However, shortly thereafter it became evident that the Unitarians, many of whose leaders had spent years in exile and had returned in the months following the battle, aspired to maintain the hegemony of Buenos Aires.

An agreement known as the Palermo Protocol [es], signed 6 April (in Rosas' house) by the governors of the four coastal states, endowed Urquiza with full powers nationally, and over foreign relations.

Among other arrangements, it was established that Representatives would attend with full power to vote their conscience, without restraint on their liberty of action, although the provinces would be able to withdraw the delegates and replace them, if necessary.

This way, pressure wouldn't be applied by the Porteño government, but by the Provisional Director of the Argentine Confederation: general Urquiza himself, who paid the wages of the delegates and had put the Governor of Santa Fe in office.

By the time governor López y Planes arrived in Buenos Aires on the 12 July accompanied by General Urquiza, the press had already shaped public opinion against the agreement.

Foreshadowing what would eventually occur, an article in El Nacional ended with a striking claim from a discourse by Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield: It's impossible to govern a people whose rights are violated.

He rejected the alleged right of porteños[b] to impose their requirements to the rest of the country, with a famous phrase: I love the people of Buenos Aires, where I was born, as much as or more than anybody else does.

But I raise my voice to say, my country is the Republic of Argentina, and not Buenos Aires!The public, incensed against the government, hampered López from continuing his speech.

During his term as governor of Entre Rios Province, Urquiza sent doctor Santiago Derqui to Paraguay, to sign treaties of open navigation and to acknowledge the sovereignty of the country, which had been rejected previously by Rosas in 1843.

[5] Simultaneously, he announced the open navigation of interior rivers, an old grievance of the coastal provinces, which the liberal Porteños[b] had signed on to in opposition to Rosas, for ideological reasons.

A tense calm held during the two months following Urquiza's coup: some of those who were exiled returned, while the city grudgingly accepted the intervention and military occupation.

In public, there were no aggressive moves towards the general, and his birthday was even celebrated in Club del Progreso,[6] but opposing parties went forward with revolutionary plans, which Urquiza confidently disregarded.

In the early morning of the 11th of September, most of the military forces of the city plus Galan's Correntinas troops were gathered in Plaza de Mayo, led by general José María Pirán, while Miguel Esteves Saguí [es], lawyer, alerted the populace by sounding the bell of the Cabildo.

[7][8] Near noon, while the troops were being given several months advance pay plus a bonus, the House of Representatives, which had been dismissed by Urquiza, reconvened, and elected General Pinto as interim governor.

General Galán, leadinga few military forces from Entre Ríos, withdrew first to Santos Lugares, and then toward the north of the province, from where he called Urquiza, who was getting ready to preside over the first of the Constituent Congress sessions.

Aware of the situation in Buenos Aires, but assuming Galán was in Santos Lugares, Urquiza counter-marched up to San Nicolás, at the front of a small army from the province of Santa Fe.

[9] Meanwhile, in Buenos Aires, during a meeting in the Teatro Coliseo, Alsina embraced publicly with the chief of Porteños Federals, Lorenzo Torres, who had been an ardent Rosas follower.

On the 24th of September, on learning that Urquiza had left for Entre Ríos, the government demanded the immediate exit from the province of several people, among them Colonels Bustos y Lagos.

Lacking external support and attacked by the troops that Urquiza could mobilize effortlessly, the invasion to Entre Ríos failed completely because the predicted advances on Santa Fe had not occurred.

On December 1, Colonel Hilario Lagos appeared in front of the campaign troops and spoke against Alsina's government in Guardia de Luján (now Mercedes).

Meanwhile, the government in Buenos Aires sent a prestigious campaign leader, Pedro Rosas y Belgrano, to gather the troops that remained loyal to the city in the interior of the province.

A few days later, general Flores, who had abandoned the siege, returned from the north of the province with a huge sum of money, with which he bought a large part of Lagos' troops.

The exiled leaders tried repeatedly to invade Buenos Aires, but failed every time; until General Jerónimo Costa was defeated and executed without trial, together with his officers, at the beginning of 1856.

The victory of the Porteños in this battle caused the dissolution of the Confederate government, and the temporary rise to national power of the Buenos Aires Governor Bartolomé Mitre.