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 pa.s.sed 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 mediaeval 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 sh.o.r.e of the Uruguay began to be settled by Spaniards. Simultaneously the ranchers of the right bank of the Parana, who had long been tempted by the fine pastures on the opposite sh.o.r.e, 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 single ships, 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 ma.s.sacred 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 her dominions. 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 acc.u.mulated town houses, ranches, plantations, mills, cattle, ships, and even slaves. Along the banks of the Upper Parana 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 quant.i.ties 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 Parana and Paraguay.
Neither their services to civilisation nor regard for the 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 const.i.tuted 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 t.i.ticaca was separated from the Viceroyalty of Peru, and the province of Cuyo was detached from the Captaincy-General of Chile. The new Viceroyalty covered 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 Fe, the whole mesopotamian region, Uruguay, and the Jesuit country of the Upper Parana.
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 t.i.tle 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 regulations had 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 the _entrepot_ of the wine and brandy of Cuyo; the poncho and hides of Tuc.u.man; 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 thousand inhabitants. 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.
CHAPTER V
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTION
The Viceroyalty was a heterogeneous ma.s.s. 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 const.i.tution. Upper Peru had been a mining region, and its white population was largely of a shifting character. The bulk of the population were Indians, and the inhabitants of Spanish blood were still taskmasters. Society was as yet in unstable equilibrium, and the different elements had not thoroughly coalesced. Paraguay was an isolated and almost self-sufficing commonwealth. It was essentially theocratic, and averse to receiving external impressions. In Salta and Cordoba the proportion of Indian blood was not so preponderant as in Bolivia and Paraguay; agriculture was the economic basis; the Creoles and Indians had largely amalgamated politically and socially; and, though the people of Spanish descent lived mostly in the towns, they were in close and friendly contact with the 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 n.o.bles 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 of union between the widely dispersed cities and provinces of the Viceroyalty. The priests had not been organised into a compact hierarchy. They had little cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 from the 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 scanty British garrison was shut up in the fort, and on the 12th of August the Argentines advanced. After some hard street fighting, the English were forced to surrender, and the flags which were captured that day are still exhibited in the city of Buenos Aires with just pride as trophies of Argentine 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 a.s.sault. In Buenos Aires all was confusion, but the people were resolute to resist. Again an open Cabildo a.s.sembled, 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 cla.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses 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 suggested to the Argentines that they were ent.i.tled to the same privileges from Spain. Charles IV. and G.o.doy, 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 t.i.tular 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 the throne, while provisional governments were formed in many cities of Spain to resist the enthroning of Joseph. A central junta at Seville claimed to be the 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-const.i.tuted 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 att.i.tude 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sembly 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 const.i.tutional law provided no machinery through which they could be heard, and the capital a.s.sumed, 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 the front, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 munic.i.p.al governments on an anti-Spanish basis, and the army increased like a rolling s...o...b..ll. 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 join the 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 alt.i.tude, suffering in health and efficiency. The Viceroy of Peru rapidly recruited a considerable army among the st.u.r.dy 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 t.i.ticaca, 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 att.i.tude of affairs. The Argentines evacuated Uruguay, and the Spanish colonial authorities everywhere took the offensive. The heroic resistance which the Spanish people were now making to the army of Napoleon"s marshals encouraged the Viceroy and governor to believe that Ferdinand would soon again be seated on the throne of his fathers. Spanish ships dominated the delta of the Parana, and the Spanish troops from Montevideo descended at pleasure on the banks of the Plate or its tributaries. The Spanish residents at Buenos Aires plotted against the junta, but their conspiracy was betrayed, and in the middle of 1812 their chiefs, to the number of 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 a.s.sociates. 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 Tuc.u.man, where the disheartened fragments of the 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 hors.e.m.e.n appeared as the princ.i.p.al element of an Argentine army. The junta ordered Belgrano to retire, so as to protect Buenos Aires, but he disobeyed and stuck to Tuc.u.man and let the Spaniards get between him and the capital. With the country up in arms, and the exasperated gauchos hara.s.sing his march, the Spanish general did not dare leave Belgrano"s army behind him. The Spanish army turned back to Tuc.u.man to finish with the ma.s.s 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 a.s.surance 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MANUEL BELGRANO.
[From an oil painting.]]
All this while the government at Buenos Aires was involved in internal quarrels. The first junta soon expelled its fiercest, strongest, and most active spirit,--Moreno,--who seems to have been the only man of the period who foresaw the necessity of establishing a federative form of government. With the disaster of Huaqui the necessity for a more compact executive became urgent. A triumvirate a.s.sumed the direction of affairs.
Its policy was at once despotic and feeble and satisfied neither federalists, advanced liberals, nor the military element. The latter was becoming daily more predominant. A radical republican society called the "Lautaro," composed largely of young officers, was organised and became virtually a ruling oligarchy. San Martin and Alvear arrived from Europe, and the prestige which they had acquired on European battle-fields at once secured for them prominent positions. When the news of the victory of Tuc.u.man reached the city the military cla.s.ses revolted, deposed the old triumvirate, and installed a new one. This revolution marked the final triumph of the sentiment of independence. The new government was active in every sense of the word. Belgrano was re-enforced; San Martin was encouraged in his chosen work of forming the nucleus of a disciplined army, fit for offensive warfare; the worn-out pretence of employing Ferdinand"s name on public doc.u.ments was dropped; the inquisition, the use of torture, and t.i.tles of n.o.bility were abolished.
The Argentine revolution had finally a.s.sumed a military and republican character; independence was clearly henceforth its end and purpose.
CHAPTER VI
COMPLETION OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE