“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

Montevideo in January of 1811, he immediately declared war on Buenos Aires. To shore up
his base of support in the new capital among his elite cadre of merchant supporters, he
further imposed a number of draconian measures on the borderlands. He required
landowners to present paper titles to officials in Montevideo and pay taxes. For many small
landowners in the interior who had occupied the open countryside without formal title, these
moves threatened to usurp their claims in favor of absentee coastal elites. The old tensions
between inhabitants in the borderlands and elites along the coast dramatically resurfaced.
Elío made matters worse still by again openly courting the Portuguese. This outraged
Spaniards in the interior like Artigas who had struggled for decades against their incursions
into the Banda. 19
Elío badly misjudged the situation on the ground. Almost immediately, opposition
forces in the Banda Oriental’s interior sought assistance from Buenos Aires against the
royalists in Montevideo. Just days after Elío issued his declaration of war against the Creole
government across the Río de la Plata, Artigas traveled to Buenos Aires to secure support
for a campaign to overthrow the putative viceroy. By the end of February, uprisings against
Elío had broken out in the Banda Oriental along the Uruguay River. Having pledged his
support for the May revolution in Buenos Aires, Artigas quickly returned to the Banda to
join the uprising. He assumed control of the oriental militias as part of a broader
expeditionary force from Buenos Aires under the command of José Rondeau. Artigas
advanced ahead of the porteño forces and met Elío’s army outside of Montevideo in early May
at the battle of Las Piedras. Artigas crushed the royalists, driving them back into
19 Edmundo M. Narancio, La Independencia de Uruguay, 2d ed. (Montevideo: Ed. Ayer,
2000), 75-79.
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