CHAPTER V
CHILE'S GREATNESS AND THE CIVIL WAR
Since 1873 the low prices of Chile's chief exports, wheat and copper, had turned the balance of trade against her. The government could not make both ends meet, and in 1878 the banks were compelled to suspend specie payments. They resorted to the issue of more notes, backed by the government's guaranty. Just at this juncture the Bolivian government levied a heavy royalty on the nitrate extracted by the Chilean companies operating in Bolivian territory. This threatened ruin to the most promising enterprise in which Chilean citizens were engaged, and was believed to be a manifest violation of the terms of the treaty of 1866. The government determined not to stop short of war itself if necessary to defend Chilean interests, though war on Bolivia also meant war on her ally, Peru.
A meagre description of the stirring events of this contest will be found in that part of this volume devoted to Peru. Chile's overwhelming victory not only profoundly affected her international position, but also her internal condition. The preparations of the spring of 1879 plunged the government into expenditures which ordinary revenues were totally insufficient to meet. A new issue of paper money was resorted to, but the interest on the foreign debt was kept up. The first nine months of 1879 were an anxious time for Chileans. Pitted against two nations whose combined population was nearly double her own, her treasury empty, while that of Peru was supplied by the marvellous nitrate deposits of Tarapacá, the result appeared doubtful and the consequences of failure almost too horrible to face. When the Peruvians lost their iron-clad, Independencia, hope rose, but the ease with which the Huascar eluded the Chilean ships made the people again lose confidence in their navy, and the coast towns were terror-stricken. But the destruction of the dreaded iron-clad in the naval battle of the 9th of October changed in the twinkling of an eye fear into confidence, apprehension of national ruin into the joyful assurance that a Chilean army would soon be in possession of the Golconda of the Pacific. Within a month the Chilean forces were landed in the nitrate country, the Peruvians and Bolivians had been chased across the desert, and the Chilean collectors were receiving a million and a half a month from the royalties of the nitrate mines. A net sum nearly equal to the total revenue which Chile previously had been collecting from all sources was added to her income, and she was no longer driven to painful expedients in order to raise money to meet her military expenses. Although the issues of paper money were continued and prices consequently rose, business flourished and a period of abundance replaced the hard times which had reached a crisis in 1878. The government was able to abolish the odious tobacco monopoly, and the war rather lightened than increased the burdens of commerce. The centralised government of Chile proved an admirable instrument for times of war. The president and his ministry, backed by a compact congress, wielded the whole force and resources of the country like a weapon fitted to the hand, striking heavy and relentless blows until Peru lay prostrate.
After the complete destruction of the allied army by the Tacna campaign in March, 1880, the government, confident that a treaty of peace would soon be signed, delayed further aggressive operations for several months. But the Peruvians were obstinate and later in the year it was resolved to carry the war to the centre of the enemy's country. Lima fell on the 17th of January, 1881, and the glorious news was received while the liberals were contending over whom they should select as a candidate to succeed Pinto. There was much striving among the rival chiefs and one convention had already adjourned without coming to any agreement. Pinto ventured to interfere in a more decided way than any previous president had done and his influence was sufficiently powerful to induce the liberal party to unite on his personal choice, Santa Maria. The opposition tried to rally around the candidacy of General Baquedano, the greatest general of the war, but the prestige of the administration was too powerful.
Although his nomination had been bitterly opposed by many prominent liberals, once in office Santa Maria found means to unite in his support a great majority of congress. The members who took their seats in 1882 were divided into three factions: the liberals proper, as the moderates were called, the radicals, and the nationals—few in number but counting in their ranks some of the ablest and wealthiest aristocrats in Chile. The conservatives, no longer an important factor, had abandoned their opposition to the civil reforms which the liberals pressed forward, concentrating their efforts on a hopeless but desperate resistance to religious innovations. Santa Maria was in full accord with his party, and his message of 1883 proclaimed that the time had come for the realisation of the oldest and dearest aspirations of Chilean liberals—civil marriage and registry, entire liberty of conscience, and the secularisation of the cemeteries. In the fierce discussion which followed, the eloquent prime minister, Balmaceda, took the lead. Although educated for the priesthood he had developed into an intransigent radical, a passionate advocate of the completest separation of Church and State.
The civil-marriage law was pushed through in spite of the sullen resistance of the conservatives and clericals. The women of Chile, the old-fashioned elements of society, and the clergy would not accept the result. The priests refused to perform a religious ceremony for any one who had been married by the civil law, and excommunicated the president and his cabinet. Devout Chileans of all classes would not yield on this point of conscience, and cursed the liberal politicians as betrayers of their God. All other political questions were held in abeyance. Urged by their wives and the priests, the conservatives abandoned the attitude of abstention from politics which they had so long maintained, and went to the polls to do what they could to secure a majority for the repeal of the law. But ladies' entreaties and priests' absolutions availed little against the government's control of the election machinery, and the law remained on the statute books. Opposition centred against the presidential candidacy of Balmaceda—the radical, the Anti-Christ, the uncompromising. In vain Santa Maria tried to unite the four liberal groups—the government liberals, the radicals, the nationals, and the new division called dissidents. They refused to meet in a general convention. However, a majority, composed of the government liberals, the nationals, and a portion of the radicals, decided to support Balmaceda and he was triumphantly elected in 1886.
The dissidents, conservatives, and opposition radicals formed a formidable minority, determined to obstruct his administration. In the closing days of 1885 scenes were enacted on the floor of the Chilean congress which resembled recent sessions of the Austrian parliament. The revenue and appropriation bills were about to expire, and fresh ones for a new fiscal period had to be adopted. Under the regulations every member had a right to speak twice on each section, and the minority filibustered until the constitutional period for adjournment had expired. Santa Maria would have to finish out his administration and Balmaceda begin his without supply bills. Under a strict construction of the Constitution all government would cease, but Balmaceda was not the man to shrink from enforcing the right of self-preservation inherent in all governments. The executive calmly proceeded to collect taxes and pay expenses according to the provisions of the expired law until a new congress met shortly after Balmaceda's inauguration, and this solution was peacefully accepted by the country.
Chile had never known a time of such material prosperity as the first three years of Balmaceda's administration proved to be. The revenues, well-nigh doubled by the nitrate and copper of the provinces wrested from Peru, were further increased by the flourishing condition of commerce and industry. The administration initiated and carried forward many important public works. Large sums were voted for railways, colonisation, and schools. Public salaries were raised, the Araucanian country colonised, and the Indians finally incorporated as real citizens of Chile. The clericals made the best of their defeat, and the liberal majority in congress, inspired by Balmaceda's energy, pushed forward rapidly on the road of reform and change. A new election law was passed and a beginning made toward making the Constitution more democratic.
Balmaceda's first idea was to unite all the liberal factions, conciliate the conservatives, and devote himself to a policy of material development. Although owing his election to three political parties out of the six, he was unwilling and perhaps unable to govern solely by their assistance. Instead of regarding himself as the chief of a combination of parties, entrusted by it with the direction of affairs and under obligations to act in harmony with it, he did not hesitate to accept the help offered by his former political opponents when that help was needed to carry into effect his personal ideas of what was best for the public interest. On the other hand, the party which had elected him was really no party at all—it was only a temporary coalition of three discordant factions. It is not necessary to follow the many changes in his cabinet, the continual substitution of one group for another, the details of the efforts which he made during three years to govern as he pleased, and at the same time to govern in harmony with congress. His difficulties lay not so much in reconciling conflicts of opinion on matters of policy as with the personal rivalries and ambitions of the factions. Suffice it to say that toward the end of 1889 he found himself without a majority in congress and with no prospect of obtaining one. Heretofore the rival groups had been only too anxious to trade their votes in exchange for a share of patronage. Now, satisfied that the president was determined upon depriving them of their secular influence in public affairs, all the factions of the ruling aristocracy fought him bitterly. They feared that the president was plotting the formation of a personal party, cemented by hopes of office, responsible to him alone, and that the system of parliamentary government which had grown up by tacit consent and long-continued custom, would be replaced by a real presidential government in which the executive would be the source of power and not merely its channel.
Indeed, circumstances and his own characteristics were rapidly forcing Balmaceda into this position. Conscious of his own integrity and the disinterestedness and patriotism of his motives, his irritation against the stubborn self-seeking of the cliques ended in convincing him that the old interpretation of the Constitution must be abandoned, and the president in person in reality vested with all the powers given by the letter of the fundamental law. He devoted the remainder of his life to an effort to free the presidency from the practical control which congress had exercised since the days of Portales. In January, 1890, he threw down the gauntlet by appointing a cabinet composed exclusively of personal supporters. The new ministers announced that, considering their power to be derived from the president, they would hold office so long as they continued to be satisfactory to him, regardless whether or not they were supported by a parliamentary majority. In May, Balmaceda went a step farther by selecting another cabinet at whose head he placed San Fuentes, his own intimate friend and a man regarded with particular hatred by the president's opponents because it was understood that he had been selected as the president's successor, pledged to the continuance of the same policy. Congress replied by passing a vote of censure. Balmaceda insisted that the cabinet should remain in power. Congress refused to pass any appropriation bills and summoned the ministers to the bar of the House. But the president was confident that he could carry the elections, and, sure of ultimate victory, felt he could afford to make present concessions. In August a compromise was agreed upon by which Balmaceda dismissed the San Fuentes cabinet and selected one composed of neutral men, while congress consented to pass the appropriation bills. The truce did not last long. The new ministers soon found that they were mere figureheads and that the Balmacedist executive committee was the real power in the administration. They resigned and Claudio Vicuña formed a ministry which was a re-edition of the May cabinet. The announcement of its appointment was in effect a notification that the armistice was at an end. Congress accepted the gage of combat and immediately began to organise for civil war.
The wealth, social distinction, and professional classes of the country were mostly on the side of the congressionalists, and all who were conservative and fearful of disturbance in the established order rallied around them. The democratic elements, the reformers, the radicals, the dissatisfied, supported Balmaceda, but the great mass of the common people, used for centuries to political subordination to the upper classes, remained inert. His opponents met with no encouragement in their efforts to suborn the army and General Baquedano refused the leadership of the insurrection which they offered him. However, the officers of the navy, recruited from among the aristocratic classes, enthusiastically assured their undivided support, and Jorge Montt, who held a high position in the navy, was chosen as chief of the revolution.
The congressionalists resolved to make the issue upon the point whether the president had a right to maintain any military force, land or naval, after the 31st of December, the day upon which the existing appropriation law expired. Balmaceda did not hesitate an instant, but issued a proclamation that he would follow the precedent established in 1886—collect taxes and maintain the public service by executive authority until the assembling of the next session of congress. He expressly disclaimed any designs of establishing a permanent dictatorship, while expressing his firm determination not to permit the refusal of congress to interrupt the functioning of government. The issue was sharply drawn; neither side would recede; either congress would cease to exercise its immemorial control of the executive or would depose him.
JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA.
Five days after Balmaceda's proclamation the congressionalist chiefs embarked on board the war-ships lying in Valparaiso Bay, and the civil war was on. The army remained faithful to Balmaceda and he was in undisputed possession of the whole country, although his opponents had powerful sympathisers everywhere. The latter's plan of campaign was simple. Once again power on the sea was to decide the fate of the Pacific coast. The navy sailed away to the nitrate provinces, a region separated from the rest of Chile by the impassable Atacama desert and to which, therefore, Balmaceda could not send re-inforcements. The small garrison under Colonel Robles made a desperate resistance, but was soon overpowered, and there the revolution established its base of operations. The population of sturdy miners, used to discipline under their bosses, furnished an admirable supply of recruits, and a revenue of two millions a month fell at once into the hands of the congressionalists. Possessing the sinews of war, it was only a question of a few months to equip an army with the most modern weapons and have it thoroughly drilled and organised by experts. The blockade of the southern ports intercepted Balmaceda's supplies and the congressionalist partisans escaped by hundreds to make their way up the coast and join the revolutionary army. By August they were ready with a force of more than ten thousand men.
In the meantime Balmaceda had been making desperate efforts to get a navy, but iron-clads cannot be improvised, and the congressionalist agents in New York and Europe had money enough to outbid him and to command influences which effectually hindered prompt action. In Chile itself he adopted stern repressive measures against the plots of his enemies and vigorously recruited his army, putting into the field nearly thirty thousand soldiers. But the blockade prevented his procuring modern arms and they had to go into battle with old-style rifles whose range was only half that of those carried by their opponents. He was also at a disadvantage in that the enemy could strike where he pleased on a coast nine hundred miles long. Balmaceda was obliged therefore to keep his forces divided. Nine thousand were at Coquimbo, three hundred and fifty miles north of Santiago; as many at Concepcion, four hundred miles south of the capital; and five thousand at Valparaiso, a hundred miles north-west. At Santiago he kept the remainder as a reserve to be sent to the assistance of whichever of the three divisions might be attacked.
On the 20th of August the fleet of seventeen vessels carrying the whole revolutionary army suddenly appeared a few miles north of Valparaiso. Balmaceda had short warning and was not able to oppose the landing, which was skilfully conducted by Colonel Canto, the able strategist who commanded the congressionalist forces, with the valuable assistance of Colonel Koerner, a Prussion tactician of the first rank whose services had been hired. There was no time to get troops from Coquimbo and Concepcion. The congressionalist generals moved so rapidly that the best the president could do was to send the Santiago division, which, united with that at Valparaiso, made a force nearly equal in numbers to the enemy. The revolutionists landed with their rations in their haversacks and within a few hours were marching straight south along the seashore on Valparaiso. The Balmacedists tried to defend the passage of the Aconcagua River, which enters the ocean twenty miles north of the city, but they had hardly got into position on the heights which overlook its southern bank when the enemy was upon them. The latter's artillery was twice as strong and his infantry more numerous besides being armed with longer range rifles. In spite of the advantage of position and the fatigue of their opponents the Balmacedists were flung back in complete defeat by the volleys of the Mannlichers and the furious cannonading from both batteries and ships. The battle lasted the whole day and at its close two thousand of the government troops lay on the field, three thousand had been dispersed or deserted to the enemy, and scarcely three thousand held together for the retreat to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where three regiments of the Santiago division who had taken no part in the fight were waiting. Canto followed, but failing in a tentative attack on the strong northern defences of Valparaiso, he determined to make a circuit to the east, cut the railroad between Santiago and Valparaiso, and either take the latter place in the rear or march on the capital as seemed best. The movement, so masterfully conceived, was skilfully carried out without a moment's loss of time. The essential thing was to act so promptly that Balmaceda could not concentrate his forces. On the 25th the whole congressionalist army had reached Quillota, on the railroad twenty-five miles back of Valparaiso. But Balmaceda had also been active, and during those three days the Concepcion division had arrived at Santiago, and reinforcements had been got through to Valparaiso which raised the army to nearly ten thousand men. Four thousand troops defended Santiago and more were momentarily expected from Coquimbo.
Canto resolved to give him no time for any further concentration, but to fall upon the Valparaiso army before the railroad could be repaired and, by destroying Balmaceda's largest force, end the war. A forced march across country brought him to the old carriage road which comes into Valparaiso from the south. By the 27th his army had covered the incredible distance of forty miles and was within six miles of the government forces, who occupied a strong position between the congressionalists and Valparaiso. Tired though the congressionalists were, they were forced to attack without delay. The only provisions which they could count on were the rations that they had brought in their haversacks; and Balmaceda might at any moment receive reinforcements from Santiago. So they advanced resolutely to the assault. The Balmacedists fought with little enthusiasm or hope; the desertion of part of their cavalry and the inactivity of the rest discouraged the infantry and artillery, but at first they met the charges with the steadiness characteristic of the race. The battle was decided by a flank movement executed by Koerner, who turned the Balmacedist left, while the cavalry charged recklessly up the hill. Thrown into confusion, the government troops were simply swept out of existence by furious volleys and determined charges. Some had stood steady long enough to kill and wound a sixth of the enemy who charged up the hill, but more than a quarter of their own numbers perished in the battle and the pursuit.
The fight was over at half-past ten in the morning, but the news of the utter ruin of all his hopes did not reach Balmaceda until half-past seven. It was his wife's saint's day and friends were coming to dine at his house. Characteristically he did not recall the invitations, and not until the dinner party was over did he arrange to turn over the government of the city to General Baquedano. Then he quietly walked to the Argentine legation and received asylum. Vicuña, the recently elected president, who would have succeeded Balmaceda on the 18th of September, was in Valparaiso and fled to a foreign warship followed by the principal Balmacedist chiefs. No further resistance was made and the congressionalist junta, with Jorge Montt at its head, assumed the supreme direction of affairs. Balmaceda's fall was followed by some riots, but the arrival of the responsible chiefs of the victorious party ensured the re-establishment of order. Like the Anglo-Saxon, the Chilean fights desperately on the field of battle, and when his blood is up he is relentless, but when beaten he phlegmatically accepts the consequences, and when victorious he is not cruel. The Chileans resemble their prototypes of the northern hemisphere in lacking the vivid imagination which makes the inhabitants of warmer climates vengeful. Slow, silent, serious, practical-minded, hard to themselves as well as to others, they turned at once to the work of reconstruction.
No one suspected that the defeated president was at the house of the Argentine minister. It was supposed that he had escaped in disguise, but on the 18th of September, the day upon which his legal term as president expired, the country was astounded to hear that he had shot himself that very morning. The unhappy man feared that he might get his generous host into danger, and his theatrical temperament could not bear the humiliation of a public trial or the risk of being torn to pieces by a mob in case he were discovered. He offered himself as an expiatory sacrifice, knowing that his death would save his friends from further persecution and hoping that it might do for the cause of democratic government in Chile that which his life had so signally failed to accomplish.
An election had been called and Jorge Montt chosen president of Chile with all due regard to legal forms. The aristocratic and parliamentary form of government, under which Chile had so long lived in peace, order, and prosperity, growing at home in intellectual and moral graces and in material welfare, while abroad the nation had waxed great in the consideration of the world, was restored as it had been before Balmaceda attacked it. Not only the arbitrament of battle, but the verdict of the people, so far as the latter can be gathered from the convinced enthusiasm shown by the congressionalists and inferred from the passiveness of the masses, had decided that there should be no radical change; that the president should be advised by the congress and rule in harmony with its majority; that the ballot should be guarded by both an educational and a property qualification; that political evolution should proceed by slow amendment and not by radical innovation—by experiment, not by theory.
The last twelve years of Chile's internal political history offers little of special interest to the foreign student. Jorge Montt, though raised to power by force of arms, proved a modest and non-aggressive president. For two years the anti-Balmacedist groups managed to keep a majority together, but incompatible ambitions rather than differences of principle soon divided them. Balmaceda's old partisans quickly rallied and elected nearly a quarter of the members of the congress of 1894, holding the balance of power amid the warring factions. Curiously enough, it was with the conservatives that the Balmacedists formed a combination, and though they held no cabinet position in Montt's time, they were a principal factor in the coalition which elected Errazuriz to the presidency in 1896. The jealousies among the rival factions of the liberals were too bitter to permit the bulk of that party to make any effective combination against the conservative-Balmacedist-liberal alliance, and the latter remained in power during most of Errazuriz's administration. At its end, the liberals having failed to agree, German Riesco was nominated and elected by much the same influences over Pedro Montt, son of the old president.
The present Chilean parties do not embody any definite and conflicting political principles. Each one derives its origin from some great conflict which took place under a former administration. Once welded together in battling for a common cause, friendship, gratitude, the hope of mutual aid in their ambitions have kept the members united. The latter-day Balmacedists are not enemies of parliamentary dominance; the nationals are now classed as liberals, though they started as ultra-conservatives under Montt; the conservatives do not especially oppose reforms, though they defend the Catholic universities against radical attacks. The property qualification for suffrage is liberally construed; any one who has an income of a thousand pesos is legally entitled to vote, and if the elector can read and write he is not rigidly cross-examined as to the exact amount of the wages he receives. However, this wide extension of the suffrage has not brought about any material change in the personnel of congress. Discussion of the advisability of changing the present system is purely academic, and if dissatisfaction exists it ferments far beneath the surface. Like the English aristocracy that of Chile is truly representative, wielding its power with a keen sense of its responsibility to the nation, and rarely refusing to adopt a reform which is clearly demanded by the country.
THE PLAZA VICTORIA VALPARAISO.
Chile recovered with some difficulty from the industrial disorganisation and tremendous expenditures caused by the civil war. Balmaceda's vast issues of paper money disturbed government finances and made the returns of private enterprise uncertain. The world-wide fall of prices in the years following 1893 hurt Chilean exports, and an era of economy made necessary by closely balanced budgets succeeded the flush times. Meanwhile, the marvellous material growth of the Argentine Republic began to make Chileans doubt if their country could retain that military and naval hegemony which she had possessed since her great victories over Peru and Bolivia. Shut in between the Andes and the sea, on the north an uninhabitable desert and on the south the bleak Antarctic waste, Chile naturally envied the limitless and fertile plains over which her neighbour might spread her population, and the Argentine navy was fast approaching her own in size and efficiency.
By the year 1895 Argentina's revenue exceeded Chile's nearly twenty per cent., while the former's foreign commerce was seventy per cent. and her population fifty per cent. greater. Their rivalry, none the less real because tacit, explains the seemingly unreasonable bitterness of the dispute over the differing interpretations of the treaty of limits. That treaty fixed the boundary at the crest of the Andes, but when the joint commissioners appointed to make the surveys reached southern latitudes where the range becomes ill-defined and runs off into the sea they found it difficult to determine just where the crest was. The Argentines insisted on a line drawn between the highest peaks because that would give them more territory, while the Chileans contended for the watershed between the two oceans. Another dispute also arose about the line which ought to divide the Argentine from the province which Chile had taken from Bolivia. Though in both cases the disputed territory was comparatively valueless, national feeling rose to an extraordinary pitch and more than once war has been imminent. The northern dispute was at length settled in 1898 by the arbitration of the American minister to Buenos Aires, but, though a similar method of settlement had been agreed upon as to the other and more important question, its final submission was delayed from year to year, and meanwhile each nation suspected the other of aggressions. Argentina ordered new iron-clads, which she could ill afford; Chile ordered still better ones, and Argentina kept pace. In 1898 and again in 1901 the two countries were on the brink of a war which certainly would have ruined either one or the other. Happily, better counsels prevailed and arbitration by the English government was hurried forward, resulting in 1902 in a settlement with which both parties are in reality satisfied, and the fine iron-clads building in Europe are now for sale.
BOLIVIA
