The termination of his second visit was more fatal than that of his first. Attacked when in an unprepared condition by the Spaniards, the defeat of the buccaneer force was complete. Moreau himself was slain, together with the greater part of his company, while the remainder were taken prisoners. Freed from this source of danger, the inhabitants of the Banda Oriental were not long left without anxiety on another head. The Portuguese had never ceased to covet the rich land that might be made to serve as such a valuable and temperate pendant to their torrid northern areas. The River Plate stood to them in the light of a Rhine, and at the end of 1723 they awoke once more into aggressive activity. An expedition then left Rio de Janeiro consisting of four ships with three hundred soldiers. The force sailed to the point where the town of Montevideo now stands, at that time a lonely spot whose commercial and strategic importance was then for the first time discovered. Here the expedition landed, and in a short while its leaders had negotiated with the natives whom they found in the district, had supplied them with arms, and had founded a settlement. On learning of this aggression the Buenos Aires authorities determined to resist the attempt in earnest. Gavala, the Spanish Governor, collected a powerful fleet, and sailed in haste to the spot. The Portuguese, ascertaining the strength of the attacking force, abandoned their new settlement, and made off to the north without awaiting its arrival. Gavala then took possession of Montevideo in turn, and took measures in order to prevent a repetition of the incident. To this end he constructed a powerful battery on the spot, and supplied the fort with a garrison of a hundred Spanish troops, and with a thousand native auxiliaries. CHAPTER III HISTORY--_continued_ Founding of the city of Montevideo--Its first inhabitants--Inducement offered to colonists--The early days of the town--Successful rising of the Indians in the neighbourhood--Victory of the natives--Montevideo saved by Jesuit intervention--The Portuguese invade the northern provinces--The first Governor of Montevideo--Treaties and territorial cessions--Dissatisfaction of Jesuit Indians--Their defeat by combined Spanish and Portuguese forces--Vicissitudes of Colonia--The danger of hostile residents--A concentration camp of the old days--Expulsion of the Jesuits--Some incidents of the wars with the Portuguese--The foundation of urban centres--The English occupy themselves with the whaling industry on the coast--Discouragement of the enterprise by the King of Spain--A corps of Blandengues is created--The British invasion--Political effects of the occupation--The war of independence--Montevideo as the seat of the Spanish viceroyalty--Commencement of the agitation for freedom in Uruguay.