GASPAR RUIZ

By Joseph Conrad



I

A REVOLUTIONARY war raises many strange characters out of the
obscurity which is the common lot of humble lives in an undisturbed
state of society.

Certain individualities grow into fame through their vices and their
virtues, or simply by their actions, which may have a temporary
importance; and then they become forgotten. The names of a few leaders
alone survive the end of armed strife and are further preserved in
history; so that, vanishing from men's active memories, they still
exist in books.

The name of General Santierra attained that cold, paper-and-ink
immortality. He was a South American of good family, and the books
published in his lifetime numbered him amongst the liberators of that
continent from the oppressive rule of Spain.

That long contest, waged for independence on one side and for dominion
on the other, developed, in the course of years and the vicissitudes
of changing fortune, the fierceness and inhumanity of a struggle for
life. All feelings of pity and compassion disappeared in the growth of
political hatred. And, as is usual in war, the mass of the people, who
had the least to gain by the issue, suffered most in their obscure