While these pages were going through the press, there have occurred, or rather the recollection has been revived, of some circumstances that induce me to supply a few details I did not originally contemplate.
URQUIZA AND ROSAS.
Though on a small scale, the preceding sketches of these remarkable men are excellent likenesses, in either of which the physiognomist and phrenologist may find it difficult to decipher attributes that should reconcile the requirements of science with the characteristics of the individual. First, as regards the elder of the two. Not only did Rosas incur unexampled odium by his cruelties in a sphere where what would be regarded as barbarity elsewhere is looked upon as laudable firmness of disposition, but he enjoyed a reputation for a caustic pleasantry and wit, such indeed as pertained to many of the most remarkable tyrants of all ages, in all parts of the world; though, perhaps, less so to those of Spanish idiosyncrasy than any others. As he has now been expelled, beyond the possibility of restoration, from the scene of his prolonged enormities, I should not seek to revive the recollection of them, or to disturb the quietude of his declining years in his retreat in this country by now adverting to them, were it not that some of the most singular, and, as it was alleged by many of his salaried partizans in Europe at the time, some of the most apocryphal, have suddenly been rehabilitated with indisputable truth, and surrounded with a degree of interest not unworthy of one of M. Dumas’ romances, under the circumstances named in the annexed paragraph, which appeared in the leading English journal while these pages were being prepared for the press, viz.:—
Two more of the ‘mashorqueros’ have been condemned and shot—a fate they so richly merited. One of them, it is said, confessed to having assassinated no less than 21 persons by the orders of Rosas, and 19 on his own account. It is said the Government is in possession of undoubted proof of the murder of the English family (Kidd), when Mr. Ouseley was in Buenos Ayres in 1845, by the orders of Rosas; and that it is their intention to place these proofs before the British Government. This, however, may be a work of supererogation, as it is believed here that Mr. Ouseley sent home ample proofs of the facts many years ago, as well as proofs of the deliberate murder of the midshipman Ross some time after.
In order to understand the meaning of the strange term used in the first line of the preceding quotation, it may be necessary for the information of the younger reader,—for during Rosas’ sway the phrase occurred too frequently to need explanation to any one who perused the revolting reports from the Plate—to supply an elucidation. This cannot be better done than in the words addressed by the Uruguayan Agent in this country, General O’Brien, to the then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and present Prime Minister of England, in 1844, when seeking British assistance against the Buenos Ayrean oppressor of the Banda Oriental. The General said:—
The Masorcas, or secret affiliation, in support of Rosas’s government, derives its name from the inward stalk of the maize, when deprived of its grain, and has been used by the members of the clubs as an instrument of torture, of which your Lordship may form some idea when calling to mind the agonizing death inflicted upon Edward II. By the members of this club, assassination of those indisposed to the rule of Rosas was, audaciously in some instances, covertly in more, constantly exercised. Amongst the victims was Maya, the first benefactor of Rosas. The estates of all who fell by the hands of the band of Rosas, as well as of those who fled from his vengeance, were seized by him. His absolute command of Buenos Ayres, and his possession of the bank, enabled him to manage the finances of the country, and in 1842 gave to him an army of 10,000 men. Many were collected by fear, from the positive knowledge that, if they did not obey his summons, their fate would be similar to that of men who, having refused to join his troops, were dragged out of their beds at night by members of the Masorca Club, and in the very presence of their wives and children brutally put to death! Like as it happened with the early revolutionary armies of France, which had commissioners from the Convention, the soldiers of Rosas were accompanied by individuals of the Masorca Club, and they but too faithfully executed the commission confided to them, depriving the victims of Rosas’s vengeance or suspicion of life, amid tortures and cruelties that shock humanity but to hear of them. My Lord, I know of these tortures being inflicted. At the time that Oribe invaded the Banda Oriental, with the army and the Masorca commissioners of Rosas, I was residing on my estate in the country. I am aware of wretches being staked into the ground forty-eight hours before their heads were sawed, not cut, off;—of the lasso being flung over persons’ necks, and then drawn by a horse at full speed until life became extinct;—of spikes being driven into the mouths of human beings, and they, whilst living, thus nailed to trees.
Of the way in which such machinery was capable of being used by such a man as Rosas, we may form an idea from General O’Brien’s description of his antecedents:—
Rosas is known to me for five-and-twenty years. For his early education he was indebted to Maza, afterwards president of the Buenos Ayres congress. His calling in life was that of a ‘Capataz,’—or care-taker of the property of his relatives, the Anchorenas, and this brought him into constant intercourse with the wild Indian tribes of the Pampas. He ingratiated himself greatly with these tribes, for he not only conformed himself to their habits, but he also won the favour of their Caciques by presents, judiciously distributed amongst them. This was his state of life until 1820, when the influence of his kinsmen, the Anchorenas, obtained for him the lieutenant-colonelcy of the militia of the frontiers of the Indian territory. It was then, and not till then, that he appeared as a soldier. It was to aid Martin Rodriguez in a successful revolution; but once the victory of his friend had been secured, he again retired to the Pampas, put himself in contact with the Patagonian and Pampa Indians, and thus added to his popularity and his influence amongst that savage race of men. Rosas maintained his friendly relations with the Indians until the civil war, in 1829, in Buenos Ayres. In that war the President Dorrego was shot by Lavalle, and Rosas at once became the head of the party of Dorrego. With the death of Dorrego commence the calamities of that part of the world. The conduct, the bearing, and the demeanour of Rosas, were such as to obtain for him universal approbation. He gained in his favour the opinions of the good, whilst he was concocting schemes for winning the bad. He left the society of civilized men, and again repaired to the Indians. It was under his auspices, it has since been discovered, that the Indians were incited to attack the property of those who were civilized; and their hostility was especially directed by Rosas against all whom he believed would be capable or disposed to resist his attempts at possessing himself of despotic power. He established a camp, which had all the privileges of a sanctuary for every malefactor of every district, from Buenos Ayres to Upper Peru and the Cordilleras of the Andes. His protectorate of crime was not avowed, but it was actively exercised. It shielded the criminal from the punishment of man, and it won impunity by the perpetration of new atrocities upon all who were suspected by Rosas. Between 1829 and 1833, Rosas laid the foundation for that despotism which he has since exercised. The means he employed were worse even than the object itself, for they consisted in ‘the organization of a band of assassins.’ I assure your lordship there is not the slightest exaggeration in the phrase.