The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

JOSE MANUEL BALMACEDA.

Five days after Balmaceda's proclamation the congressionalist chiefs embarked on board the war-ships lying in Valparaiso Bay, and the civil war was on. The army remained faithful to Balmaceda and he was in undisputed possession of the whole country, although his opponents had powerful sympathisers everywhere. The latter's plan of campaign was simple. Once again power on the sea was to decide the fate of the Pacific coast. The navy sailed away to the nitrate provinces, a region separated from the rest of Chile by the impassable Atacama desert and to which, therefore, Balmaceda could not send re-inforcements. The small garrison under Colonel Robles made a desperate resistance, but was soon overpowered, and there the revolution established its base of operations. The population of sturdy miners, used to discipline under their bosses, furnished an admirable supply of recruits, and a revenue of two millions a month fell at once into the hands of the congressionalists. Possessing the sinews of war, it was only a question of a few months to equip an army with the most modern weapons and have it thoroughly drilled and organised by experts. The blockade of the southern ports intercepted Balmaceda's supplies and the congressionalist partisans escaped by hundreds to make their way up the coast and join the revolutionary army. By August they were ready with a force of more than ten thousand men.

In the meantime Balmaceda had been making desperate efforts to get a navy, but iron-clads cannot be improvised, and the congressionalist agents in New York and Europe had money enough to outbid him and to command influences which effectually hindered prompt action. In Chile itself he adopted stern repressive measures against the plots of his enemies and vigorously recruited his army, putting into the field nearly thirty thousand soldiers. But the blockade prevented his procuring modern arms and they had to go into battle with old-style rifles whose range was only half that of those carried by their opponents. He was also at a disadvantage in that the enemy could strike where he pleased on a coast nine hundred miles long. Balmaceda was obliged therefore to keep his forces divided. Nine thousand were at Coquimbo, three hundred and fifty miles north of Santiago; as many at Concepcion, four hundred miles south of the capital; and five thousand at Valparaiso, a hundred miles north-west. At Santiago he kept the remainder as a reserve to be sent to the assistance of whichever of the three divisions might be attacked.

On the 20th of August the fleet of seventeen vessels carrying the whole revolutionary army suddenly appeared a few miles north of Valparaiso. Balmaceda had short warning and was not able to oppose the landing, which was skilfully conducted by Colonel Canto, the able strategist who commanded the congressionalist forces, with the valuable assistance of Colonel Koerner, a Prussion tactician of the first rank whose services had been hired. There was no time to get troops from Coquimbo and Concepcion. The congressionalist generals moved so rapidly that the best the president could do was to send the Santiago division, which, united with that at Valparaiso, made a force nearly equal in numbers to the enemy. The revolutionists landed with their rations in their haversacks and within a few hours were marching straight south along the seashore on Valparaiso. The Balmacedists tried to defend the passage of the Aconcagua River, which enters the ocean twenty miles north of the city, but they had hardly got into position on the heights which overlook its southern bank when the enemy was upon them. The latter's artillery was twice as strong and his infantry more numerous besides being armed with longer range rifles. In spite of the advantage of position and the fatigue of their opponents the Balmacedists were flung back in complete defeat by the volleys of the Mannlichers and the furious cannonading from both batteries and ships. The battle lasted the whole day and at its close two thousand of the government troops lay on the field, three thousand had been dispersed or deserted to the enemy, and scarcely three thousand held together for the retreat to the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where three regiments of the Santiago division who had taken no part in the fight were waiting. Canto followed, but failing in a tentative attack on the strong northern defences of Valparaiso, he determined to make a circuit to the east, cut the railroad between Santiago and Valparaiso, and either take the latter place in the rear or march on the capital as seemed best. The movement, so masterfully conceived, was skilfully carried out without a moment's loss of time. The essential thing was to act so promptly that Balmaceda could not concentrate his forces. On the 25th the whole congressionalist army had reached Quillota, on the railroad twenty-five miles back of Valparaiso. But Balmaceda had also been active, and during those three days the Concepcion division had arrived at Santiago, and reinforcements had been got through to Valparaiso which raised the army to nearly ten thousand men. Four thousand troops defended Santiago and more were momentarily expected from Coquimbo.

Canto resolved to give him no time for any further concentration, but to fall upon the Valparaiso army before the railroad could be repaired and, by destroying Balmaceda's largest force, end the war. A forced march across country brought him to the old carriage road which comes into Valparaiso from the south. By the 27th his army had covered the incredible distance of forty miles and was within six miles of the government forces, who occupied a strong position between the congressionalists and Valparaiso. Tired though the congressionalists were, they were forced to attack without delay. The only provisions which they could count on were the rations that they had brought in their haversacks; and Balmaceda might at any moment receive reinforcements from Santiago. So they advanced resolutely to the assault. The Balmacedists fought with little enthusiasm or hope; the desertion of part of their cavalry and the inactivity of the rest discouraged the infantry and artillery, but at first they met the charges with the steadiness characteristic of the race. The battle was decided by a flank movement executed by Koerner, who turned the Balmacedist left, while the cavalry charged recklessly up the hill. Thrown into confusion, the government troops were simply swept out of existence by furious volleys and determined charges. Some had stood steady long enough to kill and wound a sixth of the enemy who charged up the hill, but more than a quarter of their own numbers perished in the battle and the pursuit.

The fight was over at half-past ten in the morning, but the news of the utter ruin of all his hopes did not reach Balmaceda until half-past seven. It was his wife's saint's day and friends were coming to dine at his house. Characteristically he did not recall the invitations, and not until the dinner party was over did he arrange to turn over the government of the city to General Baquedano. Then he quietly walked to the Argentine legation and received asylum. Vicuña, the recently elected president, who would have succeeded Balmaceda on the 18th of September, was in Valparaiso and fled to a foreign warship followed by the principal Balmacedist chiefs. No further resistance was made and the congressionalist junta, with Jorge Montt at its head, assumed the supreme direction of affairs. Balmaceda's fall was followed by some riots, but the arrival of the responsible chiefs of the victorious party ensured the re-establishment of order. Like the Anglo-Saxon, the Chilean fights desperately on the field of battle, and when his blood is up he is relentless, but when beaten he phlegmatically accepts the consequences, and when victorious he is not cruel. The Chileans resemble their prototypes of the northern hemisphere in lacking the vivid imagination which makes the inhabitants of warmer climates vengeful. Slow, silent, serious, practical-minded, hard to themselves as well as to others, they turned at once to the work of reconstruction.

No one suspected that the defeated president was at the house of the Argentine minister. It was supposed that he had escaped in disguise, but on the 18th of September, the day upon which his legal term as president expired, the country was astounded to hear that he had shot himself that very morning. The unhappy man feared that he might get his generous host into danger, and his theatrical temperament could not bear the humiliation of a public trial or the risk of being torn to pieces by a mob in case he were discovered. He offered himself as an expiatory sacrifice, knowing that his death would save his friends from further persecution and hoping that it might do for the cause of democratic government in Chile that which his life had so signally failed to accomplish.

An election had been called and Jorge Montt chosen president of Chile with all due regard to legal forms. The aristocratic and parliamentary form of government, under which Chile had so long lived in peace, order, and prosperity, growing at home in intellectual and moral graces and in material welfare, while abroad the nation had waxed great in the consideration of the world, was restored as it had been before Balmaceda attacked it. Not only the arbitrament of battle, but the verdict of the people, so far as the latter can be gathered from the convinced enthusiasm shown by the congressionalists and inferred from the passiveness of the masses, had decided that there should be no radical change; that the president should be advised by the congress and rule in harmony with its majority; that the ballot should be guarded by both an educational and a property qualification; that political evolution should proceed by slow amendment and not by radical innovation—by experiment, not by theory.

The last twelve years of Chile's internal political history offers little of special interest to the foreign student. Jorge Montt, though raised to power by force of arms, proved a modest and non-aggressive president. For two years the anti-Balmacedist groups managed to keep a majority together, but incompatible ambitions rather than differences of principle soon divided them. Balmaceda's old partisans quickly rallied and elected nearly a quarter of the members of the congress of 1894, holding the balance of power amid the warring factions. Curiously enough, it was with the conservatives that the Balmacedists formed a combination, and though they held no cabinet position in Montt's time, they were a principal factor in the coalition which elected Errazuriz to the presidency in 1896. The jealousies among the rival factions of the liberals were too bitter to permit the bulk of that party to make any effective combination against the conservative-Balmacedist-liberal alliance, and the latter remained in power during most of Errazuriz's administration. At its end, the liberals having failed to agree, German Riesco was nominated and elected by much the same influences over Pedro Montt, son of the old president.

The present Chilean parties do not embody any definite and conflicting political principles. Each one derives its origin from some great conflict which took place under a former administration. Once welded together in battling for a common cause, friendship, gratitude, the hope of mutual aid in their ambitions have kept the members united. The latter-day Balmacedists are not enemies of parliamentary dominance; the nationals are now classed as liberals, though they started as ultra-conservatives under Montt; the conservatives do not especially oppose reforms, though they defend the Catholic universities against radical attacks. The property qualification for suffrage is liberally construed; any one who has an income of a thousand pesos is legally entitled to vote, and if the elector can read and write he is not rigidly cross-examined as to the exact amount of the wages he receives. However, this wide extension of the suffrage has not brought about any material change in the personnel of congress. Discussion of the advisability of changing the present system is purely academic, and if dissatisfaction exists it ferments far beneath the surface. Like the English aristocracy that of Chile is truly representative, wielding its power with a keen sense of its responsibility to the nation, and rarely refusing to adopt a reform which is clearly demanded by the country.