Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/101

Rh perhaps, for the very reason it was incomplete, and had not attained the elevation which it felt itself capable of reaching, but it entered into the revolution with enthusiasm. Outside the cities, the revolution was a problematical affair, and so far as shaking off the king's authority was shaking off judical authority, it was acceptable. The pastoral districts could only regard the question from this point of view. Liberty, responsibility of power, and all the questions which the revolution was to solve, were foreign to their mode of life and to their needs. But they derived this advantage from the revolution, that it tended to confer an object and an occupation upon the excess of vital force, the presence of which among them has been pointed out, and was to add a broader base of union than that to which throughout the country districts the men daily resorted. These Spartan constitutions, that warlike nature hitherto ill-satisfied by the free use of the dagger, that Roman-like idleness which could only be exchanged for the activity of a battle-field, that utter impatience of judicial control, were all to have at last a fit sphere of action in the world.

Revolutionary movements then began in Buenos Ayres, and the call met with a decided response from all the interior cities. The pastoral districts became unsettled and joined in the movement. Tolerably disciplined armies were raised in Buenos Ayres to be sent to Upper Peru and Montevideo, where the Spanish forces under General Vigodet were stationed. General Rondeau laid siege to Montevideo with a disciplined army, and Artigas, a noted chieftain, took part in the siege with some thousands of gauchos. Artigas