Page "History of Chile" Paragraph 32

From 1817 to 1823, Bernardo O ' Higgins ruled Chile as supreme director.

He won plaudits for defeating royalists and founding schools, but civil strife continued.

O ' Higgins alienated liberals and provincials with his authoritarianism, conservatives and the church with his anticlericalism, and landowners with his proposed reforms of the land tenure system.

His attempt to devise a constitution in 1818 that would legitimize his government failed, as did his effort to generate stable funding for the new administration.

O ' Higgins's dictatorial behavior aroused resistance in the provinces.

This growing discontent was reflected in the continuing opposition of partisans of Carrera, who was executed by the Argentine regime in Mendoza in 1821, like his two brothers were three years earlier.