Artigas was essentially the product of a turbulent era. Born in 1764, he had remained comparatively obscure until forty-six years later, when the outbreak of the South American War of Independence sent him aloft with dramatic rapidity to a pinnacle of prominence from which he ruled nations and armies--with a result that is yet the subject of considerable dispute. Perhaps never did the memory of a man meet with more honour in his own country, and with less favour without it. Argentine historians and European travellers of all nationalities have included him within the dark fold of the world's great criminals. From the mill of their analysis Artigas emerges as a bandit, murderer, traitor, a criminal who seized with audacity each of his thousand opportunities to outrage the laws of morality and decency. Apart from the testimony of the noted historians, two Swiss naturalists, Rengger and Longchamps, who penetrated to his country and whose report should be unbiassed, speak of him as one "whose life has been only a tissue of horrors, the great instrument of all the calamities which for ten years fell on the provinces of the confederation of Rio de la Plata." These convictions are echoed by a score of other authorities. For the other side of the picture it is necessary to turn to the Uruguayan writers. Their views are at least as definite and unanimous as the others. According to one, Eduardo Muñoz Ximinez, "the austerity of Cato, the purity of Aristides, the temperament of the Gracchi, the nobility of Camillus, the generosity of Fabricius--these virtues, allied to heroism and determination, have been found united within the breast of none but Artigas." This represents but a solitary note, typical of the great chorus of praise that goes up from Uruguay. Artigas, living, had little concern with compromise; dead, his spirit seems to have infected his historians with the same dislike of half-measures. In other respects this particular strand of history is as flexible as all the rest. For generations the feathers of Artigas's fame remained of undisputed black; now the active protests of the Uruguayans have initiated a cleansing process that promises to change the plumes to too blinding a white. Such impartial judgment as is possible induces the persuasion that the Argentine and foreign chroniclers, though writing in all good faith, have erred a little in relying too much upon the testimony of men who bore bitter personal enmity towards the Uruguayan leader. Artigas, in fact, reveals himself from out of the cloud of conflicting authorities as an essentially human being, swayed by the passions of the age and knowing many of its faults, wild as the age itself, but less sordid and more picturesque, and the author of some deeds, moreover, that, worked in the light of a more central and populous field, might well have sent his name to posterity with more assured honour.