Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/314

284 San Martin also decreed to himself an annual salary oF 30,000 dols., of which he spent the greater part in presents and in public displays; but even so, this brought much adverse criticism upon him, and contributed to give currency to a report then commonly circulated about him, that he entertained the inane project of crowning himself King. The people in their ballads sang of him as their future Emperor, and it became a habit among the officers of the army to speak of him as "King Joseph."

Up to that time the American spirit of independence and the love of glory had sufficed to bind together the units of the army; the alloy of gold had not yet destroyed the temper of their swords. Badly fed, badly dressed, with only half their pay when they had any, suffering from all sorts of privation and disease, they had never received any pecuniary reward for their services. The Government of Chile had promised to give the victors of Maipó the land on which they had achieved that crowning triumph, but the promise was never fulfilled. The municipality of Lima now gave to San Martin 500,000 dols., arising from the sale of the properties of Spanish residents which had been confiscated, for distribution among his principal officers, and offered to the rest who should continue in the service grants of land in the provinces yet to be conquered. San Martin distributed the half million dollars among twenty officers—25,000 dols. to each one—which was in those days a fortune; but this, instead of binding them to his cause, produced resentments and jealousies, as is ever the case when self-interest enters into the relations between man and man, of which he was soon to have sad proof.

In October he received information that a conspiracy to depose him existed among the higher officers of the army. He summoned them to a secret council and disclosed the matter to them, but received very unsatisfactory replies. That such a conspiracy existed appears certain, but it was not yet mature, and the inquiry was sufficient to dissipate it. Colonel Heres, of the Numancia battalion, was