FIIANCIA, DOCTOR JOSA GASPAR RODRIGUEZ (and ho himself at inlet appeare to have written the name with the feudal prefix, De Francia), Dictator of Paraguay, ia said to have been born near the town of Asuncion, the capital of that country, in 1757 or 175& His father, a European, was a chacaroro, or small proprietor cultivating his own laud. Francis himself, who had a for everything French, alleged that his father came from 1.rance, but others have asserted that he was n Portuguese. However that may be, old Francis had gone to Brazil, and, proceeding thence to the Spanish possessions in the interior, had finally settled in Paraguay, where he married a Creole, and had this Jose and other sous and daughters. Joni was the eldest.
When he came to the proper age, young Francis was sent to the University of Cordova, In the neighbouring province of Tucuman, to be educated for the church. Here he took his doctor's degree, but it is uncertain whether of divinity or of law. The latter lie ultimately determined to make his profession. The change was perhaps prompted in part by the turn which his opiuions had taken or begun to take towards deism, the avowed creed of his latter years, which he had Imbibed from reading the works of Rousseau, Reyna], and other French writers of that school. Ile seems to have spoken as well as read the French language; and lie also brought away with him from college, besides what he learned of law and theology, some knowledge of mathematics and of mechanical philosophy, a taste for which departments of study he preserved to the end of his life. Establishing himself iu the town of Assuncion, Francia spent there perhaps the next thirty years of his life as an advocate or barrister. He had a good practice, and a high reputation both for legal learning and for integrity and independence of character.
The revolution which brought about the independence of the Spanish possessiona in South America began in Buenos Ayres in 1810, when Francis was fifty-two or fifty-three years old. Paraguay refused to join the other La Plata provinces in this movement, and was successful in repelling a force sent from Buenos Ayres under General Belgrano to compel its adherence; but the next year it accomplished a revolution of its own. Francis had been active in directing thia course which things had taken, and when the independent junta was aet up, with Don Fulgencio Yegros, the general who had defeated Belgrano, as president, Francis was appointed secretary. Yegros and the others
however could not gat on with him—or he with them—and he soots resigned his post, retiring to a country house in the neighbourhood of Aasuncion. Everything went from bad to worse, and the Paraguayan public, mind seem to have taken up a fixed idea that only Francia could act mattera right. Accordingly, a new congress which assembled In 1813 placed him and Yegros at the heed of the republic under the name of joint consuls. From this moment the state of public affairs began to improve; in particular the protection of the country from foreign invasion, a calamity which had actually begun to come upon it before from some quarters, and been threatened from others, was effectually scoured. It was with a view to this particular object that Francia first introduced his non-intercourse system. The peculiar character which had been impressed upon society in that country by the Jesuits at the same time favoured and may have partly suggested the policy which ha thua adopted ; and the course of events, after it was tried and found to answer, led by degrees to its more strict enforcement. It became at last so complete that, as is well known, all ingress into Paraguay or escape from it became nearly impossible, nor had the country any political relations, or almost any commercial communication, with any other part of the globe.
Before matters came to this however, Francia's joint consulship had been converted, first in 1814, by a third congress, ioto a dictatorship for three years, and than in 1817 into a dictatorship for life. Yegros, who had been all along a mere cypher or useless incumbrance, was of course got rid of. He afterwards, in 1819, it is asserted, engaged in rt conspiracy for the assassination of hla former colleague; the detec tion and defeat of which at the same time consolidated and greatly strengthened Francia's power. It appears to have been principally during the existence of the critical state of affaira produced by this plot, a period of two or three years, that the system of sanguinary severity which has been called the reign of terror was kept up by Francia.