page_title: Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre
section_title: Siege of Uruguaiana
hierarchical_section_title: Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre / Paraguayan War / Siege of Uruguaiana
caption_attribution_description: English: The Count of Porto Alegre, c.1866
context_page_description: Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre, nicknamed "the Gloved Centaur", was an army officer, politician, abolitionist and monarchist of the Empire of Brazil. Born into a wealthy family of military background, Manuel Marques de Sousa joined the Portuguese Army in Brazil in 1817 when he was little more than a child. His military initiation occurred in the conquest of the Banda Oriental, which was annexed and became the southernmost Brazilian province of Cisplatina in 1821. For most of the 1820s, he was embroiled in the Brazilian effort to keep Cisplatina as part of its territory: first during the struggle for Brazilian independence and then in the Cisplatine War. It would ultimately prove a futile attempt, as Cisplatina successfully separated from Brazil to become the independent nation of Uruguay in 1828.
  A few years later, in 1835 his native province of Rio Grande do Sul was engulfed in a secessionist rebellion, the Ragamuffin War. The conflict lasted for almost ten years, and the Count was leading military engagements for most of that time.
context_section_description: In December 1864, the dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano López, ordered the invasion of the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso (currently the state of Mato Grosso do Sul), triggering the Paraguayan War. Four months later, Paraguayan troops invaded Argentine territory in preparation for an attack on Rio Grande do Sul. The situation in Rio Grande do Sul was chaotic, and the local military commanders were incapable of mounting an effective resistance to the Paraguayan army. The Baron of Porto Alegre offered to return to active duty, and on 21 July 1865, the government gave him command of the Brazilian land forces in Rio Grande do Sul. He set out for Uruguaiana, a small town in the province's west, where the Paraguayan army was besieged by a combined force of Brazilian, Argentine and Uruguayan units.
  Porto Alegre assumed the command of the Brazilian army in Uruguaiana on 21 August 1865. From the very beginning, he had an acrimonious relationship with Brazil's allies Bartolomé Mitre, president of Argentina, and Venancio Flores, president of Uruguay, who led the armies of their respective nations. The years had not lessened Porto Alegre's prejudice against Hispanic-Americans; on the contrary, his antagonism had increased. On 2 September, Flores suggested an immediate attack on Uruguaiana, an option rejected by Porto Alegre and Joaquim Marques Lisboa (then Viscount and later Marquis of Tamandaré), the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian navy. Tamandaré was a first cousin of Porto Alegre; their mothers were sisters. When Flores claimed that he could defeat the Paraguayan army alone, he was mocked by both Brazilian officers.
  Since his arrival in Uruguaiana, Mitre had claimed the position of commander-in-chief of all allied forces participating in the siege—a precedence Porto Alegre vehemently refused to recognize. He reminded the Argentine president that, according to the Treaty of the Triple Alliance, the imperial army would be led by a Brazilian officer while on Brazilian soil. Porto Alegre later argued that "I would prefer to answer to a court-martial rather than to subject myself, in our territory, to the command of a foreign general". The dispute was temporarily forgotten when Pedro II arrived at the front. The Brazilian monarch settled the dispute when, at his suggestion, the allied army was divided into three forces, one led by Porto Alegre and the other two by Mitre and Flores. On 18 September, the Paraguayan garrison surrendered without further bloodshed.
caption: Porto Alegre around age 62, c. 1866
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