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Thus prepared, and matured by study, experience, travels in foreign lands, and years of beneficent action in a true cosmopolitan spirit, he left Chili in 1851 with the present President, Colonel Mitre, and the present General Paunero, to incorporate himself in the army of General Urquiza, who was about to open the campaign against Rosas. The battle of Caseros, which disposed of Rosas, took place on the third of February, 1852, and Seiior, now Colonel Sarmiento, had the pleasure of writing a description of it upon the tyrant's own table with the tyrant's own pen. Six days after, he left Urquiza's army, for he saw that that old servant of Rosas meant no good to the country, but purposed to make himself a tyrant in Rosas' place. Durqué had been made President, who fell in with Urquiza's plans. The event proved that his prophecy was right, though Urquiza was not wholly successful.

He left a note for Urquiza, in which he told him it was his profound conviction that he was entering upon a thorny path, dissipating sooner or later, but not less fatally, the glory which for a moment had hung round his name.

Colonel Sarmiento returned to Chili, this time a voluntary exile. He went by way of Rio Janeiro, and passed a few weeks in close intimacy with its enlightened Emperor, who had read and admired his works and received him with much distinction. The Emperor had made an alliance with the Republic, to which he had formerly been opposed, and wished to converse with Colonel Sarmiento upon its status and its prospects.