We do not propose following the blood-stained career of Juan Facundo through all its windings and episodes of cruelty and blood.  Suffice it to say, that, with the title of Comandante de Campana, he retained in La Rioja every fraction of actual power,—­nominating, nevertheless, a shadowy governor, who, if he attempted any independent action, was instantly deposed.  His influence gradually extended over the neighboring provinces; thrice he encountered and defeated Madrid; while at home he gambled, levied contributions, bastinadoed, and added largely to his army.  He excelled his contemporary, Francia, in the art of inspiring terror; he only fell short of Rosas in the results.  A wry look might at any time call down upon a luckless child a hundred lashes.  He once split the skull of his own illegitimate son for some trifling act of disobedience.  A lady, who once said to him, while he was in a bad humor, Adios, mi General, was publicly flogged.  A young girl, who would not yield to his wishes, he threw down upon the floor, and kicked her with his heavy boots until she lay in a pool of blood.  Truly, a ruler after the Russian sort!

Dorrego, meanwhile, was at the head of affairs at Buenos Ayres.  Opposed to the “Unitarianism” of Lavalle and Paz, who would have made of their country, not a republic “one and indivisible,” but a confederation after the model in the North, Dorrego was chiefly anxious to consolidate his power in the maritime state of Buenos Ayres, leaving the interior provinces to their own devices, and to the tender mercies of Lopez, Quiroga, Bustos, with a dozen other Gaucho chiefs.  Rosas, the incarnation of the spirit which was then distracting the entire Confederation, was made Commandant General by Dorrego, who, however, frequently threatened to shoot “the insolent boor,” but who, unfortunately for his country, never fulfilled the threat.  As for himself, he, indeed, met with that fate at the hands of Lavalle, who landed with an army from the opposite coast of Uruguay, defeated Dorrego and Rosas in a pitched battle at the gates of Buenos Ayres, and entered the city in triumph a few hours later.

With the ascendency of Lavalle came the inauguration—­and, alas! only the inauguration—­of a new system.  Paz, one of the few Argentinians who really deserved the name of General that they bore, was sent to Cordova, with eight hundred veterans of his old command.  He defeated Bustos, the tyrant of Cordova, took possession of the city, (one of the most important strategic points upon the Pampas,) and restored that confidence and security to which its inhabitants had so long been strangers.  This action was at the same time a challenge to Quiroga in his neighboring domain.  It was a warning that right was beginning to assert its supremacy over might; nor was the hero of La Rioja slow to understand it.  Collecting a band of four thousand Gaucho lancers, he marched upon Cordova with the assurance of an easy victory.  The boleado General!  The idea of his opposing the Tiger of the Plains!