Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay. Richard Francis Burton

the same dis- position — oflPensive and defensive, the individual superiority of the descendants of Sepe and Cacambo, and the leader- ship of one more terrible than the terrible Father Balda.

       I propose to reconsider this interesting subject in a forthcoming

      volume, " The Lowlands of the Brazil."

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      34 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

      The second is the secret working by the Missioners of gold mines — a subject kept in the profoundest obscurity. A host of writers^ the latest being M. Demersay^ doubts their very existence, and makes the precious metals an extract of agriculture. But their opinions are of little value in the presence of earlier authors ; for instance, of ^^ Mr. R. M.^ ['^ A Relation of a Voyage to Buenos Ayres, 1716 â– 'â– '), who declares that the Misiones had gold diggings, and of Mr. Davie^ (^' Letters from Paraguay"), who, travelling in 1796-1798^ asserts that the Fathers of the Reductions had 80,000 to 100,000 disciplined troops to defend their mines. The latter author saw pure gold collected from the banks of the Uruguay, upon which, we may re- member, were seven of the thirty Missions. He imprudently travelled through the old Missions in a semi-clerical dis- guise, and he suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace. I have myself handled a lump of virgin silver from the High- lands of Corrientes, known as the Sierra de las Misiones ; and a French painter at S. Paulo, who was also aware of its existence, proposed to exploit the diggings, setting out from Brazilian Rio Grande do Sul with an armed party strong enough to beat off hostile '^ Indians.""

      The Jesuits, it may be remembered, were almost all foreigners — Italians and French, Germans and Portuguese, English and Irish. Their communistic system, their gold, and their troops at last seriously alarmed the Spanish monarchy. Men had heard of Nicholas Neengiru, " King Nicholas of Paraguay ;" f and a proverb-loving race quoted the saying, " La mentira es hija de Algo." By his decree of April 27, 1767, issued some 220 years after the Jesuits had landed upon the shores of South America,

       I do not know why this traveller has had the honour to be so severely

      abused by M. Alexandre Dumas (pere).

      t Concerning this personage, see Southey, vol. iii. 469.

      INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 35

      Charles III. " estranged them from all his dominions/' The peculiar secresy, the sealed orders,, and the other pre- cautions with which they were deported show what Iberia believed to be their power of resistance.

      The era of progress seemed to have dawned, but it was fraught with misery to the Misiones. Deprived of their Jesuits, a few lingered on to the present century, and now they are virtually extinct. About 1817, General Artigas raised the " Indians against the Portuguese, who punished them by destroying their settlements, whilst their ^^ Protector" finished wasting all those between the Rivers Parana and Uruguay. In 1838 the cattle, which nearly two centuries before had numbered upwards of 700,000, were reduced to 8000 ; and in 1848 the 6000 souls of the eleven Para- guayan Missions were dispersed by the first President Lopez.

      Whilst ecclesiastical Paraguay was thus rising to decline and to fall, laical Paraguay, subject as has been said to the Viceroy alty of Peru, was slowly advancing in the colonial scale. Her port, Buenos Aires, advantageously situated for the carrying trade between Europe and the Andine Regions, became the nucleus of important commerce, and demanded defence against the Portuguese. By royal rescript of August 8, 1776, the King of Spain created the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, independent of Peru, and it presently embraced the Intendencies or Provinces of La Plata, Paraguay, Tucuman, Potosi, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, High Peru now Bolivia, and Cuyo alias Chile East of the Andes, now Mendoza, and S. Juan. These Intendencies all preserved certain privileges which gave them a manner of autonomy. The new division, with Buenos Aires as a capital, contained about 3,000,000 souls, and could ex- pend upon government $3,000,000, remitting the while $1,000,000 per annum to the king. It was separated into two Presidencies — Paraguay and Buenos Aires, whose Royal

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      36 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

      Audience was established in 1783^ and thus it became inde- pendent of Ch areas (Chuquivaca) where the high Court dated from 1559.

      The first Viceroy of the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, appointed March 21, 1778_, was Lieutenant- General D. Pedro de Zeballos. This officer was at once Captain- General with command of army, fleet, and church, and with civil as well as military powers. His successors kept up con- siderable state ; they lived pompously upon gifts, unlawful to accept ; and they cared little for the orders which forbad them to trade, to borrow, or to lend money ; to marry with- out permission, to become sponsors, officially to attend marriages or funerals, to have intimate friends, or even to possess land. The Viceroys were removable at will; and, at the end of their term, each was expected before he went home, to justify his acts before a Tribunal de Resi- dencia. The latter was held for sixty to ninety days by a doctor of laws^ whom the King chose out of three nomi- nees^ proposed to him by the Council of the Indies. This was some check upon a bad man ; otherwise, as a Viceroy himself said, the Viceroy could be " more sovereign than the Grand Turk.^^ At first, the locum tenens, during the absence of the King^s representative, was the Rejente, or senior Oidor, the Auditor-judge of the Supreme Court (Audi- encia). In the latter days of colonial rule, the senior military authority claimed the place, and thus in the revolutionary times and to the present age, Spanish America, it may be remarked, has ever preferred the rule of generals.

      Meanwhile, the province of Paraguay, here the cradle of Spanish colonization, that Mediterranean state, distant from the ocean and from the Platine ports affected by Europeans, isolated from the world, and deeply depressed by Jesuitic Socialism,, owed all her advantages to the suavity of the climate^ the fertility of the soil, and the easy simple life which.

      INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 37

      however relaxed, favoured to some extent, population. The early Spaniards had attempted to make it a high road to Peru and to the Cobija port on the Pacific, but the inordinate difficulties which it presented diverted the current of trade to the western lines, via Tucuman and Mendoza. It still preserved much of the ecclesiastical system, so adverse to moral dignity and mental independence, and so fatal to development and progress. In fact, at the date when the revolution broke out, the Paraguayans were the people least prepared for independence. They cared little whether of 170 Viceroys of the Rio de la Plata, only four were American born, or if the New World had given but fourteen out of 602 Captains -general ; they had transferred to the Crown the allegiance which they once owed to the Church, and in their ignorance and apathy, they felt themselves happy.

      We now approach the fourth epoch of Paraguayan history. It begins in 1811 with the birth of a Republic, which now numbers nearly two generations. The last of the sixty-five intendents or provincial governors was Lieu- tenant-Colonel D. Bernardo de Velasco, a brave but unin- telligent soldier, whose patriarchal kindness pleased his subjects. Influenced by this popular ruler, the people heard with indiff'erence the glad tidings brought by an emissary from the Buenos Airean Junta, who announced the depo- sition of the Viceroy and the revolution of May 25, 1810. A general assembly of the province, especially convoked, hesitated to accept the new regime, and pointedly refused to recognise the " hegemony ^^ of Buenos Aires. Thereupon the Revolutionary Junta resolved to try the effect of a corps of 800 men, headed by one of their best soldiers. General D. Manuel Belgrano. He was allowed to advance nearly 300 miles, till his force was reduced from 800 to 600 men ; he was beaten by the half-armed Paraguayans under Colonel Cabanas, at the Convent of Paraguary, in the heart of

      38 TNTRODUCTOEY ESSAY.

      ParagTiay^ and di'iven back to the Tacuari River,, in the Misiones^ and on March 10^ 1811^ he was disgracefully compelled to capitulate. The army was allowed to retire without molestation^ and Belgrano^ spending the end of the month with the Paraguayan officers^ used his time in show- ing the advantages which their country would secure by throwing off the yoke of Spain. Shortly afterwards were heard in the mouths of the soldiery allusions to liberty, liberal ideas, independence and nationality, which a few days before would,