We shall attempt to trace briefly: first, the steps by which the Spaniards were expelled from the South American countries; second, the steps by which the provinces of the Plata emerged from the chaos of civil strife, and came, after the battle of Pavón, to enjoy the sweet fruits of peace.
After the deposition of Cisneros, the provisional Junta sent out circulars to the provinces, asking for their recognition of its authority. The provinces, save Uruguay and Paraguay, signified their support of the new government. From the very beginning, then, these two provinces showed a tendency not to accept the leadership of Buenos Aires. Furthermore, not long thereafter, when it became known that the Junta aimed at separation, the province of Córdoba and those of Alto Perú (Bolivia) joined with Uruguay and Paraguay in their opposition to the provisional government. The “Tory” reaction was thus not long in manifesting itself.
Montevideo, led by the newly appointed Viceroy, Javier de Elío, made ready a fleet to attack Buenos Aires; Gutiérrez de la Concha, Governor of Córdoba, appointed Liniers to lead its forces against the Junta; and in Alto Perú, General Goyeneche, appointed president of Cuzco by the Viceroy of Peru, took charge of the resistance to the Revolution. The gravity of the reaction that set in, the increasing number of forces that were being arrayed against the new government, demanded firm and instant action. Happily for the independence of Argentina, there was in the Junta a leader of force and vision. He was Mariano Moreno, the secretary of the Junta; he was the soul of the revolutionary movement in its early stages; he was the pilot that steered it safely through the perilous shoals of the dawn of independence. It is in recognition of these great services that Argentina acclaims him to-day as one of her greatest champions, ranking with San Martín, Belgrano, and Rivadavia.
To meet these dangers, two expeditions were sent out: one against Córdoba and Alto Perú, under the orders of Ortiz de Ocampo; and another against Paraguay, under the orders of General Belgrano.
Liniers and Concha were taken prisoners, and by order of the Junta were put to death. Thus died Santiago de Liniers, defender of Buenos Aires during the English invasions. Many historians and writers have denounced this act of the Junta as ruthless and unnecessarily severe; practically as many others have defended it in view of the inexorable need for sternness demanded by the conditions of the times. We mention it as the first instance of internecine struggle, and as typical of the unrelenting character of the Revolution that came later. The expedition continued its northward march, under the orders of Balcarce, and defeating the Royalists at Suipacha, soon had control of the north as far as the Desaguadero, the boundary between the Viceroyalties of Peru and of the Plata. Here we shall leave it for a while in order to follow the campaign against Paraguay.
Heartened by the successes of Balcarce, the Junta decided to hasten the expedition against Paraguay under the orders of Belgrano. But, whereas the expeditionary force of Alto Perú had met until then with remarkable success, Belgrano, after having his communications impeded by the control of the Paraná, which the Royalists held, and taking part in two unsuccessful engagements, was glad to sign an agreement whereby he was allowed to withdraw unmolested from Paraguay with all his forces. Though this expedition failed of its purpose to bring Paraguay under the control of the Junta, it helped in no small degree to create a separatist movement in Paraguay which led in a few years to the defeat of the Spaniards and the establishment of an independent government.
By this time also the situation in Uruguay called for the attention of the Junta. The people of the country, despite the pro-Spanish sentiment prevalent in Montevideo, were manifesting signs of revolt against the Spaniards, and when Artigas, the Uruguayan leader, came to Buenos Aires to enlist the aid of the provisional government, the forces of Belgrano that had returned from Paraguay were intrusted to Rondeau to coöperate with Artigas in Uruguay. With the aid of these troops from Buenos Aires, Artigas obtained a signal victory against the Spaniards at Las Piedras, which enabled him to lay siege to Montevideo.
With the exception of Belgrano’s expedition to Paraguay, which, though unsuccessful in its attempt to bring that province under the control of the Junta, had nevertheless caused no serious military loss, the forces of the Revolution were everywhere successful. Unfortunately, the stinging defeat of Huaquí that the army of Alto Perú met at the hands of Goyeneche in 1811, on the boundary between Bolivia and Peru, threatened for a moment to reëstablish the power of Spain. Had the Argentine forces been successful, Bolivia and Uruguay would never have become separate republics. The complete independence of South America would have been attained ten years before the battle of Ayacucho (1824), and, very likely, with its victorious armies, Buenos Aires would have been able to avoid the terrible civil struggle that, through the lack of a wise and strong central government, lasted till the downfall of Rosas. As it was, the siege of Montevideo had to be abandoned at a time when its garrison was on the point of surrendering; and it was only through the energetic and skillful leadership of Pueyrredón, who was put in command after Huaquí, that of the 23,000 men who composed the original Army of the North, one thousand succeeded in reaching Tucumán. From a purely military point of view, the disaster of Huaquí meant the passing of the initiative from the revolutionary Army to the forces of Spain. In fact, not until 1817, when San Martín crossed the Andes and defeated the Royalists in Chile, were the provinces once more on the offensive. It meant also that the way for a decisive blow at the Spaniards through the north was forever barred; that the attack had to be carried through the west to Chile, first, and then by sea to the heart of Spanish power in Lima; that while troops were being prepared slowly and patiently for this purpose, the constant pressure of the victorious Spanish armies from the north had to be withstood; and last, but by no means least, it emphasized the need for the presence of a strong man to bolster up the provisional government in Buenos Aires itself, which, after the death of Mariano Moreno, was left without a leader of ability and strength commensurate with the magnitude of the task to be accomplished.
Fortunately for the independence of the provinces of the Plata, there arose, at this critical juncture, men like Belgrano, who by his victories of Tucumán and Salta, stemmed the flood of Spanish invasion after Huaquí; San Martín, who by his conquest of Chile and Lima, was to force the Spaniards into the fastnesses of the mountains of Peru, where his veteran troops, delivered by one of the greatest acts of self-denial in the record of history into the hands of Bolívar, sounded the knell of Spanish dominion on the battlefields of Junín and Ayacucho; Güemes, who after the battle of Sipe-Sipe, a disaster comparable only to Huaquí, was able, with the aid of his intrepid gauchos, to protect the communications of the army that was being prepared by San Martín in Mendoza; Rivadavia and Pueyrredón, without the stimulus of whose leadership the provisional government would have succumbed under the weight of the responsibilities it had assumed.