Joseph Rondeau

José Casimiro Rondeau (Buenos Aires, March 4, 1773-Montevideo, November 18, 1844) was a soldier and politician from the River Plate with outstanding performance in the war of independence of Argentina and the Uruguay. He defeated the royalists at the Battle of Cerrito in 1812, but was defeated by the Spanish general Joaquín de la Pezuela at the Battle of Sipe Sipe in 1815. He was supreme director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata in 1815 and again in 1819-1820.

The Siege of Montevideo

In 1790 José Rondeau moved with his family to Montevideo. In August 1793 he joined the Infantry Regiment of Buenos Aires as a cadet and in 1806 he was already captain of the Blandengues Regiment of Montevideo.

In 1807, during the English invasions of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, he was taken prisoner when the city of Montevideo fell into the power of the invaders.

Released in Great Britain in 1808, he remained in Spain, always in the service of the king. He returned to Montevideo, where the May Revolution of 1810 surprised him. Decided on the cause of the revolutionaries, he went to the other side of the River Plate where the First Junta of Buenos Aires gave him a place in the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, assigning him to the operations of the Eastern Band as head of the independent forces. Promoted to colonel and in command of the Regiment of Dragoons of the Homeland, he besieged Montevideo and on December 31, 1812 he won the battle of Cerrito.

Conflicts with Artigas

The eastern leader José Artigas joined the siege of Montevideo and held a congress in Tres Cruces, where the representatives of the people of the Eastern Province elected their deputies to join the Assembly of the year XIII. However, the deputies were rejected by the Assembly, which was dominated by the Lautaro Lodge, because they carried instructions to achieve political, economic and military autonomy for all the provinces and “civil religious freedom in all its imaginable extension” for all its inhabitants.. In addition, the government of the provinces was required to be in any province except Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires government wanted to maintain a clearly unitary form of state, without innovating in this regard.

By order of the Assembly, Rondeau organized his own congress in the Maciel Chapel, where the majority of the towns' deputies were elected directly by Rondeau, expressly excluding Artigas's allies. As a result, this congress appointed only government supporters as deputies to the Assembly. They traveled without instructions, being left to their conscience and the pressure of the Buenos Aires people.

In view of these events, Artigas withdrew from the siege of Montevideo at the beginning of January 1814, followed by his men. Although this left part of the patriot camp unguarded, the Spanish had been chastened in the battle of Cerrito and did not take advantage of it.

Rondeau desperately asked for reinforcements to replace the orientals; They were sent to them in May, when Captain Guillermo Brown had already defeated the Spanish fleet, leaving the city isolated. Along with the reinforcements, the Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, Gervasio Antonio de Posadas, sent a new commander to the besieging army, replacing Rondeau in office when the square was virtually taken. The new leader was Carlos María de Alvear, a soldier without any previous experience or merit, who wanted for himself the glory of taking the city. He achieved it just a few days later, and then set out to pursue Artigas and his supporters.

The Army of the North

To conceal the scandalous replacement a little, the Supreme Director, Gervasio Antonio de Posadas, promoted José Rondeau to brigadier general and transferred him as head of the Northern Army of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. He immediately began to organize what was the Third Campaign to Upper Peru. To do this, he counted on reinforcements sent from Montevideo, that is, troops that had participated in the siege, many of the former besieged and, above all, powerful weapons captured there. When everything was ready, he received the news that Posadas ordered Alvear to replace him in command of the army. Several officers revolted and publicly disavowed Alvear's authority, forcing him to return before reaching his destination.

This rebellion forced Posadas to resign, and Alvear was elected in his place; He dedicated his government to persecuting his opponents, but just three months later he was overthrown by a military rebellion. The Buenos Aires council appointed Rondeau to succeed him, who could not pursue anyone in the capital for the simple reason that he was 2,000 kilometers away. To replace him in the capital was the leader of the revolution that had overthrown Alvear, Colonel Ignacio Álvarez Thomas.

All these disorders undermined the authority of the head of the Army, who lost key months in preparations and reorganizations. Among other things, he replaced Colonel Martín Miguel de Güemes as head of the vanguard with Martín Rodríguez. He was defeated and taken prisoner in the Battle of El Tejar, just after entering the Puna of Jujuy.

Shortly after, Güemes and some Horse Grenadiers saved the campaign in another victory, in the Battle of Sitio del Marqués. Only then did the expedition begin; but Rondeau's obstinacy in despising Güemes and his guerrillas led to him withdrawing from the army with his gauchos. As soon as he arrived in Salta, he was elected governor of the province, in an act that meant insubordination against the director of the State, since it initiated the political autonomy of that province.

Third campaign to Alto Perú

In May 1815 the Northern Army of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata entered Potosí, while Juan Antonio Álvarez de Arenales and Ignacio Warnes strengthened themselves in Vallegrande and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. On August 11, Ignacio Warnes was elected as governor of Santa Cruz, after having sent his resignation to José Rondeau, due to certain internal political movements and command conflicts with Arenales. The neighborhood financed Warnes's campaign to Chiquitos, where on October 7 he defeated the royalists Udaeta and Altolaguirre in the battle of Santa Bárbara. Meanwhile, Rondeau ordered Warnes replaced by Santiago Carrera, who was removed from office and died.

But in mid-October, Martín Rodríguez decided to attack the royalists stationed in Venta y Media at night, suffering a tremendous defeat.

With a demoralized and anarchic army, Rondeau concentrated his troops near Cochabamba, on the Sipe Sipe plain. There the 3,100 patriotic soldiers and their 9 cannons (without the collaboration of the Indian volunteers, despised for racial reasons) faced off against the 5,000 royalists, armed with 23 cannons. The enemy leader, Joaquín de la Pezuela, turned out to be a much better strategist than Rondeau. The defeat of the Battle of Sipe Sipe, on November 29, 1815, was a total disaster. The United Provinces of the Río de la Plata lost the provinces of Upper Peru forever and when they achieved independence from Spain they did so as an independent state, emerging the Republic of Bolivia.

Conflicts with Güemes

After the defeat of the Battle of Sipe-Sipe, in its flight, the Northern Army was only able to rebuild its ranks on the northern limit of current Argentina. From there José Rondeau set out to avenge the affront of Martín Güemes, whom Rondeau had declared a traitor and deserter. To make matters worse, Álvarez Thomas sent reinforcement troops, under the command of Domingo French and Juan Bautista Bustos, with orders to overthrow Güemes and then join the Army of the North. Güemes did not let them pass until he had made sure that they would not attack him.

In January 1816 he occupied the city of Salta but, after a few weeks of an absurd civil war, a treaty was finally signed between the director of the State and the governor of Salta. In this, the governor of Salta was in charge of defending the northern border of the country. He did very well, much better than expected: he withstood five invasions without outside help and finally got rid of the royalists. In the process, he wore down the powerful Spanish army in his own province, which lost the opportunity to defend itself in Chile and Peru.

At the beginning of May 1816 Rondeau was replaced as State Director by Juan Martín de Pueyrredón, and two months later he had to leave the Army of the North in the hands of Manuel Belgrano. In any case, he never managed to make a fourth campaign to Upper Peru, and the Army was dissolved at the beginning of 1820, dismembered as a result of the civil wars.

The Directory

In 1818 José Rondeau was appointed inspector general of the army and the border with the southern Indians, who had risen up against the advance of the white population in the province of Buenos Aires, taking advantage of the disorder of the army.

In April 1819 he was appointed governor of the province of Buenos Aires, although his authority was simply delegated by the Director. In June of that year, the resignation of Juan Martín de Pueyrredón led him to the position of Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata.

His command was not effective outside of Buenos Aires. The governors of Cuyo and Salta considered themselves, in practice, only allies of the Directory. Those of Córdoba and Tucumán, named by Pueyrredón, were managed with great autonomy. For their part, the coastal provinces (Banda Oriental, Corrientes, Entre Ríos and Santa Fe) denied all authority to the Buenos Aires government and remained hostile. A tense truce maintained peace with Santa Fe, and some dangerous piles even remained in place in Córdoba. The Banda Oriental, or at least its coastal cities, was dominated by the Portuguese invaders, with evident support from the central government.

However, the worst threat to his government was much further away: a powerful invasion of the Río de la Plata was being organized in Cádiz. The liberal revolution in Spain suspended his departure, but the news did not reach Buenos Aires until after the fall of the Directory.

Rondeau dedicated himself to putting an end to the federals as soon as possible, determined not to give them the autonomy they demanded. He ordered José de San Martín to bring the Army of the Andes to also fight in the civil war. Manuel Belgrano, in charge of the Northern Army, obeyed and left command in the hands of Francisco Fernández de la Cruz, and General Bustos as second. As San Martín refused, he sent General Juan Ramón Balcarce to take command of his army and bring it to Buenos Aires; Estanislao López's gauchos stopped the convoy.

The Battle of Cepeda

José Rondeau decided that the truce was broken and ordered Manuel Belgrano to transfer the Army of the North entirely to the war against Santa Fe. He also did something much worse: he invited the Portuguese governor of the Banda Oriental, Carlos Federico Lecor, to invade the provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes. That is, he refused to expel the invaders from part of the territory he governed and invited them to invade other portions of his territory.

In October, the Entre Ríos leader Francisco Ramírez went on the offensive and invaded the north of the province of Buenos Aires. Rondeau went on campaign and led the Buenos Aires army, but on January 8, 1820, the Arequito mutiny broke out, in which the Army of the North, Bustos, deposed its commander and refused to continue the civil war.

Rondeau was left alone against López and Ramírez, who on February 1, 1820 faced him in the Battle of Cepeda. The director formed his army in a classic arrangement, with the cavalry on the sides and the infantry and artillery in the middle; Protecting his back was the long formation of carts. A very difficult position to defeat, unless the enemy was not forced to attack head on. The federal leaders surrounded the device and stood behind it. They immediately attacked the cavalry, while the infantry tried to peek between the tanks and the cannons were still pointed the other way. The battle lasted ten minutes, and the flight of the directorial cavalry swept Rondeau away. The rest of the army had to retreat towards San Nicolás de los Arroyos and embark back to Buenos Aires.

The entire north of Buenos Aires was invaded by the caudillos, who arrived in the surroundings of the capital in a few days. Rondeau resigned on February 11, and in March he left the city for Montevideo. His fall caused the fall of the Directory and the Congress of Tucumán; Until mid-1862 there was no national government recognized by all Argentine provinces.

Subsequent action in Argentina

During the following decade Rondeau helped the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Martín Rodríguez, in his campaigns against the Indians of southern Buenos Aires. In 1825 he made a general campaign on the border but was completely defeated at Toldos Viejos, near Dolores. Since then he began to exercise his command from Buenos Aires.

While the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata were at war against the Empire of Brazil for the recovery of the Banda Oriental, he was appointed commander of the army that was to operate in the Banda Oriental. But the Minister of War, Alvear, replaced him himself.

Performance in Uruguay

Governor Manuel Dorrego appointed Rondeau his minister of war, but on October 10, 1828 he resigned, because in the newborn Eastern State of Uruguay, the General Constituent and Legislative Assembly meeting in Florida, in a unanimous vote, called him to occupy the position of Governor and Provisional Captain General. On December 22, 1828, he took the oath before the Chamber of Representatives that was operating in Canelones at that time. This neutralized the command ambitions of Generals Fructuoso Rivera and Juan Antonio Lavalleja, each determined to be the government. He resigned on April 17, 1830, shortly after the sanction of Uruguay's first constitution and, the next day, he was promoted in the army with the rank of brigadier general.

During Rivera's presidency, in 1832, he was appointed Chargé d'Affaires to the Argentine government. In 1835 he was appointed Chief of the Army Staff, a role he abandoned for health reasons on April 5, 1838. He was again Minister of War between February 6, 1839 and March 5, 1840. With his meager forces Physically he participated in the Defense of Montevideo in 1843 and 1844, in the hardest period of the siege, along with many veteran Argentine military personnel like him.

Death

José Rondeau died in Montevideo, on November 18, 1844.

Buried with exceptional honors, his remains, which rest in the National Pantheon of the Central Cemetery, were requested in 1891 by Argentina in order to reintegrate them into their native homeland, but Uruguay determined that his ashes should remain on its soil, which had served as its own homeland. In his honor, the Montevideo avenue that begins in Plaza Cagancha, in the Center, and extends to Avenida Agraciada, in La Aguada, was given his name.