While the magistral President was showering down reforms, the demagogues triumphed over his efforts toward unity. His constitutional labours miscarried in the provinces; the governors would not submit to the haughty supremacy of Buenos-Ayres. They fought for power in rude civil wars, in the North and on the seaboard. Some provincial congresses were precariously installed, and Montevideo renounced its union with the Argentine. A _caudillo_, who at times rose to the moral greatness of the Liberators, Artigas, longed to see Uruguay, his country, independent. The Empire of Brazil and the Argentine democracy were wrangling for its possession. Rivadavia stoically resigned the Presidency in 1827, having shown himself a prodigal and sumptuous creator and an eminent prophet; he left the country, having wearied the populace with his inventive genius.[1] In his place General Dorrego was elected Governor of Buenos-Ayres, the federal chief of the city, as Rosas was of the country. The war with Brazil continued; but in 1828 a treaty was signed which recognised the autonomy of Uruguay. [Illustration: RIVADAVIA. President of Argentina (1826-1827). To face p. 13] This Brazilian victory aroused the indignation of the Argentine Unitarians; they overthrew Dorrego and elected General Lavalle to be Governor. A storm of tragedy broke over the divided city. Dorrego was shot by order of Lavalle, and then began the terrible war of hatred between federals and Unitarians--a Jacobin conflict. The daring revolt of the provinces had coincided with the promulgation of the Constitution of 1826. {139} Since 1820 the Argentine provinces had been in a state of revolt against the imposed or suggested rule of Buenos-Ayres; it was the period of _caudillos_. To the aristocratic presidency of Rivadavia they opposed the Terror. They represented the barbarian might of the provinces. They made federation a reality, cemented it by long quarrels, sanguinary hatreds, conventions, alliances, and friendships. The provinces fought within the nation; the cities within the province; within the city, the families. An inflexible individualism--the fundamental Spanish tradition--dissolved the provisional crystallisations of society and politics. It was not a simple federal disaggregation--a clash of ambitious overlords eager to surround their manors by new domains; it was a mystic barbarism, the leaders of which recalled the nomadic and fanatical Tamerlane. They were impelled by a strange, rude force, disordered and prodigious--the genius of the _pampa_, the instinct of a vagabond race.