A French writer whom we shall again have occasion to quote at the conclusion of this chapter, in explanation of the causes which lead to that indifference to the lives of others which distinguishes the guachos, describes a characteristic trait of Rosas, which it is necessary to understand, viz.—
Every one who has visited the provinces of La Plata, and has written about General Rosas, has spoken of his energy, his patience, his cleverness, and his cruelty; but there is that in him which is paramount to all his other qualities, and which may be said to be the most prominent trait of his character, and that is his science in mendacity, his skill in working out, even to a most perfect system—a gigantic scheme of lying. It is an accomplishment in which he never has been equalled, and never can be surpassed. It would be difficult to convey an idea of the degree to which this faculty has been developed in the dictator of Buenos Ayres. The only explanation of his being permitted to exercise power for such a length of time, is to be found in this instrument of action, and which he has employed at all times and in all places with a perseverance that cannot but excite our wonder. Are the acts of his government denounced to the indignation of Europe, he audaciously denies them even to the very face of those who have been eye-witnesses to them. Is an accusation preferred against himself, he instantly turns it against his adversaries, and unceasingly pursues them with it before the entire world; and this he does by means of his journal printed in three languages, with which he inundates the American continent, and which his agents sedulously circulate in every part of Europe. Sustained by a dogged obstinacy which defies all obstacles, nothing can make him deviate from the course he has marked out for himself, and unscrupulous as to the means, he knows that time and patience will effect for him all that he desires. In this respect Rosas has been perfectly consistent. At the moment in which he consecrated in his own person a government essentially Unitarian, by effacing even the last traces of a federation, he compelled the population, upon pain of death, to cry out, ‘Long live the Federation!’ The same day, on which he substituted his own will for all the codes of the republic, he caused himself to be saluted with the title of ‘restorer of the laws!’ Whilst his portrait was publicly incensed in the churches, and received, by his order, divine honours, he invoked the vengeance of heaven upon the impious Unitarians who daily offend the Almighty. When, in fine, he let loose, in the broad day, into the streets of Buenos Ayres, bands of assassins, who massacred the population, he could not find tears enough to deplore ‘this unhappy popular ebullition, which made his paternal heart bleed!’ We do not believe that hypocrisy and audacity ever reached to such an extreme degree of shameless impudence. It was thus that Europe was misled as to the real character of the events that occurred, and that it accustomed itself to consider as the representative of peace, and as the protector of order, commerce, and civilization, the man who has never ceased for eighteen years to be on the banks of La Plata, the element of sanguinary wars, of crimes, and of violence of every kind.
Reverting to the case of the Kidd Family, their murder was one of the most atrocious on record in any age or any country, considering, first, the number, ages, and utter inoffensiveness of the victims; secondly, the rank, motive, and perfidiousness of the assassin; and, thirdly, the want of public virtue or spirit to resent it among the community in the midst of whom it was perpetrated, but who had been so subdued by such deeds amongst themselves as actually to affect indignation that strangers should name the culprit. The object of Rosas was, under the pretext of popular hatred of foreigners, on account of the policy that was being pursued by the British Government, to strike terror into the English residents in the province and city of Buenos Ayres; so that this terror, reacting on the diplomatist, or at least upon the English cabinet, which it is now notorious that it unfortunately did, might lead to a change in the course so obnoxious to the Dictator, because so fatal to his power of desolating the Uruguay. The Kidds were a highly respectable English, or rather Scotch, family who resided on an estancia a short distance from the city of Buenos Ayres, engaged, as they had been for several years, in the rearing of cattle, and neither interfering, nor being accused of interfering, in the political disputes of the country in the smallest possible degree. They were nine in number—from the aged grandfather, to the infant in arms. These were found one morning with their throats cut in the most barbarous and revolting, yet deliberate, manner; their bodies ranged along the floor; and, in the case of two young girls about fifteen or sixteen, and remarkable for the luxuriance of their hair, their tresses were brought round the head, and tied in fantastic knots in the gashes in their throats. That the object of this bloody business was not plunder was obvious from the circumstance of there not being a particle of property removed, or the least disturbance of the furniture, and also from the ferocious mockery of decency exhibited in the orderly adjustment of the bodies. Of course it made a vast sensation, and it was intended that it should do so.
But Rosas little calculated how completely the tables were about to be turned upon him, and how the engineer would be hoisted with his own petard. Every man, woman, and child in Buenos Ayres knew that the deed had been done by Rosas’ directions, and his ‘Mashorqueros’ brigands boasted of it as the crowning audacity of their master, and one that would soon bring the English minister to his senses. The blow, however, had hardly been struck when it recoiled upon the author. Sir W. G. Ouseley immediately offered the sum of ten thousand dollars for the detection of the murderers; and, inviting the coöperation of all who abhorred the crime to aid in augmenting the reward for the discovery of its perpetrators, carried the list to Rosas himself, and demanded that he and his daughter, Donna Manueleta, should head it! Of course refusal was impossible, without an open avowal of his guilt, about which no one entertained, or could entertain, a doubt. Accordingly, forth there came, the following morning, and daily for a long time afterwards, the names of Rosas and the British minister, and of many British inhabitants, stigmatising the outrage, and invoking vengeance on the monsters who had effected it. But mark the result. Not only was there no detection, but not a single Buenos Ayrean citizen, or a single person in any way amenable to the power of Rosas, put down his name for a solitary rial, or was heard to whisper a syllable of desire that the assassins should be brought to justice. But there was no hope of anything of the kind, nor would there ever have been as long as Rosas remained in the position he was at the time of that villany, as well as the subsequent one alluded to in the extract, and which was more the prompting of baffled spite against the British minister, than with the least idea it could have had any effect of the kind intended in the direction where the Kidd massacre had so signally failed. But ‘murder, though it hath no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organs;’ and certainly a more strange one could hardly be than that of a ‘mashorquero’ implicating Rosas in one of the greatest enormities of this age, and while yet there is proof sufficient to make its truth apparent even to those whom the Dictator had persuaded he was the victim of foreign calumny. He tried this sanguinary strategy with considerable success, on the occasion of the French intervention in Buenos Ayrean affairs, in 1842, and likewise practised it against some British subjects, as in the case of the midshipman alluded to in the extract from the Times, and also in the still more ferocious one of the murder of Lieut. Wardlaw, the depositions of the boat’s crew, who saw him foully butchered, when landing on the Rosista territory under a flag of truce, having been published in full detail in the English papers soon afterwards.
But enough, and more than enough, of Rosas. Turning now to his former friend and sometime successor, General Urquiza. Although he has been expelled from Buenos Ayres, yet, in consequence of his having been again rechosen as President of the Confederation by all the other provinces, as well also as continuing in the position he had filled for many years as President of his native province of Entre Rios, there is little doubt that he is destined to play again a conspicuous part on the stage of South American politics, especially should there be a separation of the states into distinct and independent governments, or minor confederacies, as has frequently been proposed, and to which the position and vast extent of these regions point as a prudent course, particularly now that Buenos Ayres may be regarded as having virtually and practically ceased to be a component part of the Argentine republic. I have thought it may not be uninteresting to the English reader to furnish some particulars of this remarkable man, and for that purpose have subjoined a condensed translation of a little work that has attained a great circulation in South America. It is entitled ‘Seis Dias con el General Urquiza, que comprenden Muchas Noticias Sobre su Persona. El esclarcie miento de hechos importantes. Y Algunos Datos Sobre la Situacion Actual de la Provincia de Entre-Rios.’ It will be seen that it is the production of a great admirer of Urquiza, and on that score will be received with due qualification, which must be further extended to the style of the writer, whose grandiloquent idiom has been preserved with some closeness in the translation. The principal reason, however, for giving the annexed data is because of the picture afforded of the private life of a South American chief, and, incidentally, of society in portions of that country hitherto undescribed by English travellers. I will only preface these memoranda by saying that Urquiza is now about 54 years of age, abstains from wine and tobacco, and though a great admirer of beauty is still a bachelor. Since 1840 he has been president of Entre Rios, and sided with Rosas during the civil war of Lavellé and Rivera, the latter of whom he routed at the battle of Inda Muerta, in 1846. At last perceiving that the interest of his own state was highly prejudiced by the conduct of Rosas in excluding it from all access to the ocean, he seized the opportunity when Rosas annually resigned the presidency of the Confederation to accept such resignation, thereby depriving the dictator of the legal authority longer to represent and conduct the foreign relations of the Confederation. He then joined Brazil in driving Rosas and Oribe out of the Uruguay, and subsequently out of Buenos Ayres, of which he became president, and was himself in turn ejected from that city and state, under the circumstances already detailed. In the translation the use of the first personal pronoun has been retained:
SIX DAYS WITH GENERAL URQUIZA.
I arrived at the General’s residence, which is eighteen leagues from the village of Gualeguachú, on the left bank of the river of that name; and, to my surprise, about that magnificent country house, where I expected to find a military encampment, full of officers, soldiers, and men in the service of the renowned champion of Entre-Rios, a profound silence reigned, interrupted only by the blows of the axe of a rustic, who was working upon some trees. I alighted, and entered the house. At the door of one of the apartments stood a man whom I at once recognized as the General, having seen him in the Oriental Republic twenty years before. I knew him because his visage was not changed, and not because his dress manifested anything by which I might recognise him as the supreme chief of the province of Entre-Rios. I took off my hat, but he immediately bade me follow him, and put his hand on the neck of a mastiff, which was lying at his feet. This animal is the famous Purvis,[95] the only sentinel and companion General Urquiza has in a spacious edifice in which five hundred persons can accommodate themselves. His only attendants are an old man who serves him, and a coloured woman who attends to the apartments, where they receive the persons who daily arrive to see the General, some in the public service, but the greater part with private objects. Some other men have occupations in the house, in the labours of his beautiful garden, and in the indispensable services of a country mansion, where there reign order and the most admirable economy. The General made me sit down, and asked me some questions, which inspired me with confidence, at the same that his presence imposed respect. He was dressed rather negligently, covered with a light poncho of the finest vicuna, and wearing a hat of white cloth, with a coloured ribbon, which is distinctive of the Entre-Riano army. I saw him in the same dress all the time that I was with him. He has very little beard, nor does he wear the moustache, so general among the military, and still worn by the peasants; but he does not lose thereby the aspect of a warrior. He is of a very robust constitution, has a broad and extremely prominent chest, and is altogether a remarkably well-formed man. His face preserves all the freshness of youth, although, in my judgment, he must have been born at the commencement of the century. He is of moderate stature, and slightly inclined to corpulence. His complexion is fair, but its bloom has been somewhat darkened by the sun during his military career. All his features are full of expression. His mouth is small, his teeth good, his eyes of a clear grey colour, and full of fire and vivacity. They are unsteady when he speaks, fixing themselves on every object around him, especially when he refers to any act of extreme severity. His hair is black, and begins to fall off his clear unwrinkled forehead. His manners are frank, jovial, and cheerful, so that he predisposes in his favour all who approach him.
‘Why,’ he inquired, after a brief pause, ‘have you come to this country, after having been associated with the foreigners, who have deceived you all, and prolonged a war which ought to have been by this time concluded?’ ‘It is true, sir,’ I replied, ‘but past events linked themselves by degrees, and the torrent of successes has led us’—‘Stop! you must not say that the torrent of successes has precipitated it; you must say that it deceived you, for men of ideas and education do not permit themselves to be led with the multitude, who observe nothing. The Monte Videans have not comprehended their own interests; they ought long since to have settled that unfortunate question, in which so much blood has been shed, and I am persuaded, if such were the case, things would go on well, and the Orientals would not see their country destroyed.’