In July, 1807, another British expedition, composed of 12,000 soldiers, under General Whitelock, attempted to reconquer Buenos Aires. But Liniers was fully prepared to meet the new and increased forces sent to take possession of the colony. In less than a year he had been able to reorganize the scanty and demoralized forces that protected the capital. Whitelock, having effected a landing, marched upon Buenos Aires; but after much fierce street fighting, in which women and children took part, he was forced to capitulate with the loss of over 3000 of his effectives. The heroism of the people of Buenos Aires on this occasion is well attested by the testimony of Whitelock himself, who said: “Each home was a castle, and each soldier a hero.”
These signal victories, which the colonists were able to obtain without any aid from the home government, coupled with their ancient dissatisfaction over the trade restrictions forced upon Buenos Aires, had a double effect: first, they inspired the colonists with a new sense of self-reliance and confidence; secondly, they heightened the old discontent, and gave rise to thoughts of independence. When, therefore, Napoleon, in 1810, dethroned Ferdinand VII, and crowned his own brother Joseph King of Spain, the occasion presented itself for the colonists to translate those sentiments of dissatisfaction into actual revolt.
Liniers was at this time Viceroy, the choice of the people having received the official sanction of the royal government. As a Frenchman, however, he was distrusted, and in his place Don Baltasar Cisneros was appointed in July, 1809. One of his first acts, the throwing open of the commerce of the Viceroyalty to all nations, quieted for a while the general discontent, and gained for the new Viceroy a certain measure of popularity. But his harshness in repressing an outbreak that took place in La Paz (Bolivia), in February of 1810, lost him at once the prestige he had at first won.
The minds of the multitude were irrevocably bent on separation; men like Belgrano, Castelli, Chiclana, Paso, Rodríguez Peña, were secretly working for the independence of the provinces. On the 25th of May, 1810, after news had been received of the complete subjugation of Spain, the people en masse demanded the deposition of Cisneros, and a committee presided over by Cornelio Saavedra was appointed to take the reins of government. Castelli, Belgrano, Azcuénaga, Alberti, Matheu y Larra, were the other members of this Junta, and Paso and Moreno were its secretaries. Thus the change in government was carried out, in form at least, by a mass meeting of the population of Buenos Aires.
The task of the newly established government was indeed an arduous one; for, not only did it have to defend its authority against Spain, but also to make its power felt and obeyed by the provinces of the interior. The first task was accomplished when the Spaniards were finally driven from South America; the carrying out of the second task brought on a second revolution, a fratricidal strife, which came very near establishing in Argentina a number of petty and insignificant states instead of a united, strong nation. In this second struggle, though in principle the battle was lost for Buenos Aires (since the federal form of government is the one that obtains to-day in Argentina), the leadership of the capital remained unquestionably established so far as initiative and spiritual ascendancy are concerned.
Buenos Aires set out, as Rome had done, to expand politically from a city-state into a vast republican state. She partly failed in this, as is evidenced by the withdrawal of Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia from the old Viceroyalty of the Plata, but, as we have said, she succeeded in establishing, if not the political hegemony of the Plata, the undisputed spiritual leadership, and the proud claim of being the second largest and wealthiest Latin city in the world, and the greatest in all the Southern Hemisphere.