Outside Asuncion the Lieutenant-Governor, Don Francisco Florez, met the Bishop’s secretary, Father Nieto, who informed him of the enterprise, exhorting him to enlist the sympathies of the Governor in so good a cause. Florez, a better diplomatist than his commanding officer, seemed to approve, and naturally deceived poor Father Nieto, who, like most hypocrites, became an easy prey to his own tactics when used against himself.
Florez informed the Governor at once, and he sent to the Jesuits, and put them on their guard. Next day he met the Bishop, and told him that his enterprise could not succeed, as the Jesuits were under arms. No doubt he learned these artifices in his campaigns against the Indians of Arauco, or it may have been that, like others who have had to strive with churchmen, he learned to beat them with their own controversial arms. The Bishop fell completely into the snare, and, thinking the Governor was a fast friend, confided all his plans to him for the expulsion of the Jesuits and the conquest of the mission territory. Just then Captain Don Pedro Diaz del Valle came from La Plata, and gave Don Bernardino a new decision of the High Court of Charcas, telling him to live in peace with all men, and govern his diocese with zeal. He certainly was zealous to an extraordinary degree, if not judicious. Therefore, the very mention of the word ‘zeal’ must have been peculiarly offensive to such a zealous man. The letter went on to say that all the fines he had exacted were illegal, and commanded him to give back the yerba which he had extorted from his involuntary penitents, and in the future live on better terms with all around him. To all of this he paid no notice, as was to be expected, but, to avoid returning the yerba, sent a letter to his officers to have it burned. This letter, which he denied, was subsequently produced against him in the High Court at Charcas.
Seeing the Governor was bent on frustrating or on deceiving him, he tried to get from Don Sebastian Leon, who held an office under the Governor, an edict of the Emperor Charles V., which he had heard was in the archives, and which provided that, in case a Governor should die or be deposed, the notables of the place had power to appoint an interim Governor to fill his place. If such a paper ever existed, it must have been a very early document given by Charles V. at the foundation of the colony, for nothing was more opposed to the traditions of Spanish policy throughout America. Don Sebastian Leon having informed the Governor, the latter saw that things were coming to a crisis, and that either he or the Bishop would have to leave the place. Not being sure of all his troops, and the Bishop having the populace upon his side, he sent to the Jesuit missions for six hundred Indians. Thus the supremacy of the royal government fell to be supported by men but just emerging from a semi-nomad life, who owed the tincture of civilization they possessed to the calumniated Jesuits.
On many occasions armies of Indians from the Jesuit missions rendered important services to the crown of Spain: not only against the Portuguese, but against English corsairs, and in rebellions, as in the case of Cardenas; or as when, in the year 1680, Philip V. wrote to the Governor of Buenos Ayres to garrison the port with a contingent of Indians from the Jesuit reductions; in 1681, when the French attacked the port with a squadron of four-and-twenty ships; and at the first siege of the Colonia, in 1678, when three thousand Indians marched to the attack, accompanied by their Jesuit pastors, but under the command of Spanish officers.[130]
An army from the Jesuit missions consisted almost entirely of cavalry. It marched much like a South American army of twenty years ago was wont to march. In front was driven the caballada, consisting of the spare horses; then came the vanguard, composed of the best mounted soldiers, under their caciques. Then followed the wives and women of the soldiers, driving the baggage-mules, and lastly some herdsmen drove a troop of cattle for the men to eat. When Jesuits accompanied the army, they did not enter into action, but were most intrepid in succouring the wounded under fire, as Funes, in his ‘Historia Civil del Paraguay’, etc.,[131] relates when speaking of their conduct at the siege of the Colonia in 1703. For arms they carried lances, slings, chuzos (broad-pointed spears), lazos, and bolas, and had amongst them certain very long English guns with rests to fire from, not very heavy, and of a good range. Each day the accompanying Jesuits said Mass, and each town carried its particular banner before the troop. They generally camped, if possible, in the open plain, both to avoid surprises and for convenience in guarding the cattle and the caballada. In all the territories of South America no such quiet and well-behaved soldiery was to be found; for in Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala, the passage of an army was similar to the passing of a swarm of locusts in its effect.
Don Bernardino, on his side, was occupied in animating the populace against the Jesuits with all the fervour of an Apostle. Naturally, he first commenced by launching his usual sentence of excommunication against them, and having done so returned again to Yaguaron. This village, like other Paraguayan villages, many of which in times gone by have been the scenes of stirring episodes, retains to-day but little to distinguish it. Nature has proved too powerful in the long-run for men to fight against. On every side the woods seem ready to overwhelm the place. Grass grows between the wooden steps of the neglected church; seibos, lapachos, espinillos de olor, all bound together with lianas, encroach to the verges of the little clearings in which grows mandioca, looking like a field of sticks. All day the parrots scream, and toucans and picaflores dart about; at evening the monkeys howl in chorus; at night the jaguar prowls about, and giant bats fasten upon the incautious sleeper, or, fixing themselves upon a horse, leave him exhausted in the morning with the loss of blood.
When Cardenas used the place as a sort of Avignon from which to safely utter his anathemas, it must have worn a different aspect. No doubt processions and ceremonies were continual, with carrying about the saints in public, a custom which the Paraguayans irreverently refer to as ‘sacando á luz los bultos’.[132] Messengers (chasquis), no doubt, came and went perpetually, as is the custom in countries such as Paraguay, where news is valuable and horseflesh cheap. Thereto flocked, to a moral certainty, all the broken soldiers who swarmed in countries like Peru and Paraguay, with Indian caciques looking out for work to do when white men quarrelled and throats were to be cut. Priests went and came, friars and missionaries; and Cardenas most certainly, who loved effect, gave all his emerald ring to kiss, and made those promises which leaders of revolt lavish on everyone in times of difficulty.
When the Indian contingent arrived, the Governor marched upon Yaguaron, although the air was positively lurid with excommunications. The Bishop, rushing to the church, was intercepted by the Governor, who seized his arm and tried to stop him. Cardenas struggled with him, and declared him excommunicated for laying his hand upon the anointed of the Lord. But, most unfortunately, there was no Fitz-Urse at hand to rid the Governor of so turbulent a priest. A mulatto[133] woman rushed to the Bishop’s aid, together with some priests. This gave him time to gain the altar and seize the Host, which he exposed at once to the public gaze, and for the moment all present fell upon their knees. Turning to the Governor, he asked what he wanted with armed men in a church. The Governor replied he had come to banish him from Paraguay, by order of the Viceroy, for having infringed upon the temporal power. Cardenas, taken aback, replied he would obey, and, turning to the people, took them all for witnesses. The Governor, no doubt thinking he was dealing with an honest Araucan chief, retired. The Bishop immediately denounced the Governor in a furious sermon, after which he left the church, carrying the Host in full procession, accompanied by the choir singing the ‘Pange Lingua’, followed by a band of Indian women with their hair dishevelled, and carrying green branches in their hands. He then returned to the church, and from the pulpit denounced the Governor, who, standing at the door surrounded by a group of arquebusiers blowing their matches, answered him furiously.
The honours, so to speak, being thus equally divided, it remained for one side or the other to negotiate. Cardenas, knowing himself much abler in negotiations than his adversary, proposed a conference, in which he bore himself so skilfully that he made the Governor consent to dismiss his Indians, and allow him six days to make his preparations for the road. This settled, at dead of night he set out for the capital. Arrived there, he showed himself in public in his green hat, having upon his breast a little box of glass in which he bore the Host. A band of priests escorted him, all with arms concealed beneath their cloaks, in the true spirit of the Church militant. The bells were rung, and every effort strained to raise a tumult, but all in vain. He had to throw himself for refuge into the convent of the Franciscans.
At once he set about to fortify the place to stand a siege. In several places he constructed embrasures for guns, and pierced the walls for musketry. But, thinking that his best defence lay in the folly of the people—as public men always have done, and do—he sent to the Cathedral for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and another of San Blas, and placed them at the gate. Then, remembering that calumny was a most serviceable weapon, he put about the town a report that the Indians from the missions had pillaged Yaguaron, and that they even then were marching on the place. Again recurring to the edict of Charles V., which he pretended to have found, he issued a proclamation that, as the present Governor was excommunicated, and therefore could not govern, the office being vacant, he intended to nominate another in his stead. His subsequent behaviour shows most clearly that he wished to nominate himself.