Part 803

The Rio de la Plata, or River of Silver, was discovered in 1515 by the Spanish explorer, Juan de Solis, who landed incautiously and was killed by the natives. In 1519 this "Sweet Sea," as Solis called it, was visited again by Magellan, in the course of the voyage which made known the great strait which bears his name. The first, however, to ascend the important river for any distance, and to attempt the establishing of Spanish settlements upon it, was Sebastian Cabot, in 1526, after he had become chief pilot to the king of Spain. He sailed up the majestic stream to the junction of the Paraguay and the Parana, and then explored both channels, in turn, for long distances beyond. "Cabot passed the following two years in friendly relations with the Guaranis, in whose silver ornaments originated the name of La Plata, and thence of the Argentine Republic, the name having been applied by Cabot to the stream now called the Paraguay. That able and sagacious man now sent to Spain two of his most trusted followers with an account of Paraguay and its resources, and to seek the authority and reinforcements requisite for their acquisition. Their request was favourably received, but so tardily acted on that in despair the distinguished navigator quitted the region of his discoveries after a delay of five years." In 1534, the enterprise abandoned by Cabot was taken up by a wealthy Spanish courtier, Don Pedro de Mendoza, who received large powers, and who fitted out an expedition of 2,000 men, with 100 horses, taking with him eight priests. Proceeding but a hundred miles up the Plata, Mendoza founded a town on its southwestern shore, which, in compliment to the fine climate of the region, he named Buenos Ayres. As long as they kept at peace with the natives, these adventurers fared well; but when war broke out, as it did ere long, they were reduced to great straits for food. Mendoza, broken down with disappointments and hardships, resigned his powers to his lieutenant, Ayolas, and sailed for home, but died on the way. Ayolas, with part of his followers, ascended to a point on the Paraguay some distance above its junction with the Parana, where he founded a new city, calling it Asuncion. This was in 1537; and Ayolas perished that same year in an attempt to make his way overland to Peru. The survivors of the colony were left in command of an officer named Irala, who proved to be a most capable man. The settlement at Buenos Ayres was abandoned and all concentrated at Asuncion, where they numbered 600 souls. In 1542 they were joined by a new party of 400 adventurers from Spain, who came out with Cabeza de Vaca—a hero of strange adventures in Florida—now appointed Adelantado of La Plata. Cabeza de Vaca had landed with part of his forces on the Brazilian coast, at a point eastward from Asuncion, and boldly marched across country, making an important exploration and establishing friendly relations with the Guaranis. But he was not successful in his government, and the discontented colonists summarily deposed him, shipping him off to Spain, with charges against him, and restoring Irala to the command of their affairs. This irregularity seems to have been winked at by the home authorities, and Irala was scarcely interfered with for a number of years. "The favourable reports which had reached Spain of the climate and capabilities of Paraguay were such as to divert thither many emigrants who would otherwise have turned their faces toward Mexico or Peru. It was the constant endeavour of Irala to level the distinctions which separated the Spaniards from the natives and to encourage intermarriages between them. This policy, in the course of time, led to a marked result,—namely, to that singular combination of outward civilization and of primitive simplicity which was to be found in the modern Paraguayan race until it was annihilated under the younger Lopez. … Irala, in fact, created a nation. The colony under his administration became numerous and wealthy. … He was the life and soul of the colony, and his death, which occurred in 1557 at the village of Ita, near Asuncion, when he had attained the age of 70 years, was lamented alike by Spaniards and Guaranis. … The Spaniards brought with them few if any women, and if a certain proportion of Spanish ladies arrived later they were not in sufficient numbers to affect the general rule, which was that the Spanish settlers were allied to Guarani wives. Thus was formed the modern mixed Paraguayan race. In a very short time, therefore, by means of the ties of relationship, a strong sympathy grew up between the Spaniards and the Guaranis, or those of Guarani blood, and a recognition of this fact formed the basis of the plan of government founded by the great Irala. {2482} The lot of the natives of Paraguay, as compared with the natives of the other Spanish dominions in the New World, was far from being a hard one. There were no mines to work. The Spaniards came there to settle, rather than to amass fortunes with which to return to Europe. The country was abundantly fertile, and such wealth as the Spaniards might amass consisted in the produce of their fields or the increase of their herds, which were amply sufficient to support them. Consequently, all they required of the natives, for the most part, was a moderate amount of service as labourers or as herdsmen."

_R. G. Watson, Spanish and Portuguese South America, volume 1, chapters 5 and 16._

ALSO IN: _R. Southey, History of Brazil, volume 1, chapters 2-3, 5-7, and 11._

_R. Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, chapters 16-23._

_Father Charlevoix, History of Paraguay, books 1-3._

PARAGUAY: A. D. 1608-1873. The rule of the Jesuits. The Dictatorship of Dr. Francia and of Lopez I. and Lopez II. Disastrous War with Brazil.

"Under Spanish rule, from the early part of the 16th century as a remote dependency of Peru, and subsequently of Buenos Ayres, Paraguay had been almost entirely abandoned to the Jesuits [see JESUITS: A. D. 1542-1649] as a virgin ground on which to try the experiment of their idea of a theocratic government. The Loyola Brethren, first brought in in 1608, baptized the Indian tribes, built towns, founded missions [and communities of converts called Reductions, meaning that they had been reduced into the Christian faith], gave the tamed savages pacific, industrious, and passively obedient habits, married them by wholesale, bidding the youth of the two sexes stand up in opposite rows, and saving them the trouble of a choice by pointing out to every Jack his Jenny; drilled and marshalled them to their daily tasks in processions and at the sound of the church bells, headed by holy images; and in their leisure hours amused them with Church ceremonies and any amount of music and dancing and merry-making. They allowed each family a patch of ground and a grove of banana and other fruit trees for their sustenance, while they claimed the whole bulk of the land for themselves as 'God's patrimony,' bidding those well-disciplined devotees save their souls by slaving with their bodies in behalf of their ghostly masters and instructors. With the whole labouring population under control, these holy men soon waxed so strong as to awe into subjection the few white settlers whose estates dated from the conquest; and by degrees, extending their sway from the country into the towns, and even into the capital, Asuncion, they set themselves above all civil and ecclesiastical authority, snubbing the intendente of the province and worrying the bishop of the diocese. Driven away by a fresh outburst of popular passions in 1731, and brought back four years later by the strong hand of the Spanish Government, they made common cause with it, truckled to the lay powers whom they had set at naught, and shared with them the good things which they had at first enjoyed undivided. All this till the time of the general crusade of the European powers against their order, when they had to depart from Paraguay as well as from all other Spanish dominions in 1767. In the early part of the present century, when the domestic calamities of Spain determined a general collapse of her power in the American colonies, Paraguay raised its cry for independence, and constituted itself into a separate Republic in 1811. But, although the party of emancipation was the strongest and seized the reins of government, there were still many among the citizens who clung to their connection with the mother country, and these were known as Peninsulares; and there were many more who favoured the scheme of a federal union of Paraguay with the Republics of the Plate, and these went by the name of Porteños, owing to the importance they attached to the dependence of their country on Buenos Ayres (the puerto or harbour), the only outlet as well as the natural head of the projected confederation.

See ARGENTINE REPUBLIC: A. D. 1580-1777.

All these dissenters were soon disposed of by the ruthless energy of one man, Juan Gaspar Rodriguez, known under the name of Dr. Francia. This man, the son of a Mamaluco, or Brazilian half-caste, with Indian blood in his veins, a man of stern, gloomy and truculent character, with a mixture of scepticism and stoicism, was one of those grim, yet grotesque, heroes according to Mr. Carlyle's heart whom it is now the fashion to call 'Saviours of society.' A Doctor of Divinity, issuing from the Jesuit seminary at Cordova, but practising law at Asuncion, he made his way from the Municipal Council to the Consular dignity of the New Republic, and assumed a Dictatorship, which laid the country at his discretion … (1814-1840), wielding the most unbounded power till his death, at the advanced age of 83. With a view, or under pretext of stifling discontent and baffling conspiracy within and warding off intrigue or aggression from without, he rid himself of his colleagues, rivals, and opponents, by wholesale executions, imprisonments, proscriptions, and confiscations, and raised a kind of Chinese wall all round the Paraguayan territory, depriving it of all trade or intercourse, and allowing no man to enter or quit his dominions without an express permission from himself. Francia's absolutism was a monomania, though there was something like method in his madness. There were faction and civil strife and military rule in Paraguay for about a twelvemonth after his death. In the end, a new Constitution, new Consuls—one of whom, Carlos Antonio Lopez, a lawyer, took upon himself to modify the Charter in a strictly despotic sense, had himself elected President, first for ten years, then for three, and again for ten more, managing thus to reign alone and supreme for 21 years (1841-1862). On his demise he bequeathed the Vice-Presidency to his son, Francisco Solano Lopez, whom he had already trusted with the command of all the forces, and who had no difficulty in having himself appointed President for life in an Assembly where there was only one negative vote. The rule of Francia in his later years, and that of the first Lopez throughout his reign, though tyrannical and economically improvident, had not been altogether unfavourable to the development of public prosperity. The population, which was only 97,480 in 1796 and 400,000 in 1825, had risen to 1,337,431 at the census of 1857. Paraguay had then a revenue of 12,441,323f., no debt, no paper money, and the treasury was so full as to enable Lopez II. to muster an army of 62,000 men, with 200 pieces of artillery, in the field and in his fortresses. {2483} Armed with this two-edged weapon, the new despot, whose perverse and violent temper bordered on insanity, corrupted by several years' dissipation in Paris, and swayed by the influence of a strong and evil-minded woman, flattered also by the skill he fancied he had shown when he played at soldiers as his father's general in early youth, had come to look upon himself as a second Napoleon, and allowed himself no rest till he had picked a quarrel with all his neighbours and engaged in a war with Brazil and with the Republics of the Plate, which lasted five years (1865-1870).

See BRAZIL: A. D. 1825-1865.

At the end of it nearly the whole of the male population had been led like sheep to the slaughter; and the tyrant himself died 'in the last ditch,' not indeed fighting like a man, but killed like a dog when his flight was cut off, and not before he had sacrificed 100,000 of his combatants, doomed to starvation, sickness, and unutterable hardship a great many of the scattered and houseless population (400,000, as it is calculated), and so ruined the country that the census of 1873 only gave 221,079 souls, of whom the females far more than doubled the males."

_A. Gallenga, South America, chapter 16._

ALSO IN: _Father Charlevoix, History of Paraguay._

_J. R. Rengger and Longchamps, The Reign of Dr. Francia._

_T. Carlyle, Dr. Francia (Essays, volume 6)._

_C. A. Washburn, History of Paraguay._

_R. F. Burton, Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay._

_T. J. Page, La Plata, the Argentine Confederation and Paraguay, chapters 27-30._

_T. Griesinger, The Jesuits, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1)._

_J. E. Darras, General History of the Catholic Church, period 7, chapter 7 (volume 4)._

PARAGUAY: A. D. 1870-1894. The Republic under a new Constitution.

Since the death of Lopez, the republic of Paraguay has enjoyed a peaceful, uneventful history and has made fair progress in recovery from its prostration. The Brazilian army of occupation was withdrawn in 1876. Under a new constitution, the executive authority is entrusted to a president, elected for four years, and the legislative to a congress of two houses, senate and deputies. Don Juan G. Gonzales entered, in 1890, upon a presidential term which expires in 1894.

PARAGUAY: End--------

PARALI, The.

See ATHENS: B. C. 594.

PARALUS, The.

The official vessel of the ancient Athenian government, for the conveyance of despatches and other official service.

PARASANG, The.

The parasang was an ancient Persian measure of distance, about which there is no certain knowledge. Xenophon and Herodotus represented it as equivalent to 30 Greek stadia; but Strabo regarded it as being of variable length. Modern opinion seems to incline toward agreement with Strabo, and to conclude that the parasang was a merely rough estimate of distance, averaging, according to computations by Colonel Chesney and others, something less than three geographical miles. The modern farsang or farsakh of Persia is likewise an estimated distance, which generally, however, overruns three geographical miles.

_E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, chapter 10, note B (volume 1)._

PARAWIANAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: CARIBS AND THEIR KINDRED.

PARICANIANS, The.

The name given by Herodotus to a people who anciently occupied the territory of modern Baluchistan.

_G. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, Persia, chapter 1._

PARILIA, PULILIA, The.

The anniversary of the foundation of Rome, originally a shepherds' festival. It was celebrated on the 21st of April.

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 21, with foot-note._

PARIS: Start--------

PARIS: The beginning.

A small island in the Seine, which now forms an almost insignificant part of the great French capital, was the site of a rude town called Lutetia, or Luketia, or Lucotecia, when Cæsar extended the dominion of Rome over that part of Gaul. It was the chief town or stronghold of the Parisii, one of the minor tribes of the Gallic people, who were under the protection of the more powerful Senones and who occupied but a small territory. They were engaged in river traffic on the Seine and seem to have been prosperous, then and afterwards. "Strabo calls this p]ace Lucototia; Ptolemy, Lucotecia; Julian, Luketia; Ammianus calls it at first Lutetia, and afterward Parisii, from the name of the people. It is not known when nor why the designation was changed, but it is supposed to have been changed during the reign of Julian. Three laws in the Theodosian Code, referred to Valentinian and Valens, for the year 365, bear date at Parisii, and since then this name has been preserved in all the histories and public records."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 2, chapter 7, note._

See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

PARIS: Julian's residence.

Before Julian ("the Apostate") became emperor, while, as Cæsar (355-361), he governed Gaul, his favorite residence, when not in camp or in the field, was at the city of the Parisii, which he called his "dear Luketia." The change of name to Parisii (whence resulted the modern name of Paris) is supposed to have taken place during his subsequent reign. "Commanding the fruitful valleys of the Seine, the Marne, and the Oise, the earliest occupants were merchants and boatmen, who conducted the trade of the rivers, and as early as the reign of Tiberius had formed a powerful corporation. During the revolts of the Bagauds in the third century, it acquired an unhappy celebrity as the stronghold from which they harassed the peace of the surrounding region. Subsequently, when the advances of the Germans drove the government from Trèves, the emperors selected the town of the Parisii as a more secure position. They built a palace there, and an entrenched camp for the soldiers; and very soon afterward several of those aqueducts and amphitheatres which were inseparable accompaniments of Roman life. It was in that palace, which the traveller still regards with curiosity in those mouldering remains of it known as the 'Palais des Thermes,' that Julian found his favorite residence."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, book 2, chapter 7._

PARIS: The capital of Clovis.

Clovis, the Frank conqueror—founder of the kingdom of the united Frank tribes in Gaul—fixed his residence first at Soissons [486], after he had overthrown Syagrius. "He afterwards chose Paris for his abode, where he built a church dedicated to the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul. But the epoch at which that town passed into his power is uncertain."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians, chapter 5._

{2484}

PARIS: A. D. 511-752. Under the Merovingians.

See FRANCE: A. D. 511-752.

PARIS: A. D. 845. Sacked by the Normans.

"France was heavily afflicted: a fearfully cold year was followed by another still colder and more inclement. The North wind blew incessantly all through the Winter, all through the pale and leafless Spring. The roots of the vines were perished by the frost—the wolves starved out of their forests, even in Aquitaine. … Meanwhile the Danish hosts were in bright activity. Regner Lodbrok and his fellows fitted out their fleet, ten times twelve dragons of the sea. Early in the bleak Spring they sailed, and the stout-built vessels ploughed cheerily through the crashing ice on the heaving Seine. … Rouen dared not offer any opposition. The Northmen quietly occupied the City: we apprehend that some knots or bands of the Northmen began even now to domicile themselves there, it being scarcely possible to account for the condition of Normandy under Rollo otherwise than by the supposition, that the country had long previously received a considerable Danish population. Paris, the point to which the Northmen were advancing by land and water, was the key of France, properly so–called. Paris taken, the Seine would become a Danish river: Paris defended, the Danes might be restrained, perhaps expelled. The Capetian 'Duchy of France,' not yet created by any act of State, was beginning to be formed through the increasing influence of the future Capital. … Fierce as the Northmen generally were, they exceeded their usual ferocity. … With such panic were the Franks stricken, that they gave themselves up for lost. Paris island, Paris river, Paris bridges, Paris towers, were singularly defensible: the Palaisdes-Thermes, the monasteries, were as so many castles. Had the inhabitants, for their own sakes, co-operated with Charles-le-Chauve [who had stationed himself with a small army at Saint-Denis], the retreat of the Danes would have been entirely cut off; but they were palsied in mind and body; neither thought of resistance nor attempted resistance, and abandoned themselves to despair. On Easter Eve [March 28, 845] the Danes entered Paris. … The priests and clerks deserted their churches: the monks fled, bearing with them their shrines: soldiers, citizens and sailors abandoned their fortresses, dwellings and vessels: the great gate was left open, Paris emptied of her inhabitants, the city a solitude. The Danes hied at once to the untenanted monasteries: all valuable objects had been removed or concealed, but the Northmen employed themselves after their fashion. In the church of Saint-Germain-des-pres, they swarmed up the pillars and galleries, and pulled the roof to pieces: the larchen beams being sought as excellent ship-timber. In the city, generally, they did not commit much devastation. They lodged themselves in the empty houses, and plundered all the moveables. … The Franks did not make any attempt to attack or dislodge the enemy, but a more efficient power compelled the Danes to retire from the city; disease raged among them, dysentery—a complaint frequently noticed, probably occasioned by their inordinate potations of the country-wine." Under these circumstances, Regner Lodbrok consented to quit Paris on receiving 7,000 pounds of silver,—a sum reckoned to be equivalent to 520,000 livres. "This was the first Danegeld paid by France, an unhappy precedent, and yet unavoidable: the pusillanimity of his subjects compelled Charles to adopt this disgraceful compromise."

_Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, book 1, chapter 3 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN: _C. F. Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, chapter 9._

PARIS: A. D. 857.-861. Twice ravaged by the Northmen.