Quiroga was approaching, but did not believe, as no other general would have believed, that he would attack Mendoza; he therefore sent to the Lakes his veteran troops, who, with some other detachments from San Juan under the command of Major Castro, formed a force strong enough to resist an attack, and to force Quiroga to take the road to the Llanos. So far it was all right. But Quiroga did march upon Mendoza, and the whole army went out to meet him. In the place called Chacon there is an open field in which the army left its rear guard; but soon after, hearing the firing of a company in retreat, General Castillo ordered the army to fall back hastily, in order to occupy the level field of Chacon. This was a double error; in the first place, because a retreat at the approach of a formidable enemy paralyzes inexperienced soldiers, who do not understand the cause of the movement; and secondly, because the rougher and more broken the ground, the better it would have been for fighting Quiroga, who only had with him a small body of infantry. What could he have done in such a field against six hundred infantry with a formidable battery of artillery in front? But unfortunately the officers were all native Argentines, who were devoted to horses; for them there would be no glory except in a victory won by the sword, and therefore they thought an open field for cavalry charges was absolutely necessary; this is the mistake in Argentine strategy.
The battle began, and a squadron of militia was ordered to charge, another Argentine mistake is this of beginning the fight with a charge of cavalry, a mistake which has lost to the Republic a hundred battles.
