Two more of the ‘mashorqueros’ have been condemned and shot—a fate they so richly merited. One of them, it is said, confessed to having assassinated no less than 21 persons by the orders of Rosas, and 19 on his own account. It is said the Government is in possession of undoubted proof of the murder of the English family (Kidd), when Mr. Ouseley was in Buenos Ayres in 1845, by the orders of Rosas; and that it is their intention to place these proofs before the British Government. This, however, may be a work of supererogation, as it is believed here that Mr. Ouseley sent home ample proofs of the facts many years ago, as well as proofs of the deliberate murder of the midshipman Ross some time after.
In order to understand the meaning of the strange term used in the first line of the preceding quotation, it may be necessary for the information of the younger reader,—for during Rosas’ sway the phrase occurred too frequently to need explanation to any one who perused the revolting reports from the Plate—to supply an elucidation. This cannot be better done than in the words addressed by the Uruguayan Agent in this country, General O’Brien, to the then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and present Prime Minister of England, in 1844, when seeking British assistance against the Buenos Ayrean oppressor of the Banda Oriental. The General said:—
The Masorcas, or secret affiliation, in support of Rosas’s government, derives its name from the inward stalk of the maize, when deprived of its grain, and has been used by the members of the clubs as an instrument of torture, of which your Lordship may form some idea when calling to mind the agonizing death inflicted upon Edward II. By the members of this club, assassination of those indisposed to the rule of Rosas was, audaciously in some instances, covertly in more, constantly exercised. Amongst the victims was Maya, the first benefactor of Rosas. The estates of all who fell by the hands of the band of Rosas, as well as of those who fled from his vengeance, were seized by him. His absolute command of Buenos Ayres, and his possession of the bank, enabled him to manage the finances of the country, and in 1842 gave to him an army of 10,000 men. Many were collected by fear, from the positive knowledge that, if they did not obey his summons, their fate would be similar to that of men who, having refused to join his troops, were dragged out of their beds at night by members of the Masorca Club, and in the very presence of their wives and children brutally put to death! Like as it happened with the early revolutionary armies of France, which had commissioners from the Convention, the soldiers of Rosas were accompanied by individuals of the Masorca Club, and they but too faithfully executed the commission confided to them, depriving the victims of Rosas’s vengeance or suspicion of life, amid tortures and cruelties that shock humanity but to hear of them. My Lord, I know of these tortures being inflicted. At the time that Oribe invaded the Banda Oriental, with the army and the Masorca commissioners of Rosas, I was residing on my estate in the country. I am aware of wretches being staked into the ground forty-eight hours before their heads were sawed, not cut, off;—of the lasso being flung over persons’ necks, and then drawn by a horse at full speed until life became extinct;—of spikes being driven into the mouths of human beings, and they, whilst living, thus nailed to trees.