That was how Urquiza got hold of several hundred Argentine soldiers who had been sent to fight alongside the whites on the neighboring shore.
These men rescued by Urquiza were not always very clear about their party allegiances. Without asking much, they joined the Big Army that was heading to Buenos Aires. Against whom were they going to fight? Who did they answer to? Many did not know… The important thing was that they returned to their homeland.
The rescued troops were distributed in different battalions under the command of officers who had returned from exile to fight with Rosas. One of them was Colonel Pedro Leon Aquinoa warrior of independence trained in the school of General José María Paz, made to the fights that bled the Argentines, in Quebracho Herrado and the battles with Juan Lavalle.
Like many independence officers, Aquino wore a gold earring as a member of a brotherhood of heroes. Pacheco, Barcalá, Bogado and Frías were some who proudly shared this insignia, but now many were fighting on opposite sides.
Aquino was a tough officer who tried to bring order to this troop of soldiers, quite undisciplined by years of lack of rigor in front of the Montevidean walls. The colonel was willing to turn this “montonera” into a seasoned battalion. To this end, he camped away from the Big Army to instruct his soldiers in the voices of command and combat tactics, under his close supervision. He did not shake the colonel’s pulse when sanctions had to be applied for the slightest insubordination. He had to discipline them and the only thing these men understood was rigor. With a stock, staked, and whip he was going to turn them into soldiers. One day, a certain Sergeant Flores, a man born in Tuyú with ancestry over the troops, responded with a bad tone to the colonel and he did not mince words. For two days he left him in the stocks, brooding over his fate.
On the night of January 10, 1852, Aquino had invited his friend Bartholomew Miter to dinner at the camp in a place called Espinillo. That day Aquino had hunted several ducks with which he was to entertain the then Colonel Miter and Major Carlos Forest, former companions in exile.
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Luck was on the side of the future president that day (as it would be for many years until his death in 1906) because the party got lost and they did not find the camp of the Aquino regiment until they sighted the campfires. The silence seemed strange to them. Not a whinny, not a bark. Forest gave the name and pointed, but got no response. It was then that they perceived the bodies near the bonfires. They thought they were asleep until they realized the horror. They were mutilated corpses, including that of Aquino himself who had been decapitated and his ear torn off with the earring that he had proudly worn while alive. Next to him was the sergeant Lorenzo Elguetaformer soldier of San Martín.
they found the major Florencio Terrada bound and gagged but alive. It was he who narrated the tragedy of tonight in which Flores’s men viciously attacked their superiors, whom they killed with such viciousness that they did not stop until they were mutilated.
With Aquino’s ear as treasure, Flores’ men fled to place themselves under the orders of Rosas, who received the deserters with honors. They say that this Flores wanted to give Aquino’s ear to Rosas, but he rejected it in disgust. These men fought desperately at Caseros and when they saw that defeat was imminent, they fled the battlefield to escape the penalty that awaited them.
Don Justo’s slogan of not having winners or losers was postponed until the retaliation that came after fighting in the Palomar de Caseros. Before, accounts had to be settled…
The members of the Aquino battalion were captured one by one and executed on the long road that led from the Rosas mansion in Palermo to the center of Buenos Aires. Their corpses were left hanging to rot in the gentle breeze that came from the river.
Source: Ambito
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