On the 13th of February 1880, the minister of war, Dr Carlos Pellegrini, summoned the principal officers connected with the Tiro Nacional, General Bartolome Mitre, his brother Emilio, Colonel Julio Campos, Colonel Hilario Lagos and others, and warned them that as officers of the national army they owed obedience to the national government, and would be severely punished if concerned in any revolutionary outbreak against the constituted authorities.
The reply to this threat was the immediate resignation of their commissions by all the officers connected with the Tiro Nacional.
It is universally agreed that the letters ad Familiares were published by Tiro, whose hand is revealed by the fact that he suppresses all letters written by himself, and modestly puts at the end those written to him.
It is obvious that Tiro thought the passage compromising and struck it out.
As to what was going on beyond it, we have but a few casual gleams of light, just enough to make the darkness visible, from writers such as the author of the life of St Germanus, Prosper Tiro, Procopius, and Gregory of Tours.