The composition of Senate and Chamber of Deputies was outlined, the Senate’s and Director’s term of office fixed at six years, while the deputies, from whom a property qualification was required, were to be elected annually, one for every 15,000 people. The Director was made head of the army and navy, with powers to create foreign treaties and to make peace and war. The treasury and all ecclesiastical appointments were in his hands, as well as the naming of ambassadors, judges, ministers and secretaries of state. In the middle of October, 1822, General San Martín suddenly reappeared in Valparaiso, in the character of a private citizen whose health required a sojourn at the medicinal baths of Cauquenes. He told a tale of voluntary renunciation of Peruvian dignities that received little credence; as a matter of fact, the luck that for a period had made him appear a master of men had failed him at last.
From the time when he made himself Protector in Lima (August, 1821) the Peruvians had taken exception to his arrogance, his oppressive treatment of leading citizens, the extortions of his ministers, and complained of the want of stability in the country. In the interior Spanish forces still maintained themselves, while San Martín kept idle an army of 8000 men, a burden upon the populace. Early in April, 1822, the royalist General Canterac marched quickly upon the coast and inflicted a severe defeat upon the forces of the Protector, near Ica. San Martín, alarmed, decided to ask aid from Bolívar, fresh from victories in the Ecuadorian interior, and sailed to Guayaquil. He was received by Bolívar on July 26, but with such hostility that, fearing for his personal safety, he left hurriedly on July 28, and sailed back to Callao. He found that Peru had undergone a coup d’état. Upon his departure leading citizens held a meeting, insisted upon the resignation of his unpopular minister, Monteagudo, and deported him. San Martín accepted the warning and waited only until the convocation of congress to offer his resignation and to leave the country. If he had any dream of returning to take a part in public affairs in Chile or Argentina, it was speedily dissipated, and presently he retired to an estate at Mendoza, now a part of his native Argentina. His arrival and the fears of Chile that he contemplated some disturbing stroke probably hastened the irruption of feeling against the heads of the Chilean Government, by whom San Martín was received with extreme friendliness. No hostility was expressed against O’Higgins, whose memory agreeably survives in Chile, but the detested Rodriguez was increasingly blamed for the blighting commercial decrees and the general depression of the country.
In November, 1822, Chile experienced one of the most disastrous earthquakes of the century: a month later another upheaval occurred, with armed insurrections both in the north and south. The division of the “Penquistos” from Santiago was newly emphasized by violent dissatisfaction with laws against grain exports, and the cause of the south was championed by General Ramon Freire, military governor of Concepción, and echoed by Coquimbo, also angered by the heavy export dues placed upon copper, collected in the north but spent in Santiago.
While the troops of Freire crossed the Maule, his northern supporters under Benevente marched south; by the end of January they had reached Aconcagua and had secured the adhesion of Quillota. On the 28th a group of leading citizens visited O’Higgins and induced him to resign his authority into the hands of a junta of three, until the national congress could be again summoned. But the arrival of Freire in Valparaiso Bay with three warships and 1500 men put a different complexion upon governmental plans. Freire camped his men outside Santiago, declared his lack of personal ambition, but presently accepted the offer of the Directorship from the Junta. A new constitution was evolved at the end of 1823, which does not concern history since it was abrogated a year later in the face of new danger from Spain, speedily dispelled, when Freire needed larger powers.
From this period Chile slowly fought her way to social solidarity, her true wealth in agriculture developing steadily as the population increased. It is true that from a political standpoint there were few outstanding figures during the last eighty years of the nineteenth century, but whether from the outside or the inside the men appeared who brought the country to economic strength and gave her all that she lacked as regards markets, means of communication and development of her almost unsuspected resources.
In 1830 internal disturbances took place, chiefly as the result of the reaction of the pelucones (the Conservative-Church-aristocratic group) against the Government party of pipiolas (Liberals). The victory of the Army of the South at Lircay (April 17, ’31) resulted in the election of the successful general, Prieto, as President, and during his term of office (1831–41) the brilliant minister, Diego Portales, advanced the country’s progress materially and framed the Constitution which is still in force. Portales was assassinated upon the eve of Chile’s expedition to free Peru from the domination of a foreign dictator, in 1837. The occasion of this war was the rise of the aggressive Bolivian general, Santa Cruz, and his invasion and reduction of Peru. Chile regarded this forced Confederation as a challenge, sent armies to the north, took Lima, and defeated Santa Cruz at the battle of Yungay (January, 1839), when the Confederation fell apart.
The victor of Yungay, General Bulnes, ruled Chile for another ten years (1841–51), a prosperous and quiet period marking a tremendous stride forward in the country’s advance. Manuel Montt, the next President, served for another ten-year period, but was troubled first with a rebellion under General de la Cruz, crushed at the battle of Loncomilla at the end of 1851; by a revolt of the Atacama miners, put down at Cerro Grande in April, 1859; and a serious affray at Valparaiso late in the same year. During the succeeding government of José Perez occurred Spain’s last hostile act against her former colonies, when in 1865 a naval squadron sailed into the Pacific, seized the Chincha islands off Peru and demanded the payment of the old Peruvian colonial debt. Chile made the cause hers, and mobilized her fleet, brought upon herself the bombardment of Valparaiso on March 31, 1866, but seized the Peruvian gunboat Covadonga off Papudo port.
In 1879, during the administration of Anibal Pinto, war broke out between Chile and Bolivia, afterwards joined by Peru, with the result, after the cessation of hostilities in 1883, of the acquisition by Chile of practically all the nitrate fields of South America.
A little later, Chile’s internal peace was curiously disturbed by the recurrence of old trouble concerning church privileges. The Chilean government claimed the right of nomination of church dignitaries, and the question was brought to a head when the Pope refused to appoint a candidate to the Archbishopric of Santiago chosen by the administration of Santa Maria (1881–86). A governmental decree rendering civil marriages legal in the eye of Chile, and another insisting upon the right to bury non-Roman Catholics in city cemeteries, roused a great deal of popular passion and clerical objection.
Unrest culminated during the administration of Balmaceda, when quarrels broke out between the President and Congress, and his attempts to govern the country without that body ended in a mutiny of the fleet. Sailing to the north, the insurgents prepared their plans for eight months, training an army, until it was brought south in August, 1891, and Balmaceda was defeated at the battles of Concon and Placilla. When the president shot himself in September of the same year, the mantle fell upon one of the insurrecto leaders, Admiral Jorge Montt, son of Manuel. Another of the Montt family, Pedro, occupied the presidential chair from 1906 to 1910, a period marked by great energy in the construction of ports, highways and railroads.