The South American Republics Volume II Part 2

The news of the murder threw Peru into confusion. In Lima the governor's friends hid themselves or fled; a hundred sympathisers joined the a.s.sa.s.sins; the rudders and sails of the s.h.i.+ps in port were taken away so that no word could be sent to Panama; and all the treasure in the city was plundered. Young Almagro a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of governor of Peru, but he and Rada soon realised that the vast majority at Lima regarded them with execration, while threatening messages came from the commanders in other towns. Rada and the boy usurper started up the road for Jauja and Cuzco. At the former place Rada died, but his protege, though only twenty-two years old, now showed unexpected ability and resource. Suppressing with b.l.o.o.d.y severity a quarrel among his captains, he took the road to Cuzco, where his father's party was strongest.

In the meantime the royal commissioner, now become legal governor of Peru, had sailed from Panama. s.h.i.+pwrecked off the coast of southern Colombia, he resolved to proceed by land, and disembarking at Buenaventura, made his way with infinite difficulty through the tangled forests and steep defiles of the Maritime Cordillera to the valley of the Cauca River. Thence to Quito over the highlands of Popayan and Pasto was easier. As soon as the news of Pizarro's murder reached him he hastened south, receiving many offers of help from the friends of the dead governor. At Jauja he found a considerable army ready to his orders, so he proceeded promptly to Guamanga, to which point Almagro was advancing from Cuzco. The soldiers of the young half-breed knew that they were fighting with halters round their necks, and the battle was the bloodiest since the Spaniards had landed in Peru. Of the twelve hundred white men who went into the fight only five hundred escaped unwounded. The rebels were practically annihilated. Two days after the battle Pizarro's murderers were executed in the great square at Guamanga. Young Almagro managed to escape to Cuzco, but he was quickly captured and relentlessly put to death.

Upon the death of Francisco Pizarro the right to nominate a governor reverted to the Spanish Crown. Though some disappointment was felt that Gonzalo Pizarro had not been appointed, Vaca de Castro succeeded without opposition. Gonzalo's selection would not have suited the new policy of the Spanish government. Las Casas had written his famous book exposing the unspeakable iniquities of the earlier conquerors toward the West Indian natives. It produced a tremendous effect on public opinion, and the authorities at Madrid decided to root up Indian slavery, and gradually abolish the existing "encomiendas." Manifestly, such a step would excite bitter dissatisfaction among the adventurers in Peru, and it seemed best to name a viceroy, who would be _ipso facto_ vested with absolute power, and not subject to the influence of the "conquistadores."

This dangerous post was entrusted to Blasco Nunez de Vela, an old bureaucrat of the Escurial, whose integrity, piety, and rigid obedience to orders had pushed him into high positions. Arriving in Peru early in 1544, he was received with outward courtesy and respect, thinly veiling real alarm and distrust. The "New Laws" abolished personal service by Indians; the grandees of estates must hereafter be content with a moderate tribute from their tenants; encomiendas might not be sold nor even descend by inheritance; and--worst of all--public officials and all Spaniards who had taken part in the wars between Almagro and Pizarro were to be deprived. The provisions were drastic and rumour exaggerated them. In his journey down the coast the viceroy had sternly ordered that no Indian be forced to carry a burden against his will. To the Spaniards this seemed an outrageous violation of the natural order of things. The whole fabric of their fortunes rested upon forced Indian labour. Without it they could not work their mines, farm their estates, or transport their goods, and these "New Laws" enforced by a conscientious and stubborn old bureaucrat, would virtually rob them of all that their swords had won.

Dismayed "encomienderos" wrote to Gonzalo Pizarro, urging him to espouse their cause; his own vast estates would infallibly be wrenched away by the viceroy, and he was told that his head was to be cut off as soon as Nunez Vela could lay hands on him. With the Pizarro instinct of running to meet a danger, he hastened from southern Bolivia to Cuzco, where he was proclaimed "procurator general" of Peru; soldiers flocked to his camp; he seized the artillery and stores at Cuzco, and soon was at the head of four hundred desperate men, well armed and provided. Many, however, shrank from open rebellion against the representative of the Castilian king, and the Pizarros had enemies. The result was still doubtful, when the viceroy himself turned the scale by his own violent measures. He imprisoned Vaca de Castro on suspicion of favouring the revolt; quarrelled with the judges of the royal court; and finally in an altercation with the popular factor of Lima, stabbed his opponent with his own hand, and then attempted to conceal the murder. Frightened at the burst of public indignation, he fled to Trujillo, while the royal judges took the direction of affairs into their own hands. They ordered the arrest and deportation of the viceroy, and sent a conciliatory message to Gonzalo. But he knew better than to rely upon the unauthorised promises of the judges. His answer was to send a detachment to Lima, which seized three deserters and hanged them on trees outside the town. The judges having no troops upon whom they could rely, were forced to recognise Pizarro as governor. A few days later he made his triumphal entry, riding at the head of twelve hundred men. There was no mistaking the sincerity of the acclamations with which the Spaniards welcomed the devoted champion of their privileges. Nevertheless in the minds of most there lurked an uneasy consciousness that all this was in fact flat treason against the lawful sovereign, and that no government could in the long run prevail without recognition from Madrid.

The sea-captains to whose custody the blundering old viceroy had been entrusted did not know what to do with their embarra.s.sing prisoner, and set him ash.o.r.e at Tumbez, whence he proceeded to Quito to get help from the anti-Pizarro faction. The governor of southern Colombia joined him and he soon had five hundred men under his orders. Gonzalo flew to the point of danger; the viceroy retreated to Popayan, but being joined by more recruits, rashly returned to the neighbourhood of Quito to offer battle. He was defeated and killed; Pizarro went back to Lima, while his lieutenant, Carbajal, hunted down and put to death every loyalist who remained under arms in southern Peru.

Gonzalo's administration lasted three years' and they were golden ones for the Spanish adventurers. The marvellous silver mines of Potosi and the gold was.h.i.+ngs of southern Ecuador were discovered. Encomiendas were lavishly granted; the Indians went back to their fields; the mining industry began that marvellous development which soon made Peru the treasure box of the world and Potosi a synonym for limitless wealth. But the dazzling sunlight of prosperity was dimmed by the shadow of Pizarro's scaffold slowly creeping across the Atlantic and down the coast. His chief lieutenants, knowing they had sinned past forgiveness, urged him to declare himself king of Peru, but he was at once too proud and too patriotic to fling away his right to die a loyal Spaniard.

Philip, the leaden-eyed, close-mouthed despot, was regent of Spain.

Bitterly chagrined that the stream of Peruvian gold had ceased to flow into the royal treasury, his vindictive heart held no mercy for the gallant soldier whose sword had helped win the riches now temporarily diverted. He selected a man after his own heart--Pedro de la Gasca, an ugly, deformed little priest, hypocritically humble, though astute and untiring, whose success as an inquisitor was a guarantee that he would be as pitilessly cruel as even Philip could wish. Gasca landed at Panama in the character of a modest ecclesiastic, a humble man of peace who had been commissioned to investigate the sad situation of Peru and re-establish peace. He said he would recommend the repeal of the obnoxious New Laws, and had authority to suspend them. Gonzalo refused to put his head into the noose and demanded substantial a.s.surances. But many Peruvians were more easily beguiled, and welcomed the excuse to renew their allegiance to lawful authority. While Gasca remained at Panama, gathering troops from the neighbouring provinces, Pizarro's fleet deserted, leaving the coast open to attack. An advance guard came sailing down the coast, sending letters ash.o.r.e at every port promising amnesty and rewards. Desertions were so numerous that Gonzalo was forced to give up the hope of defending Lima and retreated toward Arequipa.

Gasca ascended to Jauja, while Pizarro's old enemies in the t.i.ticacan region rose, gathered a thousand men, and sent word to Gasca that they could overwhelm without help the five hundred soldiers who remained faithful. But a Pizarro never waited to be attacked. By forced marches he crossed the dizzy pa.s.s where the Mollendo and Puno Railway now runs, and fell upon his enemies near the southern end of Lake t.i.ticaca. Though outnumbered two to one, the superior discipline of his men, his admirable dispositions, Carbajal's skilful handling of the artillery, and his own cool and intrepid leaders.h.i.+p of the cavalry charges, gave him a decisive though dearly bought victory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE "INFERNILLO" BRIDGE ON THE OROYA RAILWAY.

ALt.i.tUDE 10,924 FEET.]

Meanwhile Gasca was coming up the road from Jauja to Cuzco, his army increasing by accessions from every direction until it numbered over two thousand. The wisest of Gonzalo's counsellors advised him to retire to southern Bolivia and make a defensive campaign in that remote region, but he preferred bold methods. For once, however, he could not inspire his men with his own confidence. They followed with heavy hearts his eager march against Gasca's overwhelming army. He drew them up for the attack and the battle was about to begin when, to his despair, he saw several captains desert to the enemy and his soldiers surrendering without a blow. Knowing that all was over, he turned to Juan Acosta, who rode at his side, saying, "What shall we do, brother Juan?" "Sir, let us charge them and die like Romans." "Better to die like Christians,"

replied Pizarro, and he rode across the plain and gave himself up. The exulting priest grossly insulted the fallen warrior, and called a court-martial to condemn him and his captains to immediate execution.

Though only forty-one years old when he went to the scaffold, Gonzalo had for sixteen years taken a leading part in nearly every one of the battles and expeditions of Peru, and is justly regarded as the best fighting man among the "conquistadores."

The property of Pizarro's friends was confiscated; the prisons filled with wretched victims; many were put to death; many more mutilated or flogged; even the staunchest loyalists were not safe. Gasca evaded and delayed as long as possible the distribution of land-grants among those who had earned and been promised such rewards, and when he had to announce the list he sneaked to Lima by an unfrequented route in cowardly fear of his miserable life. He never dared to try to put the New Laws into effect, and when a peremptory order came from Spain that enforced Indian labour must cease, he kept it secret until he could resign the government to the royal judges, leaving instructions that it should be published immediately he was at sea.

Peru was left in confusion. The prohibition of Indian slavery added to the dissatisfaction felt over Gasca's awards. The _ad interim_ governments could make little progress in securing its enforcement.

Rebellion after rebellion broke out, and civil war continued to desolate Peru, with a few intervals of quiescence during which the government allowed the proprietors to do as they pleased, until the arrival of the Marquis of Canete, the "good viceroy," on the 29th of June, 1556.

CHAPTER IV

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

The Spanish occupation of Peru was a conquest, not a colonisation. The narrow plateau from Colombia to Chile and the adjacent dry valleys on the Pacific and in north-western Argentina had been found fully populated by civilised races. The work of subjugating them was practically accomplished within eight or ten years after Pizarro landed in Ecuador, and this marvellous result was achieved by private adventurers who, though they held commissions from Madrid, really acted on their own responsibility. A very few appreciated the advisability of well treating the Indians and thereby preserving the effective industrial organisation, but the vast majority concerned themselves only with immediate profit. For eighteen years the original conquerors and the adventurers who followed in their track fought over the spoils. When the Marquis of Canete was appointed viceroy he found eight thousand Spaniards in Peru alone, four hundred and eighty-nine of whom had grants of lands and Indians.

We can never know the sufferings of the Indians during these civil wars. The chronicles tell us minutely the stories of the battles, marches, sieges, surprises, a.s.sa.s.sinations, and deeds of military prowess, but little of the destruction and abandonment of the irrigating ca.n.a.ls and terraces, the ruin of the magnificent roads, the breaking up of the ancient socialistic system, the impressment of natives into the rebel bands, the death by exhaustion of thousands dragging artillery over the steep mountain paths, the starvation of whole villages robbed of their crops. But the st.u.r.dy physique of the Andean Indians and their perfect adaptation to the climatic conditions saved them from extermination. In the midst of the devil's dance of Spanish carnage, the Inca officers reported minutely the crops stolen or destroyed, and the deficiencies were made up as far as possible from the villages which had escaped for the time being.

Naturally the Spanish government was anxious to put an end to such a state of affairs. Considerations of self-interest reinforced the eloquent indignation of Las Casas, but the New Laws could not be put into effect, notwithstanding the sentiment of fidelity to the Castilian king and the growth of considerable cities in which Spanish law and custom were dominant. The only real cities which the Incas had built were Cuzco in central Peru, Quito in Ecuador, and Charcas in Bolivia, and after the conquest they continued a village-dwelling people, but the Spaniards, true to the instinct inherited from Roman times, preferred to live in cities. Within a few years they had established munic.i.p.alities not only at the three Inca capitals, but at Piura, Lima, Trujillo, Loja, La Paz, Guamanga, Jauja, and numerous other places.

The enlightened advisers of Charles V. came to the conclusion that Peru could never become a loyal and profitable appanage of the Crown until freedom of action was granted to its government. Don Andres Hurtado de Mendoza, Marquis of Canete, accepted the difficult post of viceroy. He was a scion of the n.o.blest House of Spain, distinguished alike in arms and letters, capable and resolute, of mature years and wide experience.

His salary was fixed at the then fabulous sum of forty thousand ducats in order to enable him to maintain regal state, and, accompanied by his vice-queen and an imposing retinue, he a.s.sumed power with ceremonial splendour. He prohibited further immigration from Spain and ordered that no Spaniard in Peru should leave his district without permission. Though the encomienderos were left in possession of their estates, they were made to understand that they must cease the more outrageous forms of oppressing the natives. He sent for the most notorious disturbers, and they came joyfully expecting to receive grants, but were summarily disarmed and banished. He employed the more adventurous in expeditions to the interior and in completing the conquest of Chile. All the artillery in the country was gathered under his eye, and the corregidors were required to dismiss most of their soldiery. Finally, the viceroy continued Pizarro's policy of founding cities into which were gathered the Spaniards who remained scattered over the country.

He did much to alleviate the lot of the natives, though he dared not venture on giving them all the rights guaranteed by Spanish law. No efforts were spared to Hispaniolise the Inca n.o.bles, and native chiefs who could prove their right by descent were formally allowed to exercise jurisdiction as magistrates. Even the rightful emperor, Sayri Tupac, who had maintained his independence in the wilds of Vilcabamba, was induced to swear allegiance and accept a pension and estates in the valley of Yucay. When the Inca had attested the doc.u.ments by which he renounced his sovereignty, he lifted up the gilded fringe of the table-cloth, saying: "All this cloth and its fringe were mine, and now they give me a thread of it for my sustenance and that of all my house." Retiring to Yucay, he sank into a deep melancholy and died within two years.

In the meantime Charles V. had been succeeded by Philip II. The Marquis of Canete's liberal and enlightened policy did not wring money from the unhappy country fast enough to suit the greedy despot. He listened to the slanders against the "good viceroy" brought home by disappointed Spaniards, and Canete's reward for five years of brilliant service was a recall. Only his death saved him from hearing with his own ears the reproaches of his ungrateful sovereign.

Several years elapsed before Philip found a man who possessed the courage, capacity, mercilessness, and obstinacy to devise and apply a system which would make Peru a mere machine to produce gold and silver for the Spanish Crown. Such a one was Don Francisco de Toledo, a member of the same ancient house to which the Duke of Alva belonged. To him belongs the distinction of founding the infamous colonial system--the origin of the misery and disorder from which Spanish South America has suffered ever since, and a potent if not the princ.i.p.al cause of the decline of Spain herself and the loss of her magnificent colonial empire. Toledo reached Lima 1569, leaving Spain just after the news had been received that William the Silent and his Hollanders had risen in revolt against the cruelties of Alva and gained the victory of Groningen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROMENADE OF THE ALAMEDA, LIMA.]

The new viceroy first devoted himself to the destruction of the native dynasty. Sayri Tupac's younger brothers, t.i.tu Yupanqui and Tupac Amaru, still roamed free in the forests of Vilcabamba. The Spaniards had hitherto not interfered with the Indians' celebrating their national festivals with the ancient solemnities, and Toledo came to Cuzco to be present at one which he had determined should be the last. As soon as it was over he sent for t.i.tu to come in and take the oath of allegiance.

t.i.tu died of an illness, but the chiefs swore fealty to the boy Tupac Amaru, and refused to put him in the power of the Spaniards. The exasperated viceroy sent a force which captured the young emperor.

Brought to Cuzco, Toledo ordered him to be decapitated, and the head was stuck upon a pike and set up beside the scaffold. One moonlight night a Spaniard went to the window of his bed-chamber, which overlooked the great square, and saw the whole vast s.p.a.ce packed with a crowd of kneeling, silent people, their faces all turned to the Inca's grisly head; it was the Indians devoutly wors.h.i.+pping the last relic of their beloved and unfortunate sovereign. But there was no spirit left in them for rebellion--and no centre for them to rally around. Toledo's executions exterminated the leading Incas and half-castes; the celebration of Indian rites was forbidden, and everything which might remind the people of the fallen _regime_ destroyed or removed.

Toledo's "Libro de Tasas," or code of regulations, is the basis of the system under which the Spanish colonies were governed for more than two centuries. The Spaniards were practically recognised as belonging to a privileged and governing caste. The country was divided into about fifty districts, called "corregimentos," each under the rule of a corregidor. This official was substantially absolute so far as the Indians were concerned, although an effort was made to keep up parts of the ancient Inca organisation, and in practice the hereditary village chiefs administered justice and exercised considerable power.

Every male Indian between the ages of eighteen and fifty was compelled to pay a certain tribute or poll-tax, for whose collection their chiefs were responsible. About one-sixth of the Indians belonged to estates already granted, and these paid their tribute to the proprietors, the Crown deducting one-fifth. The other five-sixths paid directly to the representatives of the government. In consideration of this tribute, general and indiscriminate personal service was declared to be abolished, but the commutation was not in full. One-seventh of the Indians were required to work for their masters, and the wretched victims of this "mitta" were sent by their caciques to the nearest Spanish town, where they could be engaged by any one who required their services. But these were not all the burdens. The natives of the provinces near the mines were compelled to furnish the labour necessary to work them, and the poor creatures to whose lot it fell to go might never hope to return. Oppressive as was the letter of these laws, their practical application was made infinitely worse by evasions practised with the connivance of the corregidors. Hundreds of Indians were hunted down and carried away to work on farms and in factories under the pretext that the "mitta" returns had not been honestly made, and though the population decreased, the survivors were required to furnish the same number of victims every year.

In spite of the slaughter during the civil wars, the Peruvian Indians numbered eight millions in 1575. Including the outlying provinces, the population of the Inca empire must have reached twenty millions in the heyday of its prosperity. Horrible as had been the decrease of the first forty years of Spanish domination, it was a trifle to that which followed the establishment of Toledo's system. In 1573 the impressment for the Potosi mines produced eleven thousand labourers; one hundred years later only sixteen hundred could be found. In the non-mining provinces the destruction was not so stupendous, but some encomiendas, originally containing a thousand adults, were reduced to a hundred within a century, and the miserable survivors were compelled to pay the same sum as had been a.s.sessed to their ancestors. The total population of Peru proper had fallen to less than a million and a half within two centuries and that of the whole empire to not more than four millions.

So great had been the mortality among the feebler inhabitants of the warm coast valleys that they had practically died out, and their places were taken by negro slaves whose importation began shortly after the conquest.

The Indians were the worst but not the only sufferers. The Creole descendants of the early Spanish settlers, though they nominally enjoyed the same rights as the later arrivals, in reality had small chance to partic.i.p.ate in the offices and fat concessions. Each new viceroy brought a new swarm of needy n.o.blemen, who regarded the Creoles with lofty disdain. Commerce except with Spain was forbidden, and even that was burdened with almost intolerable burdens. As time went on new taxes were devised until it seemed the deliberate purpose of the Spanish government to transfer all the gold and silver in Peru's mountains to the royal treasury. Not only were both imports and exports taxed, but also every pound of provisions sold in the markets and shops. One-fifth of the products of the mines and one-tenth of the crops went directly to the Crown. All kinds of businesses had to pay licences; quicksilver and tobacco were monopolies; and offices were regularly sold to the highest bidder.

Nevertheless the Spanish occupation brought many incontestable benefits to South America. To say nothing of the civilised system of jurisprudence, the letters and the religion which have made the peoples of the continent members of the great western European family, the introduction of new and valuable animals, grains, and fruits raised the level of average well-being among the surviving inhabitants. Horses, a.s.ses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, pigeons, wheat, barley, oats, rice, olives, grapes, oranges, sugar-cane, apples, peaches and related fruits, and even the banana and the cocoa palm were introduced by the Spaniards. In return Europe owes to Peru maize, potatoes, chocolate, tobacco, ca.s.sava, ipecacuanha, and quinine.

Toledo had put his colonial system in full operation by 1580, and from that time to near the close of the Spanish epoch the story of Peru offers little of interest. Expansion ceased; the colonists made no effort to spread over the Amazon plain, or to prevent the Portuguese on the Atlantic coast from occupying the interior of the continent almost to the foot of the Andes. On the seacoast of Venezuela and the plains of the lower Plate the Spanish race still showed a scanty fraction of that vigour and enterprise which had enabled the early conquerors to spread over half the continent in a few short years, but in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia the country slowly decayed. Though the viceroys who followed each other in rapid succession were selected from among the greatest grandees of Spain, they were held to an increasingly rigid account, and the smallest concession to commerce or a failure to send home the utmost farthing which could be wrung from the people was severely and peremptorily punished. Their jurisdiction extended over all Spanish South America; the captains-general of New Granada, Venezuela, and Chile, the royal audience of Bolivia, the president of Ecuador, and the governors of Tuc.u.man, Paraguay, and Buenos Aires being all nominally subject to their orders. But in practice these widely separated divisions of the continent were largely independent. Lima was, however, the political, commercial, and social centre of South America. To its port came from Panama the goods destined for Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and even Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Many of the viceroys were lovers of letters, and the university produced scholars and authors not unworthy comparison with those of the Old World. The continual influx of Spaniards of distinguished Castilian ancestry and gentle training made the language of even the common people singularly pure, and the sonorous elegance of the Spanish tongue as spoken during the cla.s.sical period has been best preserved in the comparative isolation of Peru. The influence of the bishops and priests, the Jesuits and the Franciscans, was hardly inferior to that of the officials. The clergy controlled education; every village had its parish priest who compelled the Indians to go to ma.s.s and made them pay heavily for the privilege; the Inquisition was early introduced and performed its dreadful functions without let or hindrance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL VIEW OF LIMA, SHOWING THE CATHEDRAL.]

The regulations which attempted to confine the oppression of the Indians within bearable limits were persistently violated, not only by private individuals, but by the corregidors themselves. Kidnapping was reduced to a system, and often all the male adults of a village were dragged off to work in the mines, leaving only the women and children to till the fields. The corregidors went into partners.h.i.+p with merchants, and the poor Indians were compelled to purchase articles for which they had no use, and thrown into slavery to work out the debt if they failed to pay.

The wiser viceroys did not waste their energies in vain efforts to mitigate the profitable abuses. They devoted their attention rather to the exaction of the last penny of taxes, to be spent in maintaining the horde of office-holders, or to be remitted to Spain. So rigidly was taxation enforced and so successful were the Spaniards in finding rich mines of silver, gold, and mercury, that early in the seventeenth century the revenue had reached the sum--enormous in those days of low prices--of nearly five hundred thousand pounds, of which about half was regularly sent to Madrid. Foreign nations could not effectively interfere with Spain's commercial and fiscal monopoly. The Isthmus was in her hands, and the voyage through Magellan's Straits or around Cape Horn was too stormy and uncertain for the slow, clumsy s.h.i.+ps of that age, and only a few English and Dutch expeditions, half-trading, half-piratical, ravaged the coast towns in the seventeenth century.

The most memorable event of Peru's history during the seventeenth century was the revelation of the sovereign virtues of quinine. The Lima physicians were unable to cure the Countess of Chinchon, the viceroy's wife, of a stubborn attack of malarial fever, but the rector of the Jesuit college had received some fragments of an unknown bark from a Jesuit missionary to whom they had been given by an Indian in the mountain wilds of southern Ecuador. Doses of this quickly restored the vice-queen, and when Linnaeus named the world's plants in scientific order, he called the genus to which the tree belongs chinchona, from the viceroy, through whom its virtues had come to notice.

The succession of the Bourbons to the Spanish Crown, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, brought about a considerable change of colonial policy. To England was conceded the privilege of exporting negroes to South America, and French vessels were permitted to come round the Horn and trade at Peruvian ports. The latter concession was soon revoked and the commerce of the Pacific coast again became a monopoly for the ring of merchants at Cadiz. The Atlantic, however, by this time swarmed with s.h.i.+ps of all the European maritime Powers, and it was impossible to prevent smuggling at the Caribbean and Argentine ports. The Madrid government reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was impossible to administer effectually from Lima the provinces which were commercially tributary to the Caribbean Sea. In 1740 Bogota, on the populous plateau of eastern New Granada, was made the capital of a new viceroyalty, under whose jurisdiction were placed the captaincy-general of Venezuela and the presidency of Quito. Buenos Aires was a resort for contraband traders under non-Spanish flags, and smuggling through that port so increased that goods coming from Spain by the Panama route were undersold in the markets of Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, and even Peru itself. In 1776 the southern Atlantic region was detached from Lima, and to the new viceroyalty of Buenos Aires were attached not only the Plate provinces--Buenos Aires and Paraguay--but also that part of Chile which lay east of the Andes, as well as Tuc.u.man and the audiencia of Charcas as far north as Lake t.i.ticaca. By these changes Peru was reduced to its present dimensions, except that Chile remained attached as a semi-independent captaincy-general.

Three times since its foundation had Lima been nearly destroyed by earthquakes, but none of them was to be compared with the convulsion which in 1746 reduced the whole city to a shapeless ma.s.s of ruins. More than a thousand people perished; a great wave engulfed Callao, drowning half the population and carrying great s.h.i.+ps far inland.

The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 was effected without difficulty. In the neighbourhood of Lima alone they owned five thousand negro slaves and property to the value of two million dollars, and every penny of their immense acc.u.mulations was confiscated by the government.

The great Indian rebellion which had so long been expected broke out in 1780 under the leaders.h.i.+p of Tupac Amaru, the lineal descendant of the last of the reigning Inca emperors. In Peru proper it did not spread beyond the southern frontier provinces and the story of its suppression belongs to Bolivia. The authorities were so alarmed that the reforms, to procure which Tupac had risked and lost his life, were shortly after voluntarily adopted. The vitality and fighting qualities of the half-breeds now stood revealed, and the Creoles, jealous of imported officials and dissatisfied at their exclusion from places of honour and profit, realised that a weapon lay ready to their hand when they should determine upon revolution.

General Theodore de Croix, a Fleming, was entrusted with the reorganisation and reform made necessary by the Indian rebellion. The corregidors, petty tyrants over whom no effective control could be maintained, were abolished; the country was divided into a few great provinces, each ruled by an intendente to whom were responsible the subdelgados who had charge of local affairs, and measures were taken for the enforcement of the laws intended to protect the Indians.

By the year 1790 these valuable reforms had been put into effect, but they came too late. Ideas of liberty had begun to infiltrate into the educated cla.s.ses, and among the Creoles the abstract right of Peru to autonomous government became the subject of secret though widespread discussion. A succession of able and liberal viceroys, however, averted the danger for the time, and the outbreak of the revolution in the rest of South America found Peru ruled by Abascal, whose energy, foresight, and determination not only prevented an insurrection at Lima, but nearly saved all South America to Spain.

CHAPTER V

THE WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

The storm soon to burst over South America was gathering when Viceroy Abascal a.s.sumed the reins of power in 1806. He made no pretensions to statesmans.h.i.+p, but it did not escape his shrewd soldier's eye and common sense that French revolutionary ideas would soon make trouble. Her very existence threatened in the t.i.tan conflict then devastating Europe, Spain could not be relied upon to spare any of her soldiers to guard her colonies. He must take care of himself. Wasting no time in seeking to propitiate the revolutionary elements, he quietly set to work to organise and arm an efficient army while vigilantly watching the course of events.