The South American Republics, Part 1 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

Among those who escaped to Buenos Aires was one destined to be the founder of Uruguayan nationality. This was José Artigas, then captain of guerrilla cavalry. Although born in Montevideo he had lived the life of a gaucho from boyhood, and since 1797 had been a leader of the gaucho bands who were continually fighting the Rio Grandenses. He happened to be in Colonia on the occasion of Elio's declaration of war against the Creoles and at once fled to Buenos Aires. The junta there gave him a lieutenant-colonel's commission and some substantial help. The gauchos of the south-eastern part of Uruguay had meanwhile risen against the Spanish governor, and within a few weeks Artigas was back on Uruguayan soil at the head of a considerable force, while all around him bands of gauchos under other chiefs were preparing to resist the Spaniards. His bravery, energy, and good luck in the field, and his ruthless maintenance of discipline, gave him an ascendancy over all the others.

In April, 1811, Belgrano, the chief general of Buenos Aires, arrived with re-enforcements. Shortly after, a Spanish detachment, which had reached the western part of Uruguay, was captured, and the gaucho leaders advanced almost to the walls of Montevideo. A force of one thousand Spaniards started out to meet them and, on the 18th of May, met with complete defeat at the battle of Las Piedras. For this victory Artigas was promoted by the Buenos Aires Junta, and became the greatest military figure on the patriot side. With a considerable army of gauchos from both banks of the Uruguay and of patriots from Buenos Aires he began a siege of Montevideo.

The siege, however, did not last long. The great expedition sent by the patriots to Bolivia was overwhelmingly defeated in the battle of Huaqui, and the Buenos Aires Junta, horribly alarmed for their own safety, ordered all the troops under their control to return and help defend that city. At the same time a Portuguese army advanced from Brazil with the avowed purpose of saving Montevideo from being lost to Spain, but really to take possession of Uruguay for King John's own benefit. Artigas was compelled to retire to the Argentine, and Uruguayan historians say that on his long retreat to the Uruguay River he was accompanied by practically the whole rural population of the country. The semi-nomadic habits of the gauchos made such a migration easy, and they quickly found new homes on the opposite shore in Entre Rios, whence it would be easy to return as soon as the Portuguese troops retired.

Considerations of international politics and English pressure compelled King John to withdraw his troops from Uruguay in the middle of the year 1812, and the Buenos Aires government immediately began to assemble an army on the right bank of the Uruguay. Artigas was still encamped with his Uruguayan forces in the same neighbourhood, and although he held an Argentine commission he was virtually independent. The Argentine army, under the command of José Rondeau, who in colonial days had been captain of guerrillas alongside Artigas, advanced against Montevideo, and on the last day of 1812 won the bloody battle of Cerrito, in sight of the city, and shut the Spaniards up within its walls. Artigas followed and assisted in the siege, but he refused to unite his forces with those of Rondeau until his own claims should be recognised and his demands complied with. He assumed a dictatorship and sent delegates to Buenos Aires to advocate the formation of a federal republic, of which Buenos Aires was to be simply one member. Buenos Aires refused to receive his delegates, and civil war broke out. Rondeau adhered to the Buenos Aires interest; and after a year of disputes, in the beginning of January, 1814, Artigas withdrew his own followers from Montevideo, leaving the partisans of Buenos Aires to continue the siege alone. In May the celebrated Irish admiral, William Brown, destroyed the Spanish fleet, which had hitherto dominated the Plate. Montevideo's communications with both land and sea were shut off, and the fortress shortly afterwards surrendered to General Carlos Alvear, the Argentine general who was then commanding the besieging forces.

Meanwhile, Artigas had retired to the west, and the gauchos, not only of western Uruguay, but also of Entre Rios, Corrientes, the Missions, and Santa Fé, rallied around his standard. Independent chiefs in these various provinces had been resisting the efforts of Buenos Aires to reduce them to obedience. Artigas was, in a way, recognised as their leader, but only as the greatest among equals. The conflict with the Buenos Aires party went on throughout the year 1814, and the federalists continually gained ground. In January, 1815, Fructuoso Rivera, one of the lieutenants of Artigas, defeated an Argentine force at the battle of Guayabos, and the Buenos Aires Junta was compelled to withdraw its troops from Montevideo.

This, however, did not amount to a separation of Uruguay from the Confederation. It only marked a triumph of the provinces in their efforts to prevent Buenos Aires from establishing a centralised government. Artigas had his friends in Entre Rios, Corrientes, the Missions, and Santa Fé, and even as far as Cordoba; and Francia, dictator of Paraguay, was another of his allies in this struggle against Buenos Aires. However, he was nothing more than a military chief, without the capacity or even the desire of uniting these vast territories under a rational and stable government.

At the very height of his power he made the fatal mistake of embroiling himself with Brazil. In 1815 he invaded the territory of the Seven Missions, which the Rio Grandenses had conquered fourteen years before. The Portuguese king retaliated by sending a well-equipped army of several thousand men, and in October, 1816, the forces of Artigas were overwhelmed and driven with great slaughter from the disputed territory. Artigas made stupendous efforts to retrieve this loss, but the four thousand men which he assembled to resist the Portuguese army, which was now advancing upon Montevideo itself, were defeated and scattered in January, 1817. The Portuguese occupied Montevideo, and Artigas and his lieutenants, Rivera, Lavelleja, and Oribe, each of whom later became a great figure in the civil wars, retreated to the interior, where they maintained themselves for two years. After many defeats, Artigas himself lost the support of the chiefs of Entre Rios and Santa Fé. He was finally driven out of Uruguay and attempted to establish himself in the Argentine provinces, only to be completely overwhelmed by his rivals. On the 23rd of September, 1820, he presented himself with forty men, all who remained faithful to him, at the Paraguayan town of Candelaria on the Paraná, begging hospitality of Francia. Francia granted him asylum, and this indomitable guerrilla chief, who for twenty-five years had kept the soil of Uruguay and of the Argentine mesopotamia soaked in blood, spent the rest of his life peacefully cultivating his garden in the depths of the Paraguayan forests. He died in 1850 at the age of eighty-six years; six years later his remains were brought from Paraguay to Montevideo and interred in the national pantheon. On the sarcophagus are engraved these words: "Artigas, Founder of the Uruguayan Nation."

GENERAL DON JOSÉ GERVASIO ARTIGAS.
[From an old wood-cut.]

Rivera was the last Uruguayan chief to lay down his arms before the Portuguese. When he surrendered, early in 1820, most of the other leaders had already given up and accepted service in the Portuguese army of occupation. In 1821, a Uruguayan Congress, selected for this purpose, declared the country incorporated with the Portuguese dominions under the name of the Cisplatine Province. For five years Montevideo and the country remained quiet under the Portuguese dominion, and Uruguay peacefully became a province of Brazil when that country declared her independence. The most celebrated chiefs of the civil war were officers in the Brazilian army, and few external signs of dissatisfaction were apparent. Underneath the surface, however, fermented a hatred of the foreign rule, and the proud Creoles only awaited an opportunity to revolt.