The greatest name in the history of Buenos Aires during the early years of the seventeenth century is that of Hernandarias Saavedra. Of distinguished ancestry and pure Spanish blood, he was born at Asuncion in 1561. A thorough Creole, his education was confined to the instruction he received at the convent of the Franciscan Fathers in his native town. At fifteen he left school and joined an expedition against the Indians of the Andes. He showed remarkable capacity in fighting on the plains, and his shrewdness and firmness in dealing with the aborigines were even more valuable than his courage. Juan de Garay, the far-sighted Basque who founded Buenos Aires, was the patron, model, and hero of young Hernandarias, who followed him in his great expedition over the southern pampa. When Garay, the great Indian fighter and coloniser, perished, his mantle fell on the young man's shoulders. In 1588 Hernandarias distinguished himself in the defence of Corrientes against the Indians of Chaco and was the leader in the difficult campaignsundertaken in retaliation. By the time he had reached thirty he was the leading Creole in all the vast region from the Upper Paraguay down to Buenos Aires, and when the Spanish Lieutenant-General of Asuncion was deposed an open Cabildo called him to the vacancy.
Eleven years later (1602) the governor of Buenos Aires died, and by common consent Hernandarias filled the officead interim. This popular selection was soon confirmed by royal commission. He signalised his term of office by an expedition down the coast in which he carried the terror of the white man's arms to the limits of the continent, and defeated the Indians wherever they resisted. Severe with the Indians when occasion demanded, he was inflexibly just, and as a rule protected them against the unlawful aggressions of his countrymen. Though he did so much to curb their military power, he left behind him the name of being their best friend. He manumitted his own slaves; he opposed the extension of the system of "encomiendas" with its enslavement of wild Indians, and after his first term as governor of Buenos Aires he was named official protector of the aborigines.
Although a Creole, such was his ability as a military leader, and his shrewdness, wisdom, and firmness as a civil ruler, that the Spanish government could not ignore him. Though a governor was soon sent out from Spain to replace him and fatten off the provincials, Hernandarias remained the most powerful man in the colony. The Spanish authorities found that they needed him, and he retained theirconfidence as well as that of the Creoles. He wisely advised the latter against open opposition, believing that continued peace must make the colony so strong that its interests could not continue to be ignored. In 1610 the Spanish government promulgated laws forbidding the further enslavement of Indians, and Hernandarias did much to secure their enforcement. At the same time he encouraged the Jesuits to extend their missions over the upper valley of the Uruguay, while he secured the ranchers of the western plains against the encroachments of these energetic priests. The Creoles prospered in the pastoral pursuits on the pampas, while the Jesuits developed the more purely agricultural resources of the wooded hills in the east. The success of his policy soon became evident in the increasing prosperity of the colony. Three hundred thousand hides were smuggled out of Buenos Aires in British ships alone in the year 1658, and by 1630 the Jesuit missions extended in a broad, continuous belt along the Paraná and the Uruguay from the Tropic of Capricorn to the thirtieth degree. They were the rulers of a great theocratic republic, whose area could not have been less than 150,000 square miles, and whose population of something like a million was concentrated in thriving and peaceful villages. The Jesuits systematically studied the resources of the country and taught their Indians the cultivation of many crops suitable for export. Their territory was commercially tributary to Buenos Aires and contributed to her growth and prosperity.
When the governorship of Buenos Aires againbecame vacant in 1615, by the death of the Spanish incumbent, Hernandarias entered on his own third term, and two years later, by his advice, the rapidly growing province was divided. Paraguay became a separate province, and the new province of Buenos Aires included all the territory east of Tucuman and south and east of Paraguay. The three provinces of Paraguay, Buenos Aires, and Tucuman were administratively separate, and each was directly dependent upon the Audiencia at Charcas and the Viceroy at Lima. One immediate purpose of the Spanish government, in erecting Buenos Aires into an independent province, was the enforcement of the prohibition of trade. It was thought that a governor always on the ground, and concentrating his attention on the subject, would be efficient in that direction. However, the result was the opposite of that expected. No governor of Buenos Aires could avoid making the interests of his capital city his own. If honest, he was constantly pressing the home government to open the doors a little and to make exceptions of particular cases; if dishonest, he went into partnership with the traders.
Hernandarias's career is the one striking example of success by a Creole in colonial times. Though the conquest and settlement of South America was accomplished by individual initiative, the men who had done the pioneering, who had fought and journeyed and suffered, who had stained their souls with horrible cruelties, whose adventures and successes would not be credited if the physical evidences did not prove the truth of the chronicles, were displacedwith scant ceremony to make room for impoverished Court favourites. If the original conquerors were thus badly treated, the Creoles, unfortunate to have missed the inestimable advantage of being born on Castilian soil, could not look for favour, or equal treatment with the office-holders sent out from Madrid year after year.
The story of the provinces that now form the territory of the Argentine Republic has not great interest during the long years that intervene from the completion of the romantic conquest until the uprising against Spanish authority. With the end of the sixteenth century, the spirit of enterprise among both Spaniards and Creoles diminished. Throughout the seventeenth century little progress was made in extirpating the savage Indians even in regions as close to Buenos Aires as Entre Rios and Uruguay. Settlements were confined to the right bank of the Paraná, and the Indians on the left bank, protected behind the wide flood of that river's delta, were left undisturbed. On the other hand, the dry and level pampas gave easy access to the thriving towns of the province of Tucuman. The Cordoba range, the greatest of the outworks of the Andes, rises from the plain less than two hundred miles from the Paraná at Santa Fé, and only four hundred miles from Buenos Aires itself. The city of Cordoba, in the fertile and well-watered slope at the foot of the sierra, was the capital of the province, the seat of a university from 1613, and the centre of Creole culture. The intercourse of the Buenos Aireans with their neighbours of the interior constantly increasedin spite of the prohibitions of the Spanish government, while Cordoba and the other towns of Tucuman prospered with the sale of pack-mules to the mines of Bolivia.
In the fertile Andean valleys of Rioja and Catamarca had lived since Inca times the powerful nation of the Calchaquies. Though they had acknowledged the suzerainty of the Cuzco emperors, they were ruled by their own chiefs. The first Spaniards that penetrated south from the Bolivian plateau failed to reduce them to submission. After a bitter experience the invaders passed to the west. For fifty years this gallant people were left undisturbed in their Andean fastnesses. Late in the sixteenth century aggressions again began. The Indians fought desperately, but were overcome. Forty thousand were sold into slavery; eleven thousand were exiled to Santiago del Estero, to Santa Fé, and Buenos Aires. The town of Quilmes, now one of the suburbs of Buenos Aires, was named from the mountain fastness where the Calchaquies made their last stand. Rosario was also settled by families of these brave Indians who were dragged across the pampas by the victorious Spaniards.
About 1655 a leader presented himself to the remnants of this warlike people, claiming to be the descendant and heir of the ancient Inca princes. He was known to the Indians as Huallpa-Inca, while the Spaniards called him Bohorquez. A woman of his own race, by the name of Colla, accompanied him, and she was greeted with all the ceremonious honours that belonged to the Inca Queen accordingto ancient customs. Even the Jesuit missionaries recognised the validity of the claims of Bohorquez, but the governor regarded him only as a menace to Spanish rule. He was pursued relentlessly; his followers rose in revolt; the rebellion spread northwards, but with the capture of the Inca it collapsed. He was sent to Lima, tried for treason, and executed, while the Calchaquies were placed under a military deputy-governor, subordinate to the governor of Tucuman. Their descendants have repeatedly proved that they came of fighting stock. They were among the best soldiers on the patriot side in the war of independence; the province of Rioja never submitted to Rosas, it resisted Mitre even after Pavon, the last and decisive battle of the civil wars, and it was the last province to give its allegiance to the confederation.
The third province into which the whole territory which is now Argentina was then divided, was Cuyo,—including the three modern provinces of Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luiz. In its early years, these settlements did not extend far from the Andes. Late in the sixteenth century San Luiz was added, thus connecting the Spanish dominions from Chile across to the borders of Cordoba.
The complicity of the Spanish governors with the contraband commerce which they were especially charged to suppress is abundantly shown by contemporary documents. The very first governor sent to Buenos Aires after its erection into a separate province was accused of agreeing to allow a Lisbon merchant to land a shipload of goods. He fled tosanctuary among the Jesuits and there perished of grief and shame. But others were more impudent and successful. Mercado Villacorta came to his post announcing that he would so effectively enforce the prohibition that "not a bird could pass with food in its beak from Buenos Aires to the interior." However, not many months passed before a Dutch ship applied for permission to disembark its cargo, presenting papers signed by a natural son of King Philip himself. The captain offered to turn over his cargo in return for a certain amount of hides, wool, silver, and enough food to take him back to Flanders. The proposition, on its face, was very advantageous, and Villacorta accepted it on account of the royal treasury. He made a faithful return of the enormous profits accruing from the cargo of the ship in question, but neglected to report that three other Dutch ships were anchored just out of sight and that she passed over to them in the night what had been laden on her the day before. By chance, a royal commissioner was in Flanders and watched the unlading of all four ships. He certified that three million dollars worth of hides, wool, woods, and silver were taken out of their holds. Villacorta was cashiered for the moment, but a few years later we find him installed as governor of Tucuman. Another governor, Andres de Robles, engaged so publicly and impudently in fraudulent transactions and corrupt contracts that his conduct was the text of sermons in all the churches, but he calmly went his way and paid no attention to the clerical boycott and priestly denunciations. Imports by way ofBuenos Aires increased so rapidly that soon the Cadiz monopolists were complaining to the Council of the Indies that the Potosí shops were filled with goods which had come by way of the Plate. Absolute prohibition had manifestly failed, and so palliative measures were tried. Permission was given to special ships to sail from Cadiz for Buenos Aires, carrying only enough merchandise to supply the demand of Buenos Aires itself, and giving bonds to return to Cadiz, so that the return cargo could be checked over to see that no silver was included. Naturally, this system proved impracticable and only opened another road to evasion.
The first severe blow to the extension of the Spanish dominions over the valley of the Paraná was struck by the Portuguese Creoles of São Paulo in 1632. Though King Philip of Spain was at that time also monarch of Portugal and Brazil, the Paulistas viewed with alarm and jealousy the encroachments of the Jesuits into the regions lying to the south-east of the homes they had occupied for a century. They had had a hard fight to keep the Jesuits from establishing villages in their own neighbourhood, and now they saw these old enemies creeping up the slope of the tributaries of the Upper Paraná, shutting them off from expansion over the remoter interior. The Paulistas hated Spaniards and Jesuits; they wanted Indian slaves; they recked little of the fine-spun discussions as to the whereabouts of the dividing line between the Castilian and Portuguese possessions; their allegiance to the Spanish monarch sat lightly upon them. Theirhomes were on the headwaters of tributaries of the Paraná, and their expeditions followed fearlessly down the streams and across the plateau and burst unheralded on the northern villages of the Jesuits. The poor Indians were defenceless and totally unprepared. The Jesuits had taught them the arts of peace but not of war; they had no arms; their spiritual rulers had bethought themselves safe in these remote plateaux in the middle of the continent; the few thousands of Paulistas, away over on the Atlantic border, had not been considered worth taking into consideration. Though few in number, the band of Portuguese Creoles created immense havoc. The Jesuit chroniclers say that three thousand Paulistas killed and carried away into captivity four hundred thousand Indians in a few years. This is certainly an exaggeration, but we know that all the Jesuit villages were wiped out as far south as the Iguassu, and that north of that tributary the Spanish line was pushed back to the Paraná. The Jesuits protested, but their complaints availed nothing. A few years later Portugal regained its independence of Spain and the work of the Paulistas stood. Spain lost her opportunity of securing the whole Plate valley, and the way was opened to the Brazilians to make the interior of the continent Portuguese.
The Paulistas' raids extended as far as the Jesuit villages in Paraguay and those on the Upper Uruguay, but here the priests managed to hold their own. Portugal's next move toward getting possession of all the territory east of the Paraná and theUruguay was made from the coast. In 1680, an expedition sent by the governor of Rio landed directly opposite the city of Buenos Aires and built a fort—calling it Colonia. This was the first permanent occupation of Uruguayan soil, either by Portugal or Spain. Both nations claimed it under differing interpretations of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Portuguese historians claim that the Paulistas had explored and asserted a right to the region in the early years of the seventeenth century; and Spanish authorities state that Jesuits had established a mission on the Lower Uruguay about the same time. As a matter of fact, Colonia was the first permanent European settlement south of Santa Catharina and north of the Plate, on or near the Atlantic coast.
The governor of Buenos Aires promptly raised a force, sailed across the estuary, and captured the new fort. However, Spain's diplomatic position in Europe at the time did not justify risking serious trouble over a matter that seemed so trifling as the possession of a piece of desert in South America. The governor was ordered to restore Colonia to the Portuguese authorities, leaving open for subsequent discussion and determination the question as to which nation was entitled to the territory on the north bank. With some interruptions, Portugal remained in possession of the port of Colonia for a century, and its existence was a constant source of annoyance to the Buenos Aireans. It immediately became a rival for the trade with the interior, and its merchants had the advantage of the open aid oftheir own government. Their competitors at Buenos Aires across the river were confessedly engaged in breaking the law of their country. Exportable goods were never safe from seizure until they had left Argentine soil. Colonia was a convenient storing-place, and the river crafts, once within its port, could discharge at their leisure, free from anxiety that active officials might threaten to enforce inconvenient laws. Every time a war broke out between the two countries in Europe, the exasperated governor of Buenos Aires would send over an expedition and capture the Portuguese town. Three times was it taken and as often restored on the conclusion of peace. Colonia in Portuguese hands interfered with the trade of Buenos Aires merchants, and the illicit gains of Spanish officials, and also destroyed any remnant of efficiency remaining to the prohibition of commerce across the Atlantic. Back of these commercial and temporary considerations was the menace to the future occupancy by Spaniards of the vast and fertile region extending from the boundaries of São Paulo to the mouth of the Uruguay.
The rapid decadence of Spain itself during the reigns of the last kings of the House of Austria was reflected in the colonies. With the accession of the Bourbons a forward movement began, and the colonial administration was roused into an appearance of activity. Something was done in the direction of adopting a more rational commercial policy, but it was already too late. The control of trade had irrevocably passed to Holland and England, and Spain could not recover the business of her own colonies. The efforts to improve administration were largely nullified by the conservatism of her aristocracy. It seemed that her mediæval governmental machinery could not be adapted to the conditions created by her active rivals.
In 1726, Montevideo, the strategic key to Uruguay and the north bank of the Plate, was occupied and fortified. Thereafter, though Colonia still remained in Portuguese hands, it was isolated and scarcely tenable. Immediately the north shore of the Uruguay began to be settled by Spaniards. Simultaneouslythe ranchers of the right bank of the Paraná, who had long been tempted by the fine pastures on the opposite shore, finally ventured to secure a foothold in Entre Rios. The warlike Charruas had kept the white man out of this favoured region for two centuries, although it was so near to Buenos Aires. They did not yield without a struggle, but they were overcome, and those who refused to submit fled to the east bank of the Uruguay River—the present country of that name. There they were followed by the proselyting Jesuits, and it was only a question of a few years before the Argentines proper had crossed the Uruguay and were pasturing their herds in the rolling champaign country that extends from that river to the sea. The Spanish advance would have continued up the coast, probably as far as the northern boundary of the Rio Grande do Sul, if the Portuguese had not in the meantime established a town and fort at the mouth of the Duck Lagoon, which is the only port that gives access to the interior of that most valuable region.
The increase of population, the extension of the occupied pasture-ground, and the greater demand from Europe for hides and wool, tended to multiply the volume and value of Argentine exportable commodities. Northern Europe made marvellous strides in purchasing power during the eighteenth century, and prices all over the world felt the impetus. The commercial policy of the Spanish government became more lax and the trade prohibition fell into contempt and disuse. The system of fleets of Spanish ships under convoy was abandoned, and singleships, mostly foreign owned, and trusting to their sailing qualities and equipment to escape capture, carried all the trade. The trade of Buenos Aires grew and the population of the city increased in proportion. The exhaustion of the surface deposits and richer lodes of precious metals in the mining provinces during the eighteenth century tended to increase the relative importance of Buenos Aires and her territory, even in the mind of the Spanish government, and to turn a current of immigration toward the pastoral and agricultural provinces.
In 1750 the Spanish government made an effort to get rid of the Portuguese in Colonia by negotiation. Portugal agreed to exchange that port for the Jesuit Missions which covered the fine pastures in the western half of the present Brazilian state of Rio Grande. The helpless Indians were driven off or massacred in spite of their feeble resistance, but as soon as the treaty was made public, Spanish and Jesuit protests against the abandonment of the territory were so violent that the agreement was formally annulled by mutual consent. The Portuguese retained Colonia, and though they gave up their formal claims to the Missions the military operations they had so promptly undertaken against that region had pretty well rooted out Spanish influence on the east bank of the Upper Uruguay. It was never re-established, and the dividing line of 1750 is still substantially the boundary between Spanish and Portuguese South America.
In 1767 Spain followed the example of Portugal and France and expelled the Jesuits from herdominions. For generations they had been the largest property holders in the Plate provinces. In the larger towns popular education was in their hands. Their great schools, convents, and churches were the finest edifices in the country. To endow their educational and religious work they had accumulated town houses, ranches, plantations, mills, cattle, ships, and even slaves. Along the banks of the Upper Paraná and Uruguay they had succeeded in dominating and absorbing the whole productive life of the community. Their system in the Indian regions smothered everything else; no white man was allowed to visit their settlements; the Indians were kept in absolute ignorance of the existence of an external world; the Jesuits required their subjects to work, gathering matte tea, cutting wood, cultivating the soil, and tending cattle. However, the Indians were kindly treated and were content with the easy life they enjoyed under the mild Jesuit rule. The Fathers exported immense quantities of hides and controlled the production of matte, then, as now, the favourite drink of Creoles and Indians in the southern half of the continent. The Indians received their living and the Jesuits absorbed the surplus. Their misfortunes in Brazil had taught them a lesson, and they had tried to erect their theocracy in regions where they need not come into close contact and constant conflict with the lay settlers. For a century, they had been left undisturbed in South-eastern Paraguay and the region between the Upper Paraná and Paraguay.
Neither their services to civilisation nor regard forthe interests of the Indians, nor their wealth and influence, could avail anything against the mandate of the Spanish monarch, backed by the Vatican and joyfully enforced by the colonial authorities. The Jesuits who had been employed in teaching in the towns were incontinently imprisoned and summarily shipped off across the seas, while their schools were placed under the charge of other ecclesiastics, and their estates sold at auction. In the missions resistance was anticipated, but none was made. The Indians, accustomed to look to the Fathers for guidance in everything, were aghast when they saw the Jesuits leaving, and Spanish officials taking their places. The new shepherds had not the skill to drive the flocks to the shearing, and could not keep the Indians together so as to exploit them for the benefit of the royal treasury. From their cruelties and exactions the Indians fled and sought refuge among the Creole settlements of Entre Rios and Uruguay, where they constituted a valuable addition to the population.
This transplantation had hardly been accomplished when the Spanish government took a step which revolutionised the administration of the southern half of the continent during the remainder of colonial times, and determined the future boundaries of the nations of South America. On the 1st of August, 1776, the Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires was created. All the territory south of Lake Titicaca was separated from the Viceroyalty of Peru, and the province of Cuyo was detached from the Captaincy-General of Chile. The new Viceroyaltycovered the territory that has since become the four countries—Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. In colonial times it was divided into eight "intendencias," of which the northern four covered the region that is now Bolivia and was then known as Upper Peru. The four southern intendencias were: Paraguay; Salta, covering the northwestern provinces; Cordoba, covering the central and western provinces; and, finally, Buenos Aires, which, besides the present province, included Santa Fé, the whole mesopotamian region, Uruguay, and the Jesuit country of the Upper Paraná.
The creation of the Viceroyalty was a reluctant and tardy reversal of the colonial policy which had steadfastly refused to recognise in Buenos Aires the inevitable outlet of the region. Although the four northern intendencias contained more than half the population, and Paraguay probably half the remainder, Buenos Aires was made the capital. Situated at the mouth of the great system of waterways, it was the natural commercial centre of the whole Viceroyalty. In fifty years it had doubled in population, while the old cities on the Bolivian plateau had remained stationary. In 1776 its population did not much exceed twenty thousand souls, but was rapidly increasing. Heretofore, it had been rather a resort of smuggling merchants than a centre of political and social influence. Nevertheless, from this unpromising root was to spring the spreading tree of South American independence. Buenos Aires is the only capital that never readmitted the Spanish authorities, once they had been expelled,and within her walls San Martin drilled the nucleus of the armies that drove the Spaniards out of Chile and Peru.
AN OLD SPANISH CORNER IN BUENOS AIRES.AN OLD SPANISH CORNER IN BUENOS AIRES.
The alarming growth of the Portuguese power southward was another potent reason for the establishment of a strong and independent military jurisdiction at the mouth of the Plate. The Spanish government had at last determined on vigorous measures to take Colonia, drive the Portuguese from Rio Grande, and push the Spanish boundaries east to the original Tordesillas line. Pedro de Zeballos, the first Viceroy, sailed in November, 1776, in command of the largest force which up to that time had been sent to the Western Continent. Against his twenty-one thousand men and great fleet the Portuguese had no force, military or naval, strong enough to make a serious resistance.
The flourishing Brazilian settlement of Santa Catharina was easily reduced, and, leaving it garrisoned, the fleet and army went on to the Plate. Colonia surrendered without resistance, and the army prepared to march northward and drive the Portuguese from all the coast as far north as Santa Catharina. Hardly was the advance begun, when news was received that peace between Spain and Portugal had been signed. The latter retained eastern Rio Grande, and Santa Catharina was restored, while Spain's title to Uruguay and the Missions was recognised.
Zeballos returned to Buenos Aires and actively engaged in the military and civil organisation of the new Viceroyalty. A fresh set of special regulationshad been prepared in Spain, creating an elaborate hierarchy of executives. The chief provincial governors, now called "intendentes," were subject to the orders of the Viceroy in military matters, but as to taxation they were directly responsible to the Crown. They were entrusted with the paying of governmental employees, which gave them great influence with the Cabildos and functionaries.
The intention of the Spanish government was manifestly to enforce close relationship and greater subjection to the central authority at Madrid. In practice, however, the financial independence of the provincial governors stimulated the feeling of local independence, increased the influence of the Cabildos, and paved the way for the revolution.
Since 1765 the rest of South America had enjoyed the privilege of free commerce from the mother country. Now, the same rule was applied to Buenos Aires, and trade with Spain quickly attained respectable dimensions. In the five years from 1792 to 1796 more than one hundred ships made the voyage to Spain, and exports ran up to five million dollars annually. Buenos Aires became theentrepôtof the wine and brandy of Cuyo; the poncho and hides of Tucuman; the tobacco, woods, and matte tea of Paraguay; the gold and silver of Upper Peru; the copper of Chile; and even the sugar, cacao, and rice of Lower Peru. By the end of the century the population of the city was forty thousand. Thirty thousand more lived in the immediate vicinity; Montevideo had seven thousand, and the outlying settlements of Uruguay twenty-five thousandinhabitants. The civilised population of the Buenos Aires intendencia was about one hundred and seventy thousand, and in population and in wealth it had become easily the first among the eight great districts of the Viceroyalty.
The Viceroyalty was a heterogeneous mass. The common subjection of its component parts to the Viceroy gave it a mere appearance of cohesion. The centring of the commercial currents in Buenos Aires did not furnish an organic connection sufficiently strong to unite 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 ofSpanish descent lived mostly in the towns, they were in close and friendly contact with the civilised Indians who laboured in the irrigated valleys. On the wide 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 toward 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 centres of aristocracy and bureaucracy, while the social organisation 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 official imposed by external authority, and having no real support in the country itself. It is not a mere coincidence that the three centres—Caracas, Buenos Aires, and Pernambuco—whence the revolutionary spirit spread over South America should all have been democratic in social organisation 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 ofunion between the widely dispersed cities and provinces of the Viceroyalty. The priests had not been organised 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 authorised, 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 "products of the country." 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 favour. 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 wars 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 fromthe sea unless permission were granted to ship in foreign vessels. Dissatisfaction grew apace, and the prestige of the Viceregal government and the influence of resident Spaniards 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 man, 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 25, 1806, Admiral Popham appeared in the estuary, and fifteen hundred 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 Liniers, a French officer in the Spanish employ, 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. Liniers crossed the estuary and, advancing without opposition to the neighbourhood 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 scantyBritish 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 valour. The British expedition might have been successful had it been more numerous, or had it been promptly re-enforced. 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 Beresford 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 re-enforcement came. Four thousand 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 Liniers, 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 Whitelocke 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 muskets, and the women and boys rained down stones, bricks, and firebrands on the masses crowding the pavements below. The British could not retaliate on their enemies, but pushed stubbornly on toward the centre 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 remainder only on agreeing to evacuate Montevideo within two months.
The political and commercial consequences of the English invasions 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 merchantmen had followed the warships. Untrammelled 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's trade was boomed by the sales of imported goods to the interior provinces. Creole jealousy of Spaniards rapidly became accentuated. From this time dates the general use of "Goths," applied to Spaniards as a term of opprobrium, and of "Argentines," as a designation for the natives of the Plate. Recognition could no longer be withheld from the men who had organised 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 pusillanimous 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 suggestedto 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 favour. The Spanish governor of Montevideo at once took the oath of allegiance to the new monarch, an act of insubordination to his titular superior, the Viceroy. The latter was the Frenchman, Liniers, who sympathised with the Creole party in desiring to wait and obtain concessions for the colony before recognising any of the various claimants. 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 favour of his brother Joseph. Everyone in South America was agreed not to recognise 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 thethrone, 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 depositary 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 programme, but all of them were determined that the "Goths" should not get the upper hand. The latter rose against Liniers and tried to install a junta on the model of that at Seville. In view of the menacing attitude of the Creole militia, the attempt was a failure, but the Frenchman 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 shrank 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 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 centre 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 to what should 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 favour 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, commander of the most efficient militia regiment; Vieytes, 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 lawyers, Castelli and Paso. The active spirits conspired to depose the Viceroy, confident that this measure would be popular among 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 colours. 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 pretence 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 Ferdinand VII., King of Castile and Leon. An able and ambitious coterie of young men came to thefront, whose achievements in war, administration, and diplomacy were to change the face of South America. In the neighbouring 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 Liniers 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 bloodthirstiness of the war between Creoles and Spanish sympathisers. As a rule, both sides slew their prisoners, and the combats were, therefore, incredibly bloody for the numbers engaged.
The Buenos Airean army continued its triumphal march through the provinces of Cordoba and Salta up to the Bolivian mountains. The Creole townspeople reorganised the municipal governments on an anti-Spanish basis, and the army increased like a rolling snowball. Not until it had reached the high lands of Bolivia was serious resistance encountered. On the 7th of November the patriots gained the battle of Suipacha. The Creoles of Bolivia rose, and the Buenos Aireans penetrated rapidly as far as the boundaries of the Viceroyalty. Meanwhile, Manuel Belgrano had led a small expedition to Paraguay. However, the inhabitants of that isolated region showed no disposition to jointhe Buenos Aireans 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 honourable terms. Montevideo's capture seemed essential to the safety of Buenos Aires itself. Spanish ships under the orders of its governor blockaded 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. Re-enforcements 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 Huaqui, 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 down 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'smarshals 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 Paraná, 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 thirty-eight, mostly wealthy merchants, were arrested and garrotted. 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. Victorious Spanish armies threatened them from both Bolivia and Montevideo, and fire in the rear 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 Tucuman, where the disheartened fragments ofthe 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 an Argentine army. The junta ordered Belgrano to retire, so as to protect Buenos Aires, but he disobeyed and stuck to Tucuman 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 Tucuman to finish with the mass of militia there before resuming its march on 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 influences 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.