Manuel Marques de Sousa, Count of Porto Alegre (13 June 1804 – 18 July 1875), nicknamed "the Gloved Centaur", was an army officer, politician, abolitionist and monarchist of the Empire of Brazil. Born into a wealthy family of military background, Porto Alegre joined the army in 1817 when he was little more than a child. His military initiation occurred in the conquest of the Banda Oriental (Eastern Bank), which was annexed and became the southernmost Brazilian province of Cisplatina in 1821. For most of the 1820s, he was embroiled in the Brazilian effort to keep Cisplatina as part of its territory: first during the struggle for Brazilian independence and then in the Cisplatine War. It would ultimately prove a futile attempt, as Cisplatina successfully separated from Brazil to become the in