Talk:Uruguayan Civil War

Italy as fighter?

Hallo, at the time of the civil war the kingdom of Italy did not exist yet. The indication of Italy as combatant is wrong. Regards, Alex2006 10:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Some Italian state was a combatant I think. --Ineffable3000 17:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I changed it to the Kingdom of Sardinia which appears to be correct. --Ineffable3000 18:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Italian exiles took part in the fighting as volunteers, but AFAIK no Italian state entered the war. Garibaldi certainly wasn't fighting as a soldier in the pay of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which had a warrant out for his arrest. He was involved because he happened to be living in Montevideo at the start of the siege and had won a reputation as a guerrilla leader during Rio Grande do Sul's attempt to break away from Brazil. This led him to raise a volunteer force among the city's Italians to fight for the Colorados. --Folantin 10:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you propose we call Giribaldi's forces? --Ineffable3000 23:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

"Italian volunteers" (as in, e.g. Finnish Civil War)? Kirill Lokshin 21:52, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Kirill's suggestion seems sensible, unless the volunteers were organized into a named formation. Carom 21:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

They were called the Italian Legion (source: Jasper Ridley Garibaldi). There was also a French Legion made up of French immigrant volunteers in Montevideo. Again, its formation had nothing to do with the regular French army or the French government. --Folantin 22:03, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I was only pointing out that, if they had an actual name, the could be listed under it - something like "Italian volunteers (Italian Legion)" or vice versa. It might simply be enough to combine all the various volunteers as something like "French and Italian volunteers," but that might not be precise enough. Carom 22:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

This Page has Nothing on it

This Page seems to have had i ts content deleted someone with some info should fix it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.154.12.241 (talk) 16:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Sourced text

I am moving the text about this civil war from the Platine War article to here. Anyone who wants to use it, feel free to. Regards. - --Lecen (talk) 12:41, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Uruguay's internal troubles, including the long civil war, "La Guerra Grande" (The Great War), were heavily influential factors leading up to the Platine War. The old Brazilian province of Cisplatina had become the Oriental Republic of Uruguay after the Argentina-Brazil War of the 1820s. Uruguay's first constitution was adopted in 1830, and Don Fructuoso Rivera was elected its first president. The voting results, however, were disputed by Rivera's opponent, Don Juan Antonio Lavalleja. Lavalleja had gained fame during 1825 for declaring, with the support of the "Thirty-Three Orientals", Cisplatine's independence from Brazil. In due course Lavalleja attempted to resolve the disputed election by force, marking the beginning of a long civil war. Rivera and Lavalleja became associated with two rival political parties: the Blancos which supported Lavalleja, and the Colorados which were partisans of Rivera.

Lavalleja soon discovered that Rosas in neighbouring Buenos Aires was interested in aiding him financially and militarily. In 1832, Lavalleja began to receive aid from Bento Gonçalves, a soldier and farmer from the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul. Gonçalves had been encouraged by Rosas to rebel against the Brazilian government, with the ultimate aim of enabling Argentina to annex the province of Rio Grande do Sul. Together, Lavalleja and Gonçalves initiated a military campaign in Uruguay which was characterised by extensive violence and pillage.

Rivera completed his term of office as President in October 1834. Manuel Oribe, like Lavalleja a member of the Blanco party, was elected in March 1835 and called for an end to the anarchy of the previous years. But election of the new president caused a shift in regional alliances. Outgoing president Rivera rebelled against Oribe but was militarily defeated and retreated into Rio Grande do Sul. There he joined forces with Gonçalves and his men, until then allies of Rosas. Lavajella, however, remained loyal to Oribe. Rivera and Gonçalves then invaded Uruguay and overran most of the country outside the environs of the capital, Montevideo. Defeated, Oribe resigned his position as president and decamped to Argentina. Rivera was then reelected president in 1838.

Rosas was determined to restore Argentine suzerainty over Uruguay and take revenge on Gonçalves. A series of interventions resulted. In 1839 an army led by Pascual Echagüe, Lavalleja, Oribe and Justo José de Urquiza, (Governor of Entre Rios) was quickly defeated by Rivera. At this point, Lavalleja turned his back on the conflict and played no further part in the civil war. Rosas sent another army of Argentines and Uruguayans in 1845, led by Oribe and Urquiza, and this time defeated Rivera's forces, slaughtering the survivors. Rivera was one of the few who managed to escape, and went into exile in Rio de Janeiro. What remained of the Colorado Uruguayan government in Montevideo chose Joaquín Suárez to assume the presidency as Oribe's forces began subjecting the capital to a siege. The violence in Uruguay escalated, with Oribe's men killing more than 17,000 Uruguayans and 15,000 Argentinians during the conflict.

The hostilities began to spread beyond Uruguay's borders. In 1847, Francisco Solano López sponsored a revolt led by Joaquín Madariaga and José María Paz against the Rosas regime in Argentina. This revolt was ultimately suppressed by de Urquiza. Meanwhile, Oribe's control of nearly all of Uruguay had been secured, enabling Rosas to launch an invasion of southern Brazil, his forces stealing cattle, looting ranches, and liquidating political enemies as they went. More than 188 Brazilian farms were attacked, with 814,000 cattle and 16,950 horses stolen. Francisco Pedro de Abreu, Baron of Jacuí independently decided to retaliate, making raids into Uruguay which became known as "Califórnias", in reference to the violence in western North America during California's revolt against Mexico, its brief independence and subsequent annexation by the U.S. As conflict further escalated with the support of Rosas for the Blancos, anarchy spread over wide areas in the region; with a growing threat to trade, the era's two greatest powers, France and Great Britain, were induced to declare war on Argentina. Buenos Aires suffered repeated attacks from Anglo-French fleets and endured several blockades. The Argentine government was able to mount effective resistance, however, leading to a peace accord in 1849.

Population numbers

How is it possible that one sourced sentence say:

As the population of Uruguay at that time was about 60,000 out of which 15,000 lived in Montevideo, the various "armies" rarely rose to more than a couple of thousand soldiers and horsemen. [1]

while another sourced sentence state that in the 1843 census:

Montevedio's population of thirty thousand inhabitants [2]

Did the population of the city doubled from 1839 to 1843? Sietecolores (talk) 07:23, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

The cited source says that "The population of Uruguay in 1828 was about 60,000 inhabitants, and about 15,000 of these individuals lived in Montevideo." (my bold, for emphasis). This is presumably a rough estimate, as the first national Uruguayan census was only conducted in 1852 (see here); the 1843 Montevideo number is presumably also an estimate. The 1852 census apparently reported a national population of about 132,000, while the 1860 census reported a population of around 229,500 (numbers given on Demographics of Uruguay).

Anyway, I'm removing the problematic sentence from the lead, on the grounds that a) the cited source gives a population estimate from over a decade prior to the war, and notes that Uruguay's population was growing rapidly at the time, such that it's not clear how relevant a decade-old statistic could be; and b) the cited source doesn't actually remark on the supposed smallness of the armies involved, despite what the sentence implies, meaning the statement is OR or mis-cited. The source doesn't actually give specific troop numbers for the 1839-51 war at all (though it does for some earlier and later conflicts). I don't think the sentence has much to add on its own merits, either, that it'd be worth trying to find better sources for it- the armies involved may have been small by global standards, but an army of, say, two or three thousand, in a country with a population of under 150,000 people, is still relatively very large; it's not clear that any of this is worth commenting on at all. Yspaddadenpenkawr (talk) 16:03, 13 October 2022 (UTC)