acknowledge the central authority. To add to these complications,
in 1812, a revolutionary Cortes, or legislative body, assembled
at Cadiz, adopted for Spain and its dominions a constitution
providing for direct representation of the colonies in oversea
administration. Since arrangements of this sort contented many of
the Spanish Americans who had protested against existing abuses,
they were quite unwilling to press their grievances further.
Given all these evidences of division in activity and counsel,
one does not find it difficult to foresee the outcome.

On May 25, 1810, popular agitation at Buenos Aires forced the
Spanish viceroy of La Plata to resign. The central authority was
thereupon vested in an elected junta that was to govern in the
name of Ferdinand VII. Opposition broke out immediately. The
northern and eastern parts of the viceroyalty showed themselves
quite unwilling to obey these upstarts. Meantime, urged on by
radicals who revived the Jacobin doctrines of revolutionary
France, the junta strove to suppress in rigorous fashion any
symptoms of disaffection; but it could do nothing to stem the
tide of separation in the rest of the viceroyalty--in Charcas
(Bolivia), Paraguay, and the Banda Oriental, or East Bank, of the
Uruguay.

At Buenos Aires acute difference of opinion--about the extent to
which the movement should be carried and about the permanent form
of government to be adopted as well as the method of establishing
it--produced a series of political commotions little short of
anarchy. Triumvirates followed the junta into power; supreme
directors alternated with triumvirates; and constituent asmblies
came and went. Under one authority or another the name of the