Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/67



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 37

however relaxed, favoured to some extent, population. The early Spaniards had attempted to make it a high road to Peru and to the Cobija port on the Pacific, but the inordinate difficulties which it presented diverted the current of trade to the western lines, via Tucuman and Mendoza. It still preserved much of the ecclesiastical system, so adverse to moral dignity and mental independence, and so fatal to development and progress. In fact, at the date when the revolution broke out, the Paraguayans were the people least prepared for independence. They cared little whether of 170 Viceroys of the Rio de la Plata, only four were American born, or if the New World had given but fourteen out of 602 Captains -general ; they had transferred to the Crown the allegiance which they once owed to the Church, and in their ignorance and apathy, they felt themselves happy.

We now approach the fourth epoch of Paraguayan history. It begins in 1811 with the birth of a Republic, which now numbers nearly two generations. The last of the sixty-five intendents or provincial governors was Lieu- tenant-Colonel D. Bernardo de Velasco, a brave but unin- telligent soldier, whose patriarchal kindness pleased his subjects. Influenced by this popular ruler, the people heard with indiff'erence the glad tidings brought by an emissary from the Buenos Airean Junta, who announced the depo- sition of the Viceroy and the revolution of May 25, 1810. A general assembly of the province, especially convoked, hesitated to accept the new regime, and pointedly refused to recognise the " hegemony " of Buenos Aires. Thereupon the Revolutionary Junta resolved to try the effect of a corps of 800 men, headed by one of their best soldiers. General D. Manuel Belgrano. He was allowed to advance nearly 300 miles, till his force was reduced from 800 to 600 men ; he was beaten by the half-armed Paraguayans under Colonel Cabanas, at the Convent of Paraguary, in the heart of