1. Giovanni Maria Mastai, the future Pius IX, visited Chile in 1824 as part of a mission (the Muzi mission) that sought to improve the relations between church and state, which had been strained since the time of the struggle for independence. As pope, he initially supported the European revolutions of 1848. (Editors note, as are all others not otherwise identified)
2. The author is referring to the general lack of participation in public and political affairs by the masses or lower classes.
3. The reference is to the liberal young men of the ruling class.
4. The Instituto Nacional was a state-sponsored secondary school.
5. Monvoisin and Ciccarelli were European painters who lived in Chile and acquired followers among native artists.
6. The onza was a gold coin worth about sixteen U.S. dollars during the nineteenth century. (Translator’s note)
7. Manuel Camilo Vial Formas was President Bulnes’ last minister of the interior. Although officially a member of the Conservative (pelucón) Party, he had liberal propensities.
8. Diego José Portales was a Conservative minister in the 1830s and de facto head of the government. He created the conservative and authoritarian system that ruled Chile until 1871.
9. Francisco Bilbao was a passionate young liberal and ardent admirer of revolutionary France.
10. All the foregoing were young liberals.
11. Pérez, Tocornal, and García Reyes were all conservative politicians.
12. A majority which, in 1850, became a minority.
13. The reference is to Manuel Montt, an ultraconservative born in 1809, president from 1851 to 1861.
14. The Battle of Loncomilla (December 18, 1851) confirmed the presidency of Manuel Montt and for the time being eliminated the last traces of the “Girondins of Chile” and the “Spirit of ’48.”
15. The Egalitarian Society was founded in March 1850 by young liberals, many of them “Chilean Girondins.” It quickly gained strong support among the liberal oligarchy and elements of the lower classes. It aimed to carry out radical social and political reforms, following the example of the first months of the French revolution of 1848.
16. Before August 19, the Egalitarian Society used to meet in the rooms and offices of the Philharmonic Society, which have now been converted into storehouses and stables for the house of Mr. Rafael Larraín on the Calle de las Monjitas. After the events of August 19, several thousand new members joined the Society; and among these one of the first was Don Ramón Errázuriz, who from that point on was the Liberal Party’s candidate for the presidency. To accommodate the crowd, the club moved to a vast theater, still under construction, on the Calle Duarte, where later the Casas de Avendaño were built. If memory serves, that property belonged at the time to the councilman Don Luis Ovalle, an important member of the Liberal Party. (Author’s note)
17. Manuel Lacunza, born in Chile in 1731, was a Jesuit priest and celebrated millenarian theologian. After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, he lived in Italy until his death in 1801. His work La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad (The coming of the Messiah in glory and majesty) was world-renowned.
18. Calle de Huérfanos is a street in the very center of Santiago.
19. Lieutenant Colonel Tomás de Figueroa, a royalist, organized a coup against the newly established nationalist government on April 1, 1811. Upon its failure, he was executed.
20. Eyzaguirre was vice president of the Chamber of Deputies.
21. At the time of which the author writes, Mitre was in exile in Chile.
22. “The Raphaël of Lamartine “alludes to Raphaël, a prose narrative by Lamartine (1849). (Translators note)
23. On April 20, 1851, an attempted military coup sought to prevent Manuel Montt from taking power as president of the Republic. Some civilians also took part, among them some of the “Girondins of Chile” and members of the dissolved Egalitarian Society. The coup failed, and Montt became president.
24. General Cruz was a Liberal (Pipiólo) candidate for president in 1851 who was defeated by Montt. He attempted to block Montt’s victory, but his troops were defeated in the Battle of Loncomilla.
25. The banks of the Maule were the site of the Battle of Loncomilla.
26. We have been unable to discover whom Vicuña Mackenna considered the second Robespierre of Chile. He was probably a political enemy from the time when the author was writing this book.
27. November 7, 1850, was the date of the dissolution of the Egalitarian Society. See the introduction to this book.
28. This banishment resulted from the dissolution of the Egalitarian Society, of which these men had been leaders.
29. The Last Supper of the Girondins, a painting by Raymond Monvoisin (1790–1870), shows a scene that never took place but that is recounted by Lamartine in his Histoire des Girondins and that inspired Vicuña Mackenna. The canvas, 340 × 235 cm., hangs in the Palacio Cousiño in Santiago.
30. We are not absolutely sure of this date, but we do know that Monvoisin was working on this canvas while he lived on his estate at Marga-Marga, near Valparaiso, and that he came to that city from time to time because he had his studio there. The painting was bought from Monvoisin by Don Marcial Gómez in 1856 for 100 onzas in gold and subsequently sold for twice as much, along with Aristodemus, another great study by that painter, to Don Emeterio Goyenechea, the present owner of both, as well as of The Fisherman. Robespierre, Ali Pasha, Heloise, and Blanche de Beaulieu belong to his sister, Doña Isidora de Cousiño. At about the same time, Monvoisin painted his two other historical groups, The Capture of Caupolicán, which contains some masterful details along with others that are completely absurd, and The Deposition of O’Higgins. The former is preserved in Santiago and the latter in Lima, where in 1860 we saw it carelessly rolled up in a warehouse. Fortunately, we were able to have this remarkable canvas photographed, and the photograph was reproduced in an engraving known as The Ostracism of O’Higgins. And those, as far as we know, are all the historical paintings by Monvoisin that exist in Chile. His Elisa Bravo was in Paris in 1870. (Author’s note)
31. “La source éclairait des feux de son ardente imagination les gouffres de l’anarchie.” Histoire des Girondins, p. 711. (Author’s note)