Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/244



214 UP THE URUGUAY RIVER.

enemies^ and was still retained by his captors; at the second time of asking he exclaimed^ " I go with my countrymen'^ (mis paisanos)^ and he insisted upon passing over to the Orientals. Thereupon his only companion, the plucky little Commandant e Braga also cried out, " E yo con mi jeute." They were placed for an hour or so in a ground- floor room of No. 55, Calle Orientales, at whose corner is the Maua Bank, not, as is generally supposed, in the blue shattered house opposite the Gefatura. It is said that during this nervous interval Gomez showed some sign of fear â€” not so Braga. At length both were taken out and shot against the eastern wall of the compound. Their corpses were thrown into the general ditch, whence they are supposed to have been rescued for the purposes of a monument.

This cold-blooded murder, for such it is, was generally attributed to D. Gregorio (Goyo) Suarez, third in command of the Oriental forces, and subsequently Minister of War and rebel. The vendetta is, moreover, said to have been the result of an old private feud, Gomez having once struck the mother of Suarez : if the tale be true, such brutality con- siderably dims the lustrous gallantry and devotion that fought against such overwhelming odds. Of course there are two opinions about Leandro Gomez : his party holds him a martyr, his enemies a scelerat. He appears to have been a " Caudil" of a better sort; he read Humboldt and he had a taste for books and natural history. His medallion makes him a good-looking man, with a somewhat pensive cast of countenance, and chiefly distinguished by an enor- mous "goatee" and mustachios. His death caused great ex- citement among his friends at Monte Video, who threatened to kill the President D. Atanacio Aguirre. And popular feeling was outraged by the treatment of the prisoners, who were forcibly enlisted into the Colorado or