Prologue 347 I. How the last Tie was broken 349 II. How Don Gregorio Lopez for the third time sought an Answer to the Question of the Day 356 III. The Opening of the month of May 360 IV. Dias de la Patria 367 V. The 25th May, 1810 375 VI. Lions in the Path 383 VII. The first Fight in the War of Independence 388 VIII. How General Liniers lost an important Ally 397 IX. La Cabeza del Tigre 401 X. Once more in the Porch together 408 GENERAL EPILOGUE I. The Viceroyalty of Buenos Aires 419 II. The Year 1810 420 III. Paraguay 422 IV. The Banda Oriental 422 V. The Army of Upper Peru 424 VI. The Sovereign People 427 VII. The Congress of Tucuman 433 VIII. Independence 434 BOOK I THE BABYHOOD OF A GREAT NATION PROLOGUE The Argentine Republic drew her first faltering breath in a time of universal tumult. Europe was in a blaze from the confines of Russia to the Atlantic; the air reeked with blood, the demon of war strode rough-shod over a whole continent, at each step crushing some ancient nation to the dust. The peoples of Europe, down-trodden for ages, rose in their misery and barbarism against their oppressors and wrote out their certificate of Freedom in characters of blood; they asserted their right to be men not slaves, and their voice as that of a mighty trumpet reverberated throughout the earth. In the hearts of the Spanish Creoles of America that voice found an echo. * * * * * Spain arrogated to herself unlimited power over the nations she had founded, witting not that they were nations. Though they were of her own bone and her own blood, she knew them not as children, but as bond-slaves, who existed to do her bidding. * * * * * The voice of France in the first throes of her great agony sounded in the ears of these bond-slaves, and in secret conclave they whispered one to another, asking one another wistfully, whether they were men and not slaves. To this whispered question for long there was no answer, for Spain was to them as their mother. * * * * * Can a mother sin in the eyes of her own child? PONCE DE LEON CHAPTER I FATHER AND SON