BUENOS AY RES. 



General 

 White- 

 locke 

 marches 



against 

 liuenos 

 Ayres. 



Buenos to entice some of the 9th light dragoons to join the 

 A y re <- Spanish army. 



-v ' General Whitelocke arrived at Monte Video on 

 the 10th of May 1807, to take the chief command 

 of the British force ; and, on the 15th of Juue^was 

 joined by General Craufurd, with the expedition 

 which had been destined against Chili, but which 

 the British government, upon receiving intelligence 

 of the recapture of Buenos Ayres, had commanded 

 to repair to the Rio de la Plata. With this united 

 force of 8000 men, consisting of some of the finest 

 troops in the British {service, General Whitelocke 

 sailed from Monte Video on the 21st of June, and, 

 having landed on the 28th in the bay of Barragan, 

 proceeded against Buenos Ayres. After a tedious 

 march of above thirty miles, through a country in- 

 tersected by swamps and deep muddy rivulets, du- 

 ring which the army were exposed to incredible hard- 

 ships and privations, being obliged to leave their ar- 

 tillery and provisions behind, and to fight with seve- 

 -ral detachments of the enemy, which endeavoured to 

 oppose their advance, they reached the environs of 

 the city. -Here the English commander having 

 formed his troops into a line, extending along the sub- 

 urbs, from the convent of Recoleta on the left, to 

 nearly the Residencia on the right, issued Ms orders 

 -concerning the plan of attack, which he proposed 

 His plan of should be pursued on the following day. Two six- 

 attack, pounders, covered by the carabineers under Lieute- 

 nant-Colonel Kingston, and three troops of dragoons, 

 were ordered along the central street ; Sir Samuel 

 Achmuty was directed to penetrate with his brigade 

 the streets on the left, and with the 38th regiment 

 to take possession of the Plaza de Toros and the ad- 

 jacent strong grounds ; and General Craufurd was to 

 proceed down the streets on the right, and with the 

 42d regiment to take possession of the Residencia. 

 Each column, preceded by two corporals armed with 

 crows, for the purpose of breaking open the doors 

 of the houses, was ordered to advance until it reach- 

 ed the last square of houses next the river La Plata, 

 of which it was to possess itself, and, forming on the 

 flat roofs, there to wait for farther orders. No firing 

 was to be permitted, until the troops had reached 

 their points of destination, and formed ; and a can- 

 nonade in the centre was to be the signal for the 

 whole to come forward. 



According to this arrangement, the army moved 

 forwards on the morning of the 5th of July ; but 

 this extraordinary mode of attack was met, on the 

 part of the Spaniards, by a most vigorous and effi- 

 cacious resistance. Some of the streets were inter- 

 sected by deep ditches, planted with cannon, which 

 poured showers of grape on the advancing columns j 

 and a heavy and continued fire of musketry from the 

 roofs and windows or the houses, assailed the Bri- 

 tish troops at every step of their progress. The left 

 division, under General Achmuty, by the most spi- 

 rited' and successful gallantry, had gained the Plaza 

 de Toros, and taken 32 pieces of cannon, 600 pri- 

 soners, and an immense quantity of ammunition, with 

 the IOSB, hawever, of the whole of the 88th regiment, 

 which had been overpowered and taken prisoners. The 

 centre division had scarcely entered the street, when 



Its execu- 

 tion, 



they were arrested by a destructive and superior fire, 

 and took up a position in front of the enemy, a little 

 in advance of what it held in the mornii.g. A small 

 part only of the right division reached the Reaiden- 

 cia ; the rest, under General Craufurd, having ta- 

 ken refuge in the convent of the Dominicans, after 

 a vigorous and protracted resistance, were at last 

 compelled to surrender at four in the afternoon. 

 What human intrepidity could accomplish, was per- 

 formed by the British troops in this unequal con- 

 flict ; but what was most galling to brave men in the 

 midst of danger, they were doomed to suffer, with- 

 out the possibility of retaliating upon their enemies. 

 Their bayonets could not reach their distant and of- 

 ten unseen opponents, whose destructive fire issued 

 from the windows and roofs of the houses, the doors 

 of which were so strongly barricaded, that it was 

 almost impossible to force them. " The nature of 

 the fire," says the commander of the expedition, in 

 his public dispatches, " to which the troops were 

 exposed, was violent in the extreme ; grape shot at 

 the corners of all the streets, musketry, hand-gre- 

 nades, bricks and stones from the tops of all the 

 houses ; every householder with his negroes defend- 

 ed his dwelling, each of which was in itself a for- 

 tress ; and it is not perhaps too much to say, that 

 the whole male population of Buenos Ayres was 

 employed in its defence." The disasters of this day, 

 which amounted to the loss of nearly a third of the 

 British army in killed, wounded, and prisoners, with- 

 out having gained any material advantage and the 

 consideration that these prisoners were in the hands 

 of an exasperated populace, whose animosity to their 

 invaders no power could restrain, if offensive measures 

 were persisted in induced the English commander 

 to agree to an armistice proposed by General Li- 

 niers, on the morning of the 6th. This armistice 

 issued in a convention, by which it was engaged, that 

 the British should evacuate the La Plata in two 

 months ; and that all the prisoners on both sides, 

 captured in South America since the commencement 

 of the war, should be restored. The Spaniards 

 were now, for a time, freed from foreign hostility, 

 for which they considered themselves as indebted to 

 the incapacity and presumptuous temerity of the 

 English leader ; and those bright prospects of wealth 

 which the British merchants had been led to indulge, 

 from the expectation of a ready market for their ma- 

 nufactures, and which had induced them to enter in- 

 to the most hazardous speculations, to the amount, 

 it is said, of three millions sterling, were dissipated 

 for ever. So great, indeed, was the antipathy of the 

 Spaniards to the British, that though greatly in want 

 of our merchandize, and knowing that this visit to 

 South America would perhaps be our last, yet they 

 rould not be prevailed upon to purchase a single article. 

 Upon the breaking out of the Spanish revolution, 

 the resentment of the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres 

 was diverted from the English, and fixed upon the 

 ruler of France. The plan of Bonaparte had no sooner 

 been accomplished against the royal family of Spain, 

 than French agents were dispersed throughout the 

 Spanish American colonies, to obtain from the dif- 

 ferent governments a recognition of Joseph Bona,- 

 3 



Buenos 

 Ayres. 



and unsuc. 

 cess ful is- 

 sue. 



The Bri- 

 tish evacu- 

 ate the La 

 Plata. 



Attempt of 

 Bonaparte 

 to secure 

 the Spanish 

 colonies. 



