ne to gain the support of the
Indian population, who hated the Spaniards bitterly. He soon went farther.
Yegros was in his way and he got rid of him, making the simple-minded and
ignorant members of the congress believe that only a sovereign magistrate
could save the country, which was then threatened by its neighbors. In
consequence, on the 8th of October, 1814, Francia was made dictator for
three years. This was not enough to satisfy the ambitious ruler, and he
played his cards so shrewdly that, on the 1st of May, 1816, a new congress
proclaimed him supreme and perpetual dictator.

It was no common man who could thus induce the congress of a republic to
raise him to absolute power over its members and the people. Francia at
that time was fifty-nine years of age, a lean and vigorous man, of medium
stature, with piercing black eyes, but a countenance not otherwise marked.
The son of a Frenchman who had been a tobacco manufacturer in Paraguay, he
was at first intended for the church, but subsequently studied the law. In
this profession he had showed himself clever, eloquent, and honorable, and
always ready to defend the poor and weak against the rich. It was the
reputation thus gained which first made him prominent in political
affairs.

Once raised to absolute power for life, Francia quickly began to show his
innate qualities. Love of money was not one of his faults, and while
strictly economical with the public funds, he was free-handed and generous
with his own. Thus, of the nine thousand pesos of annual salary assigned
him, he would accept only three thousand, and made it a strict rule to
receive no present, either returning or paying for any sent him. At first
he went regularly every day to mass, but he soon gave up this show of
religious faith and dismissed his private chaplain. In fact, he grew to
despise religious forms, and took pleasure in ridiculing the priests,
saying that they talked about things and represented mysteries of which
they knew nothing. "The priests and religion," he said, "serve more to
make men believe in the devil than in God."

Of the leading principle of Francia's political system we have already
spoken. It had been the policy of the old Jesuit missions to isolate the
people and keep them in strict obedience to the priesthood, and Francia
adopted a similar policy. Anarchy prevailed without, he said, and might
penetrate into Paraguay. Brazil, he declared, was seeking to absorb the
country.