What did Rosas do before the battle of Caseros in which he lost power

The boy arrived from an amazing trip That, unlike that of the dandis of the time, in addition to the essential Paris, the East included. Shortly after arriving at what people called the port of Buenos Aires, the boy could not with his anxiety of telling everyone his adventures and this included his remarkable uncle.

So one morning He rumbe to Palermo, greeted his beloved cousin and waitedlike all, his turn to be received by the most important person in the country.

There was not much to entertain in that waiting room rather than to look at the dozen people who approached with various orders. The landscape was multicolored, mulatto and black with their boys in tow that asked for a job, elegant women who asked for the freedom of their husband and English and French businessmen who They requested audiences with the strong man of Palermo.

That young man, who was named Lucio Victorio Mansilla was amazed Manuelita’s ability to dispatch everyone and assume the position of Prime Minister and Secretary of the “Restaurar”.

Finally, that afternoon of the beginning of February 1852 Lucio was received by his uncle Don Juan Manuel de Rosas.

Asked for his trip, He reproached him not to greet him before leaving for almost two years And without giving time to some apologies that included the six times that Lucio had gone to see him before sailing without being received, Don Juan Manuel began reading his nephew his message to the legislature of Buenos Aires that, both knew, would be the last and that he would never pronounce in the enclosure of the current block of the lights.

Lucio tells astonished how that man “On the eve of losing his power, thus wasting time with an insubstantial boy.”

The reading became endless but not tedious because her uncle interrupted her to ask about the convenience of certain spelling and grammatical turns and the young man felt flattered.

Which Lucio was worried was the hunger as a result of being more than six hours without trying a bite. His uncle had not stopped in the matter until he asked “Are you hungry?” To which the boy answered with an enthusiastic “Yes!”

The person in charge of calming him was Manuelita herself, who appeared with a rice with milk.

From then on, Mansilla measured the passing of the time that the reading of his uncle’s speech lasted for The amount of rice dishes with milk contributed by Manuelitawhich were seven.

Mansilla account: “I had swollen; The dishes followed -I ate machineally, obeyed a force superior to my will … Reading continued.

I already had my head like a hype -and the other so hard, I don’t know how I endured. He, satisfied with my pregnancy, and putting the mamotreto in my hands, told me, saying goodbye:

-Well, nephew, go just and just read that at home.

It was three in the morning.

My father, who, while I talked to my mother, He walked a meditabundo watching the mamotreto I had under his arm, he told me:

-It’s the message that my uncle has been reading …

– Reide it? . . . -And he told my mother: I don’t tell you that your brother is crazy! ” (1)

Thus the hours before the final defeat of roses passed In the battle of Caseros. Just José de Urquiza was already underway in command of the “big army” composed of entrerrianos, Correntinos, Buenos Aires, Uruguayans and Brazilians and Argentine history was about to take a new turn, to found another before and after.

Notes: 1. Lucio V. Mansilla, the seven dishes of rice with milk, Buenos Aires, Eudeba, 1963.