The dogged Paraguayan Indians, ancestors of the infantry which, under Lopez,[321] died so bravely under the fire of the Brazilian guns, would, in their red cloaks and scanty linen clothes, have marched from _capilla_[322] and from mission against the enemies of the ‘father-priests’. Seventy-eight Jesuits were marched off to Buenos Ayres, and then shipped off to Europe[323] to join their fellows, who had been brought together by the ministers of the most liberal King who ever filled the Spanish throne from every quarter of the world. Having expelled the Jesuits, Bucareli was bound by the exigencies of his position to calumniate them. Perhaps, as an official, hidebound in his belief in the inalterable right of Governments to commit injustices, he believed all that he wrote. For the welfare of humanity, one could hope he knew all that he wrote was false. What hope is there left for mankind as long as addle-headed, honest men see naught but justice in whatever order they receive? Better a thousand times a rogue who knows he is a rogue than a good, well-intentioned, blundering man quite unaware he is a fool. But, still, he had to justify himself either upon his own account or for the benefit of that posterity to conciliate which so many public men have paltered with the truth. So his first care was to extract a letter from thirty Indians whom he chose to dignify with the title of the mayors of the thirty towns, first having, as he says himself in a letter to the Conde de Aranda, the minister of Charles III., dressed them in the Spanish fashion, and treated them in such a way that they might know how much their lot had been improved.[324] The letter, written originally in Guaraní,[325] bears upon every line of it the dictation of the Governor. After a fine paragraph of salutations, it goes on to give the King many and repeated thanks (‘muchas y repetidas gracias’) for having sent his Excellency Captain-General Don Francisco Bucareli, ‘who has fulfilled, for the love of God and for the love of your Majesty, all the just orders which your Majesty laid to his charge, aiding our poverty, and clothing us like gentlemen.’ Most people, even the heathen, like those who help their poverty and clothe them in the garb of gentlemen. It had not occurred to the poor Indians that the fine clothes might turn out liveries. The mayors all sign their Indian names, which seems to give the lie to the accusation that the Jesuits kept them ignorant. The letter, dated Buenos Ayres, March 10, 1768, seems to show that the Indians, be they who they might have been, were not free agents at the time they wrote. The Indians’ letter duly despatched, the Governor indited a report, in which he fairly and with circumstance reiterates all the old charges against the Jesuits in Paraguay which the inventive brain of Cardenas had first conceived; but to them he adds several little touches of his own, which show he had some observation and an imaginative mind.