Page 211 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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Brazil concentrated an army on the frontier, and in the following year campaigned
further back, thereby maintaining the frontier until the end of the war. A strategy of
battle and maneuver by The Army of the South, or the imperial forces as a whole,
advised an attack on the concentration of the Republican Army, inside the Cisplatine, or,
in a broader context, invading Entre Rios and converging on Buenos Aires. Proposals

to this effect made by operational commanders on the ground to the upper echelons of
the government were flatly refused and the Army of the South, through the critical 1827
campaign - during which it attacked an numerically superior force at a place chosen
by the enemy - abided to a territorial strategy that combined defensive and offensive
operations, over which the government exercised constant control (PICTURE 3).
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The political situation of the United Provinces did not impose many limitations on them.
Rather, the precariousness of government institutions, the civil war among the provinces
and the dissolution of the authority of Buenos Aires over parts of the old Viceroyalty
impelled porteño leaders to pursue bold initiatives, without much concern for discretion.
They sought support in the United States and England , and sought Simon Bolivar’s
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diplomatic and military support for the war against Brazil. Militarily, the effort of the
12
United Provinces was devoted to a ground campaign to destroy the Army of the South.
The Republican Army’s campaign for 1827 began in the last days of 1826 with
the invasion of the Rio Grande aimed at Army of the South. Initially, the Republican
commander, General Alvear, sought to beat separately the two parts of the Imperial
Army in Santana do Livramento and Pelotas, but failed (PICTURE 4). This phase, which
lasted until the beginning of February ended with the strategic success of the Brazilian
commander, General Felisberto Pontes Caldeira Brandt, Marquis of Barbacena, who
managed to maneuver near Bagé the junction of the main part of his army with the
division under the command of Marshal Brown which marched from Pelotas.
In the second phase of the campaign, the commander of the Republican Army

10 In the letter dated October 20, 1826, which answers to the memorandum of October 2 of Barbacena in
which the newly appointed commander of the Army of the South proposed a plan to the Emperor of
offensive war in the South, the Conde de Lages, Minister of War Empire , asks if the occupation of the
province of Entre Rios, proposed by Barbacena, there should be the policy of the empire in relation to
the neighboring republics. Similarly, although at operational level and not political, it is observed in the
extensive correspondence throughout the year 1826 by the commander of the Southern Army, General
Rosado, the emphasis that determines Bento Manuel to remain on the defensive with his Light Cavalry
Brigade in Quaraí, preventing to do “Quixotadas, give up what little we have to abandon it across the
border to the Ocean” (CIDADE, 1931, p.52).
11 .... General Tomas Iriarte counts in his “Memoirs” that having (Rivadavia) appointed Alvear as
representative to the U.S. government, he ordered him to do a detour through London before arriving at
his destination and that the object of this detour was to instruct Canning, the minister of Foreign Affairs,
about the glassy (“vitrioso”) state of relations between the two countries. (MORENO, 1961, p. 32)
12 In this instance of the Oriental question, the governor of Buenos Aires Juan Gregorio de Las Heras
- temporarily entrusted of the Executive Branch due to the Basic Law of January 23, 1825 -, and his
Foreign Minister, Manuel José Garcia, had appointed Carlos María de Alvear and José Miguel Díaz
Vélez ministers plenipotentiary to Simon Bolivar in Upper Peru, according to the instructions dated
June 10, 1825. The fundamental purposes of the embassy were negotiate with Bolivar an alliance with
the United Provinces to regain sovereignty in the Banda Oriental, and parley for that the Alto Peru had
representation in Congress in Buenos Aires. (BRONDO, 2011, p. 21-22)