For two years Feijo struggled against the adverse conditions. For the Para revolution he found a clever and faithful general in Andrea, and managed to keep him well supplied with money and troops, so that a vigorous pursuit of the guerrilla chiefs resulted in their capture and the pacification of the province. But in Rio Grande the people were too strong and too independent to be reduced by troops sent from without, and Congress hampered him by refusing votes of credit. The revolution which had broken out there three months before he assumed the regency had been occasioned by anti-Portuguese feeling and the unpopularity of the governor. The latter was obliged to flee from Porto Alegre with hardly a semblance of resistance. At first Feijo wisely limited his interference to the nomination of a new governor. It was not safe to irritate the half-feudal chiefs, backed by their bands of gauchos trained in constant raids over the Uruguayan border and who were too accustomed to seeing revolutions on the Spanish side to hesitate much about undertaking one on their own account. But the new governor was ambitious and tried to take advantage of the jealousies among the gaucho leaders to make himself supreme. He got some of the ablest of them on his side, but the others were stimulated into more determined fighting. The rebels kept the field in formidable numbers, and among their able partisan chiefs was Giuseppe Garibaldi, who here took part in his first war for freedom. At first evil fortune followed the patriots, and they were badly defeated in the battle of Fanfa, where their greatest leader, Bento Goncalves, was captured and carried to Rio. His lieutenants rallied again and declared Rio Grande an independent republic. Feijo despatched a new governor, whose oppressive measures soon brought about a wholesale desertion by the Rio Grandenses, who had hitherto supported the union side. By the middle of 1837 Rio Grande seemed hopelessly lost to Brazil, and the government only held the coast towns.