Page 206 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

206 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

than the east of the Uruguay River, extending from the left bank of the Rio de la Plata to
the foothills of the Serra Geral, north of Rio Jacuí, a disputed region since the beginning
of the eighteenth century by the geo-historical nucleus of future nationalities that will
arise there (PICTURE 1). In this “hundred years war”, the Plata War, which lasted until
the mid-nineteenth century, clashed successive projections and projects of power, mixed
with the interests of foreign powers in the region. Brazil’s strategy in the Cisplatine War
was chosen as historical case of this study, based on field and documentary research. The
methodology chosen is the application of the latest knowledge to identify, analyze and
criticize the policies and strategies of the conflict.
The War of 1825, a chapter of the Plata War, was the first conflict involving the
new states that emerged from the dissolution of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial
empires in South America. Although inheriting structural features of the occupation
and colonization of the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and shaped
by the conflicts in the region throughout the eighteenth century, the Cisplatine War
was conducted according to the policies of the two new states, Brazil and the United
Provinces of Rio de La Plata. While geography and its derivative, geopolitics, exercised a
great influence on the formulation of war policies, economic, cultural and psychological
aspects also influenced both sides policies as in strategies developed.
Distinct from European conflicts, the Cisplatine War was fought on land over a large
area by small number of effectives who fought a war “à gaúcha,” with light cavalry
8
forces, composed of militia. The exception was the campaign of 1827, in which small
regular forces if compared to European standards, but steeped in the local traditions,
were employed in accordance with national policies and strategies, culminating in the
battle of Passo do Rosário, which, though indecisive, concluded the operations and
brought closure to the conflict. During 1826, the actions of Bento Manuel and Bento
Gonçalves’ light cavalry brigades and the maintenance of the frontier line on the Quaraí
and Jaguarão rivers also illustrate the Brazilian strategy in the conflict. At sea, the war
extended over a large tract of the South Atlantic, with battles from Patagonia to the
Northeast of Brazil and off the coast of Africa.

3. The grand strategy
The casus belli of the War of 1825 was the Cisplatine, a former province of the
Viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata, the Banda Oriental. Since 1821, it was embedded in
the Empire of Brazil, as a federate state, a situation to which the Confederation of the
United Provinces of Rio de La Plata objected, wishing to reincorporate it into the former
lands of provinces and the old Viceroyalty (1776) that had been dismantled during the
processes of independence after 1810.
The greatest controversy regarding sovereignty over Cisplatine lays in the Spanish
8 “Guerra à gaúcha” is a name applied until the begining of the XX century to the form of combat
in the pampas of South America, in which small contingents of para-regulars cavalry forces, lightly
armed, highly mobile and enjoying logistic autonomy, storming in places and moments unexpected,
disappearing before the approach of superior forces, a kind of guerrilla warfare, although they were able
to present themselves in great force when the opportunity arose.