The restoration of Ferdinand VII to his throne in 1814 encouraged the liberals of Spain, no less than the loyalists of Spanish America, to hope that the "old King" would now grant a new dispensation. Freedom of commerce and a fair measure of popular representation in government, it was believed, would compensate both the mother country for the suffering which it had undergone during the Peninsular War and the colonies for the trials to which loyalty had been subjected. But Ferdinand VII was a typical Bourbon. Nothing less than an absolute reestablishment of the earlier regime would satisfy him. On both sides of the Atlantic, therefore, the liberals were forced into opposition to the crown, although they were so far apart that they could not cooperate with each other. Independence was to be the fortune of the Spanish Americans, and a continuance of despotism, for a while, the lot of the Spaniards.
As the region of the viceroyalty of La Plata had been the first to cast off the authority of the home government, so it was the first to complete its separation from Spain. Despite the fact that disorder was rampant everywhere and that most of the local districts could not or would not send deputies, a congress that assembled at Tucuman voted on July 9, 1816, to declare the "United Provinces in South America" independent. Comprehensive though the expression was, it applied only to the central part of the former viceroyalty, and even there it was little more than an aspiration. Mistrust of the authorities at Buenos Aires, insistence upon provincial autonomy, failure to agree upon a particular kind of republican government, and a lingering inclination to monarchy made progress toward national unity impossible. In 1819, to be sure, a constitution was adopted, providing for a centralized government, but in the country at large it encountered too much resistance from those who favored a federal government to become effective.
In the Banda Oriental, over most of which Artigas and his horsemen held sway, chaotic conditions invited aggression from the direction of Brazil. This East Bank of the Uruguay had long been disputed territory between Spain and Portugal; and now its definite acquisition by the latter seemed an easy undertaking.
Instead, however, the task turned out to be a truly formidable one. Montevideo, feebly defended by the forces of the Government at Buenos Aires, soon capitulated, but four years elapsed before the rest of the country could be subdued. Artigas fled to Paraguay, where he fell into the clutches of Francia, never to escape. In 1821 the Banda Oriental was annexed to Brazil as the Cisplatine Province.
Over Paraguay that grim and somber potentate, known as "The Supreme One"--El Supremo--presided with iron hand. In 1817Francia set up a despotism unique in the annals of South America.
Fearful lest contact with the outer world might weaken his tenacious grip upon his subjects, whom he terrorized into obedience, he barred approach to the country and suffered no one to leave it. He organized and drilled an army obedient to his will.. When he went forth by day, attended by an escort of cavalry, the doors and windows of houses had to be kept closed and no one was allowed on the streets. Night he spent till a late hour in reading and study, changing his bedroom frequently to avoid assassination. Religious functions that might disturb the public peace he forbade. Compelling the bishop of Asuncion to resign on account of senile debility, Francia himself assumed the episcopal office. Even intermarriage among the old colonial families he prohibited, so as to reduce all to a common social level. He attained his object. Paraguay became a quiet state, whatever might be said of its neighbors!
Elsewhere in southern Spanish America a brilliant feat of arms brought to the fore its most distinguished soldier. This was Jose de San Martin of La Plata. Like Miranda, he had been an officer in the Spanish army and had returned to his native land an ardent apostle of independence. Quick to realize the fact that, so long as Chile remained under royalist control, the possibility of an attack from that quarter was a constant menace to the safety of the newly constituted republic, he conceived the bold plan of organizing near the western frontier an army--composed partly of Chilean refugees and partly of his own countrymen--with which he proposed to cross the Andes and meet the enemy on his own ground.
Among these fugitives was the able and valiant Bernardo O'Higgins, son of an Irish officer who had been viceroy of Peru.
Cooperating with O'Higgins, San Martin fixed his headquarters at Mendoza and began to gather and train the four thousand men whom he judged needful for the enterprise.
By January, 1817, the "Army of the Andes" was ready. To cross the mountains meant to transport men, horses, artillery, and stores to an altitude of thirteen thousand feet, where the Uspallata Pass afforded an outlet to Chilean soil. This pass was nearly a mile higher than the Great St. Bernard in the Alps, the crossing of which gave Napoleon Bonaparte such renown. On the 12th of February the hosts of San Martin hurled themselves upon the royalists entrenched on the slopes of Chacabuco and routed them utterly. The battle proved decisive not of the fortunes of Chile alone but of those of all Spanish South America. As a viceroy of Peru later confessed, "it marked the moment when the cause of Spain in the Indies began to recede."Named supreme director by the people of Santiago, O'Higgins fought vigorously though ineffectually to drive out the royalists who, reinforced from Peru, held the region south of the capital.
