“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

open the region’s consumer markets to goods piling up on merchants’ docks in the
metropôle.
The invasion was a disaster from the start. British forces occupied the viceregal
capital with little resistance. The Spanish viceroy, Marqués de Sobremonte, fled Buenos
Aires and retreated into the interior. Although prudent, the viceroy’s actions further
underscored the increasingly obvious inability of peninsular authorities to defend their
colonial possessions. With the departure of colonial officials, the task of resisting the British
fell upon the local Creole militias. The French-born Santiago de Liniers, along with
prominent porteño leaders like Juan Martín de Pueyrredón and Cornelio de Saavedra, rallied
local forces in Montevideo. Marching across the delta, they quickly defeated and captured
the British. A second British invasion under John Whitelocke the following year in 1807
first occupied Montevideo and then advanced against Buenos Aires. As the force entered
the viceregal capital, it met fierce local resistance. Locals poured burning oil on the exposed
British from rooftops over the narrow streets of San Telmo. After two days of heavy
fighting, the exhausted British had failed to take the capital. Cutoff, the British sued for
peace and abandoned the Río de la Plata altogether. 10
The British invasions reoriented porteño society. Creole elites had led the successful
defense of their own colony. In the wake of the second invasion, a popular council had
deposed the hapless Sobremonte. Following his triumphs, Liniers became the new viceroy.
More importantly, the political authority of the Creole militias, along with the Creole-
dominated Buenos Aires cabildo, waxed in the post-invasion colonial order. Unable to
10 Marcos M. de Estrada, Invasiones Inglesas al Río de la Plata, 1806-1807 (Buenos Aires:
Librería Histórica Emilio J. Perrot, 2009). For an interesting account of the impact of the
invasions from the perspective of a British merchant, see Malyn Newitt, ed. War, Revolution &
Society in the Río de la Plata, 1808-1810: Thomas Kinder's Narrative of a Journey to Madeira,
Montevideo and Buenos Aires (Oxford: Signal Books Limited, 2010).
34