Battle of Tacuarí

Battle of Tacuarí
Part of Paraguay campaign
Date March 9, 1811 Location By the Tacuarí river, in Southern Paraguay, north of the town of Encarnación. Result Royalist victory
Belligerents
United Provinces of the Río de la Plata	Royalist Army of Paraguay
Commanders and leaders
Manuel Belgrano	Manuel Cabañas
Strength
550 infantry and 400 cavalry	2,500–2,700 local soldiers from Paraguay

The Battle of Tacuarí (9 March 1811) was a battle in Southern Paraguay between revolutionary forces under the command of General Manuel Belgrano, member of the Primera Junta government of Argentina, and Paraguayan troops under colonel Manuel Atanasio Cabañas, at the time at the service of the royalists.

After the May Revolution in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the Primera Junta government invited the other cities and provinces to join the revolution. Any intent of preserving the local governments previous to the revolution were considered hostile; and as a consequence two military campaigns were launched to suppress the resistance, one to Upper Peru and another to Paraguay, whose Spanish governor, Bernardo de Velasco, had refused to recognize the Junta and had received political support from the Cabildo of Asunción.

General Manuel Belgrano, a member of the Junta, was named commander of the expedition with only 700 men, half of them without military experience. Even though his forces were small, the extreme prudence of Velasco got them to fight first at Paraguarí, near Asunción, where he was defeated with relative ease.

Forced to retreat, Belgrano marched to the Tebicuary river, where he was joined by 400 men from the Guaraní militias from Yapeyú and some men from the Fatherland Cavalry Regiment (ex-Blandengues). As noted in his Memoirs, the Paraguayans did not pursue, and he could continue retreating to the town of Santa Rosa. There he received news that the situation was worsening at the Banda Oriental, so the Junta was ordering him to end the Paraguay campaign soon so he could help in the new theater of operations.

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