Don Aitken wrote: > On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:45:53 GMT, Alison Kilpatrick > <[email protected]> wrote: > > >>Transcribed from the 19 August 1828 edition of The Newry Commercial >>Telegraph newspaper, by permission of The British Library: >> >>The Irish Emigrants in Brazil. >> By accounts from Rio Janeiro, of the 14th June, we learn that a >>serious affray occurred at Rio a few days before the packet sailed. On >>which occasion the Irish and German soldiers, who had been disaffected >>for some time past, rose in their quarters, killed, wounded, and >>expelled their Officers, and were proceeding to a general revolt against >>Government, committing all kinds of excesses. An engagement actually >>took place in Campo Santa Anna, where a regiment composed of Irish and >>Germans were quartered. The Brazilian troops, joined by the town rabble, >>surrounded the rioters, who surrendered the next day for want of order, >>food, and ammunition; about 120 were killed and wounded on both sides. >>The English and French marines were also landed, and assisted in >>reducing another regiment at St. Christovao, which surrendered without >>bloodshed; there was still a regiment of German riflemen, about 1,200 >>Irish, the latter unarmed, holding out for terms, at Praya Vermelha, >>under the Sugar Loaf. The Germans were going to be tried by a Court >>Martial, and kept in the forts in the meanwhile. The Irish were shipped >>on board the men-of-war, and going to be bundled off at the intercession >>of the British Envoy, either back to Ireland, to the Cape, or to Canada. >> >>===================== >> > > To give a bit of background to this, all of the senior officers of the > Brazilian armed forces were British (Lord Cochrane being commander in > chief of the navy). Brazil and Argentina were at war, and the British > government had just imposed its own mediation on the two sides, > neither of which was very willing, hence the presence of British > troops. The peace treaty was signed a week later (August 27); its main > provision was that the territory in dispute went to neither side, but > became independent under the name of Uruguay. > > This was the high period of Britiah "informal empire" in South America > - the theoretically independent countries of the region did what the > Britiah told them. > Os this when the Brits acquired the Falkland Islands, then?