Battle of Vuelta de Obligado

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The Battle of Vuelta de Obligado as featured on the $20 Argentine peso bill.

Date	20 November 1845
Location	Vuelta de Obligado part of the Paraná River, Buenos Aires Province
Result	'Phyrric victory' for the Anglo-French fleet. Recognition of the Paraná river as Argentinian territory by the United Kingdom and France.

Combatants

Argentine Confederation, Rosas' army.

Anglo-French Fleet.

Commanders

General Lucio N. Mansilla

Rear Admiral Francois Thomas Trehouart

Strength

2160 men, one warship

Eleven warships

Casualties

250 men, 21 taken battery cannons

26 men, multiple damage to the warships, forcing emergency reparations

The Battle of Vuelta de Obligado was a battle that took place between the Argentine Confederacy, under the leadership of Juan Manuel de Rosas, and an Anglo-French fleet, on November 20th, 1845, on the waters of the Paraná river.

1 Background
2 Battle Details
3 Aftermath
4 External links

[edit] Background

During the 1830's and 1840's, the British and French governments were at odds with Rosas' leadership of the Argentine Confederacy. Rosas was an ardent nationalist leader, and his economic policies of protecting the national industry with high tariffs, combined with his attempts to reincorporate Paraguay and Uruguay to the confederacy, were in conflict with French and British economic interests in the region. In fact, during his government, Rosas had to face numerous problems with these foreign powers, which in some cases reached levels of open aggression to the country's sovereignity, including two naval blockades, a French one in 1838, and an Anglo-French one in 1845.

With the development of steam-powered sailing (which mainly took place in England, France and the USA) in the third decade of the XIX Century, large merchant and military ships became able of sailing rivers upstream in relatively short time and with a good payload relation.

This technology allowed the British and French governments to avoid Argentine custom houses in Buenos Aires by sailing directly through the La Plata estuary and engaging in commerce directly with the Argentine inner cities, thus avoiding taxation, guaranteeing special rights for themselves and exporting their products at exhorbitantly low prices.

The Rosas government tried to stop this practice by declaring the Argentine rivers unnavigable by foreign countries, barring access to Paraguayan ports in the process. The British and French governments did not acknowledge this declaration and decided to defy Rosas by sailing upstream with a joint fleet, setting the stage for the battle.

[edit] Battle Details

Eleven warships composed the Anglo-French squad that was sailing through the Paraná river since the first days of November, these ships were among the most advanced military machinery of their time, parcially blinded, provided with great pieces of artillery of fast recharging time and Congreve projectiles.

The main Argentine fortification was located in Vuelta de Obligado, where the river is 700 metres wide and a turn makes sailing more difficult.

Argentine general Lucio N. Mansilla ordered to set up, from shore to shore, using 24 boats, three thick metal chains across the river, to prevent the advance of the European fleet. This operation was in charge of an Italian immigrant in Argentina named Aliverti.

In the right margin of the river the argentines mounted 4 batteries with 30 cannons, a lot of them made of bronze, with a caliber of 8, 10, 12 and 20, and served with a division of 160 gaucho soldiers.

Also, in the trenches there were 2000 men under the command of colonel Ramón Rodríguez, and a sole Argentine warship called Republicano, with the mission of guarding the chains that crossed the river.

The combat begun at dawn, with an intense cannon fire and strong projectile discharges over the Argentine batteries (which counted with cannons that had much less precision and a considerably slower recharging time than those of the invaders), this caused from the very first moment many casualities on the Argentine side: 250 dead and 400 wounded, 21 battery cannons felled in hands of the european enemies, which rendered them unusable. Furthermore, the boats that holded the chains were burnt down, and the Republicano warship was lost, blown by its own commander when he was unable to defend it any longer. On the other side, the agressors had 26 dead and 86 wounded, and suffered great damages that left their fleet stranded on Obligado for 40 days to make emergency repairs.

The few British and French ships that were able to sail past Vuelta de Obligado were again attacked in Paso del Tonelero and in Angostura del Quebracho. This way, the Anglo-French victory turned out to be a phyrric one: It was proved to be practically impossible to sail Argentine rivers without the authorization of Argentinian authorities.

[edit] Aftermath

The battle had a great difusion in the continent. Chile and Brazil changed their stance (which until then were against Rosas), and turned, momentarily, to the Confederation's cause. Even some unitarian leaders (traditional enemies of the Argentine caudillo) were moved by the events, with General Martiniano Chilavert offering to join the Confederacy army.

Politically, France and the United Kingdom renounced their attempts to bypass Buenos Aires' policies, and acknowledged the Argentine government's legal right over the Paraná and the other internal rivers and its authority to determine who had access to it.

The Battle of Obligado is remembered as one of the few occasions in which a peripherial country was able to reject European attempts of intervention in its internal affairs. It is also remebered in Argentina on November 20th, which was declared "Day of National Sovereignity", and on the French Paris metro, which had a station named after this battle until the 1950's. (Decade in which the station was renamed Argentine).