COMPLICATIONS.
The same day on which transpired the various events which we have related in our preceding chapters, about nine o'clock in the evening, two persons were seated in the room of the Duke de Montone, and were talking in French with animation. These two persons were the Duke de Montone himself; or M. Dubois, as he wished to be called, and the other, General Don Eusebio Moratin, governor, for the Buenos-Airean patriots, of the town of San Miguel, and of the province Tucuman.
General Moratin was then about forty-five; he was short but stout, and well built. His features would have been handsome, had it not been for the expression of cold calculation in his black and deeply sunken eyes.
This officer, whose memory is justly execrated in the Argentine provinces, and who, if Rosas had not come after him, would have remained the most complete type of the villains which the revolutionary foam, from the commencement of the century, threw to the surface of society, to tyrannise over the people, and dishonour the great human family, played at this time an important part in his country, and enjoyed immense influence.
We shall give his history in a few words. Born in 1760, of a distinguished family of Montevideo, this man had early manifested the most wicked tendencies. The nomadic life of the gauchos, their savage independence, everything about them, even their ferocity, had led away this unruly spirit. For several years he shared their life, and then he got together a band of contrabandists and assassins, of whom he soon became the most active, the most cruel, and the most enterprising member.
The ascendancy gained by this man over his companions in rapine, made them choose him as their chief.
From that time his excesses knew no bounds, and acquired a celebrity at once brilliant and execrable.
He ravaged without pity the Banda Oriental, Entrekios, and Paraguay, destroying the crops, carrying away the women, murdering the men, pillaging the churches, and throwing more than 20,000 families into mourning.
Affairs came to such a pass that the governor of Buenos Aires was obliged to form a corps of volunteers, specially charged to pursue the band of Moratin; but this means was insufficient, and the Spanish Government was obliged to treat with this brigand as between two powers.