This little incident, of so trifling import at the time, was remembered in after years as an early indication of the ferocious and uncontrollable caudillo's character. But it was soon eclipsed by the reckless deeds that followed each other in quick succession between his fifteenth and twentieth years. He speedily became notorious in the little town for his wild moroseness, for his savage ferocity when excited, for his inordinate love of cards. Gaming, a passion with many, was a necessary of life to him; it was the only pursuit to which he was ever constant; it gave rise to the quarrel in which, while yet a schoolboy, he for the first time spilt blood.
By and by we lose sight of the student of San Juan. He has absolutely sunk out of sight. Yet, if we peer into filthy pulperías here and there between San Luis and San Juan, we may catch a glimpse of a shaggy, swarthy savage, gambling, gambling as if for life; and we may also hear of more than one affray in which his dagger has "come home richer than it went." A little later, the son of wealthy Don Prudencio has become—not a common laborer—but a comrade of common laborers. He chooses the most toilsome, the most unintellectual, but, at the same time, the most remunerative handicraft,—that of the tapiador, or builder of mud walls. At San Juan, in the orchard of the Godoys,—at Fiambalá, in La Rioja, in the city of Mendoza,—they will show you walls which the hands of General Facundo Quiroga, Comandante de Campaña, etc., etc., put together. Wherever he works, he is noted for the ascendency which he maintains over the other peons. They are entirely subject to his will; they do nothing without his advice; he is worth, say his employers, a dozen overseers. Ah, he is yet to rule on a larger scale!
Did these people ever think,—as they watched the sombre, stubborn Gaucho sweating over a tapia, subjecting a drove of peons to his authority, or, stretched upon a hide, growing ferocious as the luck went against him at cards,—that here was one of those forces which mould or overturn the world? Could it ever have occurred to the Godoys of San Juan, to the worthy municipality of Mendoza, that this scowling savage was yet to place his heel upon their prostrate forms, and most thoroughly to exhibit, through weary, sanguinary years, the reality of that tremendous saying,— "The State? I am the State!"?
Doubtless no. Little as the comrades of Maximin imagined that the truculent Goth was yet to wear the blood-stained purple, little as the clients of Robespierre dreamed of the vortex toward which he was being insensibly hurried by the stream of years, did the men, whose names are thrown out from their obscurity by the glare of his misdeeds, conceive that their fortunes, their lives, all things but their souls, were shortly to depend upon the capricious breath of this servant who so quietly pounds away upon their mud inclosures.
He does not long, however, remain the companion of peons. Eighteen hundred and ten has come, bringing with it liberty, and bloodshed, and universal discord. The sun of May beams down upon a desolated land. For the mild, although repressive viceregal sway is substituted that of a swarm of military chieftains, who, fighting as patriots against Liniers and his ill-fated troops, as rivals with each other, or as montanero-freebooters against all combined, swept the plains with their harrying lancers from the seacoast to the base of the Cordillera.
In this period of anarchy we catch another glimpse of Juan Facundo. He has worked his way down to Buenos Ayres, nine hundred miles from home, and enlists in the regiment of Arribeños, raised by his countryman, General Ocampo, to take part in the liberation of Chile. But even the infinitesimal degree of discipline to which his fellow-soldiers had been reduced was too much for his wild spirit; already he feels that command, and not obedience, is his birthright; there is soon a vacancy in the ranks.
With three companions Quiroga took to the desert. He was followed and overtaken by an armed detachment, or partida; summoned to surrender; the odds are overpowering. But this man bids defiance to the world; he is yet, in this very region, to rout well-appointed and disciplined armies with a handful of men; and he engages the partida. A sanguinary conflict is the result, in which Quiroga, slaying four or five of his assailants, comes off victorious, and pursues his journey in the teeth of other bands which are ordered to arrest him. He reaches his native plains, and, after a flying visit to his parents, we again lose sight of the Gaucho malo. Blurred rumors of his actions have, indeed, been preserved; accounts of brutality toward his gray-haired father, of burnings of the dwelling in which he first saw the light, of endless gaming, and plentiful shedding of blood; but we hear nothing positive concerning him until the year 1818. Somewhere in that year he determines to join the band of freebooters under Ramirez, which was then devastating the eastern provinces. And here—O deep designs of Fate!—the very means intended to check his mad career serve only to accelerate its development. Dupuis, governor of San Luis, through which province he is passing on his way to join Ramirez, arrests the Gaucho malo, and throws him into the common jail, there to rot or starve as Fortune may direct.
But she had other things in store for him. A number of Spanish officers, captured by San Martin in Chile, were confined within the same walls. Goaded to the energy of despair by their sufferings, and convinced that after all they could die no more than once, the Spaniards rose one day, broke open the doors of their prison, and proceeded to that part of the building where the common malefactors, and among them Juan Facundo, were confined. No sooner was Facundo set at liberty, than he snatched the bolt of the prison-gate, from the very hand which had just withdrawn it to set him free, crushed the Spaniard's skull with the heavy iron, and swung it right and left, until, according to his own statement, made at a later date, no less than fourteen corpses were stiffening on the ground. His example incited his companions to aid him in subduing the revolt of their fellow-prisoners; and, as a reward for "loyal and heroic conduct," he was restored to his privileges as a citizen.
Thus, in the energetic language of his biographer, was his name ennobled, and cleansed, but with blood, from the stains that defiled it. Persecuted no longer, nay, even caressed by the government, he returned to his native plains, to stalk with added haughtiness and new titles to esteem among his brother Gauchos of La Rioja.
Having in this manner taken a rapid survey of the most salient points in his private career up to the year 1820, we may pause for a moment, before studying his public life, to glance at the condition of his native country in the first decade of its independence. The partial separation from Spain, which was effected on the 25th May, 1810, was followed by a long and bloody struggle, in all the southern provinces, between the royal forces and the adherents of the Provisional Junta. Such framework of government as had been in existence was practically annihilated, and the various provinces of the late Viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres fell a prey to the military chieftains who could attract around them the largest number of Gaucho cavalry,—while civilization, commerce, and every peaceful art, declined at a rapid rate. No alteration in this state of affairs was effected by the final Declaration of Independence, made at Tucuman, July 9, 1816; and in 1820, Buenos Ayres, the seat of the government which claimed to be supreme, was seized by a confederacy of the provincial chiefs, who secured, by the destruction of the Directorial Government, complete and unchallenged independence for themselves. During this anarchical period, the famous Artigas was harrying the Banda Oriental; Rosas and Lopez were preparing for their blood-stained careers; Bustos, Ibarra, and a host of other caudillos, ruled the interior provinces; and Juan Facundo Quiroga was raised to irresponsible power.