Ponce de Leon: The Rise of the Argentine Republic

by William Pilling

General Crauford had two light field-pieces attached to his column, the other columns were without artillery.

Colonel Duff of the 88th regiment had such misgivings as to the result of the day that he left the colours of his regiment behind him with the reserve, and, when he advanced before dawn to the head of the street by which he was to enter the city, he found his regiment so weak that he sent back for two of the companies which had been left with the reserve. Before these companies were allowed to join him they were ordered to take the flints from their muskets and leave them behind, and Colonel Duff lost much time in trying to provide them with flints, by searching among the rest of his men for spare ones. Even so, many of the men of these two companies entered into action without flints.

The division under the command of Colonel Mahon, which advanced from Quilmes to the Puente Galvès on the 5th July, consisted of about 1800 men, infantry, artillery and dismounted cavalry, the 9th and 17th Light Dragoons, and 200 sailors from the squadron, who had been landed by Admiral Murray to assist in dragging the cannon through the swamps at Ensenada, where five guns captured from the Spaniards at Monte Video stuck fast and were destroyed by Colonel Frazer.

The idea of General Whitelock appears to have been, that by avoiding the main streets of the city, which led direct from the Corrales to the Plaza Mayor, and by a rapid march before sunrise, without firing, through the suburbs and shorter streets, he would succeed in surprising the principal positions to the north and south of the great square, which idea, considering that most of these positions were a league distant from the Plaza Miserere, presumed a great want of vigilance on the part of the garrison, while all chance of a surprise was effectually destroyed by the way in which the signal to advance was given.

As the day dawned a salvo of twenty-one British guns on the Plaza Miserere gave the signal. The troops marched at once; each subdivision in column of sections, seven men in line, left its position and disappeared down the muddy roads, hedged by aloe fences, which led through the suburbs. They disappeared, marching along avenues in which they could see nothing either to the right hand or to the left, towards an unknown goal at the end of a long, narrow path shrouded in darkness and in mist.

Liniers had made every preparation for a vigorous defence. Including the regular troops, the three battalions of Patricios, the Arribeño regiment, armed citizens, slaves,[6] and the dismounted paisanos, he had over 15,000 men under his command. The regular troops were concentrated about the defences of the Plaza Mayor, but the militia were spread about on the azoteas all over the city.

The thunder of the British guns roused up at once the sleeping city; on every azotea the troops stood to arms, by every gun stood a gunner with a lighted match. There had been much rain for several days past, now over all the city there hung a thick haze. Men rushed up to the roofs of their houses, and peered anxiously over the parapets into the murky morning air. Then over the whole city there fell a great silence.

Rapidly through the suburbs marched the invading columns, meeting with no foe, scarce seeing any sign of life; then as the haze cleared somewhat away they entered the long, straight streets of the city, long monotonous lines of white houses, with barred windows and parapeted roofs, deserted streets in which was neither life nor motion, streets stretching straight before them with no visible end. Some of the subdivisions encountered cavalry videttes near the suburbs, who trotted away before them, shouting up to the azoteas of the houses as they passed the warning of their approach.

When or where the firing commenced no one knows, but presently these deserted streets sprang at once into fiery life; on each hand the azoteas bristled with armed men who fired without aim into the thick of the moving mass of men beneath them, who still marched swiftly on with shouldered muskets, and fired not one shot in return. When one man fell another took his place, and still the word was "forward." Fiercer and fiercer grew the fire from the parapets of those flat-roofed houses, men no longer crouching under them for shelter, but leaning over the better to select their victim. Losing patience at the tedious task of reloading, casting aside their firelocks, some tore down the parapet itself with their hands and hurled the bricks at the heads of the marching men. Women with dishevelled hair ran about madly on those flat roofs, more fierce, more relentless than the men, urging them on in their work of death, seizing bricks, grenades, or any other missile that came to hand, and throwing them in wild fury at the lines of living men, who pressed steadily on with teeth clenched and glaring eyes, but who still sent back not one shot in return. Rank after rank was broken, men fell by dozens and by scores, and still where each man fell another took his place, still with sloped muskets, and shoulder to shoulder, the soldiery pressed on up those pathways of death, where the leaden hail poured upon them like hailstones in a winter storm, and where, as they neared the centre, round shot and grape from the defences of Plaza Mayor tore through them.