Francia seems to have been of French or Portuguese extraction, and was educated at Cordova, in Tucuman. His original intention appears to have been to enter the Church, but he exchanged his theological studies for those of the law, and on his return to Asuncion soon acquired a reputation as an upright and honest lawyer, a hater of injustice, and a hermit. He became one of the chief advisers during the formation of the republic, and soon rose to the position of the head of the State, successively styling himself Consul, Dictator, and finally Supreme and Perpetual Dictator. In this position Francia soon gave evidence of his remarkable personality, one of his first acts of policy being to isolate Paraguay from the rest of the world. Erecting guardhouses along its frontiers and forts upon its rivers, he succeeded in keeping the State “a field enclosed” all through his long reign. Not a single native was allowed to leave the country, and the few foreigners who succeeded in entering had the greatest difficulty in leaving. A few trading vessels were permitted to enter the river ports, but only when provided with the Dictator’s licence, and under the most drastic restrictions and supervision. As the years wore on Francia grew more and more despotic, retiring within himself and eschewing company until he was as completely isolated from the rest of his kind as his country was from the rest of the world.

The masses of the people accepted his fearful rule with docility and complaisance, but the more educated classes, whose opposition and political intrigues endangered the tyrant’s supremacy, were treated with the greatest severity, wholesale executions being of frequent occurrence.

But against such excesses towards the political classes must be set the many beneficent measures he inaugurated for preserving the peace and increasing the prosperity of his country. Obtaining arms from abroad, he disciplined his soldiers and struck terror into the hearts of the bandits and highwaymen who infested the territory. He went about the city making personal surveys, and taking levels in connection with the improvements he undertook.

Since the expulsion of the Jesuits the Church had sadly deteriorated and fallen low in its influence for good upon the population, and his efforts were untiring in endeavouring to arouse the clergy to a proper sense of their secular duties. He himself held advanced and enlightened views which inspired him with contempt for the supine Church and its sensual, indolent priesthood. He never attended Mass, and consistently refused to profess adherence to a faith in which he had no belief, but his absolute honesty and devotion to the best interests of his people were unquestionable, and his methods saved the country from many years of anarchy. Purging the State of dishonest servants, he set an example which other republics might follow with advantage, and his benevolence to the poor and weak was only equalled by his severity towards the rich and strong.

In appearance this singular man was lean, tall, saturnine, and forbidding, whilst his qualities were a blend of those associated with Cromwell, Napoleon, and Robespierre. He filled his subjects with an abiding dread, and they almost feared to mention his awful name. During his lifetime he was “El Supremo,” and during the years immediately after his death he was referred to as “El Defuncto.” Few save his bodyguard dared to approach him, and when he passed through the streets he ordered the people to retire within their houses and close all doors and windows upon pain of death, whilst anyone found loitering in the road leading from the palace to the barracks of San Francisco, almost the only one he traversed, was severely beaten by the soldiers. He frustrated numerous plots made for his assassination, and many weird stories are told of him and his peculiar relations with his subjects. One old lady used to relate how when a child she was sent one day to the market-place to buy oranges, and was returning with her apron filled with them when hastily turning a corner she came unexpectedly upon the dreaded Dictator. She immediately fell upon her knees and begged for her life, the oranges meanwhile scattering in all directions. Francia smiled, and gently said, “Go, my daughter, you have done no wrong,” then rode upon his way.

On another occasion a funeral procession crossed the road as he approached, and the bearers immediately dropped the bier, priests and mourners hiding themselves behind the hedge at the roadside until he had passed.

When in the year 1820 a plague of locusts (a common scourge of the country) destroyed all the crops and ruin and starvation stared the people in the face, the Dictator issued orders to the agriculturists to at once sow fresh patches of land, enforcing his decree with the threat of heavy penalties, with the result that a fairly good harvest was secured, and the discovery made that the country was capable of yielding two good harvests in each year.

It was only when the hand of death relieved Paraguay from the rule of the Dictator and tyrant that the people breathed more freely. His body was interred in the “Iglesia de la Incarnacion” in Asuncion, but the following day it was discovered that vandal hands had scattered the bricks of the tomb and removed the remains. What became of them still remains a mystery, but the explanation of the priests, “that the evil one had carried them away,” has long ceased to be regarded as satisfactory.

CHAPTER XXI
More Modern Times in Paraguay

THE close of Francia’s career opened a fresh chapter in the history of Paraguay. The position occupied for three decades by an outstanding personality was not easily filled, and for a time two men, Carlos Lopez and Mariano Alonzo, ruled as joint Consuls, until the stronger of the two, Lopez, took the reins of government into his own hands, and secured for himself the position of President.