"J. Whitelock."
To this proposition for a suspension of hostilities General Liniers returned a decisive negative, giving the British General only a quarter of an hour for deliberation and reiterating his previous demand for the surrender of all the acquisitions of the English in the Rio de La Plata. The quarter of an hour passed, no answer was returned, whereupon General Liniers, with a strong force of the Patricios, supported by a body of regular troops, sallied forth from his entrenchments and advanced upon the Residencia by the Calle Defensa. This position was still held by Major Nicholls with 400 men of the 45th regiment, who charged his assailants with the bayonet, drove them back with heavy loss, and captured two howitzers, with their limbers and ammunition. Later on another attempt was made upon this position, but the attacking column was received with discharges of grape from the captured guns and forced to retreat.
About two o'clock General Whitelock, who was then at the Retiro, sent another officer to General Liniers with a flag of truce, accepting the terms offered by him in his despatch of the previous evening, upon which the firing at once ceased.
Soon after sundown Major-general Levison Gower, with a strong escort of Spanish troops, proceeded through the city to the fort for the purpose of drawing up with General Liniers a formal deed of capitulation, which should be signed on the day following. As he passed through the streets the excited populace thronged round him with fierce shouts of defiance, at times firing into the air, but by the exertions of the Spanish officers who were with him he reached the fort in safety, and was led to the room in which General Liniers was at that moment at dinner, having several of the English officers, his prisoners, with him as his guests. The disorderly crowd, armed with swords and pistols rushed in over the drawbridge in front of the escort, and forced their way into the dining-room, shouting—
"Señor Pack! Señor Pack! come out, we have something to arrange with you."
It had been represented to the people by the Spanish authorities that General Beresford and the officers who had escaped with him from Lujan, in March, had broken their parole. This together with his success at Perdriel and Colonia, and the fact of his having been the only English officer who had attacked the entrenchments on the 5th, greatly irritated the populace against Colonel Pack, and they would certainly have wreaked bloody vengeance upon him had they got him into their power.
General Liniers sprang from his chair as the rioters burst into the room, and seizing the foremost by the throat forced them back, going out with them and doing all in his power to pacify them, in which he partially succeeded, but apprehensive of a further attempt, he, two hours later, sent Colonel Pack to the Retiro under a strong escort of Spanish troops.
Two priests, who were dining with General Liniers that evening, also interposed between Colonel Pack and the rioters, and declared that they would lose their own lives rather than permit any harm to befall him.
The following day the treaty of capitulation was signed by Santiago Liniers, Cæsar Balviani, and Bernardo Velasco on the part of the Spaniards; and by General Whitelock and Admiral Murray on behalf of the British, the latter agreeing to evacuate Monte Video within two months.