On July 2 two ships arrived in Buenos Ayres bringing the news that the decree had been put in force in Spain on April 2 with success. As all the crew of both the ships knew what had happened in Spain, concealment of his plan became no longer possible. Thus, had the Jesuits possessed either the wish or the means to make an armed resistance, they had ample time to stand on their defence.
Nothing was further from their minds, though they had complete dominion over a territory as large as France, and which contained a population of over one hundred and fifty thousand souls.[312] For arms, they had as chief defence some ‘very long English guns, with rests if they wished to use them, which were not very heavy, and had a tolerable range.’[313] These were the preparations that the Jesuits (who, not in Paraguay alone, but throughout all the American dominions of the Spanish crown, ruled over territories stretching from California to Cape Horn)[314] had made, and they were found alone in the missions of Paraguay, where, by a special permission of the Kings of Spain, arms were allowed for defence against the Portuguese.
Bucareli, who seems to have been a timid but honest and upright man, made his first experiment upon the Jesuits of Buenos Ayres, Cordoba, and Santa Fe. The colleges in all these places were suppressed on the same night, and without the least resistance from their occupants. He who suppresses a religious Order, takes a town or country, or, in fact, puts into operation any of the forces of the law or military power, always expects, no matter how exalted be his motives at the start, to recoup himself from the treasure of the conquered. Væ victis, together with the vestments of the church, the plainsong, and the saints, came as a pagan heritage to the new faith, and has been held as canon law since Constantine looked at the sky and thought he saw a cross.
Great must have been the disgust of the Governor to find the spoil so paltry, and not to have the satisfaction even of saying that the Jesuits had hidden all their gold, as, his own measures having been taken secretly, they had no knowledge of what was in the wind. In the college of Cordoba, esteemed to be a mine of wealth, was found only nine thousand dollars,[315] which sum Ferando Fabro, the commissioner sent by Bucareli to take over the effects of the Jesuits at Cordoba, duly chronicles in his report.
But if the college of Cordoba[316] proved a miserable prey, there still remained the Jesuit missions on the Uruguay and Paraná, with all the riches of their fertile territory, and the enormous wealth which every Spaniard firmly believed the Jesuits had acquired. None of the Jesuits, either in Buenos Ayres, Cordoba, Santa Fe, Corrientes, or Monte Video having made the least resistance, but having opened wide their doors to the soldiers, who in all the towns on the same day at two o’clock in the morning came to signify their expulsion to them, it was only natural to think that the same conduct would be observed in Paraguay. But Governors and Governments never seem in the least accessible to common-sense. Almost a year had passed before he plucked up courage for his dangerous task.[317] He set about it with more preparation than either Cortez or Pizarro made for the conquest of Mexico or of Peru. Having embarked for Spain in the frigate La Esmeralda one hundred and fifty Jesuits from the towns of Cordoba, Buenos Ayres, Monte Video, and Santa Fe, he prepared to march upon the missions, when a suspicion of resistance caused him to take precautions which the result proved quite ridiculous. He sent two hundred of the best of the militia of Asuncion to occupy the fords upon the Tebicuari,[318] and a body of equal strength to occupy the port of San Miguel. All these measures being taken for his safety, the conqueror embarked upon May 24, taking with him three companies of grenadiers and sixty dragoons. He disembarked at the town of Salto on the Uruguay, and from thence despatched Captain Don Juan Francisco de la Riva Herrera to occupy the towns upon the Paraná. Don Francisco de Zabala was sent to seize six of the towns upon the Uruguay. Bucareli himself, with several hundred men, marched upon Yapeyu,[319] the southernmost of all the mission towns. The Jesuits, however, gave no trouble to any of the troops, and even stopped the Governor from gathering any laurels, however withered, with which to crown his arms.
As he advanced from town to town, the priests, on his arrival at each place, although living in the midst of Indians, some of whom were armed, and many of whom had served the King of Spain in various wars, and all of whom looked on the Jesuits almost as gods, came out and peacefully gave up the keys of all their houses, and submitted quietly to be made prisoners and be carried off in chains from the territories which they and their order had civilized and ruled over almost two hundred years. Seventy-eight Jesuits and their provincials were sent prisoners to Buenos Ayres, and their places all filled up with other priests taken from different Orders, and none of whom had any experience in mission-work. As Dean Funes tartly writes, the miracle that Bucareli wished, but scarcely dared to hope for, had taken place. The Jesuits, in Paraguay, at least, by their conduct in their last public act, most amply vindicated their loyalty to the Spanish crown. Nothing would have been easier, depleted as the viceroyalty was at the time of troops,[320] than to have defied the forces which Bucareli had at his disposal, and to have set up a Jesuit State, which would have taxed the utmost resources of the Spanish crown to overcome. No doubt the very facility with which Bucareli carried out his plans confirmed him in his own mind of their expediency, for men in general are prone to think that right which they accomplish with success. However, be that as it may, he returned in triumph to Buenos Ayres on September 16, having expended in his expedition less than four months. So in a quarter of a year the Jesuits, after more than two hundred years of rule, were all expelled from Paraguay.
They made no fight, nor offered any resistance, letting themselves be taken as a butcher takes a sheep, and that surrounded as they were by a population of upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand souls, cut off by countless leagues from the outside world, defended on three sides by virgin forests and by marshes hardly passable to European troops. One word from the Provincial would have set the missions in a blaze. A word would have brought clouds of horsemen—badly armed, ’tis true, but knowing every foot of marsh and forest, all the deep-beaten tracks which wind in the red earth across the lonely plains, the passes of the rivers, springs, natural fastnesses, and having the varied knowledge of a country which of old made Border horsemen and Northumbrian prickers formidable upon the Scottish marches—into the field.
The dogged Paraguayan Indians, ancestors of the infantry which, under Lopez,[321] died so bravely under the fire of the Brazilian guns, would, in their red cloaks and scanty linen clothes, have marched from capilla[322] and from mission against the enemies of the ‘father-priests’. Seventy-eight Jesuits were marched off to Buenos Ayres, and then shipped off to Europe[323] to join their fellows, who had been brought together by the ministers of the most liberal King who ever filled the Spanish throne from every quarter of the world. Having expelled the Jesuits, Bucareli was bound by the exigencies of his position to calumniate them. Perhaps, as an official, hidebound in his belief in the inalterable right of Governments to commit injustices, he believed all that he wrote. For the welfare of humanity, one could hope he knew all that he wrote was false. What hope is there left for mankind as long as addle-headed, honest men see naught but justice in whatever order they receive? Better a thousand times a rogue who knows he is a rogue than a good, well-intentioned, blundering man quite unaware he is a fool.
But, still, he had to justify himself either upon his own account or for the benefit of that posterity to conciliate which so many public men have paltered with the truth. So his first care was to extract a letter from thirty Indians whom he chose to dignify with the title of the mayors of the thirty towns, first having, as he says himself in a letter to the Conde de Aranda, the minister of Charles III., dressed them in the Spanish fashion, and treated them in such a way that they might know how much their lot had been improved.[324] The letter, written originally in Guaraní,[325] bears upon every line of it the dictation of the Governor. After a fine paragraph of salutations, it goes on to give the King many and repeated thanks (‘muchas y repetidas gracias’) for having sent his Excellency Captain-General Don Francisco Bucareli, ‘who has fulfilled, for the love of God and for the love of your Majesty, all the just orders which your Majesty laid to his charge, aiding our poverty, and clothing us like gentlemen.’ Most people, even the heathen, like those who help their poverty and clothe them in the garb of gentlemen. It had not occurred to the poor Indians that the fine clothes might turn out liveries. The mayors all sign their Indian names, which seems to give the lie to the accusation that the Jesuits kept them ignorant. The letter, dated Buenos Ayres, March 10, 1768, seems to show that the Indians, be they who they might have been, were not free agents at the time they wrote. The Indians’ letter duly despatched, the Governor indited a report, in which he fairly and with circumstance reiterates all the old charges against the Jesuits in Paraguay which the inventive brain of Cardenas had first conceived; but to them he adds several little touches of his own, which show he had some observation and an imaginative mind.
Amongst his numerous letters to Aranda and to the King, one dated Buenos Ayres, October 14, 1768,[326] contains the fullest account of his proceedings in the missions and of his views (or of what he thought to be his views) about the work in which he was engaged. Time was of small account in 1768 either in Paraguay or in Madrid, so Bucareli relates with some prolixity all that he did, with comments, movements of troops, regrettable occurrences—as when his soldiers let themselves be surprised and lost their horses—and now and then scraps of morality and theology, which shows quite plainly that the art of writing maundering despatches is not so new as optimists may have supposed. Quite in the manner of a modern special correspondent, he sets down all that he suffered from the weather; that it rained incessantly, and, marvellous to tell, that after rain the rivers rose, and gave him difficulty to cross. The roads were bad, provisions scarce and dear, and now and then wild Indians ‘massacred’ an outpost of his men, whilst his brave fellows, when God willed it, occasionally ‘chastised’ the infidel, and by the grace of Heaven slew no small number of them. Still, in the monstrous farrago of words, extending to some sixteen pages of close print, he lets us see he was a man of some capacity, but leaves it doubtful whether he really thought he was engaged upon a noble work, or if he wrote ironically, or if his only object was to satisfy his conscience and his King. But making much of little difficulties is but to be expected from a leader of an expedition or from a General in the field. Without it, how could they justify their existence, or prove to the world at large that they were needed, or but more important than a mere ceremony?[327]