Once the breath was out of the old man's body, his secretary attempted to seize the government. He concealed Francia's death for several hours and issued orders in the dead man's name. But as soon as the news came out, the army officers, whose assistance was essential, refused to obey him. The poor secretary escaped a worse fate by hanging himself in prison, and the troops amused themselves setting up and pulling down would-be dictators. After several months of anarchy, it was determined to assemble a Congress in imitation of the first Congress which had named Francia consul. A real representative government was, of course, impossible in Paraguay, but the Creoles, who naturally formed the bulk of the Congress, were desirous of insuring themselves against another dictatorship. They wanted a government where the offices would be passed around. However, an executive was necessary and the only executive they knew was an irresponsible one. The title borne by Yegros and Francia in the early days seemed a good one, andso it was agreed that two consuls should be elected for a limited period, during which, however, they were to exercise very limited power.
Among the ambitious and turbulent deputies a directing spirit arose in the person of Carlos Antonio Lopez, a well-to-do rancher who had received a lawyer's education and had been careful to keep out of public view during Francia's reign. At this juncture he inevitably came to the front, because he was the most learned and far-sighted among his fellow Creoles. He was a man of great natural ability and shrewdness, highly intelligent, well read, agreeable and affable in his manners. Selected as one of the two Consuls by the Congress of 1841, he soon pushed his colleague to one side, and became dominant. In 1844 an obsequious Congress which had been summoned by him and whose members he virtually named, conferred upon him the title of President for the nominal term of ten years, which really was intended to be for life. It is, however, significant of the milder character of Lopez and the increased power of the office-holding class that he preferred the more republican title of President, held for a nominally limited period, to the semi-monarchical one of "El Supremo," borne by his terrible predecessor. As a matter of fact, Lopez succeeded to all the absolute power and prerogatives of Francia.
The new ruler was no such determineddoctrinaireas Francia. He was rather a clever opportunist than a gloomy idealist. He adopted many liberal measures, such as the law providing that all negroes thereafter born should be free, and he even attempted to frame a regular constitution. He abandoned the policy of isolation, so dear to Francia, and opened the country in 1845. He loved appreciation and especially wished the approbation of foreigners. Though cautious and reluctant to engage in outside complications, he was by nature and taste a diplomat, and he welcomed the opportunity to try his wits in wider competition than Paraguay afforded. In 1844, Rosas, the tyrant of Buenos Aires, was engaged in a contest with revolutionists in Corrientes. His ultimate purpose was manifestly to unite the whole Plate valley under his authority. Lopez shared the uneasiness of other neighbouring rulers at the growth of Rosas's power. The latter promulgated a decree forbidding the navigation of the Paraná to any but Argentine vessels. This decree was an attack on Paraguay's very plain and natural right to reach the ocean, and absolutely shut her off from the outside world. Lopez resented the aggression, and after many protests declared war against Buenos Aires in 1849. Nothing came of it, however, except to give his oldest son a chance to see actual service and to emphasise Lopez's enmity to Rosas and his policy. The way was prepared for his friendship with Urquiza, the great leader of the Argentine provincials, and for the opening of Paraguay to foreign commerce.
Permission was granted in 1845 for foreign ships to ascend the Paraguay as far as Asuncion, and foreigners were no longer forbidden to enter the country. On the contrary, Lopez evinced a markeddesire for their society and encouraged them to come and engage in trade. His manners were engaging and his courtesies untiring, unless his will was crossed or his suspicions aroused, when he could be very unreasonable and arbitrary.
The spirit of the Paraguayan Creoles had been so broken by the terrible proscriptions of Francia's reign that Lopez did not experience much difficulty in ruling them. His milder methods and the terror of a renewal of the cruelties of Francia's time succeeded in holding all demonstrations of lawlessness or rebellion in check. He was averse to shedding blood, and his subjects enjoyed substantial liberty in their goings and comings. Justice was well and regularly administered, and life and property were almost absolutely safe. Over every kind of affairs, however, he exercised a patriarchal supervision. One trustworthy traveller tells of being waited on at table in a remote part of Paraguay by a fine-appearing man whose face was very sad and who seemed very awkward in handling the dishes. On inquiry, it turned out that the waiter was the richest man in eastern Paraguay and had been condemned by the President to serve in a menial capacity as a punishment for insulting a woman. Lopez's ideas of freedom did not contemplate that his people might engage in politics or the discussion of any public affairs. During the civil war in Corrientes, Paraguayans were forbidden to speak of what was going on across the river. Sometimes farmers were required to cultivate a certain area in a certain crop. He maintained the government monopoly of yerbaand completed Francia's work of incorporating the free Indians.
An instance of his ready interest in foreigners was his connection with a young American, named Hopkins, who had been sent out in 1845 by the United States Government to investigate the advisability of recognising Paraguay, then accessible for the first time. This enterprising young man fired Lopez's imagination with his accounts of the material progress of the United States, and Lopez even lent him money to return and form a company for the purpose of introducing American goods and cigar manufacture into Paraguay. Hopkins, after several years, succeeded in interesting some American capitalists and came back and established his factory. At first Lopez was delighted, but he soon quarrelled with the Americans. The etiquette in Paraguay was that the President should remain seated with his hat on when he granted an audience, and the manners of the visitor were expected to be correspondingly humble. The Americans mortally offended him by forgetting themselves in his presence. The situation soon became intolerable and the company retired.
After the overthrow of Rosas in 1851 the Paraná was declared free for navigation to vessels of all nations by Argentine law and by treaties to which Brazil and Uruguay were parties, although Paraguay was not. Nevertheless, Lopez permitted ships to ascend freely to Asuncion. Lopez wished to concentrate all trade at Asuncion and opened no ports north of his capital. The upper course of the riverbelonged to Brazil, but the boundary between Brazil and Paraguay had remained unsettled from colonial times. In his control of the Lower Paraguay, Lopez had a lever to force Brazil to terms. He steadfastly refused to permit ships to ascend into Brazil in spite of the latter's persistent efforts to procure the natural and necessary right of egress to the ocean by an international river. While this matter still remained unsettled, Lieutenant Page of the United States Navy appeared in theWater Witchat Asuncion on his survey of the Paraguay. Lopez was delighted, and extended every facility to the officer as far as the northern boundary of Paraguay. Page went on up to Brazil. Lopez was offended, for he feared that he would be at a disadvantage in his further negotiations with Brazil by having apparently granted to an American ship the permission which he had steadily refused to Brazilians. Unfortunately, just at this time occurred the quarrel with the American promoter, Hopkins. The American officer took his countryman's side, giving him refuge on board theWater Witch. This so enraged Lopez that he issued a decree prohibiting foreign war-vessels from entering Paraguayan waters, and one of his forts fired at the Lieutenant's vessel, killing a man. This outrage brought about Lopez's ears a naval expedition which compelled him to apologise and to agree to reimburse the Hopkins Company.
Brazil also sent a fleet up the Paraná to coerce Lopez into granting free transit along the Paraguay, but he cleverly held the Brazilians in parley until he had an opportunity to fortify the river. England'sgunboats at Buenos Aires virtually held the Paraguayan flagship, with Lopez's eldest son on board as hostage for a young British subject named Canstatt, who had been imprisoned and condemned to death for complicity in a conspiracy at Asuncion. Lopez was forced to release him and pay damages.
These humiliations changed his love for foreigners into a bitter hatred, and he began to prepare his country to resist their aggressions more effectively. From his youth he had trained his sons to succeed him. Francisco, the eldest, early evinced a taste for military affairs. When only eighteen years of age, he commanded the expedition of 1849 into the Argentine, and thenceforward continued to be his father's general-in-chief and minister-of-war and the active agent in improving Paraguay's military resources. The second son, Venancio, was commander of the garrison at Asuncion, and the third, Benigno, was Admiral. Though so rigid with his other subjects, he gave both his sons and daughters unlimited license and they grew up to regard themselves as members of a royal family. They enriched themselves at the public expense. The sons took as many mistresses as they pleased and gave free rein to all their cruel and bad instincts. The selfishness, obstinacy, unspeakable cruelty, and hard-heartedness of Francisco were soon to bring the guiltless Paraguayan people to the verge of extinction.
In 1854 Lopez had sent Francisco to Europe as ambassador. The young man spent eighteen months in the different Courts of Europe, and returned anexpert in the vices of great capitals and enamoured of military glory. After seeing the reviews of European armies, he became convinced that Paraguay could be made an efficient military power and that he himself might play a Napoleonic rôle in South America. His father, exasperated by the repeated humiliations put upon him by other countries, gave hearty support to his plans for the improvement of the Paraguayan army. In 1862, after a long and painful illness, the elder Lopez died. Francisco took possession of his effects and papers and produced a will naming himself Vice-President. Word sent to the military chiefs of the different towns insured the assembling of an obedient Congress at Asuncion, by which he was formally elected and proclaimed President and invested with all the absolute power wielded by his father and Francia.
The new President was thirty-five years old, good-looking, careful of his appearance, fond of military finery, and strutted as he walked. He spoke French and Spanish fluently, but with his officers and men used only Guarany. He was an eloquent speaker and had the gift of inspiring his troops with confidence in himself and contempt for the enemy. He had a will of iron; his pride was intense; he was absolutely unscrupulous, and had no regard for the truth. He never showed any feeling of kindness to his most devoted subjects. He ordered his best friends to execution; he tortured his mother and sisters and murdered his brothers. The only natural affection he ever evinced was a fondness for Madame Lynch, a woman whom he had picked up in Paris, and for her children. He seems to have treated her well to the last, but his numerous other mistresses and their children he heartlessly abandoned. Though physically an arrant coward, no defeats could discourage him. He fought to the last against overwhelming odds and was able to retain his personal ascendancy over his followers, even after he had been driven into the woods and all reasonable hope was lost.
He began his reign like a Mahometan sultan by ridding himself of his father's most trusted counsellors, imprisoning and executing the most intelligent and powerful citizens, and banishing his brothers. The military preparations which he had begun as his father's Minister of War were continued with increased vigour. The warlike Argentines and Uruguayans and the powerful empire of Brazil laughed at his pretensions to become a real factor in South American international affairs, but their laughter soon cost them dear. He was a monarch of a compact little state whose position behind rivers in the centre of the continent made it admirably defensible. Its eight hundred thousand inhabitants were obedient, brave, and physically vigorous. Accustomed for generations to regard their dictator as the greatest ruler in the world, knowing no duty except absolute compliance with his will, they never doubted that under his leadership they would be invincible. He knew that he could raise an army out of all proportion to the size of his country. The problem was how to arm it. With Buenos Aires commanding the only route of ingress from abroad it had been difficult for his father and himself to obtain war material from Europe. For years, however, they had been buying all that they could and had accumulated several hundred cannon, most of them antiquated cast-iron smooth-bores. They had fortified the point of Humaitá which admirably protectedthe Paraguay River from naval attacks, and had established an arsenal at Asuncion.
Against Brazil Lopez had serious cause of complaint. The boundary question was still unsettled and his possession of the Lower Paraguay placed the great province of Matto Grosso at his mercy, while the existence of that province, geographically a mere northern extension of Paraguay, was a menace to his own safety. Against the Argentines his hatred was not so well founded, but none the less bitter.
The usual civil war was going on in Uruguay in 1863. The party which held the capital was out of favour at Rio and at Buenos Aires, and Brazil and Argentine were both inclined to support the pretensions of Florés, who led the revolutionists. Lopez thought that his own interests were concerned and asserted his right to be consulted as to Uruguayan affairs. A mighty shout of laughter went up from the Buenos Aires press at the pretensions of the cacique of an Indian tribe to the position of guardian of the equilibrium of South America. Brazil ignored his protests and calmly went on with her preparations to establish her protégé in Montevideo. In the beginning of 1864 Lopez began active preparations for war. His army already numbered twenty-eight thousand men, and by the end of August sixty-four thousand more had been enrolled and drilled. Although ill provided with artillery and horses, and although the infantry were mostly armed with old-fashioned flintlocks, no such formidable force had ever assembled in South America.The news of Lopez's preparations exasperated and somewhat alarmed the people of Buenos Aires, though no one knew his exact intentions. Lopez had, in fact, determined to compel the Brazilian and Argentine governments to accept his wishes as to Uruguay or to risk all in the hazard of war. Perhaps hazy dreams of himself as emperor of a domain extending from the southern sources of the Amazon far down the Plate valley and over to the Atlantic coast passed through his brain. Possibly he foresaw clearly that Paraguay had come to the parting of the ways, and that she must either fight her way to the sea or reconcile herself to slow suffocation between the immense masses of Brazil and Argentina. In such a contest the only allies he could hope for would be revolutionary factions in Uruguay and Corrientes, and possibly the virtually independent ruler of Entre Rios. In case of a war with Brazil alone, the neutrality of Argentina might have been secured by careful management, but in the freer countries the feeling against him as a despot was strong, and the extension of his system would have been regarded as a menace to civilisation.
Late in 1864 the Brazilian forces marched into Uruguay and joined Florés. Lopez promptly retaliated by seizing a Brazilian steamer which was passing Asuncion on its way to Matto Grosso and followed up this aggression by an invasion of the latter province. His forces quickly reduced the towns on the banks of the Paraguay as far as steamers could penetrate. It was impossible to send reinforcements overlandfrom Rio; Brazil's counter-attack must be delivered from the south. The empire was unprepared, but its troops poured into Uruguay and Rio Grande as fast as they could be mobilised. The anti-Florés party were crushed by the siege and capture of Paysandu late in 1864. The Argentine government under Mitre proclaimed its neutrality. Lopez was flushed with his easy success in Matto Grosso. The forces he had on foot overwhelmingly outnumbered those of the Brazilians in Uruguay and Rio Grande. He wished to strike the latter before they could be re-enforced, overrun Rio Grande, and, as master of one of Brazil's most valuable provinces, dictate terms. To reach the Brazilians it was necessary to cross the Argentine province of Corrientes. He asked for permission to do so and Mitre refused. Notwithstanding the risk involved, he promptly decided to finish up both Argentine and Brazil at the same time. Sending his troops across the Paraná he virtually annexed Corrientes and declared war on Buenos Aires. Lopez destined twenty-five thousand men for the invasion of Corrientes and the conquest of the Lower Uruguay valley, but the difficulties of getting so large an army across the river and ready for an advance into a hostile country were unexpectedly great. The gauchos of Corrientes, trained for generations in civil wars, quickly assembled to oppose the Paraguayans. Meanwhile, a Brazilian fleet came up; and, on June 2, 1865, at Riachuelo, decisively defeated the Paraguayan naval forces. Lopez thereby lost all hope of commanding the river. The communications of his army in Corrientes might be cut off at any time and an advance became impossible. The battle of Riachuelo threw Paraguay on the defensive and made Lopez's great plan of carrying the war to the Uruguay impracticable.
FRANCISCO SOLANO LOPEZ.FRANCISCO SOLANO LOPEZ.[From a photograph taken in 1849.]
Nevertheless, Lopez did not recall the twelve thousand men he had sent across the missions to invade the valley of the Upper Uruguay and the state of Rio Grande. The Brazilians were takenunprepared, and early in August the Paraguayans had captured the chief Brazilian town in that region—Uruguayana. The failure of the Corrientes army to reach the Lower Uruguay left the route up that river free. The Brazilian and Uruguayan army, which had been victorious at Paysandú, marched up the west bank and defeated and destroyed the rear-guard which the Paraguayans had left on the Argentine side opposite Uruguayana. Lopez's army was therefore cut off from retreat. It was promptly surrounded, and on the 17th of September, 1865, had to surrender.
This put an end to Lopez's plan of an offensive campaign. Indignant at the invasion of her soil, Argentina had allied herself with Brazil against him. A secret treaty was signed between Brazil, Argentina, and Florés, now recognised as ruler of Uruguay, to prosecute the war to a finish, to depose Lopez from his throne, and to disarm the Paraguayan fortifications. Lopez withdrew his army from Corrientes and concentrated all his forces in the south-west angle of his own territory.
The position was admirable for defence. North of the Paraná and east of the Paraguay stretched a low, wooded country subject to overflow, and intersected by shallow, mud-bottomed lagoons, which were old abandoned beds of the rivers. The Paraguay protected his right flank and afforded him a direct and easy communication with Asuncion. Batteries on the point of Humaitá, which the Brazilian fleet did not dare to try to pass, insured this line of communication. West of the Paraguay thegreat Chaco, there impenetrable, prevented a movement to get north of Humaitá on that side. To the east the swamps along the Paraná extended indefinitely, and an advance of the enemy in that direction would have had its communications cut by an army encamped near Humaitá. Humaitá was, therefore, the key to the situation, and the allies could not advance until they captured it or, by running the batteries with their fleet, destroyed Lopez's control of the Paraguay.
By March, 1866, the allies had concentrated a force of forty thousand men just south of the fork of the rivers. About twenty-five thousand were Brazilians, twelve thousand Argentines and three thousand Uruguayans. The Brazilian fleet, numbering eighteen steam gunboats carrying one hundred and twenty-five guns, lay near at hand ready to co-operate. Protected by the fire of the gunboats, the whole allied army had little difficulty in crossing the Paraná and establishing itself on Paraguayan soil. Lopez lost heavily in vain attempts to prevent this landing. On May 2nd, a force of Paraguayans surprised the allies a few miles north of the river and badly cut up the vanguard. The allies, however, continued advancing and took a strong position just south of a great lagoon. Here, on the 24th of May, they were attacked by the whole Paraguayan army of twenty-five thousand men, who fought with desperate valour, but at a hopeless disadvantage. A quarter of the Paraguayan soldiers were left dead on the field, and another quarter were badly wounded, while the lossof the allies was half as great. The Paraguayan army was apparently destroyed, but the allies had suffered so severely, and the difficulties of transportation through the swamps were so great, that they did not make the sudden dash upon the trenches at Humaitá which might have ended the war. Lopez did his utmost to reorganise his army. Practically the whole male population was impressed into service. The river line of communication to Asuncion, and the strategic railroad thence up into the most fertile and populous interior of the country, enabled him comfortably to command all the resources of the country, both in men and provisions.
Humaitá had already been well fortified on the land side, and Lopez now threw up the trenches at the top of the bluff at Curupayty, the first high land on the Paraguay River north of the allied army and south of Humaitá, and connected it with the latter fortress. Lopez had the advantage of the services of a clever English civil engineer; and the fortifications, though rude, were soon made practically impregnable to assault. In spite of their defeats, the Paraguayans were as ready as ever to attack when Lopez commanded, or to stand up and be shot down to the last man. They were the most obedient soldiers imaginable; they never complained of an injustice and never questioned an order when given. Even if a soldier were flogged, he consoled himself by saying, "If my father did not flog me, who would?" Every one called his superior officer his "father," and Lopez was the "Great Father." Each officer was responsible with his life for thefaithfulness and conduct of his men and had orders to shoot any that wavered. Each soldier knew that the men who touched shoulders with him right and left were instructed to shoot him if he tried to desert or fly, and those two knew that the men beyond them would shoot them if they failed to kill the poor fellow in the centre of the five. This cruel system answered perfectly with the Paraguayans, and to the very end of the war they never refused to fight steadily against the most hopeless odds.
Meanwhile, the allies awaited reinforcements and supplies in the noisome swamps, dying meantime by thousands of fever. By the end of June, when the allies finally determined to assault the fortifications around Humaitá, Lopez had twenty thousand men on the ground. After some bloody and indecisive fighting in the swamps, General Mitre, the Commander-in-Chief, ordered a grand attack upon the entrenchments at Curupayty. On the 22nd of September, 1866, it began with the bombardment by the Brazilian ironclads. Eighteen thousand men in four columns advanced from the south, and threw themselves blindly against the fortifications. When they came to close quarters they were thrown into disorder by the terrible artillery fire from the Paraguayan trenches, which cross-enfiladed them in different directions. The enormous canisters discharged from the eight-inch guns point-blank, at a distance of two or three hundred yards, wrought fearful execution. The rifle fire of the allies was useless, and the Paraguayans simply waited behind their trenches until the Brazilians and Argentineswere close at hand and then fired. The allies retired in good order, after suffering a loss of one-third their number. The soldiers obediently kept rushing on to certain death until their officers, seeing that success was hopeless, told them that they might retreat. The courage of the Paraguayans had been proved in their unsuccessful assaults on the allies the year before, and now the Argentines and Brazilians showed even in this awful defeat what a stomach they, too, had for hand-to-hand fighting.
After the battle of Curupayty, nothing was attempted on either side for fourteen months. Both sides had had enough of attacking fortified positions. The Paraguayans lay in Humaitá and the allies occupied themselves with fortifying their camps. The imperial government made tremendous exertions to reinforce the army. The Argentines also did their best, but the efforts of both were hardly sufficient to make good the terrible ravages of the cholera, which by the beginning of May, 1867, had put thirteen thousand Brazilians in hospitals. It was not until July that the allies felt themselves again ready to take the offensive. A division marched up the Paraná with the purpose of outflanking Humaitá on the east, while cavalry raids were sent out to the north and rendered the outlying positions of the Paraguayans unsafe. Finally, in November, 1867, the Brazilian troops succeeded in getting over to the Paraguay River, north and in the rear of Lopez, and General Barreto captured and fortified a strong position on the bank fifteen miles north of Humaitá. This was fatal to the security and communicationsof Lopez. He made one more desperate and unsuccessful assault on the main position of the allies, and then began to plan to retire toward Asuncion. At the same time the Brazilian ironclads passed the batteries at Curupayty, compelling Lopez to withdraw his troops up the river to Humaitá. The war became virtually a siege of the latter place, which was constantly bombarded by the fleet from the front and by the army from the rear. The Brazilian position on the river to the north cut Lopez off from direct river communication with Asuncion, and he had to transport his supplies on a new road built in the Chaco swamps. He began preparations to evacuate Humaitá and retreat to the north. In January, 1868, Mitre definitely retired from the command of the allies and was succeeded by the Brazilian Marshal Caxias. A month later (February 18th) the Brazilian fleet of ironclads finally succeeded in running the batteries at Humaitá, and after throwing a few bombs at Asuncion, devoted themselves to the more useful task of cutting off the transports to Lopez's army.
PALM GROVES IN EL CHACO.PALM GROVES IN EL CHACO.
Lopez's line of river communication was now completely at the enemies' mercy, and a large force could not be maintained at Humaitá. He transported his army to the right bank of the Paraguay, recrossing when he got beyond the Brazilian positions. The garrison of three thousand men which he left at Humaitá defended itself for six months. In the meantime, he had fortified a new position less than fifty miles from Asuncion and accessible across the country from his base of supplies in centralParaguay. On his right flank a river battery was erected which again prevented the Brazilians from reaching the upper river. Opposite this point, however, the Chaco is penetrable, and Caxias landed a force on the west bank and, marching up, crossed the river in the rear of Lopez's position. The Brazilians closed in from the north and south on the few thousand Paraguayans, who were all that survived, and after several days of desperate fighting, December 27, 1868, the Brazilians carried Lopez's position and he fled for his life to the interior, followed by a thousand men.
Even after such a defeat he was indomitable and succeeded in gathering another small army which was pursued and destroyed in August, 1869. Lopez again escaped and took refuge in the wild and mountainous regions in the north of Paraguay. The Brazilian cavalry pursued him relentlessly, but it was not until March 1, 1870, that he was caught. In an attempt to escape he was speared by a common soldier.
No modern nation has ever come so near to complete annihilation as Paraguay during her five years' war against the Triple Alliance. Out of two hundred and fifty thousand able-bodied men who were living in 1864, less than twenty-five thousand survived in 1870. Not less than two hundred and twenty-five thousand Paraguayan men—the fathers and bread-winners, the farmers and labourers—had perished in battle, by disease or exposure or starvation. One hundred thousand adult women had died of hardship and hunger, and there were less than ninety thousand children under fifteen in the country. The surviving women outnumbered the men five to one; the practice of polygamy naturally increased, and women were forced to become the labourers and bread-winners for the community.
The slaughter was greatest in proportion among the people of white blood. When Lopez was waiting in 1868 for the final attack of the Brazilians, he made use of the last months of his power to arrest, torture, and murder nearly every white man left inParaguay, including his own brother, his brother-in-law, and the generals who had served him best, and the friends who had enjoyed his most intimate confidence. Even women and foreigners did not escape the cold, deliberate bloodthirstiness of this demon. He had his own sister beaten with clubs and exposed her naked in the forest; had the wife of the brave general who was forced to surrender at Humaitá speared, and subjected two members of the American Legation to the most sickening tortures. The Minister himself barely escaped with his life.
When the Brazilians captured Asuncion in 1868 they installed a provisional triumvirate of Paraguayans, but the country was really under their military government until after the death of Lopez. A new constitution was proclaimed on November 25, 1870, but it was not until a year later that the provisional government was superseded by Salvador Jovellanos, the first President. The new President had no elements with which to establish a government,—neither money nor men. The country Paraguayans refused to recognise his authority and he was shut up in Asuncion. There were three so-called revolutions in 1872, which were suppressed by the Brazilian troops. The country really remained under a Brazilian protectorate for the first few years after the war, and the government was largely a convenience to make treaties and to try to place loans abroad. Toward the end of 1874 Jovellanos was succeeded by Gill, and by 1876 the country was finally enjoying peace and freedom from foreigncontrol. The integrity of Paraguay and her continuance as an independent power had been mutually guaranteed by Brazil and Argentina when they began the war against Lopez, and neither of them could afford to let the other take possession of her territory. So Paraguay was left substantially intact, although she was compelled to give up the territorial claims the Lopezes had so long made against Brazil and the Argentine. The latter even submitted to arbitration her right to a portion of the Chaco north of the Pilocomayo. President Hayes was the arbitrator and he decided in favour of Paraguay in 1878. In the treaty of peace Paraguay had agreed to bear the war expenses of the allies and these immense sums are still nominally due from her. As a matter of fact, she has not been able to pay anything thereon, and the matter of forgiving the debt is one frequently discussed in Brazil.
Population rapidly increased after peace was thoroughly established, and has more than doubled in the last thirty years. In the late eighties the influence of the Buenos Aires boom extended to Paraguay, and the government offered great inducements to attract immigration. The movement was not very successful, but it had the indirect effect of transferring great tracts of land from government to private ownership. Previously, two-thirds of the land belonged to the State. One of the colonies was composed of socialists from Australia who promptly split on their arrival over the question of total abstinence. Those who insisted on beingallowed to drink were obliged to leave. Subsequently, disagreements about doctrine and the application of the principles of socialism drove out others. The soil of Paraguay is marvellously fertile, but its isolation and the want of markets for the national products make it unattractive to European immigrants.
Happily Paraguay has not suffered from civil disorders during the slow process of national regeneration which has been going on since 1870. Most of the Presidents have served out their full four-years term, and the one or two changes which have occurred have not been accompanied by any bloodshed or interruption in administration. The chief difficulties of the government have been financial. Revenue is small and paper currency has been issued until it is at a discount of several hundred per cent. compared with its nominal value in gold; but since foreign commerce is inconsiderable and the population lives off the products of its own farms the results of inflation have not been so disastrous as they might have been in a commercial country.
The wave of twentieth-century progress and immigration may strike this Arcadian region at any moment, but up to the present time the body of the Paraguayans live much as their ancestors. Existence can be maintained with hardly an effort; the people can always get oranges in default of more nourishing food; the climate is lovely; the forests surrounding the peasant's cabin beautiful. Why should a Paraguayan work when he can live happily and comfortably without labour, merely to procurethings which to him are superfluities? It must be remembered that the bulk of the Paraguayan people are descended from the Indians which were found crowded into this garden spot three centuries ago by the Spaniards and the Jesuits. They have never lost their simple, submissive, stoical character, and the rule of the three dictators did not tend to change them. The modern improvements of which they saw most during the reign of Lopez were muskets and cannon, and they can hardly be blamed for preferring old-fashioned ways after their experience during the war. Though the nation was almost destroyed, the surviving remnants show the same characteristics which distinguished their ancestors. The new Paraguay, however, is not ruled by any bloody-minded despot, and the military possibilities of the people will never again be a menace to the liberties of the surrounding nations. Rather is the present ruling class disposed to welcome foreign influences and immigration, and this beautiful, fertile, and easily accessible country stands open to the world.
URUGUAY
The most fertile parts of the globe have always been fought for the most. Uruguay has been the Flanders of South America. Her admirable commercial position at the mouth of the river Plate has made her capital one of the great emporiums of the continent. On the track of the world's commerce, open to the currents of intellectual and industrial life which sweep from Europe into the luxuriant country of the southern half of South America or around to the Pacific, her people have always been in the vanguard of Spanish-American civilisation. Her productive, well-watered, and gently rolling plains are well adapted for agriculture and unsurpassed for pasturage. Here the Indians struggled hardest to maintain themselves and longest resisted the Spanish conquest. From colonial times, Argentines have crowded in from the west, Brazilians from the north, and Buenos Aireans and Europeans from the coast, until this favoured spot has become the most thickly populated country of South America.
The very strategic and industrial desirability ofthis region, and the ease with which it can be invaded, have made it the scene of constant armed conflict. Uruguay has been the cockpit of the southern half of the continent, and its people have been fighting continually through the one hundred and fifty years during which the country has been inhabited. They fought for their independence against the Spaniards, then against the Buenos Aireans, then against the Brazilians, then against the Buenos Aireans again, and in the intervals they have fought pretty constantly among themselves. In colonial times Montevideo was Spain's chief fortress on this coast, and that city has always been the favourite refuge for the unsuccessful revolutionists and exiles from the neighbouring states. The blood of the bravest and most turbulent Argentines and Rio Grandenses has constantly mixed with its population. By habit, tradition, and inheritance the older generation of Uruguayans in both city and country are warlike.
Though the military spirit had been vastly stimulated by peculiar political and racial circumstances, in later times commercialism has been nourished by geographical situation and the fertility of the soil and by European immigration. The interplay of these contending forces has been producing a marked people—a vigorous, turbulent race whose energies have apparently been chiefly employed in war, but who have found time in the intervals of foreign and civil conflict to make their country one of the wealthiest and most industrially progressive countries in South America. They are like the Dutchin their turbulence and in their eagerness to make money; and they are also like the Dutch in their determination to maintain at all hazards their separate national existence. Nevertheless, the origin of Uruguay was artificial. The reason for the country's separation from Buenos Aires was that Brazil regarded it as unsafe to permit Argentina to spread north of the Plate.
The territory of Uruguay is that irregular polygon which is bounded on the south by the Plate estuary; on the west by the Uruguay River; on the south-east by the Atlantic; and on the north-east by the artificial line which separates it from Brazil. Though the most favoured in soil, climate, and geographical position, it is the smallest country in South America, the area being only seventy-three thousand square miles. In prehistoric days, when a vast inland sea occupied what is now the Argentine pampa, Uruguay was the northern shore of the great strait which opened into the pampean sea. It is the southern extremity of the eastern continental uplift of South America. The last outlying ramparts of the Brazilian mountain system, greatly eroded and planed down into low-swelling masses little elevated above the sea, run south-west from Rio Grande into Uruguay, dipping into the Plate at the southern border. The north shore of the Plate estuary is bold, and not flat as is the opposite shore of Buenos Aires. There are, however, no mountains, properly so-called, in Uruguay, and nearly the whole surface is a succession of gently undulating plains and broad ridges intersected by countless streams, and covered,for the most part, with luxuriant pasture. The abundance of wood and water is an immense advantage to settlers, whether pastoral or agricultural. The extreme south-western corner, near the mouth of the Uruguay River, is alluvial. On the Atlantic coast there are level, marshy plains, due to the slow secular rising of the land and consequent baring of the ocean's bed.
The country is easily penetrable in every part. There are no mountain ridges or dense forests to interrupt travel, and most of the rivers are easily fordable. On the west, the broad flood of the Uruguay River gives easy communication to the ocean, while it affords protection against sudden invasions from the Argentine province of Entre Rios. The low and sandy foreshore of the Atlantic has no harbours, but after rounding Cape Santa Maria and entering the estuary of the Plate, there are several bays which afford some shelter for shipping. Maldonado, Montevideo, and Colonia are the principal ports, but the extreme shallowness of the Plate prevents them from being classed as first-rate harbours for modern vessels. At Montevideo itself, large modern steamers must anchor several miles out.
HARBOUR AT MONTEVIDEO.HARBOUR AT MONTEVIDEO.
Possibly the present territory of Uruguay was reached by the Portuguese navigators who reconnoitred the coast of Brazil in the first few years of the sixteenth century, but they certainly made no settlements and left no clear record of their voyagings. In 1515, Juan Diaz de Solis, Grand Pilot of Spain, was sent out by Charles V. to reconnoitre the Brazilian coast in Spanish interests. He didnot land on the shore of Brazil proper, but kept on to the south until he reached Cape Santa Maria, which marks the northern side of the entrance to the river Plate. To his left hand stretched beyond the horizon a flood of yellow fresh water flowing gently over a shifting, sandy bottom nowhere more than a few fathoms below the surface. It was evident that he was out of the ocean and sailing up a river of such magnitude as had never been dreamed of before. He followed along the coast, skirting the whole southern boundary of what is now the republic of Uruguay and finally reached the head of the estuary. Directly from the north the Uruguay, a river five miles wide, clear and deep, seemed a continuation of the Plate, but from the west the numerous channels of the Paraná delta poured in an immense muddy discharge double the volume of the wider river. At the junction was an island which Solis namedMartin Garciaafter his pilot. He resolved to take possession of the country in the name of the Crown of Castile, and to explore the coast. He disembarked with nine companions on the Uruguayan shore: here the little party was unexpectedly attacked by Indians; Solis and all his men but one were killed, and the ships sailed back to Spain without their commander.
Three years later Ferdinand Magellan, on his epoch-making voyage around the world, visited the coast of Uruguay. On the 15th of January, 1520, he came in sight of a high hill overlooking a commodious bay. This he called Montevideo—a name which has been extended to the city which longafter grew up on the other side of the harbour. Magellan ascended the estuary, hoping that he might find a passage through to the Pacific Ocean, but after he had entered the Uruguay its clear water, rapid current, and want of tides convinced him that it was only an ordinary river and not a strait.
Spain determined to take possession of the Plate, and in 1526 sent out an expedition for that purpose under Diego Garcia. At the same time Sebastian Cabot was preparing another expedition, which was ordered to follow in Magellan's track and to make observations of longitude on the Atlantic coast of South America and in the East Indies. Spain and Portugal had already begun to dispute about the correct location of the line which they had agreed should divide the world into a Spanish and a Portuguese hemisphere, and which was believed to pass near the Plate. Garcia was delayed on the coast of Brazil, so Cabot reached the mouth of the estuary first. The latter had encountered bad weather and lost his best ship, and when he sighted the coast of Uruguay his men were discouraged. They remained in the mouth of the river for some time, and to their surprise a solitary Spaniard was encountered on the shore, who proved to be the only survivor of the party that had gone ashore with Solis ten years before.
Soon Cabot and his men heard tales of silver mines far up the river, and of the existence of a great civilised empire on its remote headwaters. Silver ornaments were shown which had come down hand to hand from Peru or Bolivia. Cabot determined to abandon his commission to the Moluccas,and to find the country whence the silver came. Naturally, his first effort was directed up the broad channel of the Uruguay, but on ascending this river it was soon evident that the mines and civilised country he was seeking did not lie on its banks. Fifty miles up the river at San Salvador the Spaniards attempted to establish a little post which is sometimes referred to as the earliest settlement in Uruguay or Argentina. It was probably intended as a mere supply depot and point of refuge, conveniently near the sea to aid the up-river expedition. However, the warlike Indians of Uruguay soon left no trace of it. Cabot entered the Paraná, where he spent three years in an unsuccessful effort to reach Bolivia. He and Garcia sailed back to Spain without leaving even a settlement behind them, but they were thoroughly convinced that an adequate expedition could find the silver country.
The tribes who inhabited Uruguay were the fiercest Indians encountered by the conquerors of South America. For two centuries they succeeded in preventing the establishment of settlements in their territory and kept out Spanish intruders at the point of the sword. The Spaniards greatly coveted the north bank of the Plate and made effort after effort to get a foothold there, but these savages managed to maintain themselves for a hundred and fifty years in the very face of Buenos Aires. The river shore itself was the last accessible and fertile region to be subjected to the whites. A century elapsed after the foundation of Buenos Aires before Colonia was occupied by the Portuguese, and another fifty yearswent by before Montevideo had been settled and fortified. Uruguay in pre-Spanish times, as well as since, was a meeting-ground for different peoples. One after another the Guarany tribes crowded into this favoured region from the north and west, and the old inhabitants had to fight and conquer, or be thrust into the sea. The bravest, best armed, and best organised tribes survived in the harsh struggle. Of the Indians inhabiting Uruguay when the Spaniards discovered the Plate, the principal ones were the Charruas. They occupied a zone extending around from the Atlantic, along the Plate, and a short distance up the Uruguay. This strong and valiant race never submitted to the Spaniards, and when at last they were defeated and crowded back from the coast well on in the eighteenth century, they retired to the north and maintained their freedom for many years. They belonged to the great family of Tupi-Guaranies, who occupied most of eastern South America at the white man's advent, but they were more nomadic in their habits and had developed the art of war to greater perfection than the mother tribes of the more tropical parts of South America.
In their fights against the Spaniards, they sometimes gathered armies of several hundreds which fought with a rude sort of discipline, forming in column and attacking in mass with clubs after discharging their arrows and stones. Possibly they learned some of their tactics from the white men, but it is certain that before the invasion they had developed a tribal organisation which enabled themto bring far larger bodies into the field than the tribes to the north, and that soon after the arrival of the whites they learned the military uses of the horse. Personal bravery and fortitude were the virtues most admired among the Charruas, and they chose their chiefs from those who had most distinguished themselves in battle. They did not practise cannibalism like their brother Guaranies on the Brazilian coast; they killed defective children at birth; they were moderate in their eating, lived in huts, and in winter covered themselves with the skins of animals. Altogether, they seem to have much resembled the more warlike tribes among the North American Indians and to have made the same effective resistance to the whites as did the Iroquois or Creeks. Such a fierce and indomitable people terrorised the Creoles, and settlement proceeded on lines of less resistance. The coast of Uruguay was long known as the abode of red demons who showed little mercy to the adventurous white who dared build a cabin on the shore, or ride the plains in chase of cattle. The forts established from time to time by the Spanish authorities in the early days were invariably starved out and abandoned, and the white man obtained a foothold only after the Portuguese and Spanish governments had fortified towns with walls, ditches, and artillery, which could be supplied with provisions from the water side, and after Entre Rios had been overrun by the gauchos.
Warned by the experiences of Solis and Cabot on the north shore, Mendoza, the first adelantado of the Plate, on his arrival in 1535, selected the southbank of the river as the site of the fortified port which he proposed to establish at the mouth of the Paraná as a base for his projected expedition up the river. His effort failed completely; he abandoned Buenos Aires, and the remnants of his expedition fled to Paraguay and founded Asuncion. In 1573 Zarate, the third adelantado, made a serious effort to establish a post in Uruguay. He had three hundred and fifty well-armed Spanish soldiers, more than the number with which Pizarro had conquered the empire of Peru, but they were not enough to make any impression on the Charruas. A company of forty men hunting wood was set upon and massacred, and when the main body tried to avenge this defeat, it, too, was driven back and only escaped to the island of Martin Garcia after losing a hundred men. The survivors were rescued by Garay, the most expert and successful Indian fighter of the time.
This experienced and far-sighted officer wisely left the Charruas alone and devoted his efforts to the other side of the river, where, in 1580, he founded the city of Buenos Aires. Hernandarias, the Creole governor of Buenos Aires, who shares with Garay the honour of establishing the Spanish power in Argentina, and who had already defeated the Pampa Indians from the Great Chaco in the north to the Tandil Range in Buenos Aires province, attempted, in the early years of the seventeenth century, to subdue the Charruas. He disembarked at the head of five hundred men in the western part of Uruguay. Few details of the campaign which followed have been preserved, but it iscertain that the Spanish force was destroyed and that Hernandarias himself barely escaped with his life. Thenceforth, for more than a century, the Spaniards made no serious attempts to interfere with the Charruas; the coast of Uruguay was shunned by European ships, and the interior remained absolutely unknown.
It is probable, although not certain, that the Jesuits on the Upper Uruguay established some villages of peaceable Indians in the north-western corner of Uruguay proper, in the middle of the seventeenth century. A few Indians, it is certain, gathered under Jesuit control on an island in the Lower Uruguay, some fifty miles above Martin Garcia, about 1650. This was known as the Pueblo of Soriano, and is often referred to by Uruguayan historians as the first permanent settlement in their country. However, no real progress was made toward getting possession of Uruguay. The Charruas proved refractory to Jesuit influence, and only the milder Yaros and the tribes on the Brazilian border could be converted.
The horses and cattle which the Spaniards had introduced multiplied into hundreds of thousands and roamed undisturbed over the rolling, grassy plains of Uruguay, and occasionally parties of Creoles would land on the shore of the Plate and at the risk of their lives kill some steers and strip them of their hides. As time went on, the Indians became used to the white men and some trading sprang up, but for a full century after Buenos Aires had been in existence Uruguay remained unsettled by civilised man.