Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/439



RETURN TO BUENOS AIRES. 409

the combatants, and he passed three days in the Allied camp. The negotiations, however, were broken off, and the Minister once more retired.

The ill feeling between Marshal-President Lopez and Mr. Washburn began early in 1868, when Asuncion was placed under military law, and Luque was erected into a provisional capital. The United States Minister received an invitation to quit his hotel, and he positively refused to obey it, arguing that the Legation w^as part of the United States territory. I hardly think that such a proceeding would have been adopted by European diplomatists. Asuncion had been proved dangerous ; it might have been attacked at any moment by a squadron of ironclads, and the Marshal- President of the Republic was to a certain extent answerable for the lives of foreign agents accredited to him.

Thus the Minister was drawn into a by no means dig- nified correspondence with the Paraguayan Cabinet, espe- cially with the acting minister Gumesindo Benitez, who was shot, or reported shot, before the question was settled ; and with his successor, the notorious Luis Caminos. He was subjected to all manner of injurious imputations; of harbouring foreign traitors, when he had only given a home to two or three Americans and twenty-two English; of furthering his fortunes by receiving, in consideration of a percentage, " trunks, boxes, and iron safes " of moneys and valuables which belonged to the State ; of being " bribed by the Marquis de Caxias ; " of covering with his seal treason- able correspondence forwarded to the Allied Army; and lastly, of being " implicated in a vast conspiracy '^ — in fact, of high treason. His only excuse for tolerating and replying to such insolent charges, was that he feared not only death, but torture for himself and his wife and child. Such a confession could hardly be palatable to the proud Republic which he represented.