Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/83



IXTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 53

and after a virtual reign of nearly thirty. He had ap- pointed no successor, shrewdly remarking that he was not likely to want heirs. His last order was to direct the death of an enemy ; he made no will, he kept no records, and he left about one million of dollars in the national treasury. Early he had adopted the excellent plan, for a tyrant, of destroying all his '^'^bandos^' or decrees returned to him with ^' executed^^ upon the margin. He was very much addicted to women — the greater the man, the warmer are his passions, doubtless the instinct which would multiply him. He left sundry illegitimate children whom he never adopted, and he prematurely carried out the saying ^' Neque nubent, neque nubentur.^^ Many couples who had families took the advantage of his death and caused themselves to be married. He was buried in the Cathedral of Asuncion, but the exact spot is now forgotten. According to Mr. Mansfield and Lieut. -Colonel Thompson, the rem.ains of " El Defiinto^^ — his new title — were cast out by private enmity from a violated grave. This is hardly probable in a country where for years after his death men uncovered at the mention of his name.

Europeans often wonder how, after such a career. Dic- tator Francia was allow^ed to die in his bed. "Spain," ^ said Gibbon, " was great as a province, but small as a kingdom -/' and the same may be asserted of all the Spanish provinces and colonies in our time. The peculiar characteristic of the Spaniard — as the lengthened reign of D. Isabel II. proves — and of the Hispano-American, as opposed to the Luso-American, is a marvellous, Oriental, fatalistic patience under despotisms the least endurable. For years Rosas freely tyrannized over Buenos Aires, and he owed his overthrow only to the foreign idea, even as Marshal President Lopez is succumbing to the stranger bayonet. At the present day, D. Justo XJrquiza, the Taboada family.