FRANCIA'S REIGN OF TERROR.

Tam two volumes to which this publication is a sequel, narrated the various travels and adventures of the elder Mr. ROBERTSON, closing with the arrival of a younger brother at the capital of Para- guay, to share his prosperous fortunes ; the accession of FRANCIA to solitary power by the votes of a House of Assembly swamped by intriguers and ignorant peasant planters ; and the departure of Mr. ROBERTSON for England, on his own business, and a mission from the new Dictator, which came to nothing in consequence of a de- tention at Buenos Ayres. The present volume takes up the tale where the other broke off; and consists of personal adventures, a description of Paraguay, and a narrative of FRANCIA'S proceedings during his government. The personal adventures comprise the elder Mr. Itonmrsox's robbery, imprisonment, and imminent danger in ascending the La Plata ; as well as his brother's residence at As- sumption till they were both banished by the Dictator—ostensibly in consequence of this unlucky robbery, which deprived him of some expected munitions. The description of the valuable products of the country are distinct ; that of the country itself glowing, and somewhat too much calmr de rose, we should opine, for a half-set- tled tropical land, with its heat and its insects. The narrative of FRANCIA'S "Reign of Terror" consists of a pretty full and clear account of the means by which he maintained himself in power, with many anecdotes of the num and of his oppressive government. As a history, this part is deficient, leaving domestic or foreign events almost untouched : and it seems by no means complete even as a portrait of the tyrant,—gaps being left in the narrative ; the information being often derived from mferior ob- servers, terrified by the man, and prejudiced against him ; whilst the impimpartiality of the Messrs. Ronawrsox is questionable—no evil traits of FRANCIA losing any thing in their account, whilst we look in vain for any softening or relief to the picture. Still, in- complete as it is, the Reign of Terror furnishes a singular account of a strange tyranny i and a strange tyrant, without parallel in his- tory, because there s no example in history of such a society, and, take him altogether, of such a man. We shall therefore, as a variety, confine ourselves to this point of the volume : but fully to comprehend the narrative, the reader must have the character of the country, of the people, and of the Dictator himself, present to his mind.

Paraguay is an inland district of South America, lying about mid-way between the Atlantic and the Andes, and bounded by the rivers Parana and Paraguay, which, meeting the vet young La Plata, form conjunctively the main feeders of that mighty stream. Its name has a European celebrity, from the effiwts of the. Jesuits to civilize the Indians, and the expulsion of the Fathers by the Court of Spain, when they were said to have established an Arcadian Utopia. Mr. ROBERTSON, however, tells a different talc; representing the Indians as really bond-labourers to the order, for whuae wealth and aggran- dizement they toiled. The country appears never to have been otherwise than very scantily peopled ; from three to four hundred thousand souls being the utmost limit it has ever attained, and the mass of this population being slaves or natives. The Spanish and Creole society,* like that in most of the settlements of Spain and Portugal, was of a very singular kind ; possessing a more corrupt morality than that of Continental Europe, without the disguise that veils it from public view. Combined with this was much- softness and agreeableness of manners ; great kindness of heart, with little control of the fiercer passions ; a strange simplicity of thought ; and an unsophistication in speech, dress, and behaviour, upon matters of corporeal necessity, which brought astonishment to the mind ERA colour to the cheeks of new "arrivals" from England. The gene- rality were ignorant of letters, and, in the inland places, of every knowledge beyond the daily life of their village or village-like towns : the acquirements of the educated few merely extended to the worda of Latin, and, to bad law, bad medicine' and worse divinity ; whilst languor and helplessness, in any thing beyond their routine expe- rience, characterized the inhabitants, of Paraguay at least. The Chief exceptions were the natives of old Spain ; but these the Revo- lution had proseribed,—many having been slain or banished, and those who remained living suspected and on sufferance.

Such was the state of society on which Dr. FRANCE\ had to work, after his reputation and his intrigues had given him the chief power in a government patched up to meet the exigencies of society and Creole theories of the rights of man. But although far above his compatriots in comprehension and natural qualities, with a more disciplined mind and some knowledge, FaANctA was still a native of Paraguay. Ris education at tile university had given him no more law, and no larger views of jurisprudence, than it gave to other South American doctors : his eminence as an advocate was due to

• It may be necessary to remind some readers, that a Creole is a born colonist of pure European descent. Confounding, as many people do, a Creole with a Mulatto, or some of the other five varieties of mixed blood, is a matter of mortal offence in many colonies. his own keenness, industry, and incorruptibility exercised in the meshes of Spanish colonial law. His endeavours to supply the defects of his education by study were highly praiseworthy ; but his books must of necessity have been few, and not of a kind to give a complete view of any thing. Moreover, lie wanted the only safe comment—an extensive acquaintance with various societies, and an observation of living affimirs ; so that his piecemeal reading, whether of ancient times or of the modern history of Naaol.aox, (whom he affected to imitate,) gave him a false and exaggerated no- tion of government and policy, because the letter of his knowledge was inapplicable to existing things. His stern, close, and cynical nature—the unforgiving disposition which refused to see a dying father t—his great abilities and varied acquirements—even his very virtues isolated him front the lighthearted simpletons by whomn he was surrounded, and raised him as much above them as a planter israiscd above his slaves or a rustic above his cattle.

The origin of FRANCIS'S aim, and the causes of his cruelty, are not clearly made out. We heard, indeed, at the close of the

second volume, that he was under the ban of the flintier Go- vernment ; but whether be aimed at supreme power from an innate lust of rule—or, having engaged in the turmoil of poli-

ties, was partly stimulated by rivalry, partly driven by oppo- sition and a want of security, to displace his opponents and accu- mulate all power in himself—does not appear. Nor is it perfectly plain, though INICSSN. ROBERTSON vouch the fimet over and over,

that FRANCIA was like NERO, a monster of wanton cruelty. On the contrary, we have no very clear proofs that he used his power to sacrifice his personal enemies ; and, taking every fact they tell of him au pied de la lettre, we can trace in most of his doings a purpose couching under a seemingly wild caprice ; or he erred—a very common error—by imitating injudiciously.

The character of the man, and the mode in which he first attained power and then secured it, are more fully narrated. Having got himself elected Consul, and then Dictator, FRANCIA seems to have determined to centre all powers in himself, and to make his will law. Following that instinct which instructs us intuitively in the necessities of our position, and which none obey more quickly than tyrants, he trusted to force tdone to uphold him, and raised an army, small in number, but sufficient to overawe the simple in- habitants of Paraguay, especially backed by the superstitious dread with which FRANCE& was regarded. Having established guards, and secured thenu to himself by the powerful motives of hop e mind femur, his first indication of approaching despotism was the encouragement

of military insolence and then of military violence. His next step was to organize a system of espionage which at last so extensively rami- fied under the influence of corruption and fear, that social and even

domestic confidence were at an end, and all the gayeties and chari- ties of life destroyed. A conspiracy detected through the practice of confession—Mowed by another, which was fomented by a foreign enemy, a chief or rather bandit of the Pampas—gave the Dictator an opportunity of crushing the most influential people by death, imprisonment, or banishment ; and hencetbrth his will %MS really law, and was exercised in a way that, but tbr the peculiar circumstances of country already alluded to, would occasicmally look like insanity. He took a fancy to have part of Assumption

paved, (probably having read that it was a mark of civilization ;) and by forced requisition he procured the labour of every inhabi-

tant io the district of the quarries, pressed every vessel that arrived at the city, and set all the prisoners to work as soon as the stone arrived. With the determination to have his capital regularly laid out, and theodolite in train, (he had got a smattering of' ma(hema- tics.) the Dictator proceeded to plan his new streets : and coolly gave every resident notice to pull down his house it' it interfered with the intended line. His real motives for isolating Paraguay from the rest of the world, are not very obvious. The frequent revolu- tions and insurrections in the other South American States, held out no temptation to a despot to allow his people a free communication with their inhabitants ; and an ingress of such Europeans as find their way to South America, might have been pregnant with danger, as forming a nucleus for the disaffected to rally round. FRANCIA, however, expressed h himself anxious to open a political and commercial intercourse with Great Britain : it was only a series

of' unlucky contre-temps which caused the banishment of the Messrs. ROBERTSON ; and to time last he would have traded, could be have been supplied with arms,—which, from the distracted state of the

interven ing countries, was impracticable. His rage against the English was, that they would not coerce neutrals ; he seemed to fancy we should treat all the world as he treated the Paraguayans. FRANCIA seems to have been engaged but once in actual war ; and then discovered no lack of military skill in planning a cam- paign, though his training had been that of a civilian, and he did

not attain power till turned of' fifty. His strategy was simple, but broad and effective : he defended the accessible points of his river,

and then devastated the enemy's territory with fire and sword. His management of his own army, as described by our authors, was Machiavellian.

" His first care was to call in and to have repaired under his own immediate inspection every straggling musket and rusty blunderbuss which could be col- lected. The number of Guards or guarteleros, so often mentioned heretofore, was augmented, and all higher rank than that of captain abolished. The Dic-

tator himself became general, colonel, paymaster, quartermaster, and head tailor to the regiment. Not a musket was delivered out but by his own hands.

Grenadier bats and coat trimmings were not only devised, but fitted, stored, and distributed by himself. He held personal communication with every man in his regiment of Guards ; he pampered, flattered, paid, and caressed them. At 1- This anecdote was quoted in our former notice ; Spectator, No. 529; 18th August 1838, the same time, he •diffused among them a spirit of constant and ever-jealous rivalry, and of aspiration to his favour and countenance. He began his system of indulgence with the private, and diminished it as he went through the grades of corporal, sergeant, ensign, lieutenant, till it faded into nothing with the captain. The superior rank of this last was thus counterbalanced by the personal favour more openly shown by the Dictator to the captain's subordi- nates. But the feeling of importance thus created in them was again coun- teracted by Francia's exaction, from the soldiers and subalterns, of a passive obedience to the captain's orders. " Without knowing how, the captain thus felt himself in possession of ac- tual command divested of moral power; and the soldier, as little knowing how, felt that, although he must obey his captain and other superior officers, the tam of a straw, the nod of the Dictator, might reduce the captain to the ranks and raise the private to the command of a company. The jealousy thus ex- cited in every superior officer toward the one next subordinate to him, and vice versa, created a prying and malicious vigilance of the conduct of each into that of the other, and produced, as a never-failing result of misbehaviour, a re- port of thecase to Francia. Again, the hope of advancemeot fostered hy the Dictator in sergeants, corporals, and privates, kept them within the sphere of duty on the one hand, and on the alert to report, at head-quarters, any derelic- tion of it on the part of their commissioned othcers. At the same time, an esprit de corps was not only encouraged but inculcated, in virtue of which every man ill the regiment considered rilmself superior to any mere civilian."

Example of his mode of maintaining rigid subordination and dis- cipline— " A lieutenant of the name of Iturbide, presuming upon the Dictator's fancied partiality for him, disobeyed, upon some trivial occasion, his captain ; and assigned as a reason for &dog so. that he was a greater favourite of the Dictator than the captain hiniselt. This boast crone to Frani:ids car. He said not a word to the lieutenant; but, ordering a muster of the Quarteleros, he went up personally to the officer, collared hint, and pulling him out of the ranks, addres,m1 him thus= I found you a beggar, anill made you an officer. I now find you an ill-behaved officer, and I send you back to be a well-behaved beggar. If you are not that, I shall put vett in the stocks, or in a worse place.' s, savine, Francia had the officer stripped of his uniform, clothed in the filthy 'habiliments of a mendicant, and drummed out of the regiment. " In something of the same style were all the conrts-martial of the Dicta- tor conducted. Not even a drunt-head was required around which to assemble them. Francia's dictum was omnipotent, and the execution of it imperative, irreversible, instantaneous. Never Wag a single instance known of commuta- tion of sentence or of mitigation of minishment."

The systent of centralizing all power in himself, displayed in

military affitirs, he also taroptcd in civil. His officials were mere tools ; his secretary of state, a narrow-minded man of routine, who fitncied all government consisted in an exact ob- servance of forms. FRANCIA personally attended to every thing: and such were his suspicion and industry, that when a vessel came up with an English pass, he would not allow her to discharge till he had so far mastered the language as to be able to comprehend the document. See what strangely minute attention he gave to other matters!

" All the artisans whom Francia employed were badly, irregularly, and scantily pail; and vet the ' value received' was so narrowly looked into, mea- sured with such a yet eve, that on one occasion the potent Dictator seized hold of a grenadier's coat' brought to him hy the tailor, and taking up a pair of scissors, a piece of' chalk, :nal a quantity of cloth charged by Mr. Cab- bage as that which had been absorbed by the fit, showed him, and proved to him mechanically and mathematically, that he ran,t have stolen a quarter of a aru1, Snip was sent to the public prison ; and the coat was hung up in the Dictator's andience-chamber, as scarecrow garments are in orchards, a terror to all purloiners. " Not a piece of linen firr soldier's shirts or trous,:,N was purchased without previous inspection by his Excellency', and often, distrustful of Irish and Manchester mamillicturers, (lid he unroll with hrio own hands the piece of good: submitted to inspection. By application to it of the Yam, or yard, he ascer- tained that it was of the length, twenty-five. twenty-six, or twenty-eight yards, labelled on the ticket. to quick-sighted did he Iwcome in the quality of inanufitctured goods, that, finding a 1:rect inanv (if them bad wide inter- stices between the threads, tilled uP with stareh, In h;ed ene Old it the piece washed, and then vien Lung it through . a microscope, ascertained. the nature of its real texture. If he fiat nd, as it must be confessed he often did, the gaps between the thread to be rather Yawning, he allowed the owner half of the prime cost for it, and told hitsi to thank his stars, for that he ought to be imprisoned as a knave and impostor. "Ehis is the way,' said he on one occasion to an English merchant, ' that you hucksters of rags vend your unsound and de- ceitful manufactares over the world. The Jews are cheats, but the English are downright swindlers.'" We remarked in our notice of the former volumes, that FRANCIA bore some resemblance to DIONYSICS Mid if he had not the logi- cal wit of that tyrant of antiquity, he possessed a mixture of pith, causticity, levity, and coolness, almost unparalleled. He would not allow his state prisonersto be termed prisoners—he called them his recluses. His examination or torture room he styled the " chamber of truth." A man ordered to be flogged petitioned against the degradation, saying he would rather be shot: " Very .well," said FRANCIA, "be it so ; " and shot he was. His workmen at first annoyed him with their laziness and incapacity : he erected a gibbet in teriorent ; and a cobler bringing him a licit he disap- proved of, he had him marched under it as an " example," with the satisfitetory information, that if the next was not made better in a given time, he should himself be hanged upon the gallows. And this is said to have stimulated tropical laziness amazingly. Amongst his great antipathies, were the native Spaniards and the clergy : and "When Francis proceeded to annihilate or debase the monastic orders, he converted into barracks sonic of their monasteries. This so exasperated the poor Pelado, [an old Spaniard, a friend of Mr, ilobertson's.1 especially as his hopes at the time were raised to a great pitch of excitement by a false report of a Russian squadron being on its win to Paraguay, that he gave loose to the following remark--' fhe Franciscans .have gone to-day ; but who can tell that Francia's turn to go may not be to-morrow ? ' By some busy and malicious tongue this short hut tidal :treat was conveyed to the cars of the Dictator. He summoned the Pelado to his presence, and. addressed him in these terribly emphatic words= As to when it may be my turn to go, I am not aware ; but this I know, that you shall go beAre are. Next morning the Pelado was brought to the banquillo, (an execution-seat,) placed not fur from Francia's window; and the Dictator delivered with his own hands, to the three soldiers, the three ball-cartridges with which the unfortunate man was to be shot. The aim was not effectual, and the executioners were ordered to despatch him with their bayonets. Upon the whole of this scene of barbarity and blood, Francis. looked from his window, being not distant more than thirty yards from the place of slaughter. " You will ask me, how the Dictator Came to limit the number of men who were to do the work of execution on the Pelado to three? and as little facts are often illustrative of great, sad, and horrible things, I will answer you. He was too economical of the powder and ball, upon which he mainly depended for pmteetion, to give it out in the necessary quantity to render even execution a work of comparative humanity.

"In no subsequent case did he deviate from this practice ; so that in the great number of executions which followed that of the Pelado, in all cases where the ball did not reach the heart or penetrate the head, the sufferer was reduced to a mangled corpse by the process of stabbing him with the bayonet." Passing over many anecdotes of tyranny, which we trust are ex- aggerated, or mirepresented in travelling through several channels of narration, we will give Messrs. RonmersoN's picture of the re- sults which IIIANCIA s government produced.

"From being the most open, frank, and kind-hearted people in the world, the Paraguayans became the most sordid, low, and hypocritical of the human

race. The daemons of discord, jealousy, and distrust, took possession of every habitation in the land. The overruling passion of self-preservation cooled or deadened all the softer feelings and affections. The brother informed against

the sister, the Nvife against the husband; the son betrayed the father, or the father the sill ; and the hosem friend of yesterday became the vile spy and in- former of to-day. All the hinges of society were out of joint. No inhabi- tant of Paraguay could .ay that the man who had broken bread with him to- day, plight mit be the i est rument of his destruction on the morrow. * *

" Thus it canoe to pass, that a people proverbially the most humane, united, hospitable, and enduring in South America, were converted into a community

of beings in whom fear and distrust obliterated all traits of their original cha- mter. Every ma», and alniost every woman too, became cm isolated member of a silenced society. The guitar was laid aside—parties there were none. Each lierson saluted his neighl»uf as he passed him with chilling frigidity ; and, in the anxious desire of every individual to preserve the uneuviable life -he was still permitted to hold, the concerns of all others—their fears, perils, suf- ferings, anti even death—were vii wed with cold indifference, or only thought of as lessons of salutary warning."

This man is yet alive, though in his eightieth year ; and to all apearances he will die a natural death. But did he lead a peaceful or even a tolerable life.? No : he lived, as the contrivance of MONT.. sirs intimated to his flatterer, with the feelings of a man over whom a sword was suspended by a single hair—the dread of assas- sination perpetually haunted him.

" Every cigar that he smoked, though made by his own sister, was carefully unrolled, to see that it contained no-suspicious-looking drug. His provisions he examined with like scrupulfsity; and no one was permitted to come into his presence with even a cane in his hand. Every one who obtained an audi- ence WEIS obliged to stop short at a distance of six paces from the Dictator, and to allow his hands to bang down by his side. " 3Ir. Rengger states, that having, in ignorance, omitted this ceremony, at his first interview with Francia, he was gruffly challenged with a design to assassi- nate him. Loaded pistols and unsheathed sabres were always within the Dic- tator's reach ; people were driven by- his dragoons from the deserted streets through which he rode ; and lie changed his place of rest (if rest, indeed, the jealous and alarmed soot can eyer be said to enjoy) from one abode to another. Sometimes he slept in his own palace, sometimes in one of the Quartels in the town. and sometimes in the cavalry barracks in the country. * * * " The Dictator now rode about, conscious of the enmity and distrust of every good man, and with at breast boiling with hatred toward the few respect- able ones he had left at large. A man's being seen in the streets within one hundred yards of hi in was an unpardonable offence : it was generally visited with imprisonment or exile. One day his horse shyed at an old barrel in front of a house ; instantly the owner of it was arrested. " An informer told him there were still conspiracies hatching, and that there was an intention on the pet of the conspirators to murder hina as he rode through the streets. Instantly all houses in suspicious situatious were levelled with the ground ; lanes Were pulled down, and orange-trees, shrubs, and other places of concealment, were indiscriminately uprooted. Yet would the gloomy tyrant, at night. sometimes prowl about the streets in disguise and alone. fie was unable to confide, except to his own quick ears and disguise, eyes, the work of tracking the machinations of his supposed encodes, of prying Ilium dark and suipicious recesses, and of listening at the doors of those houses in town whose inhabitants he most suspected."

As a series of striking adventures, pictures of society, and sketches of scenery, these volumes are unquestionably both tame- tive and amusing reading. A biography of FRANCIA, or, a history of his government, they certainly do not contain ; but, notwith- standing much vehemence, some exaggeration probably, and we have little doubt sonic (undesigned) distortion and suppression, we

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consider the a valuable though incomplete contribution of histo- rical materials. It has indeed been objected that the authors were not eye-witnesses of much which they relate,—which, seeing that they were banished, could not well have be:en obviated; and that they only tell what they picked up in Buenos Ayres,—which, how- ever, is not the case, as they have given their authorities, some of whom were sufferers under FRANCIA, and all of whom had been in Paraguay. That history contains no exact counterpart of such a tyranny, is true ; but former history had no such society and cir- cumstances. Considering the nature of the people, and the super- stitious fear which FRANCIA'S studious retirement and his mathe- matical and astronomical instruments inspired, his regular army of Irons three to flar thousand men seems enough to overawe a people apparently disarmed : it happens to be the exact proportion which GIBBON has assigned as sufficient for a despot, and which econo- mists have calculated a country can permanently maintain. The fashionable idea of history has a tendency to degrade it to the rank of a gazette or a chronicle. The state of society, the dramatic march of events and purposes, the characters of men, the movements of the mind, and the passions of the heart, are nothing to persons with these notions : they have no other idea of history than as a series of dates and documents.