In 1680 the governor of Rio de Janeiro sent some ships and a force of soldiers to the Plate, with orders to occupy a point on the north bank in the name of the king of Portugal. Spain claimed that her dominions extended as far up the coast as the southern border of the present state of São Paulo, and Portugal was equally stubborn in insisting that her rightful territory extended west and south as far as the mouth of the Uruguay. Neither country had made any settlements in the disputed region, and Portugal had determined to take advantage of the negligence of the Spanish government and be first in the field. To establish a post only twenty miles from the capital of the Spanish possessions and more than a thousand miles south of the last Portuguese town seemed an audacious step, but its success would secure for Portugal the whole intermediate territory, as well as give her a port which would insure her merchants the command of the trade of the Plate valley.
The Portuguese commander landed unopposed on the shore of the estuary directly opposite Buenos Aires, and immediately began to throw up walls, dig a ditch, and lay out a town called Colonia. When the news reached Buenos Aires, the indignant governor raised a force of two hundred and sixty Spaniards and three thousand Indians, crossed the river, and fell upon the little body of Portuguese in the midst of their delving and shovelling. The attack was at first repulsed, but superior numbers were soon effective. The enemy surrendered, and the Spaniards threw down the walls and destroyed the beginnings of the town. The Portuguese government protested, claiming that the governor's action was a wilful and inexcusable aggression against the forces of a friendly power operating in territory which had never been occupied by Spain. The Madrid government disavowed the act, and the Portuguese resumed possession of Colonia in 1683. They rebuilt its walls and made the place safe against the attacks of Indians. At once it became a centre for contraband traffic. The Spanish laws and colonial policy forbade vessels to land at Buenos Aires. In defiance of the prohibition, illegal trade had been carried on, but the lading of vessels lying in the Buenos Aires roads was conducted at great risk. Officials might order the seizure of the goods, and enormous bribes had to be paid to functionaries; often the governor was the smuggler's partner, but he was a partner who demanded an exorbitant share of the profit. In Colonia, however, merchandise could be safely stored and embarked at leisure, sothe latter place rapidly absorbed the export trade and became anentrepôtfor imported goods destined for sale in the valley of the Plate and in Bolivia.
Spain had restored Colonia under protest and without prejudice, explicitly reiterating her own claim to exclusive proprietorship of the north bank of the Plate. The diplomatists agreed that the question of right should remain open for determination at some future day, but all Spanish subjects considered the existence of Colonia as a violation of Spanish soil, and whenever a war broke out in Europe between the mother countries, the Buenos Aireans were in the habit of promptly sending an expedition across the river to capture the Portuguese town. Three times was it wrenched from the Portuguese, and three times was it restored on the conclusion of peace.
In 1705, Spain and Portugal being engaged in war, the governor of Buenos Aires dislodged the Portuguese garrison from Colonia and the place remained in Spanish possession until after the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht. Their eleven years' possession at last convinced the Spaniards that the settlement of the north bank was feasible. By 1708 the Charrua raids had so far lost their terrors that the Jesuit mission at Soriano was safely removed from the island in the Uruguay River to the mainland opposite. The trade in Uruguayan hides and horsehair increased, and private expeditions henceforth frequently crossed the estuary.
It had long been known that the best harbours on the Uruguayan coast were at Montevideo andMaldonado, where partially sheltered bays, with water deep enough for the vessels of the eighteenth century, were overlooked by beautiful and defensible town sites. Montevideo is a hundred miles east of Colonia, and Maldonado another hundred miles farther on toward the Atlantic. The advisability of seizing and fortifying one or both of these places was frequently mooted in Buenos Aires, after the restoration of Colonia in 1716. Nothing, however, was done until 1723, when word came that the Portuguese had again anticipated the Spanish authorities and had occupied and begun to fortify Montevideo for themselves. The governor of Buenos Aires immediately sent an overwhelming force which compelled the Portuguese to retire. This time neither dilatory diplomacy nor official ineptitude prevented his doing the right thing to save Uruguay to the Spanish Crown, and the following year he finished the Portuguese walls at Montevideo, and in 1726 the ground plan of a town was laid out and a few families were brought from Buenos Aires and the Canary Islands. Within a few years there were a thousand people in the place, and it had been surrounded with walls and defended by artillery. Four years later, Maldonado was established. No serious trouble was experienced with the Indians at either place, and the Spaniards began to spread their ranches over the neighbouring south-eastern part of Uruguay.
MONTEVIDEO.MONTEVIDEO.[From an old print.]
Almost simultaneously with this important event, the Creoles from Santa Fé province crossed over into the wide plains which lie between the Paranáand the Uruguay, and defeated the Charrua tribes who had kept the Spanish out of that region for one hundred and fifty years. Soon the gauchos were in possession of Entre Rios as far as the Uruguay. The Charruas east of the Uruguay could not prevent the gauchos from making their way across the river to build their cabins and ride the plains after cattle. The settlement of western Uruguay began, but, except Colonia and Soriano, no towns were founded. The half-Indian gauchos lived a semi-nomadic life and needed and received little help from the authorities in their constant fights against the Indians.
Shortly after the foundation of Montevideo, a Portuguese expedition tried to recover the place, but it was found to be too strong to attack, and the party resolved to establish a town farther up the coast. Three hundred miles to the north-west is found the only opening into the great system of lagoons which stretches along the seaward side of Rio Grande do Sul, and at that strategic point the Portuguese, in 1735, built a fort and town.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the situation between Spain and Portugal in the whole region between the Plate, the Uruguay, and the sea had become very strained. Colonia was completely isolated and the Spaniards controlled all the rest of Uruguay's western and southern water-front. The Portuguese settlements in the seaward half of Rio Grande were prospering and multiplying, soon to furnish thousands of gauchos, as ready as any who rode the Argentine pampas to sally forth for waror plunder. The territory which the Jesuits had held for more than a century on the east bank of the Upper Uruguay lay directly back of these Portuguese settlements and was more easily accessible therefrom than from Montevideo. In 1750 Spain agreed to exchange the Seven Missions for Colonia. The Portuguese promptly took measures to secure the ceded territory, attacked the Indian villages, and massacred or drove off most of the inhabitants. The Jesuits vigorously protested, and outraged Spanish public opinion demanded the abrogation of the treaty, so a few years later the desolated territory was restored to Spanish possession and Colonia remained Portuguese.
In 1762 Spain and Portugal were again engaged in war, and the governor of Buenos Aires attacked Colonia with a force of twenty-seven hundred men and thirty-two ships. The fortifications were strong and the Portuguese offered a tenacious resistance. After a well-contested siege the place surrendered, only to be given back to Portugal the ensuing year. Meanwhile, troops had been sent up from Montevideo against Rio Grande and the Portuguese settlers driven back to the north-east corner of the state, only to rise again when the Spanish troops were gone and to begin a guerrilla warfare which never ceased until they had regained their towns.
The eighteenth century had entered on its last quarter before the Spanish home government took any real steps to drive the Portuguese out of Colonia and to reclaim the disputed territory as far north as São Paulo. The Atlantic slope of Spanish SouthAmerica was erected into a Viceroyalty, and in 1777 the greatest fleet and army ever sent by Spain to America reached Buenos Aires under command of the new Viceroy. The Portuguese had no forces able to cope with his army and fleet, and he carried all before him. The island of Santa Catharina in the north of the disputed territory was captured, Colonia was taken, and an army of four thousand men started on a triumphal march north-westward to sweep the Portuguese from the coast. The Spaniards were at the gates of Rio Grande when news came that peace had been declared. Orders from home compelled the Viceroy to stop his northward progress while the diplomats agreed on a division. The treaty of San Ildefonso in the main gave each country the territory its citizens actually occupied. The Seven Missions remained Spanish, and the Portuguese were deprived of the southern half of the great lagoon and of Colonia. Santa Catharina was restored, and the right of Portugal to the vast interior and to the regions of the Upper Paraná and Paraguay were confirmed. Rio Grande remained Portuguese and Uruguay was assured of being thenceforth and for ever Spanish in blood and speech.
With the treaty of San Ildefonso, Uruguay began her real existence. Montevideo was made the greatest fortress on the Atlantic coast, commanded by its own military governor, strongly garrisoned and provisioned, and with over one hundred cannon mounted on its walls. The Charruas had long been driven back from the coast, and as soon as the danger of Portuguese interference was over settlements spread rapidly along the whole southern border. Prior to 1777 there were only five towns in Uruguay, but within the next five years the number tripled. By the year 1810 there were seventy-five hundred people living in the city of Montevideo, seventy-five hundred in its immediate district, and sixteen thousand in the outlying settlements. Outside of Montevideo, cattle-herding was the sole business, and the people were a hard-riding, meat-eating, bellicose race. Immediately to the north-east lived fifty thousand Rio Grandenses of Portuguese blood and speech, who, in like surroundings, had acquired the same pastoral and semi-nomadic habits as their Argentine and Uruguayan neighbours, and who constantly made incursions over the Spanish border. The Uruguayan gauchos retaliated, and for nearly a century continuous partisan warfare went on, for these half-savage cattle-herders recked little of treaties or boundary lines. The Spanish guerrillas bore the name ofblandenques, and in this school of arms the future generals of Uruguay's war of independence were trained. Most of the forays were only for the purpose of stealing cattle or burning cabins built in coveted regions; nevertheless, one of these expeditions changed the nationality of a territory larger than England. In 1801 the Rio Grandenses conquered the Seven Missions, thus doubling at a single stroke the area of their own state and reducing Uruguay to substantially its present dimensions.
As the seat of the largest Spanish garrison, Montevideo naturally became the centre of pro-Spanish feeling and influence in the Plate and the home of families who boasted distinguished Castilian descent and conservative principles. In the interior settlements Creole influences predominated, and the population was substantially homogeneous with that of the Argentine provinces on the other side of the Uruguay River. Between the aristocratic Montevideans and the gauchos of the country districts there was little sympathy.
BRIDGE AT MALDONADO.BRIDGE AT MALDONADO.
In 1806, the English captured Buenos Aires, and many Spanish officials and officers fled to Montevideo for refuge. The garrison of Montevideo furnished troops and arms for the expedition whichsoon went across the Plate and triumphantly recaptured Buenos Aires. Late that same year, British troops from the Cape of Good Hope seized Maldonado harbour in eastern Uruguay. As soon as re-enforcements arrived a movement was made against Montevideo. On the 14th of January, 1807, the city was besieged by sea and land. The attacking and defending forces were about equal in number, although the British regulars were far superior in discipline and effectiveness to their opponents, half of whom were militia. A sortie in force was completely defeated, with a loss of one thousand men, and after eight days of bombardment the British effected a breach in the wall and took the town by assault, the Spaniards losing half their force and the remainder scattering. A great fleet of merchant vessels had accompanied the British expedition, and as soon as the town surrendered their goods were landed, and the English traders took possession of the shops almost as completely as the British soldiers did of the fortifications. Uruguay was opened up to free trade, the gauchos were soon selling their hides and horsehair for higher prices than they had ever received, and buying clothes, tools, and the comforts and luxuries of civilised life at rates they had never dreamed possible.
A few months later the English attacked Buenos Aires, but were overwhelmingly defeated, and the British general found himself in such an awkward situation that, in order to obtain permission to withdraw his army, he had to agree to evacuate Montevideo. The convention was carried out and theBritish soldiers left the Plate forever, but the British merchants remained behind. Although the English occupation of the city had lasted so short a time, it created an unwonted animation in Montevideo by the establishment of a great number of mercantile and industrial houses. From this time, Montevideo's commerce assumed greater proportions and it became a place of real commercial importance, as well as a military post. Both city and country had tasted the delights of commercial freedom, and material civilisation had received its first great impulse.
Elio, the Spanish military governor of Montevideo, suspected the loyalty of Liniers, the Frenchman, who, because he had led in the fighting against the English, had been created viceroy at Buenos Aires. Spanish affairs at home were in confusion and fast becoming worse confounded. The old king had abdicated in favour of his son; civil war had broken out on the Peninsula; the new king had been compelled by Napoleon to resign, and Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed monarch of Spain. The Spanish nation refused to accept Joseph and a revolutionary government was set up in Seville. Elio, as a patriotic Spaniard, promptly swore allegiance to this junta, but the Viceroy and the Buenos Aires Creoles hesitated as to their course of action. The Montevidean governor and the Buenos Aires Viceroy quarrelled; the former accused the latter of unfaithfulness to Spain and disavowed his authority, and the latter retaliated by issuing a decree deposing Elio. On receiving news of this act, which was strictly legal under Spanish law, the MontevideoCabildo met in extraordinary session and appointed a junta, which was to be dependent solely and directly upon the authority of the banished legitimate king and in no way upon Buenos Aires so long as Liniers remained Viceroy. Thus early did Montevideo act independently of Buenos Aires.
Although the sentiment of loyalty was much stronger in Montevideo than in Buenos Aires, the English invasion was no sooner over than there became manifest something of the same profound division between Creoles and Spaniards. Three years, however, passed without disturbances; and even when the news of the overthrow of the new Spanish Viceroy by the populace of Buenos Aires on the 25th of May, 1810, reached Montevideo, the governor was able to prevent any revolutionary manifestations of sympathy. On the 12th of July a small part of the garrison rose in a mutiny, which was easily suppressed. In January, 1811, Elio returned to Montevideo with a commission as Viceroy and bringing considerable re-enforcements. He declared war on Creole revolutionists at Buenos Aires and imprisoned the Montevideans suspected of Creole sympathies and revolutionary ideas.
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 ofElio'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 thesame 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 Airesto 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 markeda 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 Argentineprovinces, 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 JOSE GERVASIO ARTIGAS.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.
In the beginning of 1825 a group of patriots met in Buenos Aires and planned an invasion of Uruguayan territory. Word was sent to different chiefs in the country districts, and on the night of the 19th of April thirty-three adventurers, with Lavalleja at their head, landed on the shore of the river in the extreme south-western corner of the country. No sooner had they landed than the country rose; the troops sent from Montevideo to meet the band of revolutionists refused to fight, and, deserting the Brazilian banner, joined their compatriots. The revolutionists advanced east along the Negro and the Yi to Durazno, one hundred and thirty miles north of Montevideo, where they found Rivera, then general in the Brazilian service. He promptly deserted and was at once associated with Lavalleja in the command.
Lavalleja advanced to the south, calling the population to arms, while the northern detachments rose in response to Rivera. Only fifteen days after the thirty-three had crossed the Uruguay, the flagof the revolution was floating over the Cerrito Hill in front of Montevideo, and Brazilian power was virtually confined to the walls of that city and Colonia. The military chiefs formally declared Uruguay separated from Brazil, and proclaimed its reincorporation with the Argentine. The number of Brazilians then in Uruguay was small, and infantry could not be expected to do much fighting on the plains against gaucho cavalry led by such experienced guerrilla fighters as Rivera and Lavalleja. A division of Rio Grandense cavalry, under their own chiefs, Bento Manoel and Bento Goncalvez, met the Uruguayans at Sarandi. The two armies used substantially the same methods, charging into each other, sword in hand and carbine at shoulder. The Brazilians were caught in a disadvantageous position and suffered a complete and bloody overthrow.
The result of this battle was to insure to the revolutionists the continuation of their complete dominance in the country. Their cavalry bands roamed at will up to the very walls of Montevideo. Buenos Aires received the news with extravagant demonstrations of joy, and formal notice was given to Brazil that Uruguay would henceforth be recognised as an integral part of the Argentine Confederation. The emperor promptly responded with a declaration of war. His fleet blockaded Buenos Aires, while he poured re-enforcements into Montevideo and sent an army to invade northern Uruguay. Argentine troops likewise swarmed across the Uruguay River into the country, and the Brazilianscould make little progress. On sea they were not more successful, and by the beginning of 1826 Admiral Brown was blockading Colonia and menacing the communications of Montevideo.
In August, 1826, the famous Argentine general, Carlos Alvear, took command of the patriot forces. Jealousies and quarrels had meantime broken out between Lavalleja and Rivera. Alvear took the former's side and Rivera's partisans revolted. But the arrival of more re-enforcements for the Brazilians hushed up for the moment the intestine quarrels of the Spanish-Americans. Alvear determined to carry the war into Brazil, and early in January, 1827, succeeded in passing between the northern and southern Brazilian armies, and penetrated across the frontier to the north-east. He had sacked Bagé, the principal town of that region, before the Brazilian general, the Marquis of Barbacena, was able to concentrate his forces and start in pursuit. Alvear turned north toward the Missions, but he was in a hostile country where defeat meant total destruction. Though his army numbered eight thousand men he had cut himself off from his base, and an enemy in equal force was close at his heels. He resolved to turn and give battle, and on the 20th of February, 1827, his army met that of Barbacena in the decisive battle of Ituzaingo, which ended in the defeat of the Brazilians. Although Barbacena was able to withdraw his army without material loss, and Alvear retired at once to Uruguayan soil, the Brazilians were never afterwards able to undertake a vigorous offensive. The result of that battle insured that the north bank of thePlate should remain Spanish in blood, language, and government.
A few days before Ituzaingo, Admiral Brown had won the great naval fight of Juncal at the mouth of the river Uruguay, and thenceforth the Brazilian blockade of Buenos Aires was entirely ineffective. If it had not been for the civil disturbances in Argentina that paralysed the Buenos Aires government, the Brazilians might have been swept out of Montevideo at the point of the sword, and the Argentines might have undertaken the conquest of Rio Grande itself. Though considerable Argentine forces remained in Uruguay during 1827 and 1828, they put no vigour into their operations, and on their part the Brazilians were able to do little more than hold Montevideo. So hampered was Rivadavia, the president of Buenos Aires, by revolts, uprisings, and disorders throughout Argentina that he thought himself obliged to agree to abandon Uruguay. Public opinion in Argentina would not accept the treaty which he made; he was deposed, and a leader of the opposite party installed in power.
Rivera, operating on his own account, had undertaken a campaign against the western Rio Grande, but so bitter was factional feeling that his rival, Lavalleja, sent a force to pursue and fight him, while the new Buenos Aires government was induced to sign a treaty of peace largely because Rivera's success against the Brazilians might make him strong enough to be dangerous. Both Brazil and Argentina were tired of the tedious, expensive war,and both governments had preoccupations within their own territories. Through the intervention of the British Minister the terms were agreed upon. Brazil and Argentina both gave up their claims to Uruguay, the region was erected into an independent republic, and Brazil and Argentina pledged themselves to guarantee its independence during five years.
At that time Argentina was convulsed by the struggle between the federalists and the unitarians, and the Uruguayans were also divided into two camps—the followers of Lavalleja and those of Rivera. Neither in Argentina nor in Uruguay were these divisions parties in any proper sense of that term. They were military factions, whose ambitious leaders seem to have been always willing to sacrifice the interests of the country at large to secure a partisan advantage. The Argentine troops who returned home from the war against Brazil promptly plunged their country into the bloodiest civil war known in her history, and Uruguay did not delay in following the example.
The first chief magistrate of independent Uruguay was José Rondeau, an Uruguayan who had become one of the greatest Argentine generals. However, Lavalleja and Rivera were the real factors in the situation, and Rondeau's efforts to conciliate both at the same time failed. The Constituent Assembly, which soon met and framed a paper constitution, was controlled by Lavalleja's partisans. Rondeau was deposed and Lavalleja assumed the reins of power. Rivera prepared to march on Montevideoand dispute the matter by arms, but the representatives of Argentina and Brazil intervened and a compromise was effected. Rivera got the best of the bargain, being given command of the army, and after the constitution had been declared (July 18, 1830), he became, as a matter of course, the first president of Uruguay.
Except for an expedition against the remnants of the once formidable Charrua Indians, the first two years of independence passed in peace. Since the expulsion of Artigas, the country had prospered and its population had risen nearly threefold within twenty-five years, in spite of the bloody fighting which occurred from 1811 to 1817 and from 1825 to 1828. The settlements had spread far back from the coast, and many of the principal interior towns date from this period.
In 1832 the civil wars began again. Lavalleja's partisans organised a conspiracy, and a certain Colonel Garzon took advantage of Rivera's absence from Montevideo to raise a mutiny in the garrison and to issue a pronunciamento deposing the president. The latter soon recovered the city, and after two years of intermittent fighting the Lavalleja party was overthrown for the moment and Rivera finished his term in peace.
Manuel Oribe, a chief of the anti-Rivera faction, succeeded to the presidency by a compromise agreement, but the breach between the two factions had really grown wider and their mutual hatred became irrepressibly bitter. Oribe soon began to persecute his opponents. Meanwhile, the five years had expired during which Uruguayan independence had been guaranteed by the treaty between Argentina and Brazil. Argentina was free to solicit the reincorporation of Uruguay into the Confederation. Rosas, the head of the federalist party, had made himself master of Buenos Aires, and his authority was recognised in most of the Argentine provinces, although the unitarians continued their ineffectual revolts. The new Uruguayan president sympathised with the federalists, while his rival, Rivera, could count on the unitarians. The plan of Rosas was to establish Oribe firmly in Uruguay and through his aid to incorporate that country with Argentina, while the unitarians were desperately anxious that Rivera should triumph, knowing that Montevideo would be a base for the organisation of their own forces for invasions of Buenos Aires and central Argentina.
Thenceforward for many years Uruguay's history is inexplicably entwined with the story of the struggle between the two great Argentine factions. The little country became the storm-centre of South American politics and the chief battlefield of the contending forces. Now for the first time we encounter references to "blancos" and "colorados," which remain to this day the names of Uruguayan political parties. All the forces of the community lined up on either side and never have politicalparties fought more determinedly and relentlessly. The divisions between them entered into all social and business relations, and even friendly intercourse between the members of the two factions was almost impossible. Men have often been more blanco or colorado than Uruguayan. The old conservative resident Spanish families were the basis of the blanco, or Oribe party, while the colorados, or partisans of Rivera, were the progressive faction. The latter attracted the Argentine refugees fleeing from the tyranny of Rosas, and could count upon the support of resident Europeans and upon the sympathy of foreign governments. Rosas in Argentina and the blancos in Uruguay represented the spirit of exclusivism and opposition to foreign influences.
After Oribe's accession to power Rivera hastened to raise a revolt in the western districts. He obtained help from the unitarians, and his invasion was accompanied by many Argentine generals who had distinguished themselves in the wars against Rosas. The Argentine dictator sent help to Oribe, but for two years the tide of battle set in favour of the colorados and unitarians. Rivera had obtained so decided an advantage by 1838 that Oribe abandoned Montevideo and embarked for Buenos Aires, followed by the chiefs of his party. The colorado chief, now in control of all Uruguay, celebrated a formal alliance with the province of Corrientes, then in revolt against Rosas, and war was declared against the latter. A large Argentine army, accompanied by many blancos, invaded Uruguay, but wasdecisively defeated at the battle of Cagancha, December 10, 1839.
The interval of unquestioned colorado supremacy which followed was one of the most flourishing periods in the history of Uruguay. Large numbers of the intellectual élite of Buenos Aires swarmed across the river; Montevideo became the centre of arts and letters of Spanish America; the civil wars of the last few years had not been severe, and even during their continuance property had suffered little. Immigration from England, France, and Italy began on a large scale, and the population increased at the rate of four per cent. per annum. In the year 1840 nine hundred ocean-going ships entered the port of Montevideo, more than three thousand houses were erected, and twenty-seven great meat-curing establishments were in active operation. However, Rosas and the blancos were only awaiting a good opportunity to attack.
In 1841 Oribe, in command of one of Rosas's armies, defeated the Argentine unitarians under General Lavalle, and marched into Entre Rios to suppress the insurrection in that province. In January, 1842, Rivera took an army of three thousand men to the rescue of his unitarian allies. He crossed the river Uruguay and united his forces to those of General Paz, but after a year's desperate fighting on Argentine soil he and the unitarian general were overthrown and their armies completely destroyed in the battle of Arroya Grande. The way was open to Montevideo; the colorados and Argentine exiles shut themselves up in that city, and theso-called nine-years' siege began. Rosas's power seemed overwhelming, and although Rivera and other colorado chiefs at the head of scattered bands managed to make some headway in the outlying departments, they were finally driven into Brazil, while the unhappy country was given up to pillage and slaughter. Thisguerra grandewas the bloodiest, longest, and most stubborn war ever fought on Uruguayan soil.
Montevideo seemed doomed to an early surrender when an opportune intervention by France and England upset the plans of Rosas. He had embroiled himself with the ministers of those powers by refusing to give satisfaction for certain alleged injuries to foreign merchants and naval officers, and the dispute became so acrimonious that the European powers finally resorted to the most drastic coercive measures. A French, and later a British, fleet blockaded Buenos Aires and drove Rosas's vessels from the Plate. Under these circumstances it was impossible for him to land re-enforcements on the Uruguayan shore. In 1845 the European navies forced a passage at the head of the estuary into the Paraná and Uruguay, destroying the batteries which Rosas had erected there and opening up those rivers to foreign navigation. Thereafter, troops could be sent from Argentina into Uruguay only by a long détour to the north.
In spite of this hampering of his military operations, and the injury which the blockade caused to the commerce of Buenos Aires, the Argentine dictator stubbornly refused to yield an inch to foreignpressure. France and England were finally tired out; they raised the blockade; Rosas regained his control of the Plate and the early capture of Montevideo seemed certain. Just at this time, however, General Urquiza, governor of Entre Rios, and Rosas's best lieutenant and most successful general, broke with his chief. Entre Rios became a virtually independent state, and Rosas's efforts to reduce it were unavailing. Urquiza's defection again rendered it impossible properly to reinforce Oribe's army. The colorados of the interior plucked up courage and during four years no material progress was made on either side. A tedious and exhausting partisan warfare went on in the interior; guerrilla bands scoured the country in every direction; inhabitants of the same town were arrayed against each other, and surprises, treasons, and massacres were almost daily occurrences. One of the most successful leaders on the colorado side was the famous Giuseppe Garibaldi. The future liberator of Italy had made his début as a revolutionist in the insurrection which broke out in 1835 in the Brazilian province of Rio Grande. Later he crossed the Uruguayan border and fought against Rosas for several years.
Early in 1851 a grand combination to overthrow Rosas was made between Entre Rios, Corrientes, the unitarians, the colorados, and Brazil. The constant policy of the latter power had been to secure and maintain the independence of Uruguay, and she welcomed the opportunity to open up the Paraná and Uruguay, on whose headwaters she had greatterritories, inaccessible except along those rivers. Urquiza naturally became the general-in-chief of the alliance. On the 18th of July he crossed the Uruguay, followed by a large army from his own provinces. A Brazilian army soon joined him and the colorados flocked to his standard. The Brazilian fleet came down the coast and controlled the estuary. An overwhelming force advanced on Montevideo and the blanco army found itself with a hostile city and fleet in front, a superior army behind, and deprived of the hope of receiving help from Buenos Aires. The officers hastened to make terms with Urquiza. Whole divisions deserted, and Oribe himself was obliged to surrender. Many of the soldiers who had been fighting in the blanco ranks joined Urquiza, and the latter, after a vain attempt to reconcile the Uruguayan factions among themselves, marched his army back through Uruguay and Entre Rios, crossed the Paraná, and, descending to Buenos Aires, defeated Rosas in the great battle of Monte Caseros.
The overthrow of Rosas and Oribe marked the end of the effort to re-incorporate Uruguay with the Argentine Confederation. Uruguay was no longer in peril from foreign aggression, but she was far from being united. The blancos had apparently been completely crushed, but their wealth, prestige, and numbers still made them formidable. The seeds of division lay thickly in the soil of the national society and character, sure to spring up and bear many crops of wars and pronunciamentos.
For the moment, however, the fierce Uruguayan partisans had had enough of fighting. The colorados were dominant and the blancos disorganised and discouraged. It seemed likely that Uruguay would enjoy a prolonged peace. The wars which lasted almost continuously from 1843 to 1851 had interrupted immigration from Europe; unitarians had, however, crossed in multitudes from Buenos Aires and many of their families remained after the proclamation of peace. To this day Montevideo is full of families descended from Buenos Aires refugees;the same names constantly recur on both banks of the Plate, and the social ties uniting the two cities are intimate. Uruguay's herds of cattle and sheep had suffered from the depredations of the armed marauding bands which had scoured the country districts for nine years, but man's cruel destructiveness could not injure the magnificent pasturage with which nature had endowed the nation, and animals quickly multiplied again by hundreds of thousands. In 1860 the cattle in Uruguay numbered more than five millions, the sheep two millions, and the horses nearly one million. The population increased at the almost incredible ratio of nine per cent. per annum after the overthrow of Oribe in 1851 until civil war again broke out in 1863.
During these years colorado chiefs occupied the presidency, sometimes succeeding one another, sometimes by pronunciamento, and sometimes by a form of election. General Venancio Flores, an able and ruthless officer, became the principal figure among the colorados. In 1853 he was a member of a triumvirate which forced the legal president to withdraw, and in 1854 he was himself raised to the presidency, only to be obliged to resign the following year. As is usual in South America, the dominant party split into factions, led by ambitious chiefs, and lost popularity. The blancos, as soon as they got into power, obtained control of the senate, and their prestige and wealth soon balanced the military force of their opponents. In 1860 they finally prevailed, and their leader, Berro, became constitutional president of the republic.
The colorados, however, did not propose to submit. Massed upon the Argentine frontier, they held themselves ready to fall upon their successful opponents at the first opportunity. Flores had been exiled and joined the Argentine army, but in 1863 he obtained aid in Buenos Aires and disembarked upon the Uruguayan coast with a considerable force. His partisans rose and he obtained possession of a large portion of the country and set up a government of his own. For a year the contest went on with varying fortunes, and then this fight between blancos and colorados involved all the neighbouring nations and brought on the greatest war which has ever devastated South America and which resulted in the nearly complete destruction of the Paraguayan people.