At length the Portuguese peril loomed sufficiently large to outweigh every other consideration. With a view to stemming the foreign tide of invasion, the Buenos Airens patched up a treaty with the Spanish troops in Montevideo. The despairing measure was doubtless one of necessity, but it aroused deep passion in the mind of the Uruguayan leader, who protested that his country was forsaken, and given over once again to the mercies of the Spaniards. Collecting every available man, woman, and child, he led them to the north-west, and passed the great exodus over the River Uruguay to a haven of safety at Ayui, upon the Entre Rios shore. Meanwhile, Uruguay was overrun by the invading Portuguese and by the released Spaniards, who eddied out in all directions from Montevideo.
Artigas was now encamped for the first time with a translated nation and an independent army of his own. The condition of both was grimly tragic, pathetically humorous. For fourteen months almost the only shelter, that served for all alike, was afforded by the branches of the trees and the boards of the carts that had brought them. As for the army, it was composed of strangely heterogeneous elements. Honest countryfolk rubbed shoulders with professional criminals and cut-throats; Indians from the destroyed Jesuit missions went side by side with fierce-faced Gauchos; while townsmen, negroes, and a few adventurous foreigners made up the mixed gathering.
The men were in deadly earnest, since the example of Artigas seems to have inspired even the most depraved with a spark from his own fire. Had it been otherwise they would undoubtedly have succumbed to the disadvantages with which they had to contend. Arms were scarce. A certain favoured few were possessed of muskets and swords; but the weapon in chief use was the lance, the national arm of River Plate folk, the point of which, here at Ayui, was usually fashioned from the blade of shears or a knife, or from the iron of some other agricultural instrument. Many, however, had perforce to be content with a long knife, with the lasso and the sling--the _boleadores_--as subsidiary weapons. Yet even these proved by no means despicable in the hands of the men whose sole garment was the ragged remnant of a poncho tied about the waist, and who exercised with poles in preparation for the time when a musket should be in their hands.