Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/77



INTllODUCTOllY ESSAY. 47

orders^ and they might lead to conspiracy. Finally, at the time of his death only fifty priests, all aged and mostly decrepit, survived in the land that had once been overrun by them.

" Por suas ideas religiosas/' says my learned friend Dr. D. Barros Arana, of Santiago de Chile, whose excellent school history of the New World deserves to be naturalized amongst us, " aquel mandatario no parecia nascide i educado en una Colonia espanola.'^ It is not generally known that the Francia family is of Paulista origin, and that the Fran9a e Horta house still exists at S. Paulo. The Dictator's father, Garcia Rodriguez rran9a, was established by the Governor of Paraguay, D. Jaime Sanjust, as Majordomo in the Yaguaron plantation of black tobacco, with which the Spaniards attempted to rival the Brazilians. Bengger declares that his father was born a Frenchman, yet owns that Paraguay believed him to be Portuguese. G. B. Fran9a Castilianized his name, and married in his adopted home. His son, however, never belied his Portuguese origin, or his descent from that noble city which has three times expelled the Jesuits — she will yet do it a fourth time — and which pushed her arms far as the Gaarani language spread, from the Plate river to the Amazons, from the Atlantic to the foot of the Andes. Viewed by this light, the high-minded and self-reliant, the disinterested and far- seeing, the sombre, austere, and ascetic character of Dic- tator Francia, becomes at once intelligible.

On May 1, 1816, the fourth Congress met at Asuncion and elected Dr. Francia perpetual Dictator of the Republic : he was no longer " Usia-" or "Vuestra Senoria" he became " Excelentisimo"- and "El Supremo" — in those times a recognised title. It is now quoted as if a little blas- phemous. The Dictator had attained the ripe age of sixty, when the fixed habits of a life show only a tendency to