactics of the Persians at Thermopylae. There was an abandoned road running over the summit a little to the west of the traveled route and debouching into the same valley a little below the Spanish position. Through this O'Higgins, the chief of San Martín's Chilean allies at two o'clock in the morning on February the 12th started with 800 men. By 11 he had reached the main valley and turned up it to attack the Spaniards on their left flank. His first assault, made without waiting for the other division to come down in front, was repulsed. San Martín, sitting on his warhorse on the heights above galloped down the slope leaving orders to hasten the descent of the main body. As he reached the lower ground and joined the Chileans he saw the head of his main column appear through the mouth of the pass. O'Higgins again attacked and the Spaniards taken in flank and with their centre assailed in echelon by the Argentine squadrons and battalions were at a hopeless disadvantage. The position of their infantry was carried by the bayonet while the patriot cavalry charged the artillery and sabered the men at their guns. The infantry were the flower of the Spanish regulars. They formed a square and for a time held their stand. Finally, surrounded on their sides with their artillery gone and fighting against double their number they broke and retreated over the broken ground in their rear. Less than half escaped and a quarter were killed on the field and in the pursuit. The patriots lost only 12 killed and 120 wounded. Though the numbers engaged were insignificant and though the victory was easily won the battle of Chacabuco was decisive in the struggle to regain and her revolted subjects in the southern colonies. Since the outbreak of 1810 the revolutionary cause had been losing not only territory but morale, conviction and self-confidence. Spanish authority seemed certain finally to be completely re-established perhaps by a compromise and concession to autonomy but still on a basis gratifying to the pride of the mother country. The day before San Martin started this march over the Andes Chile was quietly submissive. Uruguay was occupied by Portuguese troops. Argentina was a mere loose aggregation of discordant and warring provinces whose most intelligent statesmen had nearly given up hope of peace and autonomy except by foreign aid or submission to some alien monarch. But the day after Chacabuco the Spanish governor was flying from Santiago to the coast Chile had become and has remained independent. In Argentina there was no more talk of Portuguese princes of British protectorates of compromise with Spain. The declaration of Tucumán had become a reality. There was much more hard fighting still to be done and time after time during the next seven years the final result seemed to tremble in the balance but hope and national spirit had been so aroused in South America that defeat was never irremediable. The rest of San Martin's military career belongs rather to the history of Chile and Peru than to that of Argentina. It is enough to say that he established his friend O'Higgins as dictator of Chile, thus assuring her cooperation in the prosecution of the war against Peru. Spanish successes in Chile and civil war in Argentina delayed for years his over matching the Spanish naval power of the Pacific. Without command of the sea he would have had to march his arm up to a desert coast between the Cordillera and the ocean and undertaking almost impossible. The help of the Buenos Aires fleet was essential and so was the aid of the Argentine treasury in buying more ships and paying for ensimen. His friends at Buenos Aires were struggling for their lives against their rivals for supreme power. To San Martin's demand for assistance they responded by begging him first to use his army to crush the rebellion that he refused them in their hour of better need has been pointed out as a blot upon his fame but his resolution was spartan. Not even the considerations of gratitude to personal friends diverted him from his great purpose. He had that element of supreme great achievement steadfastness to adhere to a purpose once conceived that nothing could shake. Where redon might be driven into exile the warring factions might tear Argentina into fragments and Jelous Cochrane might unjustly accuse him the ambitious and selfish Bolivar might regard him only as an obstacle to his own supremacy. None of these things could change his course or alter his devotion to the one great purpose of his life. In 1820 he finally started up the coast and in four months without a pitched battle he had rendered the Spanish position on the coast of Peru untenable. He met Bolivar at Guayaquil and the personal interview between the liberators of the northern and southern halves of South America was the end of San Martin's public career. He went to it with the purpose of arranging a joint campaign to drive the Spanish from their last stronghold the Highlands of Peru. But Bolivar did not see his own way clear to cooperation. San Martin explained his predicament to no one. He uttered no word of complaint or regret. He simply gave up the command of the army which he had led for seven years and resigned the dictatorship of Peru. There was no place for him in distracted Argentina except as a leader in the Civil Wars a role he disdained. He went into exile without saying a word as to the reason for his action. Rather than precipitate a division between the Patriots before the last Spaniard had been driven from South America he submitted in silence to the reproach of cowardice. Rather than geopart independence he sacrificed home, money, honors, even reputation itself. The history of the world records few examples of finer civic virtue. The rest of his life he spent poverty stricken in Paris only once he tried to return to his native country. At Montevideo he heard that Buenos Aires was in the throes of another revolution and that his presence might be misconstrued. Without a word he took the next ship back to Europe. For many years his struggles against poverty and ill health were pathetic. It was the generosity of a Spaniard and not a fellow counterman that relieved the last days of his life. But throughout those very thirty years he never wavered in his devotion to South America. His last utterance about public affairs was a vehement laudation of Rosas, tyrant though he thought him, because the latter had defied France and England when they disregarded Argentina's rights as a sovereign member of the family of nations. Reading was the only resource left to lighten his old age and his last months were embittered by the approach of blindness. His heart began to be affected, symptoms of an aneurysm appeared and he went to Boulogne to take the sea air. Standing one day on the beach he felt the awful shock of pain that announced his approaching end. quote Gasping and raising his hand to his heart he turned with a touching smile to that daughter who ever followed him like a Latter-day Antigone and said On the 17th of August 1850 being 72 years of age he expired in the arms of his beloved daughter. Chile and Argentina have raised him statues. Peru has decreed a monument to his memory. The Argentine nation, at last one and united as he had ever desired has brought back his sacred remains and celebrated his apotheosis. Today his tomb may be seen in the Metropolitan Cathedral bearing witness for Argentina to his just distinction as the greatest of all her men of action. End quote End of Section 8 Section 9 of the South American Republics Volume 1 by Thomas Clelland Dawson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Pietronater Part 1, Argentina Chapter 7, The Era of Civil Wars For half a century from 1812 to 1862 the story of Argentina is one of almost continual civil wars of disturbances and armed revolutions affecting every part of the Republic. But through the confused records of this half-century there runs the thread of a steady tendency and purpose. The nation was instinctively seeking to establish an equilibrium between its centripetal and centrifugal forces between the spirit of local autonomy and the necessity for union. At the same time the irrepressible conflict between military and civil principles of government was fought out. Argentina emerged strong and united while the provinces retained the right of local self-government and the military classes were relegated to their proper subordinate position as servants of the civil and industrial interests of the community. When studied in detail the story of the civil wars is confusing and tedious. It is my purpose to omit all that does not bear on the final rational and beneficial result. At the outset of the Revolution against Spain the oligarchy of liberals who ruled Buenos Aires assumed the sovereignty of the whole vice-royalty. They regarded themselves as successors to the power of the vice-roy himself and attempted to rule the outlying provinces with no more regard for the latter's interests than if they had been delegates of an absolute monarch. Though the people of the city of Buenos Aires often quarreled as to what individual should exercise the supreme power they were united in insisting that the capital should continue to enjoy the privileges and exclusive commercial rights with which the Spanish system had endowed it. Hardly had the revolution begun when the districts in the neighborhood of Buenos Aires showed symptoms of revolt against the central authorities. The cities of Santa Fe, Concepción and Corrientes each with its dependent territory aspired to the status of independent provinces. Military chieftains called Caudíos organized the Gauchos who were excellent cavalry ready-made to their hands and defied the Buenos Aires oligarchy. José Artigas, a fierce chieftain of the plains on the lower Uruguay, gathered about him a considerable army from among the Gauchos east of the Paraná and did more than the Buenos Aires themselves to shut up the Spaniards in the fortress of Montevideo. He refused to accept the concessions offered by the Buenos Aires oligarchy and a desperate civil war broke out. Buenos Aires successively lost Uruguay, Entre Rios, Corrientes and Santa Fe. The fighting was bloody and these districts were all terribly devastated. Cordova and the Andean provinces also refused to recognize the validity of orders emanating from Buenos Aires. By the year 1818 all the provinces were practically independent of Buenos Aires, though the latter abated not a jot of her pretensions to hegemony and continued to send troops against the various Caudíos. Her armies obeyed their own generals rather than the orders of the central government. In desperation, the oligarchy finally peremptorily ordered San Martín and Belgrano to bring down their armies from the western and northern frontiers and suppress the independent chieftains. San Martín refused to obey but the imaginative, warm-hearted Belgrano was not made of the same sterling stuff. He managed to lead the army of the north as far as the province of Cordova but at Arequito the troops at the instigation of ambitious officers revolted and scattered. Many joined the Caudíos and on the 1st of February the provincials completely overthrew Buenos Aires militia in the decisive battle of Thepeda. This ended for a time the capital's pretensions to hegemony. The centralization went on a pace. Cuyo dissolved into the three provinces of Mendoza, San Luis and San Juan. The old intendency of Salta became four new provinces Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Catamarca and Salta to which a fifth was added when the city of Hujui drove into a separate jurisdiction in 1834. From the Cordova of colonial times Rioja split off, while the intendencia of Buenos Aires had been divided into four great provinces Santa Fe, Corrientes, Entre Ríos and Buenos Aires besides the independent nation of Uruguay. Each of these provinces practically corresponded with the leading city and its dependent territory and the cabildo of each municipality and the basis of new local government. This process was spontaneous and the provinces then formed have ever since been the units of the Argentine Confederacy. To many intelligent patriots of the time, however, decentralization seemed to be only a sure sign of swiftly approaching anarchy. Power fell more and more into the hands of the military leaders and war became almost the normal condition of the country. During the four years from 1820 to 1824 there was no material change in the position of the contending forces. The provinces much desired to make a confederation of which Buenos Aires should be an equal member, but the latter refused and only waited for an opportunity to order to renew her pretensions to hegemony. Two opposing tendencies were, however, at work which soon created two parties in Buenos Aires itself. Commercial interests had suffered so severely in the civil wars and communications were so uncertain and so burdened with arbitrary executions by the provincials that the property holding classes began to press hard upon the office holders of the oligarchy with demands for an accommodation and some sort of a union with the provinces. This was the beginning of the Federalist Party which naturally found efficient support among the cattle herding inhabitants on the Great Pampas of the province of Buenos Aires. On the other hand the Unitarians were becoming more compact, more determined and more definite in their purposes. Rivadavia, the greatest constructive statement of the era undertook the reform of the laws and the administration. He created the University of Buenos Aires, founded hospitals and asylums, introduced ecclesiastical and military reform, bettered the land laws and infused into the legislation a modern spirit. The improved tone of political thought tended to stimulate a more general and rational discussion of a modus vivendi with the provinces. The Federalists favored the establishment of a system like that of the United States while the Unitarians clung to the idea of a nation organized more after the model of the French Republic. In 1825 the provinces were represented at a general constituent congress which assembled in Buenos Aires. After much discussion the Unitarians, with Rivadavia at their head, finally obtained control. In 1826 he was elected Executive Chief of the Federation. This election however did not make him president in fact. Recognition from the Cavildos and the Caudios was practically greater importance than the vote of a Congress of delegates who were unable to ensure the acquiescence of their constituents. Rivadavia's favorite plan of placing the city of Buenos Aires directly under the control of the central government excited bitter opposition among the Federalists of Buenos Aires. Under their leader Manuel Dorrego they protested vehemently against the dismemberment of their home province. Meanwhile an easy fabric was subjected to the strain of a serious foreign war. In 1825 the country districts of Uruguay rose against their Brazilian rulers. The Argentines went wild with joy when they heard of the victory which the Gauchos won over the Imperial forces at Salandi. Congress promptly decreed that Uruguay had returned herself to the Federation. The Emperor's answer was a declaration of war and a state of Buenos Aires. The fighting Irish sailor, Admiral William Brown, again came to the front and his daring seamanship rendered the Brazilian blockade ineffective. He destroyed a large division of their fleet at the Battle of Cuncal. While fast Baltimore clippers, commanded by English and Yankee privateer captains, swept Brazilian commerce from the seas. Late in 1826 an Argentine army of men was assembled for the invasion of Rio Grande do Sul. Alvear, now returned from exile was entrusted with its command and on the 20th of February 1827 the Brazilians were overwhelmingly defeated at Ituzango far within their own boundary. The Argentines were not able to follow up their victory and shortly returned to Uruguayan territory but the Emperor was never again able to undertake an aggressive campaign. Negotiations for peace were begun and Rivadavia's envoy signed a treaty by which Uruguay was to remain a part of the Empire of Brazil. A storm of indignation broke forth at Buenos Aires and Rivadavia had to disavow his minister and continue the war. The blow to his prestige was however mortal. The Federalists had indeed never ceased to make war against him and the Unitarian Constitution which Congress had adopted at his dictation was rejected unanimously by the provinces. He resigned and Dorego, chief of the Unitarians succeeded him as nominal executive chief of the confederation. In reality however the Republic was divided into five quasi-independent military states. Dorego ruled in Buenos Aires, López in Santa Fe, Ibarra in Santiago, Bustos in Cordova and Quiroga in Cuyo. Many of the officers of the army which had been victorious at Ituzango were dissatisfied with the triumph of Dorego at Buenos Aires. They belonged to the Unitarian Party and they were anxious themselves to usurp the places of the various Caudios. The first division that reached Buenos Aires after the signing of the preliminary peace with Brazil raised the standard of rebellion in the city itself. General Lavalle declared himself governor while Dorego fled to the interior only to be pursued, captured and shot without the form of trial by Lavalle's personal order. This began the fiercest and bloodiest civil war which ever desolated the Argentine. The gauchos of the southern provinces rose en masse to fight the Unitarian regulars, while the generals of the latter began a series of campaigns against all the federalist provincial governments in Buenos Aires. General Paz advanced on Cordova to give battle to Bustos, while Lavalle's forces invaded Santa Fe. Rosas, the chief of southern Buenos Aires, had rallied the federalists of that province. He himself joined Lopeth, the Caudio of Santa Fe, while he left behind a considerable force of his gauchos to threaten the city from the south. Lavalle sent some of his best regiments against the latter body, and his surprise, his veterans were completely cut to pieces by the fierce riders of the plains. He himself had to retreat to Buenos Aires, while Rosas and Lopeth defeated him under the very walls of the city. These victories made the Buenos Aires federalist leader, José Manuel Rosas, the chief figure in Argentine affairs. Then's fourth, for more than 20 years, he was the absolute dictator and tyrant of Buenos Aires. The most bitterly hated man in Argentine history, probably no other leader had as profound an influence in preparing the Argentine nation for the consolidation, which was so shortly to follow his own fall from power. His personal characteristics and his public career are equally interesting. The scion of a wealthy Buenos Aires family, from his childhood he devoted himself to cattle rising on the vast family states of the Southern Pampas. He became the model and idol of the Gauchos. By the time he was 25, he was the acknowledged king of the Southern Pampas with the thousand hard-riding half savage horsemen obeying his orders. In 1820 he and his regiment were chief factors in the revolution that placed General Rodriguez in power at Buenos Aires. Through the more peaceful years that followed, his power grew until he was the acknowledged head of the country people of Buenos Aires province and their champion against the city. He had been fairly well educated, his information was wide and his intellectual abilities were of a high order, but he thoroughly identified his tastes and prejudices with those of his rude followers and in politics he was fiercely unitarian. The victories of 1829 over Lavalle placed him in supreme power at Buenos Aires and made him the nominal head of the whole Argentine. His real power was, however, far from extending over the whole territory. General Paz with his veterans of the Brazilian war had expelled Bustos from Cordoba and firmly established himself as ruler of that province. Quiroga, the redoubtable caudillo of the Cuyo province gathered his swarms of fierce Gauchos from the western Pampas in the slopes of the Andes and descended to the very walls of Cordoba, there to be twice defeated with awful slaughter by General Paz. The latter followed up his victories by establishing unitarian governments in the northwestern provinces. In Cuyo he was not so successful and Quiroga managed to sustain himself. Rossas came to the rescue of the despairing federalists with the whole force of Buenos Aires. That province all opposition to him had been crushed and he was able to send a strong army against Cordoba which surprised and captured General Paz himself. This misfortune demoralized the Unitarians. The federalists and the terrible Quiroga again triumphed in most of the western provinces. It is estimated that more than 23,000 Unitarians fell in battle. Part of Paz's army retired to Cuyoan and were there surrounded by an overwhelming force under Quiroga. Though their position was hopeless they did not offer to surrender nor would quarter have been given them had they asked it. In these internecine conflicts the beaten side usually fought it out to the last men selling their lives as dearly as possible. 500 prisoners taken at Tucumán were shot in cold blood and only a few small bands escaped to Bolivia. Rossas filled the offices in the provinces with his partisans while the obsequious authorities of the capital conferred upon him the high sounding title Restorer of the Laws. He made a faint or two of resigning the governorship and in fact left it in other hands while he led an army against the Indians of the south. He soon returned with the prestige of having extended wide domination far beyond its former boundaries. After much show of reluctance in 1835 he accepted the title of governor and captain general and a special statute expressly confided to him the whole quote some of the public power end quote. The thousands of murders, betrayals and treasons of the long civil war had subbed the foundations of good faith in human kindness. The Unitarians were mere outlaws, their property was constantly subject to confiscation and their lives were never safe. Rossas himself least of all could confide in the faithfulness of his partisans. Things had come to such a pass that no one could rule except by force. Whoever was in power was sure to be hated by the majority and plotted against by many, though he might have been raised to command by the acclamation of the whole population. Rossas was a product of the conditions that surrounded him. Belgrano, Rivadavia and everyone who had tried to establish a civil government had failed. The forces of militarism and federalism had been too strong for them. From among the ambitious military chieftains the strongest and fittest survived. Rossas understood the conditions under which he held power and took the measures his experience had thought him would be the most effective in preserving it. He undertook to forestall revolt by creating a reign of terror. He replaced the blue and white of Buenos Aires by red, the colour of his own faction. The wearing of a scrap of blue was considered proof of treason. A club of the Spirados, called the Massorca, was formed of men sworn to do his bidding even though it might be to murder their own relatives. No one suspected of this affection was given. Sometimes a warning was given so that the victim might flee, leaving his property to be confiscated. Sometimes he was dragged from his bed and stabbed. The charge of deliberate blood-thirstiness against Rossas is, however, hardly borne out by the facts. For political reasons he did not hesitate to kill and to kill cruelly, but he did not kill for the mere sake of killing. He was passionately jealous of foreign residence. Early in his reign he quarrelled with the government of France over questions in regard to the domicile and obligations of foreign residents. The French fleet, assisted later by that of Great Britain, blockaded Buenos Aires, but Rossas defied their combined power although in this very year 1835 he was menaced by a formidable invasion from the banished Unitarians. In Uruguay the Colorados occupied Montevideo and had formed a close alliance with the Argentine exiles. Montevideo was the center of resistance to Rossas and from its walls went out expeditions to end the revolts which continually broke forth. In 1842 the Allied Unitarians and Colorados suffered a great defeat from Rossas' right arm in the field General Urquiza and then Fourth Uribe, chief of the Uruguayan Blancos, besieged the Colorados in Montevideo and controlled the country's districts. This apparently ended all hope of expelling Rossas from power. The immigration of the intelligent and high-spirited youth of Buenos Aires to Montevideo and Chile increased. Among these exiles and martyrs to their devotion to constitutional government were many Argentines who shortly rose to the top in politics and whose abilities gave a great impulse to the intellectual movement. Among them were Mitre, Vicente López, Salmiento, Valera and Echeverria, who shared the honor of establishing civil government in Buenos Aires and who aided Urquiza in preventing South America from becoming a military empire and in uniting the Argentine province into a stable nation. The longer the tyrant reigned the less man remembered their own factional divisions. Practically the whole civil population of the capital was ready to support a rebellion. Rossas however was to fall not by a revolution in Buenos Aires, but because his system was inconsistent with the local autonomy of the provinces. He put his partisans into power as military governors but no bond was strong enough to keep them faithful to his interests. As soon as they were well established in their territories they became jealous of their own prerogatives and of the rights of their people. Rossas ceased to be a real federalist when he made Buenos Aires the center of his power. He lived there, he raised most of his revenue there and the city's interests became in a sense synonymous with his own. He excluded foreigners from the provinces, he forbade direct communication between the banks of the Parana Uruguay and the outside world. Everything was required to be trans-shipped at Buenos Aires so that it might be subject to duty. The chief lieutenant of Rossas was General Urquiza, whom he had appointed governor of Uentre Rios. The latter's generalship overcame the Unitarian rebellions in that province and repelled the invasions from Uruguay. Under his wise and moderate rule the province flourished and covered from the devastation of the previous civil wars. Its fertile plains were covered with magnificent herds of cattle and horses which fed and mounted an admirable cavalry. Urquiza himself was the greatest rancher in the province and could raise an army from his own estates. Entrenched between the vast moving floats of the Uruguay and Paraguay he was practically safe from attack and his relations with his neighbors in Corrientes, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil were those of warm friendship and alliance as soon as he had declared against the tyrant, who seated at the mouth of the plate cut off the countries above from free access to the sea. Though Urquiza was a caudio he had no such ambition for supreme power as plagued Rossas. He was even tempered of simple tastes and careless of military glory. In 1846 the rupture between him and Rossas came and thenceforth he devoted himself to the overthrow of the tyrant. Three times his attacks failed but in 1851 he arranged an alliance with Brazil and with the Colorado faction in Uruguay. The war was opened by Urquiza's crossing the Uruguay and in conjunction with a Brazilian army suddenly falling upon the Blancos who in alliance with Rossas were besieging Montevideo. Most of the defeated forces joined his army and accompanied by his Brazilian and Uruguayan allies he recrossed the Uruguay and moved over the Andrerrios planes to a point on the Paraná just at the head of the delta. The Brazilian fleet penetrated up the river to protect his crossing and on the 24th of December the entire force of 24,000 men, the largest which to that date had ever assembled in South America, was safely over and encamped on the dry pampas of Santa Fe. The road to Buenos Aires was open Rossas could do nothing but wait there and trust all to the result of a single battle. On the 3rd of February he was crushingly defeated in the Battle of Caseros thought within a few miles of the city of the 20,000 men he led into action half proved treacherous and many of his principal officers betrayed him. He took refuge at the British Legation and thence was sent on board a man of war which carried him into exile. End of section 9 Section 10 of the South American Republics, Volume 1 by Thomas Claddon Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Piotr Natter Part 1, Argentina Chapter 8, Consolidation After 40 years of struggle no formula had been found which would satisfy the aspiration for local self-government and at the same time secure the external union so essential to the welfare of the whole country. The questions between the provinces and Buenos Aires and between the different cities which were rivals in the race for national leadership seemed to a superficial glance to be as far as ever from solution. There had however been a shifting of the material balance of power which was soon to change the situation. The provinces had suffered most severely from the long civil war. Corrientes was well may a desert. In Santa Fe the Indians roamed up to the gates of the capital town and the Andean provinces were isolated and poor. The long peace under Rosas' rule had increased the wealth and population of Buenos Aires. The city lost hundreds of enthusiastic young liberals but it gained thousands who fled from the disorders of the interior. Its population had doubled since his accession. 30,000 English, Irish and Scotch had crowded in to engage in sheep-raising and the rural population of Buenos Aires province was nearly 200,000. City and country together had doubled while the rest of the confederation had only increased one half. The capital province now contained 27% of the total population and the proportion in wealth and percentage of foreigners was far greater. The number of sheep increased from 2.5 million in 1830 to 5 times that number and by 1850 there were 8 million cattle and 3 million horses in the single province. All over the country rational ideas about government had made progress. The people became more efficient of military rule. Civilization, education and general intelligence were spreading their beneficent influences. Industry, commerce and the pursuit of wealth were absorbing more of the national energies. Urquiza, greatest of the Caudios saw that without peace and union and Tre Rios could not be ensured prosperity. He had no sooner entered Buenos Aires than he took measures looking to the framing and adoption of the constitution. After his victory he was named provisional director of the confederation but he showed no wish to play the role of erosas. All the governors met and agreed to the calling of a constituent congress in which each province was to have an equal vote. As a further precaution against the predominance of Buenos Aires the session was to be held in Santa Fe. The provinces were anxious to form a strong confederation between Buenos Aires. Her statesmen did not realize that she was bound to be the center of the system and that the pull of her superior mass would before many years be sufficient to control the aberrations of the satellites. Though the governor of Buenos Aires had agreed on behalf of his province and the Urquiza's military power was overwhelming the legislature of that province refused its assent. It was clear that Buenos Aires provinces would not be able to agree upon a basis of union. The ambitious cities of the interior each aspired to take the place of Buenos Aires as the capital and to this humiliation the latter city would never submit unless after another civil war. Urquiza determined not to use force and retired to his ranch. As soon as he was out of sight the city rose in arms against his nominees. The broad-minded entreria's chieftain sent backward that he had won the Battle of Caseros for the sole purpose of giving Buenos Aires her liberty and that he would not now intervene to prevent her making the use of it she chose. He even disbanded his troops. However when the Buenos Aires marched an army to the attack of Santa Fe where the constituent congress attended by delegates from all the other provinces was holding its sessions he again took the field. A counter-revolution broke out in the rural districts of the Buenos Aires province against the faction dominant in the city. Urquiza joined his forces to theirs and besieged the town. A land siege was useless without a blockade on the water side and Urquiza tried to establish one. He was unsuccessful because the commanders of his ships treacherously betrayed him surrendering to the city party for a heavy bribe. He raised the siege and retired to the northern provinces. Buenos Aires virtually declared her independence of the other provinces by this action but the latter took no further steps to force her into their union. Urquiza and his followers had however accomplished more toward uniting the Argentine into a firmly nation than had been done in the previous 40 years. The opposition of Buenos Aires helped convince the other provinces of the necessity of a union. With the mouth of the river in the hands of a hostile state more powerful than any of them separately the position of Entre Rios, Santa Fe or any one of the others would have been critical. Only by uniting could they hope to maintain themselves and avoid absorption in detail. Intelligent Argentines had long been convinced of the desirability of a firm and enduring union and the present danger crystallized that conviction in man's mind. Back of all this was Urquiza's influence. At last a military chief had come to the possession of a supreme power who was willing to aid his country in establishing a stable and free government and whose purpose was not merely the gratification of his own love of power. Argentine writers are divided in their opinion of Urquiza's real abilities and many think that ignorance and irresolution rather than a lofty patriotism cost his moderation after his victory over Rosas. Intelligent foreigners however who saw the plate for themselves during this period were unanimous in praising his character his dignified bearing his liberality and his capacities. Argentina had passed the stage when a military dictator was her natural chief. The day for constitutional government had arrived. Urquiza was a product of his time and consciously or unconsciously embodied the changed political sentiments of his countrymen. On the 1st of May 1853 the constituent congress adopted a constitution substantially copied from that of the United States of North America and that constitution with a few amendments had continued to be the fundamental law of the Argentine Republic. The navigation of the Parana and the Uruguay was declared free to all the world largely as a reward to Brazil for her assistance against Rosas although she protested against the extension of that liberty to any nations except those who had territory on the banks. The city of Parana in the province of Andrerrios and on the eastern shore of the Parana river was made temporary capital of the republic. The various provincial capitals had been unable to agree that any of them should have the honor and profit of being the political metropolis and the city of Buenos Aires was selected as a permanent capital to become such as soon as the province of that name should enter the confederation. The delegates had a double purpose in making this selection. Buenos Aires was the natural commercial and political center and all things considered the most convenient location in the provinces. In the 2nd place they desired to weaken the great province of Buenos Aires by cutting it in two and to curb the city's political influence by placing it directly under the control of the federal government. Urquiza was naturally selected as the first president and was recognized by foreign nations. Buenos Aires protested claiming still to be for the international purposes the Argentine nation. She did not however formally declare her independence and seek for recognition as a new power. Buenos Aires as well as the confederation looked forward to the time when she would join the country. Throughout Urquiza's six year term the provinces prospered amazingly. His administration of his province had guaranteed the security of property and now as president he extended the blessings of peace too much of the rest of the confederation. The new bonds sat lightly on the outlying provinces of the Andean regions but Urquiza did not stretch his constitutional authority to interfere with them to let them learn by degrees that the right of local self-government guaranteed by the paper constitution would be respected in practice. The freedom of navigation caused unprecedented prosperity in the river provinces. The towns on the Paraná and Uruguay doubled in population during his six years service. Corrientes had been continually ravaged by the civil wars as lately as last few years of Rosas's reign but the assurance of peace was all that was needed to start the rebuilding of the houses and the restocking of the ranches. The impulse in population, wealth and commerce then given to the river provinces has never since lost its force. Foreign capital and immigration were invited and the rivers and harbors carefully surveyed. Rosario in Santa Fe was made a port of entry and began a growth that has made it second only Buenos Aires itself. In Buenos Aires events were gradually shaping themselves toward reuniting that province with the confederation. A liberal provincial constitution was adopted and though the ruling bureaucracy preferred the status quo, fearing that their own fall from power would follow any triumph of the provincials they were unable to hold the city in check. It was too evident that the real interests of the city and even her future commercial supremacy were menaced by the continuance of the separation. In 1859 the situation became so strained that Buenos Aires marched an army to attack the national government. Urquiza met it near the borders of Santa Fe and Buenos Aires and administered a defeat. He advanced to the city and required his vanquished opponents to agree to accept the constitution of 1853 and to consent that Buenos Aires should become a member of the confederation. He yielded, however, to the wishes of many Buenos Airesians and consented in the interest of harmony that the question of the dismembering of the city from the province and capitalizing the former should remain open for future determination. The essential justice in all other aspects of the constitution of 1853 had long been admitted even in Buenos Aires and there remained no reason why the latter should not enter the confederation once and for all. On the 21st of October 1860 General Bartolome Mitre, governor of Buenos Aires swore to the constitution, saying quote, this is the permanent organic law, the real expression of the perpetual union of the members of the Argentine family so long separated by civil war and bloodshed, end of quote. Meanwhile Urquiza's term had expired. Dr. Der Quy, his successor was suspected of designs against the autonomy of the provincial governments. The assassination of the governor of San Juan and the succession of a member of an opposite faction was made the occasion for federal intervention in the affairs of that province. The government of Buenos Aires protested and it became evident that this untoward event was soon to disturb the peace of the newly formed confederation. The Federal Congress under Der Quy influence refused to admit the members from Buenos Aires. Mitre marched out at the head of her forces and at the Battle of Pavan September 17, 1861 he overthrew the provincial forces. Buenos Aires remained mistress of the situation. The governments of certain provinces had been imposed on their people by the Der Quy administration or they were obnoxious to the triumphant Buenos Aires party. They were overthrown and Der Quy was deposed. Happily for the Argentine, Mitre was a sincere patriot and though young, was moderate and conciliatory. Made president of the Republic as the representative of the victorious Buenos Aires, he said about the final reorganization of constitutional government in a spirit of unselfishness and with a foresight and skill that greatly aided to save his country from the rising anarchy of civil war. The accession of Mitre in 1862 marked the end of the period of uncertainty. The government of the Argentine Republic was now finally and definitely established and fixed after 42 years of conflict. The constitution of 1853 was left unamended except that Buenos Aires became the seat of federal government without being separated from its province or ceasing the provincial capital. The free international navigation of the rivers was not interfered with and Buenos Aires abandoned her pretensions to special commercial privileges. She was then forward more and more the center of gravitation and power for the whole republic, but her influence came from legitimate natural causes and was exercised within constitutional limits. The autonomy of the provinces was not interfered with and it was no longer possible, even in the remotest districts, for a caudillo to rally at his call the Gauchos, always ready for a raid, a campaign or an invasion. Though the form of the federal government was fixed and its theoretical supremacy has never since been questioned, its real power at first was feeble. Wurkitha was master in the Mesopotamian provinces and in case of need Mitre could count on little military help except from his own province. The only result of the battle of Pavan, which was immediately apparent was the shifting of the center of power from Wurkitha's capital to Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, henceforth the tendency was constantly towards strengthening the bonds of union. Wurkitha and the other provincial governors showed no disposition to attack the central authority and in turn the latter was careful to avoid useless aggressions against them. The problem of reconciling provincial rights with the existence of an adequate federal government had at last been solved. The nation passed on to a still more difficult question the smooth and satisfactory working of democratic representative institutions in the absence of an effective participation in public affairs on the part of the bulk of the population. Elections have not carried the prestige of being the expression of the majority will. The ruling classes have been anxious enough to obey the popular voice and to govern wisely, but the people can only gradually be trained into the habit of expressing their will clearly and indisputably at regular elections. The insignificant disturbances to public order which have occurred since 1862 have been indications of dissatisfaction with the imperfect detail working of the complicated system of ascertaining the public wishes or hasty protests against mistakes on the part of those in power. Never have they endangered the federal constitution nor diverted the steady course of the nation's progress in the art of self-government. End of section 10.