During this time the population increased. The Dictator favoured Creoles, stimulated the crossing of Indian and foreign blood by severe measures, and carefully chose foreigners for the improvement of the Paraguayan population by means of forced unions; {195} in this way he continued the work of the Jesuits. A homogeneous democracy, a national conscience, was gradually formed. Like all the great American dictators, he stimulated material progress, and rebuilt Assomption, the capital city. He constructed public works, and forts to stop the encroachments of Indians, protected agriculture, and created industries. His ideal was full autonomy in an isolation possibly barbarous. By successive regulations he forced proprietors to sow their lands, to extend the cultivated area; like the Peruvian Incas, he would have none idle in his kingdom; he distributed tasks and enforced their execution. He ruled from 1811 to 1840, a long thirty years, a period attained by no other American dictator but Rosas. His work was rude and imposing; he created a race, and freed his threatened country in every sense, political, economic, and religious. A priest said once in an ardent panegyric: "The Lord, having cast a pitying glance upon our country, sent us Dr. Francia to save it." The tyrant thus became a redeemer, and is not without his strange legend. At seventy years of age he was regarded as a remote and divine personage. From a secret palace he governed a disciplined people. He had militarised the country and exalted patriotism, the strong national feeling of small nations, from Uruguay and Paraguay in America and Servia, to Bulgaria and Montenegro in Europe. His long tyranny in no way debased the race. When he died Francia was mourned by his people, a people about to reveal in warfare a Spartan tenacity, a tranquil heroism. Paraguay was unconquerable; it was dispeopled, the masculine population disappeared, but the Republic remained erect and aggressive. Francia had formed a proud and warlike race. He was the most extraordinary man the world had seen {196} for a hundred years, said Carlyle in one of his Essays--a Dominican ripe for canonisation, an excellent superior of Jesuits, a rude and atrabilious Grand Inquisitor. The Scottish historian praises the grim silences of Francia--"the grim unspeakabilities"--that mute solitude in which remarkable men commune with the mystery of things. After thirty years of uniform dictatorship the Guaranian people might have revolted against autocracy. But here, contrary to that which passed in other republics, the monarchy was not the term of absolutism. Francia was replaced by new tyrants, the two Lopez, and Paraguay accepted perpetual dictatorship. A "ricorso" exhibited the old round of evolution: the triumvirate, then the consulate, then dictatorship.