The Eastern Band of the Uruguay River (so called because of its location with respect to the Plata estuary) with its capital in Montevideo, refused to join, like Paraguay, in the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata .
On February 28, 1811, the gauchos took up arms under the leadership of an enlightened landowner, José Gervasio Artigas, who had participated in the reconquest of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. In 1810 he supported the Argentine Junta and went to the Banda Oriental to prepare the insurrection. With General Rondeau he besieged Montevideo, but Viceroy Elio asked for help from the Portuguese, who invaded the country. Artigas then marched with the entire Uruguayan people, in the so-called exodus of the eastern people .
The unitarianism of Buenos Aires soon collided with the accused federalism of Artigas, rejected in the Congress of 1813.
Artigas, with his gaucho army, faced the Unitarians and lost Montevideo at the hands of General Alvear in 1814, but recovered it the following year.
In 1816, Portuguese troops from Brazil invaded Uruguay with the intention of annexing it. Artigas remained in the guerrilla until he was defeated in Tacuarembo in January 1820.
The Portuguese incorporated Uruguay into Brazil, in an autonomous regime with the name of Cisplatina Province (1821). In 1825 the Uruguayan insurgents penetrated from Argentine territory, carried out the oath of the thirty-three orientals They reject the Brazilians and receive help from the Argentines. The British arbitrate the Declaration of Rio de Janeiro, where the independence of Uruguay is recognized on July 27, 1828; the Constitution was sworn in two years later.
It is often said that the war of independence with the English begins April 19, 1775 at the Siege of Boston (Battles of Lexington and Concord), but the first event causing popular reaction to the English invasion began on September 1, 1774 in an event dubbed Powder Alarm incorporating this war for t