alternatehistory.com

Hi, there! This is my new TL, focused on South America and especially Paraguay with a smaller *War of the Triple Alliance and a very different Argentina. I hope you guys enjoy, and be sure to comment! Without further ado...

* * *

The Legacy of Cepeda
or
A History of South America and the Modern World


Prologue, Part 1: Cry For Yourself, Argentina



The Battle of Cepeda, painted in the early 1900s. Notable for the large amount of historical inaccuracies present, including uniforms, weaponry, and even location.


History, that great march of time, is populated entirely by single, irregular marchers; millions of billions of unique moments, each a hinge deciding which way the next shall turn. Within these moments there is a smaller subsection of moments--the real turning points. These mark a new course for the march, changing the very nature of history.

One of these moments was the Battle of Cepeda.

Though the decades-long and sporadic Argentine Civil War(1) had roots leading all the way back to the beginnings of colonization, the prelude to the Cepedan drama began to unfold on May 31, 1852 with the signing of the San Nicolás Agreement. This was the result of several decades of national debate and conflict over the organizational structure of the Argentine state, and of the personal efforts of Federal(2) Justo José de Urquiza y García.






Under Juan Manuel de Rosas's government(3), Urquiza had been only the governor of the province of Entre Rios, to the north of Buenos Aires. In 1851, de Rosas presented his resignation to the governors of the Confederation(4), as was his custom(5); unlike usual, however, Urquiza accepted his resignation and resumed full personal governance of Entre Rios, as well as opening the province's port to international commerce. Infuriated by this, Rosas declared war on Urquiza, prompting the governor of Corrientes to declare war on Rosas, soon to be joined by Brazil and Uruguay. Stunning the powers-that-were, Urquiza decisively defeated Rosas's larger and more experienced army at the Battle of Caseros, largely due to poor morale on the part of the bonaerenses(6) and the personal heroics of Urquiza, who led a cavalry charge into the massed ranks of Rosas's infantry. Rosas, most of his army captured or deserted, and himself having been gravely wounded in the hand(7), boarded the British HMS Centaur in Buenos Aires, never to return.



Juan Manuel de Rosas


Urquiza's triumph ended the twenty years of dominance by de Rosas and Buenos Aires itself, but did not end the perpetual national strife suffered by Argentina. Riding off of his victory, Urquiza masterminded the San Nicolás Agreement. This caused great uproar in Buenos Aires, where the idea of the rest of the provinces having an equal amount of deputies as the major city was an outrage. Tensions came to a head on September 11, 1852, when Unitarians(8) led by Valentín Alsina(9) seized control of the city and declared its secession from the Confederation. As a response, Urquiza moved the capital to Entre Rios and called a constitutional convention. The resulting constitution did little to solve the problem, relegating Buenos Aires to the same status as the rest of the provinces, and granting control of the city customs, one of the biggest issues, to the federal government; even worse in the eyes of the Unitarians, Urquiza--who was a staunch Federal--was declared president of the Confederation and 'director of the state'.





In December, Urquiza began the First Siege of Buenos Aires, attempting to starve the city into submission, while a mercenary fleet(10) created a blockade. In June 1853, however, the president of the State of Buenos Aires, Manuel Guillermo Pinto (Alsina had resigned as a political maneuver), bribed the leader of the fleet, the American-born John Halstead Coe, to hand over the ships to the State, forcing Urquiza to withdraw in disgrace. For six years thereafter, the "war" changed into a tense ceasefire in all but name. The governance of Buenos Aires proceeded apace, with a constitution asserting the sovereignty of the State and guaranteeing especially the rights to vote and to freely worship being put into force in mid-1854. Slavery was abolished; a national mint created; and the first railway in Buenos Aires built under the shrewd supervision of engineer William Bragge(11), funded by government subsidies. Interestingly, proposals for a more permanent secession were shot down by the legislature and opposed primarily by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and his followers. This, of course, would change following the resumption of the war against the Confederation.



The Jura de la Constitucion, 1854


In the Confederation, however, deepening and persistent deficit problems, as well as the growth of Urquiza's personal hatred(12) for the State, led to the imposition of tariffs on bonaerense goods in 1858, subsequently leading to retaliatory tariffs on the part of the State in early 1859. Alsina, newly reelected as governor of Buenos Aires, and supported especially by General Bartolomé Mitre(13), leader of the State's armed forces, pursued a confrontational policy with the Confederation, essentially baiting Urquiza into conflict. This came to a head when bonaerense forces led by Mitre invaded Santa Fe Province in October 1859, while the State's navy blockaded the new Confederate capital of Parana. Urquiza himself led a force to the province, meeting Mitre's army at Cepeda. Despite initially successful skirmishes, and a devastating cavalry charge again led by Urquiza, the bonaerense managed to reform in the late afternoon, mostly due to the heroic efforts of Mitre, who, it is said, dismounted his horse and joined the infantry in repelling Urquiza's assaults. By dusk, Urquiza was forced to withdraw to the city of Santa Fe itself with his army in disarray, having taken a whopping six thousand dead and three thousand wounded or missing out of an army of only twenty thousand.



Bartolomé Mitre


Mitre had paid for his victory in blood, however; more than four thousand bonaerense had perished in the battle, while the wounded were twice that of Urquiza's army. Mitre himself had been badly wounded in the stomach by a Confederate bayonet--despite the best efforts of his doctors, the wound became infected, confining the general to his bed. The army remained in Santa Fe province for three more weeks, looting several towns, and then withdrew to the State's borders. In the city of Buenos Aires itself, however, the Pyrrhic victory was met with much applause and celebration. Riding Mitre's coattails, Alsina again brought out the idea of a permanent secession from the Confederation, calling a Convention on the Full Independence of Buenos Aires in November. As the convention began, however, opposition leader Domingo Sarmiento riled up the pro-Confederate portions of the populace with an inflammatory speech on November 12, known popularly as the Convention of the Patriots. Large protests and even-larger counter-protests were held in front of the Casa Rosada(14), where the convention was being held. An attempt on the fifteenth by Mitre's militia to disperse the protesters only escalated tensions, finally culminating in several days of rioting and battle between pro-independence and pro-Confederate factions. By the twenty-second, the militia was finally able to take control of the situation, arresting hundreds of rioters, including Domingo Sarmiento himself, on charges of treason. The casualties of the riots, however, included Mitre himself; stress had caused his infection to worsen terribly. He would die before the end of the month(15).



Domingo Sarmiento


Ironically, Mitre's death provided the impetus needed to unite the Convention. The disgrace and arrest of Sarmiento caused many to join the pro-independence faction in the legislature, whilst respect for the death brought others. Finally, on December 5th, 1859, the historic Declaration of Secession was signed by a majority of delegates, formally creating the Republic of the Río de la Plata and adopting the wartime constitution of Buenos Aires as its official constitution (with some adjustments). This briefly sparked another round of protests that were quickly put down by the militia, now led by General José María Pirán, the late Mitre's chief lieutenant. This declaration was met only with anger on the part of the Confederation, which by now had slipped yet further into debt as a consequence of the nation's Buenos Aires-focused economy. Urquiza, having received fresh reinforcements from the provinces, rallied his armies and moved towards the border in the early days of 1860. He was met by Pirán's militia near Pergamino in the northwest. Though Pirán put up a strong fight, the superior numbers of the Confederates and Urquiza's military talent led to a close victory for the Argentines, though both armies were significantly bloodied. Pirán withdrew east, to Avellaneda, dangerously close to the city itself, and began preparing a defense.



Tombstone of José María Pirán


On February 10, 1860, Urquiza assaulted Pirán's position, first using his small artillery contingent to batter the bonaerense troops. After nearly eight hours of constant battle, Pirán's forces finally broke and routed across the Riachuelo River, with Pirán desperately attempting to rally his troops on the other side. Now, the true battle began, as Urquiza entered the city itself.(16) Over a period spanning almost three weeks, Urquiza and his troops fought street to street and house to house with both the remnants of Pirán's militia and pro-independence citizens who had taken up arms to defend their homes and their cause. It was on February 25th that the State government finally admitted that the war was lost; as he had with de Rosas, Alsina fled the city on an American merchant ship. Boston would be his exile for the coming six years. Sarmiento was freed by his guards and fled as well, to Brazil, followed by Pirán. Many of the other survivors of the legislature followed suit. As March began, the Argentine Confederation was finally reunited, at the cost of thousands of lives and the destruction of many parts of Buenos Aires, while an end to the deficit remained out of sight. Urquiza himself was a broken man, nearly seventy and exhausted by years of war. While the rest of South America went to war around them, Argentina would remain at peace--but when those wars ended, the battle for the soul of a nation would begin again...


Notes
(1) IOTL, this is instead known as the Argentine Civil Wars. Not much of a change, but enough of one to hint.
(2) I.e. one who believes that Argentina should be a federal rather than a unitary state. The conflict between these two parties grew to be so terrible in the 19th century that the latter-day slogan of de Rosas's Argentina was "Death to the savage unitarians!"
(3) It is perhaps incorrect to call de Rosas's hegemony a government. During his period, the "Argentine Confederation", as it was known, had no formal head of state, with provinces at least nominally allowed to maintain independent foreign relations and policies. In reality, however, the constant wars of the first half of the century had enabled de Rosas to appropriate powers from the other provinces and make his position as governor of Buenos Aires essentially that of president. In a way, his situation is similar to that of Greco-Roman dictators.
(4) Not resignation as governor, but instead returning his extraconstitutional powers.
(5) Yeah, de Rosas actually offered his resignation on an average of once every year as a political stunt; he never expected anyone to call his bluff.
(6) OTL and TTL term for the people of Buenos Aires. Expect to read it a LOT more.
(7) The man loses one battle and he cuts and runs. It's amazing that he was in power for so long.
(8) See (2). The opposition to the Federals.
(9) IOTL, an intellectual, politician, and strong opponent of de Rosas and Urquiza. Alsina was a staunch liberal and unitarian, and spent most of de Rosas's period in Uruguayan exile. After the end of the OTL State, he was exonerated by Urquiza and became an influential senator.
(10) I'm somewhat unclear as to whether or not the Confederation had an actual navy; from what I understand, the navy they had was really more of a mercenary deal, crewed by foreigners in foreign ships.
(11) A famed and very prolific British civil engineer, Bragge was not only the founder of one of Argentina's oldest gas companies, but also a recipient of the Brazilian Order of the Rose for his work on the lighting of Rio de Janeiro and the building of the first railway in Brazil. Bragge, a rather apolitical man, was hired by the State of Buenos Aires IOTL to build several improvements to the city. Afterwards, he briefly worked in Paris and then returned to Britain to establish his own successful business.
(12) Yeah, at this point, Urquiza has been frustrated enough. He was slow to anger, but terrifying in his fury.
(13) That's the guy I'm trying to get rid of. IOTL, he later defeated Urquiza and became president of Argentina himself, then refused access rights to Paraguayan troops, setting off Argentinean involvement in the War of the Triple Alliance. ITTL, that's not gonna happen.
(14) The old government house in Buenos Aires. IOTL, a permanent secession was very much not supported by the majority of people in Buenos Aires, but the elite were very much for it. Thus we have the conflict between pro-independence middle class and upper class members and the pro-confederation poor.
(15) And another quasi-genocidal and hypocritical, but extremely talented politician bites the dust. Alternate history marches on.
(16) IOTL, Urquiza opted to besiege the city and enlist the services of the president of Paraguay as a mediator. Here, he doesn't want to be merciful nor does Argentina's economy have time to mediate.
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