Great Siege of Montevideo

Great Siege of Montevideo
	Part of the Uruguayan Civil War and the Platine War
Date	16 November 1843 – 8 October 1851; (7 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 1 day)
Location	Montevideo, Uruguay
Result	The siege is relieved after the intervention of the Empire of Brazil and the Entre Ríos province of Argentina.
Belligerents
Besiegers: Cerrito Government; Argentina; Supported by: Federalist Party;	Besieged: Defense Government; Unitarian Party; Supported by: Empire of Brazil; Entre Ríos (1851); Corrientes (1851); Italian Redshirts; United Kingdom; France; Piratini (1843–1845);
Commanders and leaders
Manuel Oribe; Ignacio Oribe; Ángel Pacheco; William Brown; J. J. de Urquiza (1843-1850);	Joaquín Suárez; Melchor Pacheco; José María Paz; Martín Rodríguez; José Rondeau; Count of Caxias; J. J. de Urquiza (1851); Giuseppe Garibaldi; Jean Thiebaut;
Strength
1843: 3,630; 3,550; ; ; 1851: 11,000–14,000	1843: 3,000–8,000; 1,500–2,000; 400–600; 500; 1851: 12,000–19,000; 5,000; 1,500; (Reinforcements)

The Great Siege of Montevideo (Spanish: Gran Sitio de Montevideo), named as Sitio Grande in Uruguayan historiography, was the siege suffered by the city of Montevideo between 1843 and 1851 during the Uruguayan Civil War.

In practice, this siege meant that Uruguay had two parallel governments:

Gobierno de la Defensa in Montevideo, led by Joaquín Suárez (1843 – 1852)
Gobierno del Cerrito (with headquarters in the present-day neighborhood of Cerrito de la Victoria), ruling the rest of the country, led by Manuel Oribe (1843 – 1851)

The siege inspired a book by the French writer Alexandre Dumas, The New Troy (1850).