Page 34 - General Giuseppe GARIBALDI - english version

32 GENERAL GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

people were so jealous that they showed almost open enmity, maybe because
so much good military good luck on the blond head of that singular foreign-
er from across the ocean was badly tolerated. But more than any other con-
sideration, maybe even more than the great desire for rest and peace,
Garibaldi this time was unsure whether to accept the pressing invitation
because of the increasingly burning hope that an occasion would present
itself for him to return to Italy and dedicate to the great Mother, and to her
exclusively, his proud conscience and the awareness of being able by now to
fight with dignity for the freedom and the independence of his Country.
Only when he was promised that as soon as his faraway homeland would call,
he would be free to go, he accepted the task and as the man of honour he was,
he dedicated himself to his new and hard mission in aid of Uruguay and
against the greedy Argentine tyrant bent on conquering that charming coun-
try on the left bank of the Plata River, putting all his effort into the job in
hand with his usual magnificent spirit of almost mystic selflessness, that was
the sublime synthesis of the noble virtues of his great soul.
The evil influence of the nearby Argentine tyrant, had divided Uruguay in
two parties, ferociously fighting each other: blancos and colorados, headed
respectively by the President, General Fructuoso Rivera and an ex-President,
General Oribe, who, with his unbridled hunger for power, had become the
long hand of Rosas, from which he received a great deal of land and sea mil-
itary aid.
The intervention in Uruguay by the merciless Argentinian dictator had
been clear since 1839, while Garibaldi was fighting for the Rio Grande and
against Brazil. However, in the course of the first field operations, Rivera’s
national party had come out victorious. But Rivera was not able to take
advantage of such a favourable event, and having remained inactive for two
long years, had made it possible for Rosas to recover and, in the summer of
1842, relaunch the offensive and, this time, with much more strong forces.
In fact, he had ordered two of his generals, Echague and Urquiza to keep
Rivera’s troops in check in the Entre Rìos, an Argentinian province extend-
ing between the Uruguay and the Paranà rivers and next to the territory of
the Republic of Uruguay on the east; while he had put his trustworthy lieu-
tenant Oribe (a renegade Uruguaian) in charge of an army of 14,000 men,
with the order to advance directly on Montevideo, aiming straight at the
heart of the country that he intended to conquer.