HISTORY--_continued_
The advent of Artigas--First revolutionary movements in
Uruguay--The appointment of leaders--First successes of the
Uruguayans--The germs of future jealousies--Montevideo besieged
by the patriot forces--An incident of the investment--Spain
appeals to Portugal for assistance--Invasion of Uruguay by the
latter--The Buenos Aires Government concludes a treaty with the
Spanish Viceroy--Raising of the siege of Montevideo--Position of
Uruguay--Discontent of the Orientales--The exodus of the
nation--Incidents of emigration to the Argentine
shore--Montevideo in Spanish hands--The country overrun by
Portuguese--Buenos Aires effects a treaty with the
latter--Resumption of the campaign against the
Spaniards--Disputes between the Argentine and Uruguayan
leaders--Montevideo again besieged--Some battle
incidents--Artigas reappears on the scene--Drastic measures
towards an ally--A national Congress convened--Oriental deputies
rebuffed by Buenos Aires--Artigas withdraws from the siege of
Montevideo--Price set upon his head--War declared between Uruguay
and Buenos Aires--The Argentine littoral provinces adhere to
Artigas--Fall of Montevideo.
The personality of Artigas, the central figure of the Uruguayan
revolutionary era, is fully described in a later chapter. It is
necessary here, therefore, merely to give the record of historical
occurrences, without laying stress on the individuality of the
Oriental leader, a matter that is not easy of accomplishment, since
the figure of Artigas seems to have dominated the field of action in
whatever direction it lay.
Shortly after the outbreak of the revolution Artigas, who at the time
was in the Spanish service, joined the patriot ranks after a violent
quarrel with his brigadier. The Oriental fled across the river to
Buenos Aires. Here he received a warm welcome, and was supplied with
armed men and financial aid in order to foment the movement in his
native country. Beyond this he received the official rank of
lieutenant-colonel in the Army of Independence.
In the meanwhile the first stirrings of the war that was to come had
already shaken Uruguay. With its capital, Montevideo, now the seat of
the viceroyalty, the small province had remained more or less
quiescent, lying, as it were, directly beneath the eye of Imperial
Spain itself. But the awakening, when it occurred, was followed by a
strenuous outbreak of activity. The first important rising took place
at Paysandú, on the banks of the Uruguay River. This was crushed by
the aid of the Spanish war vessels that lay in the stream. But the
inhabitants, not in the least discouraged by this first check, rose
again in greater numbers than before. A body of one hundred gauchos,
ill-armed as it was, captured the town of Mercedes, and then, with
augmented forces, marched on Soriano, which surrendered to them.
This success was the signal for a general rising throughout the
country. At the beginning of 1811 the Spanish garrison found
themselves in the midst of a definitely hostile population. From one
frontier to another bodies of men were gathering together, forging
weapons from agricultural tools, and arming themselves as best they
could in order that they might take their share in the struggle for
liberation that was already in active being. In March the towns of
Maldonado, San Carlos, and Minas rose, and the country just to the
east of Montevideo itself threw off the Spanish authority and came
into possession of the insurrectionist companies.
On the 11th of April, 1811, Artigas returned to Uruguay in command of
150 men of the regiment of Patricios, and disembarked in the
neighbourhood of that hub of all strife, Colonia. Here he was welcomed
by a great number of armed countryfolk, who acclaimed him as chief of
the Orientales. The movement now fairly under way, he established his
headquarters at Mercedes. In the meanwhile the germ of future
combinations had already been created by the appointment on the part
of the Buenos Aires patriots of Rondeau as commander of the
Uruguayans. Belgrano, first named for the post, had, disgraced, been
deprived of it since his defeat by the Paraguayans.
Artigas's first collision with the royal forces occurred at Paso del
Rey, the Spanish army being completely defeated. Reinforced by a
second victorious column, under Benavidez, the Uruguayans followed up
the retreating regulars, and forced them to surrender.
Artigas, the _Jefe de los Orientales_, had now at his disposal a force
of over a thousand men. Meeting at Las Piedras with a royalist army of
1,230 men, the valour of the new levies was soon put to the test.
Although the Spaniards possessed the advantage of artillery, they were
in the end, after a desperate and prolonged fight that endured for
half a dozen hours, defeated and forced to surrender.
The doings of the patriotic force came as a blow to the Spanish
authorities at Montevideo. Urged by the first tremblings of the
viceregal throne beneath him, Elio cast about him for an inducement to
turn Artigas from his victorious course. To this end he sent
messengers offering the chieftain a heavy monetary bribe to desert the
patriot cause, and to take service again in the royalist cause.
Whether any offering of any kind would have tempted Artigas is
doubtful. But in any case the tender was eloquent of Elio's want of
acquaintance with the Gaucho temperament, to which the possession of
mere cash constitutes a matter of utter indifference. As it was,
Artigas treated the offer with angry contempt.
The hour of the patriot leader's triumph was not without its sting.
The battle of Las Piedras had won him the rank of colonel in the
revolutionary forces, it is true; but Belgrano, after Suipacha, had
risen to that of a general. And, although both the Buenos Aires
Government and the official _Gazette_, using the soft soap of courtesy
titles, referred continuously to Artigas by the honorary term of
"General," the bitterness remained to give rise to future strife.
Three days after his victory Artigas marched to Montevideo, and laid
siege to the headquarters itself of the Spanish régime. As a
preliminary to the operation an exchange of prisoners, wounded and
whole, was effected. Artigas then formally demanded the surrender of
the garrison; Elio responded by various sorties, all of which were
repulsed. The beginning of the siege was marked by a dramatic episode.
Suspecting the revolutionary sympathies of some Franciscan monks
domiciled in Montevideo, Elio decided to expel these from the city.
The Franciscans were led through the streets with the utmost silence
at the dead of night. Arrived at the gates, the officer in charge of
the escort pointed with his sword at some sparks of light that
twinkled faintly in the distance. "Go you with the butchers!" he
commanded, and the priests passed out silently into the darkness to
join the forces of Artigas. Their influence was doubtless exhilarating
to the patriot cause, but there is no evidence to show that it was
employed in the cause of mercy. A few days later forty Uruguayan
families suffered a similar fate.
In the meanwhile Benavidez had laid siege to Colonia, the garrison of
which, after a month's resistance, escaped by river to Montevideo. It
was upon this latter place that the fortune of the Spanish dominion
now hung. The scale of warfare was increasing in proportion to the
importance of the issue. Shortly after the arrival of the
reinforcements supplied by the Royalist fugitives from Colonia,
Rondeau, in command of the Argentine troops, arrived to take charge of
the attacking force, that now amounted to four thousand men. Artigas,
now one amongst many, dropped in rank from commander to leader of
horse.
Rondeau had contrived to drag two heavy guns to the spot, and with
these he opened fire upon Montevideo. Galled by a continuous
bombardment, Elio took a more desperate step than was justified even
by his situation. Carlota, the Queen of Portugal and the sister of
Ferdinand VII. of Spain, had been established in Rio de Janeiro since
the invasion of the peninsula by the Napoleonic armies. To her the
Viceroy, seeing the last foothold of power slipping from beneath him,
sent an urgent message for assistance.
Ere the response to this appeal became evident the condition of the
beleagured town had changed. Discouraged by the serious defeat at
Huaqui of the army of Peru, the revolutionary leaders of Buenos Aires
were already contemplating a retirement from before Montevideo, when
the blow engineered by Elio took effect. A swarm of Portuguese, under
command of General Diego de Souza, entered the Banda Oriental from the
north with the purpose of overrunning the country. The Buenos Aires
Government, appalled by the new turn that affairs had taken, made the
utmost haste to conclude an armistice with Elio. By the terms of the
treaty the patriot forces were to retire from Montevideo, and Spanish
authority was to be recognised throughout Uruguay in exchange for the
return of Souza's forces to Brazil. Thus Elio's unscrupulous move had
succeeded for the time being, and the first siege of Montevideo came
to an end. A month after its conclusion Elio retired to Spain. The
command he had left was now no longer worthy of the highest rank, and
the departed Viceroy was succeeded by Vigodet in the minor capacity of
Captain-General.
Artigas had from the first bitterly opposed this treaty, by the terms
of which the Orientales were to be left at the mercy of the Royalists.
That he had right upon his side from his own point of view is
undeniable, although it is difficult to see by what other means the
Buenos Aires Government, caught between the Spaniards and the
Brazilians, could have extricated themselves from their dilemma. The
treaty once concluded, however, Artigas initiated a move that in
itself proved the greatness of the man.
A general assembly of the patriotic Oriental families was sounded.
Obedient to the call, they mustered in numbers that amounted to over
thirteen thousand men, women, and children. Then followed the exodus,
ordained by the stress of events, of which Artigas was the human
instrument. Escorted by three thousand soldiers, the march of the
families began. Carts filled with women and children, herds of cattle,
troops of horses, companies of pack-mules, to say nothing of the
riders themselves--the tragic procession toiled its long length
northwards through the summer dust clouds struck up by the hoofs and
feet from the crude earth roads. Mingled with the slowly advancing
ranks, and lending still greater variety to the whole, went four
hundred faithful Charrúa Indians, armed with bolas and spears.
Over the rolling hills of Uruguay struggled the human thread of
emigrants. Death waited on the column in the shape of heat and
hardship. But, though many children and many aged folk fell by the
way, the great majority won through in safety to Salto, on the banks
of the Uruguay; crossed the great river in boats, and took up their
abode on the Argentine shore, awaiting with anxiety the hour that
might permit their return to their native land.
In the meantime matters were passing from bad to worse in Uruguay.
Once within its frontiers, the temptations of the promised land
overcame any scruple on the part of the Portuguese concerning a too
rigid adherence to the terms of the treaty. Under the convenient
pretext of pacifying an already deserted country, Souza's army overran
the smiling Campo, capturing towns and plundering where they might.
The Spanish royalists, for their part, remained passive, and the sole
opposition with which the Portuguese armies had to count was that
rendered by the forces of Artigas, sent by him across the river. But,
although they won a victory or two, the slender patriot bands were
unable to stem the tide of invasion to any appreciable degree.
It is a little curious to remark what an endless wealth of
complications appear to have attended every political move at this
period. In this particular instance the introduction of a new element
was productive of unexpected results. Thus, when the Buenos Aires
Government, realising the gravity of the situation, proposed to send
reinforcements to the assistance of Artigas, the move was checked by
Elio, the Spanish commander, who, forgetful of the ties of blood,
threatened to join cause with the Portuguese in the event of any such
intervention. As an appropriate climax to the chaotic situation, the
Buenos Aires powers turned to Paraguay for assistance. The latter,
inclined to assent, began negotiation with Artigas direct, and, since
the Argentine Government resented this slight upon its authority, and
the negotiations themselves failed to fructify, the only outcome of
importance was an increase in the mutual jealousies that already
existed between Artigas and the Argentines.
Shortly after this, however, the tables were turned upon the
Spaniards. An able stroke of diplomacy on the part of the famous
Argentine, Belgrano, supported by British influence, resulted in a
treaty with the Portuguese. Thus the Royalists, hoist by a second
edition of their own petard, lay without allies at the mercy of the
patriot forces.
Preparations for a fresh siege of Montevideo were at once begun. Don
Manuel Sarratea, appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Argentine Army,
marched to the Entre Rios shore to join his columns with those of
Artigas. The inevitable jealousies between the Argentine and Oriental
leaders came to a head almost immediately. Apart from a deep personal
antagonism that separated the pair, a yet more potent reason made the
rupture inevitable. Sarratea, representing the triumvirate of Buenos
Aires, was determined to deal with Uruguay as a province of the new
Republic of Argentina. Artigas, on the other hand, although willing to
acknowledge the authority at Buenos Aires from a federal point of
view, insisted upon the independence of the State.
It was in these circumstances that Sarratea descended upon Artigas's
mixed camp of soldiers and Uruguayan emigrant families upon the banks
of the Uruguay. The results of the meeting were soon evident. Artigas,
complaining bitterly that Sarratea had seduced from his allegiance
not only his troops but the civilian elements of the settlement,
resigned his colonelcy, and separated his division from the Argentine
forces. The troops now remaining to him numbered rather less than a
thousand men, under the command of Otorgués, Rivera, and Manuel
Artigas.
In the meanwhile Sarratea, anxious that the credit for the capture of
Montevideo should fall to his lot, had dispatched a force under
Rondeau to lay siege once again to the town of contention that
represented the headquarters of the Royalists. Arriving at the spot,
he found that his task had already been forestalled to a certain
extent by an independent Oriental, José Eugenio Culta. The latter
_caudillo_, spurred onwards by the numerous examples of reckless
initiative offered by the period, had collected a band of three
hundred Gauchos. With these kindred spirits he was busily occupied in
harassing the garrison to no little purpose.
With the arrival of Rondeau, in October of 1812, the siege of the
devoted city began on an imposing scale, the army employed for the
purpose soon amounting to two thousand men. Destined to drag out its
length for almost two years, the first few months of the siege were
marked by two events of importance. Vigodet, having received
reinforcements from Spain, made a vigorous sally on the last day of
the year. At early dawn sixteen hundred men burst out from the gates
of the city, surprising and routing the besieging forces as they went,
until they won the summit of the Cerrito hill itself, the headquarters
of the American forces. With the yellow and red of Spain flaunting
from this the Royalists forgot all but their success, and expended
their energies in a jubilation that cost them dear. For Rondeau,
gathering together his fugitive troops with an amazing rapidity, fell
like a thunderbolt upon the cheering crowd, whose joyful clamour
turned to groans and death gasps as the stricken mass went reeling
back into the city.
An event of still greater importance occurred during the first month
of the following year. Sarratea himself then journeyed to the camp
before Montevideo. But he had company behind that he could not have
failed to regard with considerable unease. Notwithstanding his late
check, Artigas still remained a power to be reckoned with. Indeed, his
vitality had risen to the occasion; he had flung out his summons far
and wide, and his power was now infinitely greater than before. Thus,
when Sarratea set out for Montevideo, Artigas followed grimly in his
wake, having now no mean instrument by means of which to assert his
rights--an army of five thousand men.
Arriving on the heels of his enemy at the point of hostilities,
Artigas was not slow to act. Taking full measure of his advantage, he
sent peremptorily to Rondeau, demanding the immediate dismissal of
Sarratea from his office of Commander-in-Chief. The order thus given
to a subordinate to deal with his superior was quite in accordance
with the spirit of the times.
As Rondeau, however, did not immediately comply, Artigas took a very
simple measure by which to prove that he did not intend to ask in
vain. His Gauchos dashed full gallop into Sarratea's camp, and drove
off with them all the horses that they found within the establishment.
Seeing that a Gaucho army, unhorsed, is as a collection of fish on dry
land, the matter was definitely settled by the act. Sarratea retired
with the best grace he could muster to Buenos Aires, Rondeau remained
in command, and the Oriental and Argentine leaders sat down to
continue the investment of Montevideo, one jealous eye of each upon
his fellow-chief, the other fixed more casually upon the beleaguered
town.
During the comparative lull in active hostilities that followed
Artigas busied himself in the affairs of the State that he was
determined to see fully created. To this end he convened a national
Congress of Uruguayans, of which he was, as a matter of course,
elected President, in addition to being created Military Governor of
the country. One of the first acts of the new Congress was to
advertise its existence by the mission of deputies to the Junta at
Buenos Aires. But, the Junta refusing to recognise either an
independent Uruguay or its agents, the deputies returned home to
spread the tale of the rebuff, and to increase the bitterness that
already lay so deep between the Buenos Aires authorities and Artigas.
In January, 1814, the long series of incessant disputes was brought
abruptly to a head by Artigas. In the dead of night he struck his hide
tents, mounted his men, and his entire force rode away over the hills,
leaving Rondeau and his army to continue the siege of Montevideo as
best they might. The Buenos Aires authorities, furious at the
defection, placed a price upon Artigas's head; and the Gaucho leader,
equally incensed at this personal ultimatum, retaliated by declaring
open war upon the Junta. Storming against the Buenos Airens, this born
leader of men took his body--valued by his enemies at six thousand
pesos, alive or dead--along the coast of the great river. So
successful were his denunciations and the missions of his ambassadors
that not only the littoral provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, and
Santa Fé came spontaneously to his standard, but the comparatively
remote province of Córdoba, following the example of the rest,
proffered its allegiance.
It was not long ere the news of the rupture reached the ears of
Vigodet in Montevideo. Thinking to derive profit from the occasion, he
made a final appeal to throw in his lot with the royal forces. The
Gaucho leader in his refusal is stated to have said that "with the
Porteños [Buenos Airens] there was always time for reconciliation;
with the Spaniards, never!" That the time for the former consummation
was not yet ripe was evidenced by the almost immediate outbreak of
active hostilities between the rival South American parties.
In the meanwhile Montevideo was giving out the last gasp of its
imperial existence. The Spanish fleet that had assisted in its defence
had been destroyed by Admiral Brown, the famous Irishman in Argentine
service. Hunger and the lack of general necessaries both of livelihood
and of war completed the work of arms. On the 20th June, 1814,
Montevideo, after suffering intense privations, capitulated, and with
its fall passed for ever the last vestige of Spanish power from the
provinces of the River Plate.