CHAPTER VII

THE CHILEAN WAR AND LATTER-DAY PERU

The nitrate region extends along the narrow desert coast of the Pacific

for three hundred and fifty miles. Peru owned the northern one hundred

and fifty, and prior to 1866 Bolivia claimed the remainder. After the

discovery of the precious mineral the industrious and energetic Chileans

crowded up the coast, while the Bolivians were shut in behind their high

Andes. Chile insisted that her true boundary lay as far north as the 23d

degree, and took vigorous measures to safeguard the interests of the

Chilean nitrate companies. In 1866 Bolivia reluctantly made a treaty by

which the 24th degree was agreed upon as the formal boundary, although

the Chilean miners were allowed to continue their operations in the

productive regions north of that line and their taxes were not to be

increased without their government's consent. This treaty gave rise to

constant disputes, and as the nitrate, silver, and copper business of

the neutral zone became more profitable, the Bolivian government pressed

harder for a larger revenue. The Peruvian government had planned to

secure a control of the output by the state purchase and operation of

nitrate properties, and such a trust would prove ineffective unless the

Bolivian government had a free hand with the Chilean companies. In 1872

Peru and Bolivia made a secret treaty of alliance. Its provisions soon

became public, and Chile not unreasonably believed it to be aimed

especially at her miners' operating on Bolivian soil. She promptly began

purchasing iron-clads. It was a favourite saying of old Marshal Castilla

that when Chile bought a battle-ship Peru should buy two, but the Lima

government was too poor to follow the good advice, and the fatal year of

1879 found her naval force inferior to that of her rival.

At this juncture the Bolivian congress voted not to ratify a treaty

negotiated with Chile four years before, and passed a law imposing heavy

taxes on the nitrate business. The Chilean companies protested and

resisted; their government backed them up, and sent a fleet to protect

their interests. Enraged at the seizure of her ports, Bolivia declared

war in March, 1879. Peru could not be expected to remain quiet. Not only

was she bound by the solemn agreement of the treaty of alliance, but she

had an imperative selfish interest in preventing the disputed nitrate

territory from falling into Chile's hands. She began to gather an army

on the southern frontier, but she was illy prepared for war and Chile

knew it. Her offers of arbitration were promptly rejected; the Chilean

government had determined to strike both allies at the same time, and

presented an ultimatum, demanding that Peru abrogate the secret treaty,

cease warlike preparations, and remain neutral in the war with Bolivia.

Failing immediate and categorical compliance war was declared in April.

What had proven true in the time of Pizarro, San Martin, and Santa Cruz,

was still true--the successful invasion or defence of Peru depended on

the control of the Pacific. Whichever power should obtain a naval

preponderance would surely get the nitrate territory--a rainless,

cropless region where an army must be sustained by supplies brought by

sea--and then could attack the other at its capital. Chile had two new

iron-clads, the _Cochrane_ and the _Blanco_, besides two good cruisers

and several gunboats. The two Peruvian iron-clads, the _Huascar_ and the

_Independencia_, were older, though their speed was superior. The

Chileans opened the war on the ocean by blockading the Peruvian ports in

the extreme south, but Miguel Grau, the able seaman and intrepid fighter

who commanded the Peruvian fleet, at once attacked the Chilean cruisers

which were lying off Iquique. The _Huascar_ rammed and sank the

_Esmeralda_, but while his other iron-clad was pursuing the _Covadonga_,

she ran upon the rocks and was lost. This was in reality a deathblow to

Peru, but the gallant Grau devotedly determined to see what his single

ship, rapidly manoeuvred, could do to make unsafe the embarkation of a

Chilean army. For four months he terrorised the coast from Antofagasta

to Valparaiso. Chile could not take a step until she had disposed of

Grau and his dreaded _Huascar_. The blockade of Iquique was abandoned

as useless; the iron-clads ordered back to Valparaiso to be cleaned and

repaired so that they might match the _Huascar_ in speed; new officers

were put in command; and on October the first the Chilean fleet set sail

from Valparaiso on a systematic chase for the Peruvian iron-clad. On

reaching Antofagasta it was divided into two squadrons, the _Cochrane_

leading one and the _Blanco_ the other, and they immediately began

patrolling the coast.

The _Huascar_, accompanied by a consort, the _Union_, was cruising in

the neighbourhood, and at daylight on the 8th of October the first

Chilean division sighted her. Grau fled, and was gradually drawing away

from his pursuers when, to his horror, three columns of smoke appeared

on the horizon directly forward. He was caught between the two Chilean

squadrons. The _Union_ had speed enough to slip by the enemy, but the

_Huascar_ was too slow. Grau's only chance was to close with the

_Cochrane_ before the _Blanco_ could come up astern, and he went

straight for the former. At half past nine the _Huascar_ fired the first

shot, the distance being about three thousand yards. It fell short and

only the fourth shot took effect. The _Cochrane_ then replied, and

though the practice on both sides was wild, the two ships soon came so

close that the machine guns were brought into effective play. A shot

disabled the _Huascar's_ turret, and in desperation Grau tried

repeatedly to ram, but was foiled by the quick turns which the

_Cochrane's_ twin screws enabled her to make. Just half an hour after

the action began a shell struck his conning-tower, blowing the heroic

Peruvian into atoms. A few minutes later the _Blanco_ came up and added

her missiles to the storm of shots which the _Cochrane_ and the smaller

consorts were pouring upon the doomed _Huascar_. Nevertheless no one

thought of striking. Hardly had Grau been blown to pieces than the

executive officer had his head taken clean off by a shell from the

_Blanco_, and the officer next in seniority was severely wounded. A few

moments later the lieutenant who succeeded to the command was killed,

and his successor, in turn, was wounded before the end of the action.

When the ship finally struck, an hour and a half after the first shot

was fired, one of the juniors was in command, and sixty-four of the

complement of one hundred and ninety-three officers and men lay killed

or wounded on the deck.

The Chileans were now in absolute control of the sea, and could land an

army when and where they pleased. The Bolivian sea-coast, inhabited

almost exclusively by Chilean miners, and inaccessible overland from

Bolivia proper, had fallen into Chile's hands at the opening of the war,

but Grau's success in immobilising the Chilean navy had been taken

advantage of by the Peruvians to ship nine thousand troops to their own

nitrate province, where they could conveniently attack the Chileans who

occupied the Bolivian territory to their south, or defend their own most

valuable piece of property. But although this army was in Peruvian

territory the naval victory of the Chileans isolated it almost

completely. A hundred miles of rough, rainless desert, intercepted by

deep ravines transverse to the coast, separated it from Tacna, where

fertile valleys begin and communication with the rest of Peru becomes

possible.

By the end of October the Chilean army embarked at Antofagasta ten

thousand strong and well provided with cavalry and the most modern

artillery. Of Iquique and Pisagua, the two principal ports of the

Peruvian nitrate country, the latter, which lies forty miles north of

the former, was chosen as the less likely to be defended in force. Only

a thousand men were found, who, in spite of a gallant resistance from

their two small batteries and their rifle pits, were unable to prevent

the landing of the Chileans protected by a tremendous fire from the

fleet. Driven from the town the Peruvians could not even hold the top of

the precipitous bluff until the arrival of reinforcements from Iquique.

The Chileans relentlessly pushed their advantage and soon were in

possession of the railroad for fifty miles into the interior and had six

thousand men entrenched on a hill called San Francisco. Abundantly

supplied with provisions and water they could afford to wait, while the

allies, cut off from communications, must either attack at once or

abandon the province. The Peruvian general chose the former alternative,

but his troops arrived in front of San Francisco exhausted and thirsty

after a twenty-miles' march across the dry desert. Only a small part of

the army took part in the assault, and it was easily repulsed.

Disheartened the allies fell back to the foot of the giant range which

inexorably barred their way to the east, and after a few days of

suffering from hunger and thirst, took their way north among the barren

foothills. The enemy sent a detachment to harass their march, but they

turned on their pursuers and defeated them, and reached Tacna province

hungry, ragged, half-armed, and generally demoralised.

Not only was the great nitrate province, the treasury of Peru,

irretrievably lost, but every point on the coast, including Lima itself,

laid open to attack. President Prado left the army at Tacna, went to

Lima, and thence sailed for Europe, announcing that he was going to buy

iron-clads. Hardly was he on board ship when a revolution broke out in

the capital, and the restless Pierola, who had headed the latest

attempts at insurrection, declared himself supreme chief. The Bolivians

also deposed their unsuccessful president. Peru's revolutionary

government, rushed into power on a wave of wounded national pride,

embodied the more than Spanish haughtiness of the Creole aristocracy,

and refused all concessions. The allies still had a large army at Tacna,

not too demoralised to make a creditable resistance, although it was cut

off from easy communication with the rest of Peru and Bolivia, and stood

badly in need of arms, clothing, and ammunition. The Chilean ships

blockaded Arica, the Tacna port, but the fast _Union_ again showed her

heels to the enemy's whole fleet, ran the blockade, and landed stores

which put the allied army on a fighting footing.

Late in February, 1880, the Chileans disembarked a fine army of

fourteen thousand men at a seaport sixty miles north of the allies' main

position, and lost no time in occupying the interior as far as Moquegua

at the foot of the Andes. Their first object was to cut the allied

armies off from any communication with their respective countries. A

small Peruvian force made an attempt to hold Torata, a point

strategically important because it commanded the entrance into the Andes

from Bolivia and Peru, but was unsuccessful. The allied armies were now

bottled up in a little valley where provisions would surely shortly

fail. The Chileans advanced south across the desert upon Tacna, and the

allies took a strong defensive position on a ridge, flanked by steep

ravines, with a sloping glacis in front. Vastly superior in artillery,

though only slightly outnumbering the allies, the Chileans thought

themselves justified in assaulting the position. They opened the battle

by a cannonade in which their magnificent Krupp guns did terrific

execution, and under cover of the fire the infantry advanced in four

columns of twenty-four hundred men each. Approaching the trenches they

were met by a storm of rifle bullets through which they charged bayonet

in hand.

Meanwhile the allies on the crest of the sand-hills suffered terribly

from the plunging artillery fire. The Bolivians, holding the weakest

part of the line, bore the brunt of the attack. Once the Chileans

wavered, but a supporting cavalry charge quickly drove back the

advancing enemy, and after two hours of desperate fighting the sturdy

Bolivian Indians gave way, their position was carried, and the allied

army fled all along the line. Though the Chileans had lost over two

thousand, the losses of the allies were greater. No way of retreat lay

open; they scattered in confusion; and their army virtually ceased to

exist. A couple of thousand Peruvians held out in Arica for a month,

deliberately devoting themselves to certain death, but the place was

carried by an assault in which quarter was neither given nor asked.

Peru now lay helpless at the mercy of the Chilean armies and fleet. The

ports were blockaded and bombarded, while expeditions ravaged the

fertile coast valleys. Nevertheless the Peruvians would not yield. The

United States offered her mediation, and plenipotentiaries met to see if

terms of peace could be arranged. Chile demanded the formal cession of

the nitrate territory and an indemnity. The Peruvians refused such hard

terms, hoping against hope for foreign intervention. This passive

obstinacy enraged the Chilean government, and after a delay of several

months it was determined to capture the capital and dictate terms at

Lima. Late in December, 1880, a splendidly equipped army of twenty-six

thousand men landed a short distance south of Lima and marched on the

city. Only a few fragments of the Peruvian regular army had survived the

defeats in the south, but the population rallied _en masse_ to resist

the invaders. At Chorrillos, a few miles south of Lima, the militia

waited behind a hastily constructed line of defence. The assault of the

Chilean regulars was irresistible; four thousand Peruvians perished, and

as many more were taken prisoners. The survivors fell back on a second

line of defence, only six miles from Lima, and were there defeated in a

second battle in which two thousand were killed and wounded. The Chilean

losses in the two fights reached five thousand. On the following day the

mayor of Lima formally surrendered the city, and on the 17th of January

the Chilean army took possession. The helpless citizens were required to

make up a contribution of a million dollars a month; the customs duties

were confiscated, and the Chileans violated all the rules of civilised

warfare by wantonly destroying the great and valuable public

library--the best in South America.

Pierola escaped to Guamanga, but succeeded in rallying no forces. He

gave it up and went to Europe. It became necessary to organise a

government which could treat for peace. The citizens of Lima, with the

consent of Chile, made Garcia Calderon provisional president, but when

the discussion of terms began the Chileans repeated their demand for the

unconditional cession of the nitrate territory, and Calderon did not

dare assent. The enemy sent him prisoner to Santiago, while Iglesias in

the northern departments, Caceres in the centre, and Carrillo in the

south each kept up an independent resistance with a few militia. The

Chileans made no serious attempt to conquer the interior, contenting

themselves with pocketing the Peruvian customs revenues. This situation

lasted two years and a half, until Iglesias came to the conclusion that

peace could only be obtained by complete submission. Caceres was,

however, resolved upon further resistance and quarrelling with Iglesias,

advanced into the latter's territory. He was intercepted by a Chilean

expedition and his forces destroyed. This left Iglesias a clear field;

he declared himself president and entered into negotiations with the

Chileans, arranging a treaty of peace which was signed on the 20th of

October, 1883. Five days later the Peruvian flag was once more hoisted

in the capital. Sporadic risings against Iglesias were easily suppressed

by Chilean bayonets; four thousand men remained to see that the treaty

was ratified, and a convention finally ratified it in March. Its

provisions differed little from the demands made by Chile three years

before. The money indemnity was waived and half the guano proceeds were

left to Peru's creditors. On the other hand, the provinces of Tacna and

Arica were to be held by Chile for ten years, and at the end of that

time a popular vote would decide who should retain them, the losing

country receiving ten million dollars from the other. Better far for the

interests of permanent peace had the fate of the provinces been

definitely determined. Chile and Peru have never been able to agree upon

the terms under which the plebiscite should be conducted; the former

still retains the provinces and the latter still agitates for their

recovery.

No sooner had the Chilean army left than Caceres began a civil war to

oust Iglesias. For eighteen months the fighting continued with varying

fortunes, but in December, 1885, Caceres surprised Lima when undefended;

Iglesias resigned; a general amnesty was proclaimed, and peace was

restored to the distracted country. A junta assumed power and in the

election which followed Caceres was chosen president, and in the middle

of 1886 he entered upon the dreary task of re-organising Peru. The

treasury was empty, the population had been decimated by a horribly

destructive war during four years, the flourishing coast valleys with

their cotton and sugar plantations had been laid under contribution, the

mines had ceased to be worked, the guano and nitrate revenue was gone,

the country was weighed down with a debt which could never be paid, and

foreign creditors pressed for a settlement utterly beyond the abilities

of the impoverished country. Rigid economies were enforced in all

departments of the administration, but the most that could be hoped was

to meet ordinary expenditure.

Peru had nothing to offer towards the immense foreign debt except her

railways, and the British creditors finally agreed to the Grace

contract, by which she was released from all responsibility for a sum

amounting to over fifty millions sterling, in return for the cession of

the state railways, the payment of eighty thousand pounds annually, and

certain rights to the guano deposits, mines, and public lands. British

pressure induced Chile to give up a large proportion of the guano

proceeds, and in 1890 the contract was ratified and the "Peruvian

Corporation" took over the vast properties conceded. Though disputes

have arisen from time to time, the corporation has made some progress in

extending lines to open up the mineral wealth on the plateau, and a

successful beginning has been made toward the exploitation of the rubber

forests of the Amazon plain. It cannot be doubted that the industrial

development of Peru must be greatly aided by the existence of this

gigantic private enterprise which will apply the energy and economy

characteristic of individual enterprise to undertakings governmental in

magnitude.

[Illustration: GENERAL DON ANDRES A. CACERES]

Caceres made no change in the centralised system of government by

prefects,--and the administrative fabric survived, substantially

untouched, the horrors of the Chilean war and the fighting between rival

chiefs. Liberal tendencies were shown in efforts to place the Indians on

an equal political footing with the Peruvians of Spanish descent,

although naturally the Creole aristocracy still dominates by reason of

its intelligence. Considerable dissatisfaction was felt with Caceres'

management of finances, but in 1890 he was succeeded by his friend,

Colonel Bermudez, who continued his policy. Unfortunately for the peace

of the country the latter died in 1893. His legal successor was Solar,

first vice-president, but an intrigue in the cabinet prevented the

latter's peaceable recognition. Caceres' influence was dominant in the

administration, and a semblance of an election recalled him to power.

General Pierola, who had led two unsuccessful insurrections--those of

1874 and 1878--and who had got power in 1880, only to lose it after the

fall of Lima, saw his opportunity. Solar joined forces with him and

revolt broke out against Caceres. The latter had completely lost the

popularity won as the most determined champion of the national rights

against Chilean aggression; his administration was bad; the public

employees were unpaid; the meagre resources of the country were wasted

on his favourites. Though his troops were at first successful against

Pierola's and Solar's hasty levies, the revolution recovered from each

defeat until finally the insurrectionists entered Lima itself. The

enemies of Caceres within the town arose and for two days its streets

were the scene of bloody barricade fighting. Rarely does a civilised

city pass through such a frightful experience as Lima on the 18th of

July, 1895. There had been no time to extinguish the street lamps, and

all night long the bands of revolutionists advanced, fighting by the

lights which brightly illumined the carnage except where extinguished by

rifle balls. Though his forces were gradually driven back, Caceres

stubbornly refused to resign, and at last only yielded to the urgent

representations of the foreign ministers, leaving power in the hands of

a junta.

With his withdrawal peace was restored, except for the resistance which

his partisans kept up for a short time in Arequipa, and this peace has

never since been disturbed. The junta served until an election could be

held, in which Pierola was chosen president by an overwhelming and

really popular majority. In 1899 he was succeeded by Romana, an engineer

who had been a member of the outgoing ministry, and he, in his turn, had

as successor, Senor Candamo, who took his seat in 1903. Historically the

new president represents the old aristocratic party founded by Pardo--a

party which had been pushed to one side in the financial confusion which

preceded and the civil disorders which succeeded the terrible Chilean

war by the more radical and democratic elements known as Pierolistas and

constitutionalists. The return to a participation in affairs of elements

which include so large a proportion of the intelligence, self-respect,

and wealth of the nation is one of the most hopeful signs of the times.

The Peruvian aristocracy has learned its lesson in the hard school of

adversity, and vies with the commercial classes in sober, serious

attention to industrial and governmental matters. Each division of the

people seems to wish to bear its share in the financial, political, and

moral regeneration of their country.

Peruvian politics are conducted _en famille_. Economic and social

questions are discussed and settled amicably among the ruling coteries

and do not as in Europe and North America form the basis for the

organisation of political parties. Though the country is steadfastly

Catholic, clericalism is not, as in Ecuador, Colombia, and Bolivia,

regarded as a menace by those who hold liberal views, and the provinces

have never made any insistent demand for a larger share of autonomy, as

in Argentina and Colombia. As a rule the elections are free and

translate the popular will. Peru has long since passed the stage of

pronunciamentos and military government; since Castilla's time the

successful revolutions have been few, and have always been undertaken

for the maintenance of the regular constitutional order--not its

overthrow--or have been inspired by national feeling when the fatherland

was in danger.

[Illustration: PERU]

CHILE

CHAPTER I

THE SPANISH CONQUEST

About a century before Pizarro landed, Tupac Yupanqui, the greatest of

the Inca conquerors, crossed the rough mountains, bleak plateaux, and

waterless deserts which lie between the habitable part of Bolivia and

the irrigable valleys of northern Chile, and rapidly overran the coast

for six hundred miles. As one goes south the plain broadens, the short

rivers flowing from the mountains grow larger, the rainfall and the area

available for cultivation increase, and from Santiago a wide valley, the

heart of Chile, stretches between the Andes and the coast range,

sustaining a dense population. As far south as the river Maule, the

limit of Tupac's conquests, irrigation is necessary for crops. In all

these valleys dwelt various tribes whose system of agriculture and

civilisation was similar to that of the Incas. Only the southern peoples

inhabiting the rainy and forested regions beyond the Maule refused to

submit. Huaina Capac, Tupac's son, was once obliged to undertake a

campaign to consolidate the Inca power, but Chile north of the Maule

became thoroughly attached to the Cuzco dynasty.

Little resistance was encountered when Almagro invaded this country just

after Pizarro's entry into the Peruvian capital. He advanced as far as

the Maule, finding everywhere a population probably as dense as that of

the present day. Agriculture was highly developed; the people were

clothed in substantial stuffs of their own manufacture; they mined

copper, tin, and lead, and possessed excellent arms and tools. The

tribes all spoke the same language, but each enjoyed a degree of

autonomy under its own chiefs. Their habits were democratic; they loved

freedom and independence; the Inca socialistic system did not prevail;

and each farmer owned his own field and could transmit it to his

children. The race was large and vigorous, the selected survivors from

among immigrants who had been greatly improved by countless generations

of struggle in the more rigorous climate. As one approached the cold and

rainy mountains of southern Chile their characteristics became more

pronounced and south of the Maule warlike, half-savage tribes proudly

maintained their independence. Almagro's sole pre-occupation was gold,

but he vainly searched the valleys as far as the southern boundary of

the Inca empire. Here he encountered serious resistance from the

independent tribes, and though victorious in his fights, concluded that

it was not worth while remaining in such a cold and goldless country. He

abandoned Chile and returned to Peru, there to meet his death at

Pizarro's hands.

[Illustration: BRIDGE ON THE ROAD BETWEEN SANTIAGO AND MENDOZA.]

Pizarro soon took measures to extend the Spanish conquests to all parts

of the Inca empire, and for Chile he selected his quartermaster, Pedro

de Valdivia, an active and experienced soldier. Late in 1540--the summer

season in those latitudes--Valdivia, with two hundred Spaniards and a

large number of Indian auxiliaries, crossed the Andes and arrived at

Copiapo, the northernmost inhabited valley. Like Almagro he met no

opposition as he pushed his way south for four hundred and fifty miles.

Arriving at the great valley of Chile, in that favoured region he

founded the city of Santiago, which has ever since remained the capital

and most important place in the country. The people of the neighbourhood

attacked the settlement and burned half the houses, but they were soon

decisively defeated. Nevertheless, the invaders position was critical;

many of them wished to return; a mutiny was on the point of breaking

out; but at this juncture the fortunate discovery of valuable gold mines

near Santiago hushed all talk of abandoning the country.

Firmly established at Santiago, Valdivia next turned his attention to

the northern provinces, and founded a city at Coquimbo, about two

hundred and fifty miles north of the capital, which became the centre of

Spanish power in that region. In 1545 he advanced into the country south

of Santiago, where the Promaucians welcomed him as an ally against their

hereditary foes, the Araucanians, a fierce and powerful confederacy

dwelling beyond the river Biobio, which flows into the Pacific in

latitude 37 deg. By the following year Spanish influence was dominant

north of that river. Valdivia, with many of his men, temporarily returned

to Peru to aid in the suppression of Gonzalo's revolt, but as soon as

civil war was over he came back to Chile with his title of governor

confirmed by viceregal authority. He had found Lima swarming with hungry

adventurers who eagerly followed him, hoping for grants of lands and

Indian slaves, or to make their fortunes in mining. With their help the

conquest and settlement of all Chile as far south as the Maule was

effectually completed. The land was apportioned among the cavaliers,

each becoming a sort of feudal baron, and in effect creating a landed

aristocracy which has continued to rule the country to the present day.

The process of incorporation did not stop at the Maule, but included the

Promaucians and most of the other tribes between that river and the

Biobio. Beyond the latter stretched the Araucanian territory for two

hundred miles, and Valdivia now undertook the conquest of the southern

forests where the Inca arms had never been able to penetrate. His first

step was to found Concepcion near the mouth of the Biobio. The

neighbouring territory belonged to allies of the confederacy, and the

Araucanians felt great alarm at such an aggression. The grand council

was summoned, composed of the head-chiefs of the four nations, and the

chiefs--called ulmens--of the provinces and tribes into which these

nations were divided and subdivided. In accordance with immemorial

custom, the deliberations lasted three days, and the humblest warrior

was permitted to give his opinion before war was voted. Once the

determination reached and a general, or "toqui," elected, each soldier

put on his leather cuirass, picked up his heavy war club, and, four

thousand strong, the tribesmen sallied forth to attack the Spaniards.

Musketry volley and cavalry charge compelled the Araucanians to retreat,

after a hotly contested combat which lasted several hours. These

Indians, strong and sturdy dwellers in an invigorating climate, were

more formidable foes than the Spaniards had yet encountered in South

America. Though amazed at the deadly effect of the strange weapons which

the invaders used, they were not demoralised. Like the Saracens they

believed that death in battle was a passport to paradise, war was their

principal business, and the youth were trained up to the trade of arms.

At close quarters they were almost irresistible; their clubs and

spears, wielded with reckless bravery, matched the swords of the

Spaniards, and as soon as they learned how to take advantage of cover in

approaching an enemy provided with firearms, the result of a battle

between them and the Castilians became doubtful.

During the year 1551 Valdivia occupied himself in fortifying Concepcion

and making preparations for an invasion of Araucania. Heavy

reinforcements came and he advanced encountering at first no serious

opposition. He founded the city of Imperial, one hundred and fifty miles

south of Concepcion, and thence pushed a hundred miles farther on, where

he established a seaport, calling it by his own name. Returning north in

1553, on his way he built several forts in the Araucanian territory, and

at Santiago found a fresh body of troops, and, what was even more

important, a supply of horses. Two hundred men were despatched across

the Andes to begin the conquest of what is now known as the province of

Mendoza in the Argentine Republic. Fancying that he had practically

completed the subjection of Chile, Valdivia sent a messenger to Spain to

sue for the title of Marquis and a perpetual governorship, and fitted

out an exploring expedition to the Straits of Magellan in the vain hope

of opening up direct sea communication with the mother country.

The Araucanians had, however, not relaxed their determination to rid

themselves of the white invaders. News came that the confederacy had put

an army of ten thousand men in the field, and that the outlying forts

had been stormed. Valdivia at once advanced from Concepcion at the head

of his forces, numbering two hundred Spaniards and five thousand Indian

auxiliaries. A hundred miles south of the city he came in sight of the

Araucanian army. For some time the Indian commander manoeuvred

cautiously, endeavouring to draw the Spaniards into a position where he

could charge without suffering too much from the dreaded artillery.

Finally battle was joined, and despite the destructive fire the Indians

managed to come to close quarters. As soon as these fierce warriors

reached the enemy's line all was up with the invaders. The Spanish army

was literally annihilated. Valdivia himself fled, but was pursued and

quickly captured. Brought before the Indian general he begged for his

life, agreeing to quit Chile with all the Spaniards, but his

protestations were cut short by the war club of an old chief standing

near.

The Spanish settlers south of Concepcion fled for refuge to the ports of

Imperial and Valdivia, abandoning the other towns and forts. A young

chief named Lautaro, who had been captured and baptised years before by

Valdivia, but who had escaped to his own people, led a considerable army

to the Biobio, destroyed an expedition sent against him, and drove the

enemy out of Concepcion. If the Indians had understood the art of

besieging fortified places, Imperial and Valdivia and probably Santiago

itself would now have fallen, and the Spaniards would have been expelled

from the southern and better half of Chile. Lautaro led north two

thousand Araucanians, ravaged the lands of the Promaucians beyond the

Maule, and penetrated to the neighbourhood of the capital. Repeated

expeditions sent against him were defeated; the dismayed Spaniards

urgently called for help from Peru and recalled the adventurers from

Argentina. Happily the civilised tribes of northern and central Chile

remained faithful, and the bulk of the Araucanian forces was occupied

besieging Valdivia and Imperial,--a fruitless undertaking so long as

provisions could be thrown in by sea. Worst of all for the Indians

smallpox broke out among them. At last the Spaniards surprised Lautaro's

encampment near Santiago; the Araucanian leader fell dead, pierced by a

dart; and his companions fought like wild beasts until every man was

slain. This victory secured the safety of Santiago, and the Araucanians

retired behind the Biobio.

Meanwhile Mendoza, the great pacificator and organiser, had come out to

Lima and assumed the viceroyalty. Turbulent adventurers swarmed into

Peru whom he thought could be better employed elsewhere. Southern Chile

seemed just the place for these reckless, needy cavaliers, who were so

anxious to carve out fiefs for themselves. Early in 1557, Garcia de

Mendoza, son of the viceroy, was appointed captain-general and enjoined

to reduce the Araucanians to obedience. He came accompanied by ten ships

and a considerable force of Spaniards. Still larger forces were on their

way overland from Peru. Cautiously landing troops and artillery at the

deserted city of Concepcion, he had finished his defences before the

confederacy could mobilise its army. Though the Araucanians attacked

with desperate fury, their charges were beaten back by the artillery

fire. Re-forming on the other side of the Biobio, the Indians waited

until Mendoza, who had meanwhile received a large reinforcement of

cavalry, advanced. In the battle which followed they were defeated, but

they had learned a lesson of prudence and they fought in front of

forests into whose depths the Spanish cavalry could not pursue.

Retreating slowly, they again gave battle, and, though again defeated,

inflicted great losses on the Spanish infantry. Mendoza hanged his

prisoners, and once more advanced, this time to the place where Valdivia

had met his death. Here he founded a fortified town, naming it Canete,

after the hereditary title of his family. Leaving it heavily garrisoned,

he went on to Imperial for provisions. In his absence the Indians

unsuccessfully tried to carry Canete by assault, and seeing the

hopelessness of aggressive movements, they withdrew to the wooded

districts and mountains, abandoning the open country and the sea-coast

to the Spaniards. Mendoza pushed on beyond the southern limits of the

Araucanian territory and discovered and explored the populous

archipelago of Chiloe. On his way back he founded, on the mainland a

hundred miles south of Valdivia, the city of Osorno.

The Araucanians were now shut in between the Andes and a semicircle of

towns and forts; it seemed as if their final subjection would only be a

question of time. Mendoza returned to Santiago, leaving a lieutenant to

undertake a campaign of raids and surprises. A few of the Araucanians

remained in the field, and it was not until their veteran chief,

Caupolican, was betrayed and pitilessly shot to death with arrows, that

the whole confederacy again flew to arms under the command of his son.

Marching on Concepcion, the Indians cut to pieces first one Spanish

force of five hundred men and then another; and blockaded the city from

the land side. The Spaniards, holding the sea, had no difficulty in

pouring in reinforcements from Peru and Valparaiso, and the Indian army

finally retreated. At Quiapo, between Concepcion and Canete, it was

defeated and nearly annihilated, its most celebrated chiefs and heroes

perishing in the slaughter. Once more the Araucanians retired to their

forests and mountains while the Spaniards rebuilt and improved the line

of fortifications and took possession of the valuable gold mines of

Villarica. But they could make no further impression on these

indomitable Indians. For forty years the war continued, sometimes

active, sometimes desultory, and with constantly varying fortunes. Year

after year the Spaniards poured in reinforcements, and their expeditions

more than once ravaged the remotest parts of the Araucanian territory.

But as soon as the armies retired the unflagging Indians would return to

the attack, cutting off isolated bands of settlers and surprising forts

and towns.

About 1593, the able chieftain Paillamachu was toqui of the confederacy.

The incessant wars against the Araucanians had made the province such a

continual drain on the Peruvian treasury, that Mendoza, who had been

promoted to the viceregal throne, determined to end this impossible

situation in one way or another. A general was sent to Chile with full

powers either to treat or fight, but the haughty and intractable Indians

rejected with scorn his overtures for peace. He then fortified the line

of the Biobio and erected new fortresses to serve as bases for a

campaign of extermination to be undertaken as soon as reinforcements

arrived. These came slowly and the Indians themselves took the

offensive, considerable bands invading the Spanish settlements, storming

some forts and blockading others. The Spanish general exerted himself to

concentrate his scattered forces, but while making a hasty journey,

accompanied only by a small escort, from Imperial toward Concepcion, he

was surprised and killed by a band of Indians. Forty-eight hours later

not only the whole of Araucania, but also the provinces south of

Valdivia, rose in arms. All the Spanish towns south of the

Biobio--Osorno, Valdivia, Villarica, Imperial, Canete, Angol, Coya, and

Arauco--were simultaneously besieged. Paillamachu crossed the river and

burned first Concepcion and then Chillan, a town a hundred miles north

of the Araucanian boundary, ravaging the country to the river Maule.

Alarmed for the safety of Santiago, the Lima viceroy sent a new governor

with a well-equipped army, but it was as much as he could do to force

the Indians back into their own territory. The Indian general suddenly

assaulted the city of Valdivia, carried it by storm, slaughtered or

captured the inhabitants, and seized two millions of booty with many

arms and cannon. Villarica and Imperial managed to hold out for three

years but finally they, with Osorno, were reduced by starvation. When

Paillamachu died in 1603 the Spaniards had no foothold on the mainland

south of the Biobio except the Valdivia citadel.

[Illustration: INDIAN ENCAMPMENT.]

Two or three years later the government made a last effort to reduce the

Araucanians. An army of three thousand Spaniards besides a large

contingent of natives advanced across the Biobio. To such an

overwhelming force the Araucanians dared not offer open battle, but they

hung on its flanks, skirmishing and harassing, and the host was

compelled to return without having accomplished anything decisive. From

the protection of the forts on the Biobio, the Spanish general sent

expeditions to lay waste the Indian country, but these smaller bodies

were roughly handled and the first period of Araucanian wars closed with

the nearly complete destruction of the Spanish forces operating in

southern Chile. The authorities at Lima and Madrid gave it up as a bad

job. Thenceforward the Biobio remained the southern boundary of the

Spanish possessions. An army of two thousand men and a line of forts

guarded the frontier, and though hostilities were frequent, for

centuries no real progress was made toward depriving the Araucanians of

their independence. In the progress of time the slow infiltration of

Spanish blood and Spanish customs modified their characteristics, but it

was not until 1882 that they became real subjects of the Chilean

government.

CHAPTER II

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

The Araucanian wars made Chile a school of arms for all South America.

The appointment to its captaincy-general was eagerly sought by ambitious

soldiers, and the place, especially after the seventeenth century, was a

stepping-stone to the magnificent and lucrative position of viceroy at

Lima. Preoccupied with the southern wars, passing most of their time on

the frontiers, the governors paid little attention to central and

northern Chile. The Indians peacefully cultivated the great estates of

their feudal masters; and although the mining industry was considerable

it never threatened the extinction of the neighbouring population. The

few towns were mere villages, built of one-story, thatch-covered houses,

commerce was insignificant, portable wealth small, money almost unknown.

However, the landed proprietors of Chile mostly lived upon their

estates, and came into more intimate contact with their Indian tenants

than in the richer and more tropical provinces, a circumstance which

has had a profound effect upon the character and racial composition of

the modern Chilean.

Although unsuccessful in Araucania, the governors prospered in their

efforts to extend the Spanish dominion east of the Andes and before the

end of the sixteenth century the fertile valleys of the province of

Cuyo--Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luiz--as far as the central desert

which separates them from the grass-covered pampas of Buenos Aires, were

incorporated with Chile. At the same time the green and populous island

of Chiloe--the Ireland of the Pacific--was added to the

captaincy-general.

The first comers were adventurous soldiers looking for sudden riches,

but Chile furnished these gentlemen small returns for hard knocks. The

reasons which led the Spanish government to discourage emigration to

Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, did not apply to Chile, and when, early in

the seventeenth century, the Madrid authorities abandoned the useless

and expensive effort to conquer Araucania, they permitted a considerable

number of real colonists. A heavy immigration followed--composed mostly

of Basques and Aragonese--hardy and industrious settlers who made

thrifty farmers and merchants. These people were no mere army of

occupation--a privileged class living parasitically upon the Indians;

they set about developing the real resources of the country, and their

blood, mixing into the fine and strong aboriginal strain, vastly

improved it. The lower classes in Chile are industrious, enduring, and

brave, and though at times they show a touch of that primitive ferocity

characteristic of young peoples, their innate energy and great physical

strength have been of incalculable value to the nation.

Little worth detailing is recorded in the annals of Chile during the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For many years the Araucanians

refused to make any treaty with the Spaniards. The chronicles are filled

with accounts of the incursions made by the Indians into Spanish

territory--often successful, more often repulsed, with sieges,

ambushes--tales of reckless valour and unspeakable cruelty. Sometimes

the Europeans carried the war over the Biobio, and during the ten years

prior to 1640 they were so successful in carrying fire, slaughter, and

pillage to the homes of the Araucanians, that the latter finally

consented to an armistice and a formal treaty of peace. The Spanish

governor went to the plain of Quillin, escorted by more than ten

thousand persons, and the Araucanian general appeared in state at the

head of all the toquis, ulmens, and chief warriors of the confederacy.

Into the open space between the high contracting parties was led a llama

for sacrifice, whose sprinkled blood remained a pledge that the historic

Biobio would henceforth be respected by both nations as the boundary,

and that the Araucanians would never permit colonists of third nations

upon their shores, or aid the English and Dutch buccaneers. The Indians

faithfully adhered to this pact of friendship and refused to furnish the

Dutch with provisions when the latter took possession of Valdivia in

1643. But in 1655 the cupidity of Spanish officers caused trouble, and

war devastated both sides of the border for the next ten years. In 1665

a new treaty, identical in terms, was negotiated, which continued in

force until 1722. However, Spanish priests pushed their evangelising

among the Indians, and officers, called "Capitanos de los amigos,"

appointed to guard the interests of the missionaries, assumed authority

highly offensive to the Araucanians. The great council was summoned, a

general selected, and the missionaries expelled. When the Spanish

governor marched to the frontier with five thousand men the Indians

offered battle which the Spaniards dared not accept. The former

continued firm in their demands, and peace was only re-established by

abolishing the obnoxious officials.

Meanwhile nothing of moment had disturbed the slow and even current of

colonial progress in northern and central Chile. The country was poor,

its exports small and its imports smaller. Great fortunes were not

accumulated as in other South American countries, though the national

life rested on a broader, surer basis. The wheat and cattle, the fruits

and poultry introduced by the Spaniards raised the standard of

alimentation and the vitality of the people, while the continual

admixture of Spanish blood augmented individual initiative and

intelligence. The towns at first grew very slowly. Santiago itself had

only eight thousand inhabitants at the end of the seventeenth century,

while the other so-called cities, Coquimbo, Castro, Valparaiso, Chillan,

Concepcion, and Valdivia, were in fact little more than villages. The

rural districts were populous, for the soil was fertile, the climate

healthful, and the means of a simple subsistence abounded. Imported

vices and diseases, and the oppressions suffered at the hands of the

first Spanish proprietors, had somewhat thinned out the native

population, but these losses were largely made up by a rapid increase of

the element which boasted white descent, and in the latter part of the

eighteenth century Spanish Chile was more densely populated than the

Atlantic seaboard of North America.

[Illustration: HOUSE OF CONGRESS, SANTIAGO.]

Spanish legislation gave a monopoly of South American commerce to a

favoured ring of merchants at Cadiz, forbidding any communication with

Chile except by the circuitous Isthmian route. Freights were enormous,

profits and taxes exorbitant, and in spite of the repressive measures of

the Spanish authorities, smuggling was carried on by way of the route

over the Andes to Buenos Aires and Colonia. The war of the Spanish

Succession, following the death of the last of the descendants of

Charles V., disorganised Spanish administration, and during the

confusion of the first few years of the eighteenth century illicit

trading increased apace. The triumph of Louis XIV., and the seating of a

French prince on the throne of Madrid, resulted in a temporary

permission to French ships to trade with South America. For a time

French manufactures were brought directly to Chile by way of Cape Horn.

The customs receipts--hitherto merely nominal--rapidly increased, and

although the license was soon revoked at the demand of the Cadiz

monopolists, a permanent impetus had been given to commerce. Improving

conditions gave a fresh start to immigration, and the comparatively

rational policy of the Bourbon dynasty removed many of the more crying

abuses of colonial administration. A little before the middle of the

eighteenth century Governor Manso, with the approval of Madrid, founded

a dozen cities scattered through all the provinces as far south as the

Biobio, and settlements spread to the frontier of Araucania. Manso's

successor, Rosas, was even more diligent in establishing new towns and

received the title of "Conde de Poblaciones." He founded the University

of San Felipe at Santiago, and stimulated commerce by opening a mint. In

his administration occurred the great earthquake of 1751, which engulfed

and destroyed Concepcion by a tremendous wave from the sea, and

inflicted great damage upon Santiago and many other towns. These

convulsions are very frequent in Chile and in early times people

supposed that it was not safe to build houses of more than one story. It

has since been ascertained that two-story edifices are as secure as

lower ones and Chilean cities contain many handsome buildings.

Rosas' successor was Don Manuel Amat. Under his administration the

erection of new cities continued, and he is remembered as the

captain-general who helped suppress the robbers and bandits who had

infested the country. Vigilance committees were organised, volunteer

patrols guarded the city streets and country roads, and a coast militia

fought the pirates who infested the seashore. Chile in the middle of

the eighteenth century presents the characteristics of a frontier

country--rapid founding of towns, disorders and lawlessness effectively

suppressed by lynch law, and a childish display of newly acquired

wealth.

The encroachments upon the Araucanians finally grew irksome to those

indomitable and intractable savages. What the Spanish armies and priests

had failed in, the settlers who poured into the fertile plains and

valleys of southern Chile seemed about to achieve. The next

captain-general even tried to incorporate the independent tribes into

the Spanish system, but when he attempted to gather them into towns the

spirit which had animated their forefathers proved too strong. A war

broke out which lasted several years and ended only when the Spanish

government renewed the treaties guaranteeing them practical

independence, and allowing them to keep an ambassador at Santiago. Just

about this time the trans-Andean province of Cuyo was separated from

Chile and transferred to the newly created Buenos Aires viceroyalty.

Taken purely for reasons of administrative convenience, this measure

resulted in shutting off Chile from expansion over the vast plains of

the Plate Valley, confining her between the Andes and the sea, and

ultimately securing to the Argentine a territorial and numerical

preponderance among Spanish-American republics.

CHAPTER III

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

The last years of Spanish rule were the most prosperous Chile had known.

A brisk coasting trade sprang into being; a small merchant marine grew

up; the removal of the prohibition against free commerce with the rest

of Spanish South America raised prices. The opening of Buenos Aires

reacted upon her western neighbour, and Chile ceased to depend on the

Isthmus route. A spirit of enterprise was awakened by a freer

intercourse with the outside world and by the immigration of hardy

adventurers who came through Buenos Aires, the great South American

rendezvous of that day.

[Illustration: PLAZA DEL ARMAS, SANTIAGO.]

Among these immigrants was the famous Ambrose O'Higgins, a poor Irish

lad, who landed at Buenos Aires, made his way to Chile, started as a

peddler, became an army contractor, made a fortune, got a commission in

the army, distinguished himself in an expedition against the

Araucanians, ingratiated himself with everybody by his wit, courage, and

good-natured shrewdness, and finally was selected as captain-general.

He ruled the country wisely and well until promoted to be viceroy at

Lima. His successors were mostly able and honest men, and under their

government the natural causes making for the prosperity of Chile had

free scope. Wealth increased, and with it love of display, honours, and

letters. Santiago became a real capital, the favourite residence of the

landed aristocracy and a social centre where fashions were prescribed.

The English war into which France pushed Spain in 1796 much damaged

Chilean commerce, but not sufficiently to stop the impulse already

received. The old ignorant content with Spanish rule gave place to a

growing demand for the removal of all restrictions, and the appetite for

commercial freedom grew with what it fed on.

Chile was still comparatively poor and backward. The rude population

were engaged in a harsh struggle with fierce savages and in laying the

foundations of material prosperity. Most of these people were the

descendants of Indians accustomed for centuries to implicit obedience to

a rustic, unlettered aristocracy. The genius of the race was rather

practical than ideal, and the long, careless government by men

invariably chosen for their military abilities rather than their

qualities as civil administrators had not tended to make Chile a fertile

soil for the development of revolutionary ideas. Chilean society was

less favourably constituted for sudden changes than that of Buenos

Aires--the boom town of the time, with its active commerce, its restless

recently arrived population,--or that of the northern viceroyalties,

controlled by professional and office-holding classes and parish

priests.

Two or three hundred families held most of the lands of Chile, and the

power of this aristocracy was especially predominant in the provinces

around Santiago. In the southern provinces long wars had thinned the

native population and dispossessed the original grantees. Estates were

more widely distributed and opinion more radical, but in the rest of the

country the newer immigrants had been forced to accept the system, and

the comparatively few families who owned the land and thereby controlled

the means of subsistence of the whole people, enjoyed unquestioned

ascendancy. But conservative as this aristocracy was, among its members

there rankled a profound jealousy of the Spanish officials who wrung

excessive taxes from their reluctant fingers; who enforced the Spanish

regulations forbidding the culture of grapes, olives, and tobacco; who

until recently had closed the ports, cutting off the profitable sale of

crops, and compelling the payment of extravagant prices for manufactured

goods; and most irritating of all, who still monopolised the lucrative

offices.

The news of Ferdinand's imprisonment and the invasion of Spain by

Napoleon's armies reached Chile in the late summer of 1809, creating

great excitement among the Spanish office-holders and the Creole

aristocracy. Sentiment was universal against submission to the French

usurpation and discussion at once began of how the government should be

carried on during the King's captivity. Carrasco, the captain-general,

hesitated and vacillated between the conflicting suggestions.

In preparation for an emergency, whose exact nature no one could

foresee, the city authorities gathered arms, drilled troops, and levied

extra taxes. The property-owning and governing classes divided into two

currents of opinion. The government officials, with their friends and

hangers-on, saw that their interests would best be served by the

recognition of the revolutionary juntas which had assumed the _ad

interim_ direction of affairs in Spain. The leading Creole families

proposed the establishment of an independent junta, pending Ferdinand's

return, or the definite defeat of the national cause in Spain. Although

the latter party warmly protested their faithfulness to the

mother-country, at bottom they designed to secure for Chile and Chileans

virtual independence while Spain's troubles lasted, and the Spanish

officials did not hesitate to characterise their opponents as rebels.

Feeling rapidly grew intense, and in May, 1810, the captain-general

ordered the arrest of several prominent Creoles. This arbitrary measure

aroused such a fierce clamour that Carrasco lost his nerve, and

consented to the release of the prisoners. This indication of weakness

encouraged the agitators, and when news came across the Andes that the

people of Buenos Aires had deposed their viceroy, Santiago broke into

revolution.

The captain-general had summoned an open cabildo to enjoin obedience to

certain orders received from Spain, but this assembly tumultuously

demanded his resignation. Helpless against the popular outcry and the

hostile attitude of the city government, he turned over his authority to

Toro, a wealthy nobleman, whose venerable age and pacific disposition

seemed likely to preserve the peace. Nevertheless, the Creoles persisted

in their demand for an independent Chilean junta. Another meeting of all

the qualified electors was called; the arrival of a representative of

the new junta at Buenos Aires, who strongly urged Chile to follow

Argentina's example, had its influence; and on the 18th of September,

the date observed as the anniversary of Chilean independence, Toro

resigned his authority to the cabildo. The office of captain-general was

abolished and power passed to a junta of seven. Chile's ports were

opened to all nations, quadrupling the customs receipts in a single

year, and the country began a virtually separate existence, although the

acts of the junta ran in the name of the Spanish King.

However, the junta's power rested upon a basis too narrow for stability.

Representing only the Santiago aristocracy, there was no certainty that

its orders would be respected in the provinces, or that independent

juntas would not be set up in other cities. To remedy this difficulty a

national congress was summoned, but the junta allotted to Santiago

almost as many members as to all the other municipalities together. The

elections took place in April, 1811, and while they were going on the

Spanish officer in command of a detachment at Santiago revolted. A

member of the junta, Jose Carrera by name, an active and ambitious

young man, who belonged to one of the most influential Creole families,

distinguished himself by attacking and defeating the Spaniard with an

improvised force of armed patriots. When congress met it voted many

reforms; abolishing slavery, reorganising the judiciary, freeing

commerce of vexatious restrictions, decreeing the payment of the clergy

out of the public treasury instead of by tithes, and conferring on the

elective bodies of the municipalities the right to elect their own city

officers. However, divisions soon arose among the members. The

representatives of the outside provinces bitterly complained of the

unfairness of the apportionment; the radicals wished to reorganise

everything, while the conservatives insisted on preserving many of the

old institutions. The Santiago representatives, chosen from the landed

aristocracy, were mostly conservative, while the members from the South

were largely radical. Under the leadership of Doctor Rosas, the latter

withdrew. The Santiago conservatives, left in undisputed control of

congress, displaced the old junta, but Carrera and his two brothers had

made themselves all powerful in the army by cleverly seizing its Spanish

officers. He determined to ally himself with the radicals and assume

supreme power. Marching to the hall of congress at the head of his

troops, he compelled the selection of a new junta with himself as chief,

and expelled the members upon whom he could not rely. Rosas had

meanwhile established a radical junta at Concepcion, and Carrera offered

to associate him in the government. Rosas declined, and the Santiago

leader, now frankly a military dictator, advanced with an army to reduce

the South to obedience. But the news that the Spanish party had gained

the ascendancy in Valdivia and Chiloe intimidated him, and he made peace

with Rosas, retiring to Santiago. His emissaries nevertheless continued

to intrigue in Concepcion and finally stirred up a riot which resulted

in Rosas' expulsion.

For nearly two years Carrera and his brothers remained in power,

governing by military force, confiscating the property of their enemies,

allowing their friends to loot the public funds, and committing many

enormities. Conspiracy after conspiracy was formed against them, only to

be detected and suppressed, while the patriots divided into hostile

factions each selfishly ambitious for control. Meanwhile Abascal, the

able and resolute viceroy at Lima, had succeeded in keeping Peru

submissive, in crushing out the revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia, and

in repelling the northward march of the Argentine patriots. He now

prepared to send an army to re-establish royal authority in Chile. Early

in 1813 a large force landed at Talcahuano and, advancing to Concepcion,

was joined by the garrison of that place. Reinforcements came up from

Valdivia and Chiloe, and the Spanish general took the road for Santiago

at the head of four thousand men. In the face of this imminent danger

the bickerings of the patriots were hushed. Carrera advanced to the

South in command of twelve thousand men, poorly armed and disciplined.

On the Spanish side the officers were, however, suspicious, and had

little confidence in their raw levies. A sudden and successful attack on

an outpost near the river Maule was followed by a panic among the

royalists, and they retreated in disorder, but with no great loss, to

the fortifications of Chillan, only fifty miles from Concepcion.

Detachments of patriots pushed on to Concepcion and captured that place

and Talcahuano. The Spanish army was completely isolated in Chillan, but

had found there an abundant supply of provisions, and successfully

resisted Carrera's efforts to take the place. His hastily gathered

levies, without means of sheltering themselves from the rain and cold,

melted away by desertion. Finally he retired toward Concepcion followed

by the Spaniards and the remnants of his army were only saved from total

rout by the gallantry and steadiness of Bernardo O'Higgins. This

military chief, a natural son of the old Irish captain-general, and heir

to his Chilean estates, had made common cause with the patriots at the

beginning of the revolution, and attached himself to the fortunes of

Rosas, the leader of the Concepcion radicals. When the latter was

banished by Carrera, O'Higgins retired from the army. The Spanish

invasion had roused him; he offered his sword to Carrera, and his

dashing military talents sent him quickly to the front.

[Illustration: BERNARDO O'HIGGINS.]

Carrera's failure at Chillan cost him his prestige, his rivals at

Santiago took advantage of his absence to expel him from the junta, his

violent measures at Concepcion exasperated its people to revolt, and his

own troops became mutinous. The new Santiago junta formally nominated

O'Higgins to the chief command and Carrera was compelled to withdraw.

The new general inspired some vigour into the patriot operations, but

the arrival of reinforcements from Lima gave the royalists an

overwhelming preponderance in cavalry and artillery. The junta had

recalled a large part of his forces to defend Santiago, when an

unexpected movement by one of the Spanish divisions resulted in the

capture of the important city of Talca, half-way between the capital and

Concepcion. Though O'Higgins and the troops left in the South managed to

repulse an attack of the main Spanish army, an army sent from Santiago

failed to retake Talca and its destruction left the capital unprotected.

O'Higgins by forced marches succeeded in beating the Spaniards to the

Maule, saving the city for the moment. Meanwhile, a revolution had

overthrown the junta responsible for the fatal Talca expedition and the

new dictator entered into negotiations with the Spanish commander. The

latter, confronted by O'Higgins' army, and anticipating a desperate

resistance, thought it best not to press his advantage too far. He

agreed to an armistice, and Chile offered to acknowledge allegiance to

Spain, send members to the Cortes shortly to assemble, and accept any

Constitution which might be promulgated by that body, if the viceroy

would recognise _ad interim_ the present Santiago government and

withdraw the Spanish army within two months.

One result of the armistice was the liberation of the Carreras from the

Spanish prison in which they had been confined since their deposition

the year before. They hastened to Santiago and started an intrigue for

the overthrow of Lastra and O'Higgins. Such was their popularity with

the troops in Santiago and the extent of their family influence that

they got possession of the city and were preparing to dispute the

supreme control of Chile with O'Higgins by force of arms when news

arrived that the viceroy refused to sanction the compromise, and that an

army of peninsular veterans was on its way. Though Carrera and O'Higgins

pretended a reconciliation, each distrusted the other, and took the

field virtually independent. Under such conditions Chilean success was

impossible. O'Higgins' division was annihilated at Rancagua, Carrera

abandoned the capital, and fled with a few hundred followers over the

Andes, where he was joined by O'Higgins and the more determined

patriots. This influx of the pick of the fighting men of Chile was a

valuable reinforcement for the army which San Martin was already

organising behind the shelter of the eastern foothills. Between the

rival Chilean leaders, Carrera and O'Higgins, he chose the latter, gave

him his confidence, and made him his chief lieutenant, while Carrera,

finding no place in San Martin's entourage, went on to Buenos Aires,

never again to return to his native country.

Both aristocracy and people in Chile were tired of the military misrule

which they had suffered during the dominance of the patriot chiefs. A

deputation of the most prominent citizens went to welcome General Osorio

as he advanced to Santiago after the battle of Rancagua. Within a month

the Spanish power was securely re-established throughout the country.

The leading revolutionists who remained in Chile were executed or

banished, more than a hundred being exiled to the desolate island of

Juan Fernandez. During two years and a half--from 1814 to 1817--Osorio

and his successor, Marco del Ponte, ruled Chile with a rod of iron. So

far as possible everything was restored as it had been before 1810. The

Spanish judges were reinstated, elective municipal councils abolished,

the newspapers suppressed, and all the liberal reforms revoked.

Meanwhile San Martin, behind the screen of the Andes, and only a hundred

and fifty miles from Santiago, was forging a thunderbolt destined to

shatter into fragments the edifice which Abascal had been so skilfully

constructing through seven laborious years. The story of how the silent

Argentine gathered and equipped the "Army of the Andes" has already been

told. In the chapter devoted to Argentina the reader will find a meagre

description of his marvellous march over the cloud-high passes, the

descent into the plain of Aconcagua made so suddenly that the Spanish

forces could not hurry up to bar his way, the prompt advance over the

low transverse range which forms the northern boundary of the plain

where Santiago stands, and the overwhelming victory in the gorge of

Chacabuco against the pick of the Spanish veterans, who confidently

stood to the attack, never dreaming until San Martin was right upon them

that his main body had had time to reach the spot. The Spanish

authorities at Madrid and Lima had made the irretrievable mistake of

underestimating the efficiency of his army. They thought the troops in

Chile amply able to take care of any four thousand men the patriots

could get together, but San Martin's army was differently provided and

organised than the undisciplined masses which had been routed at Huaqui,

Villapugio, and Rancagua. The Spanish generals were not so much

surprised at his crossing the Andes as at finding the troops which

reached the Chilean plains to be well furnished with artillery, cavalry,

and ammunition, perfectly ready for an aggressive campaign, and a match

man for man for any force that could be brought against them.

[Illustration: RAILROAD BRIDGE BETWEEN SANTIAGO AND VALPARAISO.]

The royalists lost twelve hundred of their best men at Chacabuco; only a

thousand escaped from the field to fly in disorder toward Santiago. On

the way they met the Spanish cavalry riding to join them, but

Captain-General Marco, instead of rallying the three thousand men who

remained under his orders, hurried out of town toward Valparaiso,

anxious for his personal safety. San Martin had expected to be obliged

to fight another battle and kept his army together, instead of pursuing

and annihilating the dismayed Spaniards. More than half the latter

managed to escape to Valparaiso, where they embarked for Peru. Santiago

received the conqueror with no great enthusiasm. The moneyed classes

feared another prolonged civil war with its attendant confiscations,

forced contributions, and general disorder; the common people cared

little whether a Spaniard or an Argentine occupied the governmental

palace. However, no one dreamed of resistance; the partisans of the

proscribed patriots and the votaries of independence and liberalism were

delighted; San Martin with his host of hardy gauchos and Chilean exiles

assumed full control of the capital. He summoned an assembly of notables

who promptly and unanimously elected him "Governor of Chile with plenary

powers." But this was not what the far-sighted and patriotic soldier

wanted. He realised that Chile could never give that unquestioning

support so vital to the success of his cherished campaign against Peru

so long as any stranger, even himself, governed by force. San Martin

peremptorily declined the honour, but intimated that he would be glad to

see his staunch friend, O'Higgins, selected dictator, and accordingly

the enemy of the Carreras was placed at the head of the new Chilean

government.

With eyes fixed on a Peruvian campaign it was only natural that San

Martin should leave immediate details in Chile to others. Though all

central Chile submitted with good grace, the South remained a stronghold

of the Spanish sympathisers. Among its warlike people the royalist

armies had been recruited, and there lay the two strongest

fortresses--Talcahuano and Valdivia--both of them still in possession of

the Spaniards. After two months' delay, Las Heras, with a thousand men,

was despatched, but his force was inadequate and his advance slow.

Before he arrived near Concepcion, an able Spanish general, Ordonez, who

had fought side by side with San Martin in Spain, had organised a

division equal in numbers, with which he retired to Concepcion and there

was joined by the sixteen hundred troops who had escaped after the rout

at Chacabuco, and who had been ordered back to Chile the moment they

made their appearance at Callao. The Spanish general now thought himself

strong enough to annihilate Las Heras, but the sortie which he led was

beaten back in the battle of Gavilan. However, this victory was in no

way decisive, and the patriots were not able to make any impression on

the fortifications at Talcahuano or to advance south of the Biobio.

Southern Chile remained hostile and Talcahuano and Valdivia were open

doors through which the Spaniards could send reinforcements and supplies

as long as they held command of the sea.

San Martin remained in Santiago only a short time after Chacabuco.

Prepossessed with the idea that Chile could never be safe or Peru won

until he had organised a fleet to wrest control of the Pacific from the

Spaniards, he hastened across the Andes to arrange with his friends in

the Argentine government for the necessary money. The Chilean campaign

had saved Buenos Aires from impending invasion; the Argentine patriots

would certainly be crushed if Chile should fall back into Spanish hands;

they could never feel secure so long as Peru and Bolivia remained

royalist. The promises which he asked were readily given, on his

agreeing that Chile should contribute three hundred thousand dollars

toward the purchase of a squadron on the Pacific, and forty thousand for

the support of the Argentine army on the Bolivian frontier, besides

taking the responsibility of the pay and maintenance of the Army of the

Andes. Argentina was to aid in purchasing the fleet and hold back the

Spaniards on the Bolivian border.

San Martin returned to Chile, where he was shortly followed by an

official representative of the Argentine government and the alliance

created by Chacabuco received formal sanction. He found Chilean affairs

in a very unsatisfactory condition. O'Higgins was hated by the powerful

partisans of the Carreras, and distrusted by Chileans generally as too

much under Argentine influence. His power really rested upon Argentine

bayonets; his appointment of Quintana, an Argentine and San Martin's

aide-de-camp, as acting dictator at Santiago was bitterly resented. San

Martin's presence did something to allay the feeling, but as a matter of

fact he had little sympathy for the Chilean people, being a man who

despised the arts by which popularity is gained, and who made few

friends. Meanwhile the three Carreras were actively plotting from their

exile at Buenos Aires for the overthrow of O'Higgins and San Martin.

Their friends and agents swarmed in Chile and preparations were made for

a rising as soon as they should set foot in the country. The two younger

brothers attempted to cross the Andes in disguise, but were detected and

arrested at Mendoza. Quintana ordered the imprisonment of many persons

suspected of being Carrera partisans, but his severe measures raised

national feeling to such a height that it was thought safest to carry

out San Martin's suggestion and appoint a Chilean as acting dictator in

his stead.

In the Argentine the position of the patriot government was even worse.

With civil war actively raging in the one country and only held in check

by foreign bayonets in the other, and with both governments struggling

against financial difficulties, it is no wonder that the war-ships which

were expected to sweep the Spanish frigates from the Pacific did not

arrive. The delay cost the patriots dear. In January, 1818, four Spanish

ships, mounting two hundred and thirty cannon sailed into Talcahuano,

and landed three thousand four hundred well-equipped soldiers, most of

them peninsular veterans. San Martin, a master of the art of recruiting,

had raised a second army composed principally of Chileans and nearly

equal in numbers to the original Army of the Andes, so that his total

force amounted to nine thousand men, while the Spanish troops did not

exceed five thousand. The Argentine general was in the dark as to where

the enemy would land, and had already issued orders for O'Higgins, who

was in command near Concepcion, to retreat, resolved on concentrating

his forces near Valparaiso. Even after the Spanish army had disembarked

at Talcahuano, San Martin was in doubt whether Osorio would not

re-embark and strike at some unexpected harbour near Santiago. But the

latter came up steadily by the land route, encountering no opposition

though somewhat hampered by broken bridges and the bareness of the

country of horses and supplies, for the retreating O'Higgins had left

his track a desert. The farther the Spaniards penetrated toward

Santiago the more difficult became the feeding of their army and the

more certainly disastrous a retreat in case of reverse.

[Illustration: TALCAHUANO.]

O'Higgins stopped at Talca to await orders, and there, on the 20th of

January, 1818, he defiantly made proclamation of Chile's absolute

independence of Spain. Three weeks later the approach of Osorio's army

forced him to abandon the place and he retired to form a junction with

San Martin. The latter completed his concentration and advanced with an

army of over seven thousand men, superior in all arms and especially in

cavalry and artillery. About a hundred miles south of Santiago he met

the Spaniards and won some cavalry skirmishes. The enemy retired toward

Talca, unwilling with inferior forces to bring on a general action where

defeat meant annihilation, and even contemplating a retreat to

Talcahuano. But behind them lay the deep river Maule, and San Martin

made a dash to reach it first. The two armies marched rapidly on

parallel lines with the patriot cavalry harassing the Spanish rear. On

the afternoon of the 19th of March the Spaniards wheeled into line in

excellent position just outside the city of Talca, with their west flank

protected by a stretch of broken ground called the Cancha-Rayada. San

Martin was following close, but the partial attack which be immediately

made was interrupted by darkness before any decisive results were

obtained. Hastily going into camp too near the enemy's lines and all

unprepared for battle, the patriots were surprised at about nine o'clock

in the evening by the assault of the whole Spanish army. The alarm was

given by the cavalry pickets, but only a few had time to get into line

of battle before the enemy was upon them. San Martin over on the extreme

right heard a few volleys and then the noise of confused flight,

scattering shots, and the thundering hoof-beats of the pursuing cavalry.

O'Higgins had been wounded while trying to get his men into order, and

from that moment the patriots in his neighbourhood thought of nothing

but escape through the darkness. The centre and left, including the

cavalry, dispersed in the wildest confusion, abandoning the artillery.

The right wing, composed of three thousand five hundred infantry, was

not attacked and waited in stupefaction for two or three hours not

clearly understanding what had happened. Its officers held a council,

put Las Heras in command, and by daybreak the division was sixteen miles

from the field of battle. In the meantime San Martin and O'Higgins had

found each other, and soon were busily engaged in collecting the

scattered cavalry. The patriot loss in killed and wounded had been

small, but a third of their number had deserted and many of the

remainder searched in vain for their regiments. However, the royalist

army had been nearly as badly dispersed in making this night attack as

the patriots in receiving it. No effective pursuit could be made, and

San Martin retreated on Santiago practically unmolested. The first news

of the disaster was carried to the capital by fugitive officers. They

reported that San Martin was killed and O'Higgins mortally wounded, and

everything lost. Shouts of "Viva el rey" resounded through the streets;

leading citizens opened communication with Osorio, and the republicans

prepared for flight to Mendoza or Valparaiso. But the next day word came

that San Martin himself was safe; and the day following a despatch

saying he had four thousand men under his orders. With O'Higgins's

arrival in the city the revolutionary disorders were suppressed, and

soon San Martin rode into the city. Though half dead through loss of

sleep, as he drew rein at his house he made the one speech of his life,

laconically assuring the people that he expected to win the next battle,

and that right soon.

[Illustration: NATIVE COSTUMES IN CHILE ABOUT 1840.]

Not forgetting precautions which ensured a safe retreat to the northern

provinces or the Argentine, he devoted himself to re-organising the

army, and within ten days after its dispersal had five thousand men

together, well provided and resolute to give a good account of

themselves. He took a position on a low line of chalk hills seven miles

south-west of Santiago, and waited for the enemy, whose numbers were now

slightly superior to his own. Meanwhile the Spanish officers were

greatly disappointed at the negative results of Cancha-Rayada; mutual

reproaches flew back and forth in their council of war; many advocated

maintaining the defensive and even retreating to the south to be nearer

their base. Their indecision gave San Martin the needed opportunity to

gather his dispersed forces and to inspire them with his own confidence.

Finally, however, Osorio advanced cautiously on Santiago, hoping that

the Argentine would not risk another battle for the defence of the

capital, and manoeuvring to the west so as to get between the city and

the sea. In front of San Martin's position lay another line of chalk

hills, separated from the first by a narrow stretch of low ground. At

their western end ran the road from Santiago to Valparaiso. Like the

Union position at Gettysburg this line of hills was admirably adapted

for a defensive battle, and Osorio resolved to occupy it, especially as

he thought his left wing extended far enough west to command the

Valparaiso road, thereby securing him a communication with a new and

more convenient base on the coast and giving him a line of retreat in

case of a reverse. But San Martin's quick eye saw that this opinion was

mistaken; and that his opponent might easily be cut off.

San Martin's tactical dispositions were admirably made on the momentous

morning of April 5, 1818. He divided his army into two divisions and a

reserve, stationing the latter on the extreme east of his line. Under

cover of a heavy artillery fire the west division rushed down the slope,

across the bottom, and up the hills commanding the Valparaiso road. The

counter-charge of the Spanish horsemen was repulsed by the superior

patriot cavalry, and the Spanish west wing was isolated from the rest of

the army. Meanwhile the patriots' east division, composed of the bulk of

their infantry, had charged straight across the narrow part of the

bottom and reached the high ground opposite without seeing an enemy, but

there was met by a terrific charge from the royalist infantry, and

rolled in confusion back down the hill. Regardless of the artillery

fire, the Spaniards were pursuing triumphantly over the low ground, when

suddenly their eastern flank received the charge of the patriot reserve,

which had advanced obliquely from its original position on the extreme

east. This movement decided the battle. The Spanish infantry could not

re-form to meet it, and were rolled up in helpless confusion. The flying

patriot infantry rallied and returned to the attack; their cavalry,

already victorious at the other end of the line, turned and charged the

west flank of the Spaniards, who, simultaneously taken at both ends and

in front, were cut down by hundreds. A few managed to keep their

formation and fell back to the farm of Espejo, behind whose extensive

buildings and garden walls they entrenched themselves, determined to

sell their lives as dearly as possible. Joined by their left wing,

which, unable to reach the centre where the hard fighting had taken

place, had suffered little loss, they withstood the attack of the

victorious patriot army. But the artillery was brought up, the walls

knocked to pieces, and the position carried in the midst of the most

frightful carnage. The infuriated patriots gave no quarter until General

Las Heras rode among them and begged them to desist from the inhuman

slaughter.

Maipo was the hardest fought battle in all the wars of South American

independence. Of five thousand royalists, twelve hundred were killed,

eight hundred wounded, and two thousand two hundred made prisoners. Only

eight hundred escaped, flying south toward safety at Talcahuano, of whom

less than a hundred held together until they reached the Spanish

fortifications. Of the patriots more than a fifth were killed and

wounded--the greatest sufferers being the freed negroes whom San Martin

had recruited in the Argentine. Half of these brave fellows were left on

the field.

Juan and Luiz Carrera, imprisoned at Mendoza, had been an embarrassment

and menace to San Martin and O'Higgins. The latter hated them too much

to be willing to make terms, and yet he feared that their execution

would cause an insurrection by their family and party friends in Chile.

A criminal prosecution had been trumped up against them and proceedings

delayed on various pretexts. The news of the disaster at Cancha-Rayada

was their death sentence. Dr. Monteagudo, O'Higgins's representative,

acting as judge, sentenced them to death at three o'clock one afternoon

and sent them to the shooting bench at five. Every Chilean who did not

belong to the O'Higgins faction was profoundly shocked at this murder.

Though the victims were agitators and revolutionists they belonged to

one of the most respected families in Chile; with their older brother

they had been the leaders in the first war against Spain; their devotion

to the cause of independence was unquestioned, and they embodied the

national sentiment which opposed the Argentine army's remaining on

Chilean soil.

Pursuit of the Spaniards flying from the field of Maipo was hardly over

when open opposition to O'Higgins and his policy broke out. A cavalry

corps--the "Husares de la Muerte"--composed of Carrera partisans had

volunteered after the rout at Cancha-Rayada and rendered valuable

service at Maipo. O'Higgins ordered it to disband. An open cabildo met

which voted the dictator's deposition, but his soldiers arrested the

Carrera leader, shot him in cold blood, and the citizens had no

alternative but to disperse and submit. O'Higgins undertook to crush the

opposition by ferociously persecuting his republican enemies and

rapaciously confiscating the property of the royalists. This so occupied

him that he was unable to pay much attention to the Spaniards in the

south. Osorio gathered a small force at Talcahuano, easily beat off some

desultory expeditions which the patriots sent against him, and from May

until September held the whole country south of the Maule. But after the

slaughter at Maipo the viceroy had all he could do defending Peru and

Bolivia. Late in the year Osorio withdrew with most of his troops,

leaving only meagre garrisons in the fortresses of southern Chile.

San Martin had remained only a few days in Santiago, hurrying back to

Buenos Aires to try to induce the Argentine government to carry out its

promises of the year before and aid in the purchase of a fleet. Just

before his departure an East Indiaman, carrying forty-four guns, had

arrived at Valparaiso and the Chilean treasury was emptied to pay for

her. When he reached Buenos Aires his friend Puerreyedon, the Argentine

dictator, agreed to raise a loan of five hundred thousand dollars and

send around two ships of the Argentine navy. San Martin immediately took

the road for Chile, but at Mendoza a letter came forbidding him to draw

on the Argentine treasury. He resigned, but the Argentine authorities,

dismayed at the consequences of his withdrawal, finally gave him two

hundred thousand dollars.

The winter storms make the Andean passes impracticable, and it was

October before the general reached Santiago, where to his delight he

found that O'Higgins had already got together a considerable squadron.

The East Indiaman, bought just before Maipo, and manned by British and

North American officers, had succeeded in capturing a Spanish brig. Two

American privateers were shortly afterwards bought by the Chilean

government, and their arrival was followed by that of an English vessel

purchased by San Martin's agent in London. Others were on their way from

the United States and two Argentine ships were reported to be coming

around Cape Horn. A few days prior to San Martin's return to Santiago,

Chile's two frigates with two smaller consorts had sailed south from

Valparaiso in the hope of intercepting a fleet of transports, carrying

two thousand troops and a great quantity of arms, which the Spanish

government had sent around the Horn from Cadiz convoyed by a fifty-gun

frigate. Stormy weather had, however, scattered the royalist fleet and

more than half the transports gave up the attempt to weather the

formidable promontory, though the frigate and the others succeeded. The

transports evaded the Chileans and reached Callao in safety, but the

frigate was caught lying at anchor in Talcahuano, and proved an

important addition to the patriot navy.

The object for which San Martin had been planning and working during two

years was achieved. His naval force, manned by professional sailors

picked from among the best sea-fighting people of the world, was too

formidable for the enemy to dare to attack. Chile was safe from invasion

and Peru lay open to a descent. San Martin's first care was to wrest

southern Chile from the Spaniards. To leave them in control of a fertile

and populous territory where they could recruit troops, collect

provisions, and menace Santiago was not safe. Toward the end of 1818 he

sent his lieutenant, Balcarce, an Argentine, against them at the head of

thirty-five hundred men. Such a force was irresistible; Chillan,

Concepcion, and Talcahuano were abandoned and the Spanish commander shut

himself up in the fortress of Valdivia.

But when San Martin came to face the question of organising and

equipping an army adequate for the invasion of Peru he found the

Chileans cold and indifferent. The success of their fleet had insured

them against assault, and they appeared to be chiefly interested in

getting rid of the Argentine army of occupation. The soldiers had not

received their pay, and though O'Higgins issued a proclamation

announcing an expedition to Peru, San Martin waited around for months

without receiving the promised aid. Finally he presented his resignation

as general-in-chief of the proposed Peruvian expedition, and withdrew

the Army of the Andes from Santiago, leading a part over the Andes to

Mendoza and leaving the rest on the Chilean side near the entrance to

the pass. This measure quickly brought the governments of both Chile and

Argentina to terms. His presence east of the Andes intimidated the

rebels against the authorities at Buenos Aires, leaving the latter's

hands free to aid him, while the O'Higgins party in Chile realised that

it could not maintain itself without his support. He required five

hundred thousand dollars for the equipment of an army six thousand

strong. Chile agreed to furnish three hundred thousand and Argentina

the remainder, and he returned to Santiago in the middle of 1819 to

complete his arrangements. While actively engaged in preparations word

came that civil war had again broken out in the Argentine. San Martin

was compelled to make his choice between deferring to an indefinite

future his cherished expedition against Peru, or abandoning his native

country to probable disintegration. He remained in Chile and though the

Argentine government, under whose commission he was acting, had ceased

to exist, he did not shrink from the responsibility of disposing of the

Army of the Andes. His men cheerfully agreed to follow him, but months

went by with little accomplished, and it was not until late in 1820 that

he was able to sail for Peru, and then with only four thousand men

instead of the six he had counted on. With his departure his influence

on the affairs of Chile ceased.

Lord Thomas Cochrane, a very able but very erratic British naval

officer, who had gone into politics and got into trouble in his native

country, arrived in November, 1818, to take command of the patriot navy.

Under his dashing and restless leadership no time was lost in pushing

naval operations. The year 1819 was spent in expeditions to the Peruvian

and Ecuadorian coast; Callao was repeatedly bombarded, and the Spanish

fleet took refuge under the guns of the fortresses, leaving the sea free

to the patriots. Failing in a desperate attempt to cut out the Spanish

ships from under the very guns of the Callao batteries, Cochrane sent

all his vessels except his flag-ship to Valparaiso, and sailed with her

for Valdivia, the last port held by the Spaniards on the Chilean

mainland. The place was a very Gibraltar of natural strength, and had

been well fortified. Nine forts and batteries disposed on both sides of

the narrow estuary were garrisoned by over a thousand men; nevertheless

Cochrane prepared to capture them by assault with his single ship.

Stopping at Talcahuano he took on board two hundred and fifty Chilean

soldiers, and was fortunate in finding two smaller ships. His flag-ship

stranded; he transferred the marines to the other ships and went on;

reaching the Valdivia bar, he landed without giving the Spaniards a

moment's time to bring up reinforcements, and at the head of his

soldiers and marines he attacked the outermost fort. Though defended by

three hundred and sixty men its resistance was short. While Cochrane's

main body advanced up a narrow path drawing the garrison's fire, a

detachment found a neglected entrance in the rear through which they

poured a volley on the defenders. Panic-stricken, the Spaniards fled to

the next fort, but the patriots followed so close that no stand could be

made. One after another all the forts on the south side of the estuary

were rushed. Next day Cochrane's two smaller ships sailed into the

harbour under the fire of the northern forts, and soon after the

half-disabled flag-ship made her appearance. Seeing the long-boats

filling with men and the cannons of the ships ready to open fire, the

Spaniards fled to the city and surrendered the following day. This

capture deprived the royalists of their last base of operations in

Chile, and only the Chiloe Islands and a few scattered guerilla bands

among the Indians of Araucania remained faithful.

CHAPTER IV

THE FORMATIVE PERIOD

The long struggle against Spain accustoming Chileans to military service

and uprooting the system under which the country had been ruled for

centuries, necessarily placed the control of government in the hands of

the generals. Like all other Spanish-American countries Chile had to

pass through a period of irresponsible pretorian rule and the

sterilising horrors of wars in which one ambitious chief tried to

displace another. But anarchy lasted only a short time; the civil

element was powerful even at the beginning; and Chileans never acquired

the revolution habit. Her government has been stable longest and her

political history the least checkered of any Spanish-American country.

To this result, so happy for the internal prosperity and external power

of the nation, several causes have co-operated. First of all has been

the existence of a powerful landed aristocracy whose interests lay

rather in cultivating their estates in the security of peace and order

than in trying to make fortunes by taxes wrung from a poverty-stricken,

reluctant proletariat. The people are by climate and inheritance

industrious, naturally inclined toward industrial progress, agricultural

rather than pastoral, prolific and colonising, and though pugnacious,

they are not, like the inert Indians of the Andean and Central American

countries, to be bullied into following the first revolutionary chief

who comes along. Further the country is geographically compact--a narrow

strip of plain with easy communication between its provinces, and,

unlike the Argentine and Colombia, not divided into widely distant

districts, each with its isolated capital, its local chiefs, its

ambition for hegemony and autonomy.

In the throes of the first war for independence Carrera was hardly able

to maintain himself, and a civil revolution had as much to do with his

overthrow as his military misfortunes. O'Higgins, even while supported

by San Martin's army of Argentine veterans, held control by a very

precarious grip. During 1819 and 1820 there were no serious troubles

because attention was absorbed by the war against Peru and over

Cochrane's naval victories, but no sooner had San Martin left, than

symptoms of discontent again appeared on the surface. Complaints against

the arbitrary and corrupt practices of O'Higgins's ministers were loud

and unrestrainable; the aristocracy opposed his measures, and the very

senate he had appointed to assist in the government openly obstructed

him. Theoretically a radical, he called a national congress to establish

the new nation on a democratic basis. However, even his own nominees

moved slowly, while Coquimbo, the northern, and Concepcion, the

southern capital, were hotbeds of opposition. In the latter part of 1822

General Freire, the hero of the campaign which had redeemed southern

Chile, took the initiative at Concepcion. The southern provinces

declared against O'Higgins; Freire prepared to advance on Santiago.

Coquimbo followed--an old Carrera partisan assuming the governorship.

The northern revolutionists invaded the centre, while news came that

Freire was rapidly coming up from the south. In January, 1823, O'Higgins

handed his resignation to a committee of Santiago citizens, who

appointed a temporary junta and summoned a congress. A few days later

General Freire landed at Valparaiso with sixteen hundred soldiers, and

on his advancing to the neighbourhood of the capital, congress very

prudently offered him the dictatorship. The aristocracy and the people

soon found that they had gained nothing in this exchange of masters.

After a short spasm of reform, the public finances fell into horrible

disorder, while the ruling clique enriched itself at the expense of the

treasury.

Freire permitted congress to promulgate a Constitution which in effect

recognised the aristocracy as the dominant political element, but at

heart he was a radical and an absolutist, and the document soon proved

to be only so much waste paper. He showed his anti-clerical tendencies

by refusing to come to any agreement with the Pope's representative, who

arrived in 1824 charged with the reorganisation of the Chilean

hierarchy. He summarily banished the Bishop of Santiago because of his

royalist leanings, and issued decrees confiscating Church property. In

1825 he dissolved congress and for some months ruled frankly as a

dictator. When he issued writs for a new national assembly he solemnly

promised not to interfere in the elections, but so little confidence was

felt that, outside of Santiago, no one participated and from there only

a few members were returned. Freire soon quarreled with this rump

parliament, and its dissolution was followed by political confusion in

which parties became daily more sharply defined and acrimonious. There

were "federalists," who advocated provincial assemblies; "pipiolas," who

followed the strong liberal chief, General Pinto; "o'higginistas," who

favoured the return of the former dictator; and finally the

conservatives, nicknamed "pelucones" from the perukes--pelucas in

Spanish--which old-fashioned Chilean gentlemen wore. Only the military

power and prestige of Freire, coupled with his real abilities and

resolution, prevented attempts at forcibly displacing him.

Early in 1826 the Spaniards who until then had held out on the island of

Chiloe, surrendered, and this signal service to the country somewhat

strengthened the dictator. In July of that year a congress met, composed

of men favourable to Freire, and a majority of the members were

federalists, who divided Chile into eight autonomous provinces. But it

soon became evident that such a system must encounter strong opposition.

The provincial assemblies would pass laws at variance with the measures

of the central government, and in the next moment adopt resolutions

instructing their delegates in the national congress to oppose the

permanent establishment of a federated republic, declaring emphatically

in favour of national unity. Nevertheless, the liberals persisted in

their efforts to impose on the reluctant country a brand new form of

government. Doctrinaires and soldiers were still in the saddle, and only

close observation of the signs of the times revealed the fact that

discussion was becoming broader and the military elements in danger of

losing their preponderance. By the beginning of 1827 Freire had sunk to

be little more than the doubtful leader of a fraction of a party. His

administration was in horrible financial straits, the expenditures were

twice the income, and in May he resigned in favour of the

vice-president, General Pinto. The latter was an eminent lawyer as well

as a brave soldier, who held very radical views. Continuing the policy

of his predecessor he summoned a congress which swept away the old

Constitution and framed one that was frankly federalistic, and during

1828 and 1829 he and his party struggled to put it into application. But

the sullen resistance of the aristocrats and the rivalries among the

jealous liberal leaders were too much for him. Party passion became so

acute and politicians so irritated and aggressive that it became

impossible to carry on any regular government. In November Pinto

resigned and Vicuna, president of the senate, tried his hand at holding

the liberals together and suppressing the now confident and aggressive

conservatives.

Not only political but also social anarchy obtained throughout the

country. Disorders were prevalent, robberies occurred daily, life was

unsafe, foreigners were fleeing to Valparaiso. General Prieto,

commanding the army on the Araucanian frontier, revolted and began a

march on the capital. Vicuna hurried to the northern provinces to try to

hold them quiet, while General Lastra went against Prieto. Under the

leadership of Portales, the ablest statesman Chile has ever produced,

the conservatives at Santiago organised a junta and bade open defiance

to the liberals. When Lastra and Prieto met there was no fighting. The

two generals held a conference and arranged a compromise by which Freire

was to be recalled. But affairs at Santiago were in more resolute hands

than theirs. Portales absolutely refused to agree, and back of him stood

the conservative party, well organised and knowing clearly what it

wanted. The conservatives had the land, the wealth, the prestige of

social position, the ardent support of the clergy; their influence

ramified everywhere; they had been welded together during the long

dominance of the liberals; and, best of all, they followed a strong

leader. The army could not be united in unquestioning support of any one

general. Prieto decided to cast his lot with the conservatives, and

occupied Santiago. The congress which was hastily elected naturally

proved frankly and aggressively conservative. The liberals flew to arms,

calling on Freire to lead them, and two thousand Chileans perished in

battle before the final and decisive conservative victory at Lircay

(April 17, 1830). Freire fled to Peru, Prieto was elected provisional

president, and Portales became vice-president.

[Illustration: VIEW OF SANTIAGO, CHILE, ABOUT 1835.]

Though he owed his elevation to his military successes the new president

did not attempt to rule as a dictator, and co-operated cordially with

the vice-president in organising a parliamentary civil government on an

enduring basis. Prieto played not illy the role of a Washington to

Portales' Hamilton. Militarism, radicalism, and federalism had been

tried and found wanting and the great conservative statesman took care

that the new order should be tainted with none of them. Two years were

spent in careful experiment and deliberation, and the Constitution

framed in 1833 has remained, with a few amendments, the fundamental law

of Chile to this day. The most aristocratic and centralised of American

Constitutions, it has given Chile the strongest and stablest government

in Spanish America. The foundation of political power is the

property-holding class. No man may vote unless he possesses land,

invested capital, or an equivalent income from his trade or profession,

and congress may fix the amount of the qualification as high as it

pleases. Political power originated in the oligarchy, and its exercise

was delegated to a president whose functions are even more extensive

than those of the chief magistrate of the United States. _Ipso facto_

commander-in-chief of the armed forces, free to select his cabinet and

the chief functionaries of state without the confirmation of a senate,

not subject to impeachment, possessing an effective control over the

judiciary, given a practically absolute veto, with the intendentes of

the provinces and the governors of the departments receiving from him

their commissions and acting as his agents, it would seem that the

president of Chile is little less than an absolute and irresponsible

ruler. But from the beginning the executive was in practice dependent

upon the oligarchy as represented in congress. The instances in which a

president has tried to rule in defiance of the wishes of the aristocracy

have been rare, and never successful.

When Prieto's first term expired in 1836, many of the conservatives

pressed Portales to accept the presidency, but he was satisfied with his

place as chief minister. Under his vigorous and intelligent direction

the courts and clergy had been reformed, the police organised, a

national guard created, the budgets balanced, the executive and congress

worked harmoniously together, peace and order had replaced confusion.

Chile's feet had been placed on the path of social and industrial

progress.

The exiled Freire meanwhile was receiving aid from Santa Cruz who had

recently created the Peru-Bolivian Confederation with himself as its

chief, and whose ambitious designs included the installation of a

government in Chile which would be his complaisant and obliged friend.

With arms obtained in Peru, General Freire made a descent upon the

island of Chiloe, but the rebellion was quickly suppressed, war declared

against Santa Cruz, and the Peruvian fleet surprised and seized. While

the army of invasion was waiting for the order to embark a few companies

engaged in a mutiny which brought about a horrible tragedy. Portales had

come to the camp to watch the preparations. The mutineers seized him as

hostage, and fleeing to the interior carried him along locked in a

closed carriage. In the middle of the winter night they encountered a

detachment of government troops, and with the first volley the guards

stopped the carriage. A man got out, walked unflinchingly to the side of

the road, a half dozen shots rang out in the still air, and he fell.

When the first light of dawn illumined the field, the victorious

national guards found a body lying pierced by four bullets--it was

Portales. But his work had been too thoroughly done for even his own

death to affect it. He had found his country feeble and divided, torn by

feud and faction; he left her prosperous, united, possessing surplus

vitality for a successful foreign war. Prieto and the conservatives were

not shaken; the expedition to Peru proceeded, and though the first

failed, the second won the battle of Yungay, overthrew Santa Cruz, and

made Chile the dominant power on the Pacific coast.

At the end of his two terms of five years each, Prieto was succeeded by

General Bulnes, the hero of the war. Foreign commerce was increasing by

leaps and bounds; the growth of the customs revenues put government

finances on a sound footing; the expenses of the war against Santa Cruz

had been provided for out of current income. William Wheelwright had

established the first steamship line on the Pacific. The political

policy of Bulnes was as repressive toward the liberals as his

predecessor's. However, education and literary activity were encouraged;

a new university was inaugurated at Santiago in 1843. The opera and the

drama flourished, and society took on a more intellectual and

cosmopolitan tone. Even religious doctrine and the relations of Church

and State were discussed with considerable freedom and warmth, and

everywhere were signs of an awakening--a flowering out of the

industrial, commercial, and intellectual life of the nation. German

colonists were induced to settle in the forested valleys and mountains

of the South, and that part of Chile became and has remained more

Teutonic than Latin. The discovery of gold in California opened a market

for Chilean wheat and gave a fresh impetus to commerce and agriculture,

while the mines of Copiapo began to yield their inexhaustible wealth.

Bulnes was re-elected without opposition in 1846, but a new Chile had

grown up in the fifteen years of peaceful order. Though the old liberals

had disappeared, a new party had arisen all the more formidable because

its principles were moderate and it sought not dictatorships, military

government, or federalism, but only administrative reforms, such as

restraining the clergy and widening the suffrage. By 1849 the liberals

had a majority in congress and an agitated session ensued. The

conservative president was pushed into an attitude of uncompromising

resistance to the liberal demands. Manuel Montt, the intellectual leader

of the conservatives, a strong and ambitious man, who was known to have

the courage and firmness to maintain himself against odds, was selected

as Bulnes' successor. His elevation in the spring of 1851 was followed

by an armed outbreak, which the government troops suppressed, but in

September the revolution flamed forth with redoubled fury.

From Concepcion, the liberal headquarters, marched an army which gained

several victories and even threatened the capital. But the conservatives

rallied and in December the issue was decided by the bloody battle of

Loncomilla. In Chile, a narrow plain shut in between the Andes and the

sea, losers cannot hide; a single encounter in force is enough; civil

wars cannot be prolonged in remote provinces or by the flight of the

defeated to inaccessible deserts. Though the destruction of life and

property had been frightful--four thousand Chileans perishing and

commerce and industry being paralysed for the moment--peace was

immediately re-established and the nation rapidly recovered. A general

amnesty buried the doings of the insurgents in oblivion, and former

liberals were welcomed as members of the party which Montt and Varas,

his able minister, organised. Though their faces were set against

political innovations they adopted many important administrative

reforms. The admirable civil code prepared by Bello was given to the

country, replacing the complicated and confusing mass of old Spanish

laws by clear and systematic legislation. The tariff was lowered and

differential duties as between foreign countries were abolished.

Commercial courts were installed, decimal coinage adopted, church tithes

converted into a moderate fixed tax, treaties of commerce and amity

negotiated with the great commercial nations, missions established

among the Araucanians, and public libraries and schools were multiplied.

On the other hand, Montt and Varas relentlessly pursued a policy of

centralisation, subjecting even the affairs of the municipalities to the

control of the Santiago bureaucracy. Re-elected as a matter of course in

1856, Montt's second term was even more intransigent than his first.

Many leading liberals were driven from the country, and minor

insurrections broke out more than once, only to be sternly suppressed.

The landed aristocracy had, however, ceased to be unanimous against

concessions; its more progressive members belonged now to the liberal

party; and the "montt-varistas" in congress were compelled to ally

themselves now with the clericals, now with the liberals, in order to

secure a working majority. In 1858 Montt came to an open rupture with

congress because it insisted on passing a law permitting the return of

his banished political enemies. Meanwhile he had alienated the clergy by

compelling the ecclesiastical authorities to submit to the decisions of

the civil tribunals, and some conservatives united with the liberals

against him in the elections in the fall of 1858. His measures became

arbitrary and oppressive. Newspapers were suppressed, meetings

dispersed, and agitators imprisoned. At the end of the year a great

meeting was called at the capital to promote a reform of the

Constitution. The government forbade it as a menace to public order, and

the dissatisfaction was so wide-spread that Montt proclaimed martial

law.

The liberals in the southern and northern provinces simultaneously rose

in rebellion and for four months civil war raged furiously. Gallo, a

young, rich, and powerful leader, was at the head of the insurrection in

the North and at first he defeated the government forces and occupied

Coquimbo. But his hopes were crushed by the news that the southern

liberals advancing from Concepcion had been repulsed at Chillan,

enabling Montt to concentrate the whole army against him. Four thousand

regulars routed the two thousand men who followed Gallo, and the

remnants fled across the Argentine border. Defeated and banished, the

liberals in reality had won. The seriousness of the rebellion had

convinced the aristocracy that concessions must be made or a renewal of

the conflict would be inevitable. Montt did not seek a re-election, and

it was necessary to unite on some man of high personal prestige, and of

distinguished family, who had remained neutral in the recent struggle.

Such a one was found in Perez, who accordingly received the unanimous

vote of the electoral college and was inaugurated in 1861. That the new

president's policy would be one of reconciliation and compromise was

soon made evident by his procuring the passage of a law granting amnesty

for political offences. A coalition of moderate liberals and

conservatives threw Montt and Varas with their party of "nationalists"

into opposition along with the radicals or "reds" under the leadership

of Gallo. The curious spectacle was presented of two sets of men, united

in an alliance against the administration, who only two years before had

been fighting in the field, and who now professed the most radically

divergent political opinions. Fierce parliamentary struggles ensued, but

they were confined to the floor of congress and to changes in the

ministry.

The country had now recovered from the commercial panic of the fifties

and from the devastations of the brief civil war, and proceeded again on

the even tenor of its prosperous commercial way. The railroad from

Valparaiso to Santiago was completed in 1863; lines were extended up and

down the great central valleys; the telegraph system was enlarged;

Chilean capitalists began to push up the desert northern coast to engage

in the guano business; the German immigration to southern Chile

continued and European colonisation was fostered. Indeed, no South

American country has incorporated such a large proportion of North

European blood; and British, German, and French names are common not

only in commerce and industry, but also in the political, naval, and

military services--witness Mackenna, O'Higgins, Beauchef, Godoy, Montt,

Walker, Edwards, MacIver, Tupper, Prat, Larrain, MacClure, Koenig,

Mathieu, Stuven, Ross, Marchant, Cumming, Day, Stephan, and a hundred

others.

In 1865 a war with Spain interrupted domestic progress, political as

well as commercial. Engaged in a dispute with Peru, the Spanish

government had sent an overwhelming fleet to enforce its demands, and

seized the Chincha Islands. The Spanish admiral was reported to have

justified this high-handed act upon the ground that Peru was still

subject to Spain. If this was true of the one country it was of the

other, and the Chileans believed their territorial integrity and even

their independence menaced. Government and people manifested an active

sympathy with Peru; Peruvian vessels were allowed to coal; newspapers

were filled with abuse of Spain; and a riot occurred in front of the

Spanish legation. In September, 1865, the Spanish fleet sailed into

Valparaiso Bay and its admiral presented an ultimatum. Four days were

given for a satisfactory explanation, an apology, and a salute to the

Spanish flag. Failing this he would blockade the coast and procure

indemnification by force. The Chilean government rejected the

humiliating proposition; the blockade was established, and the

administration, backed by the enthusiastic approval of the whole

country, refused to make any concessions, though Chile's fleet consisted

of one small vessel and her ports were at the enemy's mercy. The single

Chilean steamer succeeded in capturing a Spanish gunboat, which so

humiliated the admiral that he committed suicide, and when, in March,

1866, Chile refused even to disclaim an intention of insulting Spain, or

to exchange salutes, the Spaniards proceeded to bombard Valparaiso. The

town was totally without defences and open to cannon fire; ten millions

of property were destroyed in the three hours and a half that the

cannonading lasted, nine-tenths of it being on the water-front and

belonging to foreign merchants. The Spanish fleet then withdrew,

although the original question remained exactly as at the outset.

[Illustration: VIEW OF VALPARAISO.]

An indirect result of the common danger of the Pacific nations was an

agreement in 1866 between Chile and Bolivia as to their boundary on the

coast. The line was fixed at the 24th degree, but Chileans were allowed

to continue to exploit guano and nitrate as far north as the 23d--an

arrangement which gave their country substantial claims in a region

which shortly proved a marvellous producer of ready money. The German

colonisation in the South continued on an increasing scale during the

late sixties; free land was given to immigrants and their passage paid.

The Araucanians, resenting the influx of whites so near their own

territory, began to make trouble, and a war went on through 1868, 1869,

and 1870, which finally resulted in their suing for peace. A line of

forts kept them in order and they ceased to be a disturbing factor in

Chilean affairs.

Perez had been re-elected in 1866, and his second term marks the

beginning of a new era in Chilean politics. The dynamic elements had

finally become stronger than the static, and the pressure for amendments

to the Constitution could no longer be resisted. But in the forty years

since Portales had fixed the form of the government in its aristocratic

mould, political traditions had hardened into habits. No really radical

changes had any serious chance of success. A measure forbidding the

president to be re-elected was passed, and a desperate fight made to

extend the suffrage to all who could read and write. Though favoured by

President Perez the last failed to carry, and the most the liberals

could obtain was a law reducing the property qualification.

The election in 1871 was warmly contested. The advanced liberals pressed

hard on the conservatives, who resisted further changes desperately. The

latter united with the moderate liberals upon Errazuriz as presidential

candidate to succeed Perez, and receiving the support of the outgoing

administration he was elected. At first the elements who had elected him

controlled a majority in congress, but the aggressiveness of the

liberals and rival ambitions in the government coalition soon overthrew

the reactionary ministry. Errazuriz changed as congress did and soon

found himself pushing liberal reforms. The great issue was the

amenability of the clergy to the civil tribunals. Though fifteen years

previously President Montt had compelled the reinstatement of two church

dignitaries deprived of their places by the archbishop, the clergy had

nevertheless persisted in their claims. The liberals now insisted on the

adoption of a criminal code which would leave no doubt, and amid bitter

opposition it was passed. The clericals were further outraged by

concessions as to Protestant worship and the obligatory teaching of the

Catholic religion in the state colleges. Though the bill establishing

civil marriage failed, the anti-clerical movement went so far that the

old-line conservatives withdrew in disgust from the alliance which had

existed between them and the moderate liberals since the revolt against

Montt. Thenceforth the conservative party ceased to be an important

factor, and the predominant liberals divided into factions who intrigued

among themselves to organise working congressional majorities, which

supported ministries and controlled patronage. Political reform went on

with increasing momentum. To curb the control of elections which the

ministry in power exercised through the local officers who made up the

voting lists, minority representation was provided for, but only after

the moderates had forced the radicals to a compromise, which exempted

presidential and senatorial elections.

Meanwhile material prosperity was steadily increasing and population

growing at the rate of one and a half per cent. a year. Coal mines had

been discovered in southern Chile, railroad building continued, and the

finding of the rich Caracoles silver mines in 1870, lying near the

northern limit of the jointly occupied territory, not only opened up

vistas of wealth, but brought to the front the troublesome question of

the Bolivian boundary. Peru became alarmed at Chile's rapid progress in

the nitrate and guano business, Bolivia feared aggressions on the part

of her powerful neighbour, and in 1872 these two powers entered into a

defensive alliance intended to protect their joint interests on the

Pacific coast. The reaction inevitably consequent on rapid commercial

expansion came in the middle of Errazuriz' term, and was aggravated by a

fall in the prices of Chilean exports caused by the world panic of 1873.

The already burdened government finances quickly felt the strain; outgo

exceeded income, and it was necessary to reduce expenses. Happily the

debt, though large, was not excessive. Chile had gone in for no such

reckless carnival of borrowing as Peru and the Argentine, and her bonds

had been opportunely refunded at a low rate of interest.

As the time for the election approached the radical liberals put forward

Mackenna on a programme which included not only religious freedom in its

widest sense, the extension of the common schools, and the abolition of

the tobacco monopoly, but also railways and internal improvements enough

to bankrupt the treasury. The moderate liberals were opposed to Mackenna

and his programme, so the party split. The convention of moderates was

at first unable to agree on a candidate, but on a second attempt Anibal

Pinto was nominated. Favoured by the outgoing administration, his

election was a foregone conclusion.

By this time the dispute with the Argentine over the possession of the

southern extremity of the continent had become acute, and public feeling

in both countries had risen to a height perilous to the maintenance of

peace. The only boundary treaty between Chile and Argentina--that of

1856--provided that the limits should be as they had been during

colonial times, but these were not certain because throughout the

Spanish occupation the territory now disputed had been uninhabited, and

neither the viceroy of Buenos Aires nor the captains-general of Chile

had concerned themselves about it. Since independence Chile had always

claimed to the Andes on the east and to Cape Horn on the south,

including the region about the Straits of Magellan over to the Atlantic

side. As early as 1843 she had established a post at the eastern end of

the straits, and Argentina at first did not seriously dispute her

possession. In 1870 guano was discovered in the region, and when Chile

promptly proceeded to treat it as her own the Argentine government

protested. For ten years the two countries bickered, but with the

Peruvian war impending Chile thought it wiser to make some concessions,

and the dispute was finally settled by a treaty in 1881 by which the

territory was divided, Chile getting the more valuable part with the

control of both ends of the straits, although this great interoceanic

waterway was declared neutral and no fortifications may be erected

there.

CHAPTER V

CHILE'S GREATNESS AND THE CIVIL WAR

Since 1873 the low prices of Chile's chief exports, wheat and copper,

had turned the balance of trade against her. The government could not

make both ends meet, and in 1878 the banks were compelled to suspend

specie payments. They resorted to the issue of more notes, backed by the

government's guaranty. Just at this juncture the Bolivian government

levied a heavy royalty on the nitrate extracted by the Chilean companies

operating in Bolivian territory. This threatened ruin to the most

promising enterprise in which Chilean citizens were engaged, and was

believed to be a manifest violation of the terms of the treaty of 1866.

The government determined not to stop short of war itself if necessary

to defend Chilean interests, though war on Bolivia also meant war on her

ally, Peru.

A meagre description of the stirring events of this contest will be

found in that part of this volume devoted to Peru. Chile's overwhelming

victory not only profoundly affected her international position, but

also her internal condition. The preparations of the spring of 1879

plunged the government into expenditures which ordinary revenues were

totally insufficient to meet. A new issue of paper money was resorted

to, but the interest on the foreign debt was kept up. The first nine

months of 1879 were an anxious time for Chileans. Pitted against two

nations whose combined population was nearly double her own, her

treasury empty, while that of Peru was supplied by the marvellous

nitrate deposits of Tarapaca, the result appeared doubtful and the

consequences of failure almost too horrible to face. When the Peruvians

lost their iron-clad, _Independencia_, hope rose, but the ease with

which the _Huascar_ eluded the Chilean ships made the people again lose

confidence in their navy, and the coast towns were terror-stricken. But

the destruction of the dreaded iron-clad in the naval battle of the 9th

of October changed in the twinkling of an eye fear into confidence,

apprehension of national ruin into the joyful assurance that a Chilean

army would soon be in possession of the Golconda of the Pacific. Within

a month the Chilean forces were landed in the nitrate country, the

Peruvians and Bolivians had been chased across the desert, and the

Chilean collectors were receiving a million and a half a month from the

royalties of the nitrate mines. A net sum nearly equal to the total

revenue which Chile previously had been collecting from all sources was

added to her income, and she was no longer driven to painful expedients

in order to raise money to meet her military expenses. Although the

issues of paper money were continued and prices consequently rose,

business flourished and a period of abundance replaced the hard times

which had reached a crisis in 1878. The government was able to abolish

the odious tobacco monopoly, and the war rather lightened than increased

the burdens of commerce. The centralised government of Chile proved an

admirable instrument for times of war. The president and his ministry,

backed by a compact congress, wielded the whole force and resources of

the country like a weapon fitted to the hand, striking heavy and

relentless blows until Peru lay prostrate.

After the complete destruction of the allied army by the Tacna campaign

in March, 1880, the government, confident that a treaty of peace would

soon be signed, delayed further aggressive operations for several

months. But the Peruvians were obstinate and later in the year it was

resolved to carry the war to the centre of the enemy's country. Lima

fell on the 17th of January, 1881, and the glorious news was received

while the liberals were contending over whom they should select as a

candidate to succeed Pinto. There was much striving among the rival

chiefs and one convention had already adjourned without coming to any

agreement. Pinto ventured to interfere in a more decided way than any

previous president had done and his influence was sufficiently powerful

to induce the liberal party to unite on his personal choice, Santa

Maria. The opposition tried to rally around the candidacy of General

Baquedano, the greatest general of the war, but the prestige of the

administration was too powerful.

Although his nomination had been bitterly opposed by many prominent

liberals, once in office Santa Maria found means to unite in his support

a great majority of congress. The members who took their seats in 1882

were divided into three factions: the liberals proper, as the moderates

were called, the radicals, and the nationals--few in number but counting

in their ranks some of the ablest and wealthiest aristocrats in Chile.

The conservatives, no longer an important factor, had abandoned their

opposition to the civil reforms which the liberals pressed forward,

concentrating their efforts on a hopeless but desperate resistance to

religious innovations. Santa Maria was in full accord with his party,

and his message of 1883 proclaimed that the time had come for the

realisation of the oldest and dearest aspirations of Chilean

liberals--civil marriage and registry, entire liberty of conscience, and

the secularisation of the cemeteries. In the fierce discussion which

followed, the eloquent prime minister, Balmaceda, took the lead.

Although educated for the priesthood he had developed into an

intransigent radical, a passionate advocate of the completest separation

of Church and State.