CHAPTER V
THE WARS OF INDEPENDENCE
The storm soon to burst over South America was gathering when Viceroy Abascal assumed the reins of power in 1806. He made no pretensions to statesmanship, but it did not escape his shrewd soldier's eye and common sense that French revolutionary ideas would soon make trouble. Her very existence threatened in the titan conflict then devastating Europe, Spain could not be relied upon to spare any of her soldiers to guard her colonies. He must take care of himself. Wasting no time in seeking to propitiate the revolutionary elements, he quietly set to work to organise and arm an efficient army while vigilantly watching the course of events.
BAKER ON HORSEBACK, LIMA.
Although less infected than any other province, being the one where the Spanish bureaucracy was most numerous and powerful, even in Peru Creole society was honeycombed with revolutionary sentiment. The plots to secure autonomy came to Abascal's notice, and with the first overt act he pounced upon the plotters. Two republican visionaries, named Ubaldo and Aguilar, were the first martyrs for liberty. A few learned and respected professors in Lima dared to speculate on the future of America as affected by recent events in Europe, but the viceroy summoned them to his presence and his stern warnings silenced them. Two young lawyers held evening parties where politics were discussed by the rising youth of the capital. One of the ringleaders was condemned to ten years' imprisonment and the other sent to Spain, while several more were shipped off to southern Chile. Although the liberals continued to meet and conspire, and the priests were particularly active, for the present nothing definite came of all this.
Even the news of the deposition of the Spanish authorities at Quito, La Paz, and Charcas, in 1809, met with no response from the liberals at Lima. Abascal banished Riva Aguëro, their leader; his expeditions quickly suppressed the insurrections in Bolivia and Ecuador; and he redoubled his exertions to strengthen his army, recruiting among the Indians and half-breeds, and casting cannon. That his apprehensions were justified was proved by the events of the following year. In rapid succession Buenos Aires, northern New Granada, Caracas, and Santiago installed revolutionary juntas in place of the Spanish governors. The flames of revolution spread rapidly from these centres. Soon the Spanish officials were overthrown throughout Argentina, Chile, New Granada, and Venezuela; Bolivia and Ecuador were divided; and only Peru remained steady. But Abascal, resolute and unshaken, sent his armies against the triumphant revolutionists. The story of these campaigns is elsewhere told in connection with the countries where they were conducted. Though the patriots won some important victories, the loyal arms steadily advanced.
The redemption of Ecuador, Chile, and Bolivia had been mainly achieved with the resources which Abascal had picked up in South America. Until 1813 the people of the Peninsula were fighting desperately for national independence against the armies of the great Napoleon. No money or men could be spared for South America, and Abascal even managed to remit two million dollars to Spain in a single year—that of 1811. The armies with which his generals won their early victories were recruited almost entirely from the native population of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In this struggle between Spaniard and Creole, the sturdy Indian of the plateau, who was dragged reluctant from his home, took no great interest, but any sympathy he felt was anti-Spanish. Nevertheless, so ingrained was the habit of obedience that when drilled and commanded by Spanish officers the half-breeds and Indians made excellent soldiers. During these six years, only one insurrection touched the territory of Peru proper. In 1814 the Indians of the Cuzco region rose under the leadership of one of their own caciques. The whole population of this, the most southern province of Peru, seems to have sympathised with the insurrection, and the same feeling extended over the Bolivian border. When Pumacagua, the Indian leader, advanced into Bolivia the people about La Paz joined him. But his army was an undisciplined, unarmed mob, only eight hundred of the twenty thousand who followed him possessing muskets. The Spanish general, Ramirez, hastened up from southern Bolivia; the Indians retreated over the Cordillera to Arequipa, where they were followed by the Spaniards. When Ramirez approached they again retired to the Bolivian plateau and the game of hide-and-seek ended with the horrible slaughter of Umachiri near Lake Titicaca.
In 1816 Abascal thought that his work was virtually completed and that he had earned the right to retire. Resistance was confined to Buenos Aires, to the thinly populated provinces of Tucuman and Cuyo, and to the banks of the Orinoco. The Argentine revolutionists were fighting among themselves, and that they must succumb before an advance in force from the Bolivian plateau appeared certain. The last act of his administration was to send out a fleet that compelled four Argentine ships which Admiral William Brown had brought around the Horn to withdraw to the Atlantic. He was succeeded by General Pezuela, a strategist of no mean abilities, who had borne a brilliant part in the Bolivian campaigns. The new viceroy straightway set about final preparations for a decisive advance across the pampas to Buenos Aires, but like a thunderbolt from a clear sky came the news that San Martin had made a sudden descent on Chile and won the battle of Chacabuco, annihilating the Spanish forces in that country. Pezuela saw himself obliged to begin a war to reduce Chile to obedience—an undertaking sure to be long and arduous, and in which he must encounter a general whose technical mastery of the profession had enabled him to create an army equal in discipline and effectiveness to any the viceroy might hope to throw against him. Pezuela abandoned the idea of an immediate Argentine campaign, and contented himself with maintaining a defensive attitude on the Bolivian frontier. He managed to repulse the armies which the Buenos Aireans sent against Bolivia, but it was in vain that he poured into Chile all the troops he could possibly spare. They were overthrown and annihilated in the decisive battle of Maipo. The viceroy sent for help to Spain and New Granada, but Venezuela had risen in insurrection under Bolivar and Paez; and it was impossible to spare any considerable number of troops from the Caribbean.
So long, however, as Spanish ships commanded the Pacific, Peru itself was safe from attack and the viceroy could securely await the arrival of reinforcements, and then attack Chile where he chose. Happily for the cause of South American independence, the war-ship of the beginning of the nineteenth century was not the expensive, complicated, slow-built machine it has since become. San Martin subordinated everything to the creation of a fleet. He forced the Argentine and Chilean governments to furnish him money, and his agents hastened to Europe and North America to buy ships and engage British and American captains. The Spaniards had four frigates and thirteen smaller ships, mounting in all three hundred and thirty guns, while San Martin was able to improvise only three frigates and as many brigs, mounting about one hundred and eighty cannon. This disparity of force was more than made up by the superior skill and experience of the foreign seamen. His admiral was Lord Cochrane, a Scotchman of noble family, but radical principles and adventurous disposition. A daring and reckless fighter, inventive and fertile in resource, he excelled in leading cutting-out expeditions and surprises. His marvellous activity and the capture by Blanco Encalada of their largest frigate dismayed the Spanish captains. When Cochrane sailed up the coast he found the Spaniards huddled under the guns of Callao castle. Returning to Valparaiso, he reported to San Martin that he could guarantee the unmolested transport of an army to any point on the Peruvian coast, and again sailed away for Callao. Though his attempt to destroy the Spaniards with fire-ships and rockets was unsuccessful, he captured and sacked several towns and terrorised the Spanish authorities all along the coast. San Martin after many disappointments and interruptions succeeded in preparing an army of invasion. For ten years war had desolated every other part of Spanish South America, while Peru had remained untouched. At length the conflict was to be transferred to the very centre of Spanish power.
On September 7, 1820, Lord Cochrane's fleet dropped anchor in a bay near Pisco, one hundred and fifty miles south of Lima. San Martin's army, numbering four thousand five hundred Argentines and Chileans, disembarked without opposition and occupied the fertile, vine-covered valleys. To undertake a campaign for the conquest of Peru with such a force seemed absurd. The viceroy's troops were five times as numerous; at Lima alone he had nearly nine thousand men; as many more were quartered at Cuzco, Jauja, and Arequipa, besides the six thousand veterans who guarded the Bolivian frontier against an invasion from Buenos Aires. The contest was, however, really not so unequal as it appeared. The Spanish armies were made up of native Peruvians and Bolivians, with some Venezuelans; sympathisers with the patriot cause swarmed in their ranks; many were waiting an opportunity to desert; the viceroy had little control over his generals, and the arrival of the Argentine army stimulated the activity of the patriot societies in the Peruvian cities.
From Pisco San Martin detached a force of twelve hundred men under the command of General Arenales, which ascended the Cordillera, roused the population of the plateaux immediately back of Lima, and defeated a detachment under General O'Reilly near Cerro de Pasco. The Indians rose, but when the Spaniards came up in force Arenales retired to the coast, leaving his allies to be mercilessly slaughtered. Meanwhile San Martin with the main body had taken ship at Pisco and, sailing north, landed at Huacho, seventy miles beyond the capital. His three thousand men could not hope to succeed in a direct attack on the city, defended by thrice that number of disciplined troops. On the other hand, the Spanish army was shut off from the sea; its base was now far back in the interior; its line of communication might be cut at any moment by other expeditions like that of Arenales. Lima and the coast towns were decidedly disaffected. San Martin's plan was to wait patiently until a rising should compel the Spaniards to retire to the interior, and then to organise the country and gather an army for the final campaign on the plateau. He kept, therefore, at a safe distance from the Spaniards; sent out detachments which scoured the country up to the walls of Lima; and entered into communication with the conspirators in the city. Crowds of young enthusiasts hastened out to join him; Cochrane daringly cut out the frigate Esmeralda under the very guns of Callao castle; an expedition sent to Tacna, on the extreme southern coast, was enthusiastically received; and numerous desertions from the Spanish army culminated in a battalion of Venezuelans coming over in a body. The viceroy was sorely puzzled. He hesitated to send his army to attack San Martin, fearing an insurrection or surprise during his absence, and knowing that defeat meant irretrievable ruin. Really only two courses of action lay open to the Spaniards—they must either fight San Martin, and the sooner the better, for he was becoming stronger every day—or they must abandon Lima and concentrate on their base in the mountains. The viceroy could not make up his mind to abandon the ancient capital, and he was reluctant to expose his family to the hardships of a guerilla warfare in the mountains.
THE MOLE AND HARBOUR OF CALLAO.
San Martin drew closer and closer, the attitude of the Lima liberals became more and more threatening, and still Pezuela made no move. News came of the revolution in Spain and of the overthrow of absolutism, and all the principal commanders united in demanding his resignation. He had no alternative, and retired to Spain, while the generals selected one of their number, La Serna, to succeed him. The new viceroy entered into negotiations looking toward an amicable accommodation of the whole question at issue between Spain and her colonies. The Argentine was nothing loath, well knowing that every month strengthened the patriot feeling among the coast Peruvians and brought him nearer his goal. San Martin proposed that South America become a constitutional monarchy and accept a Bourbon prince as its king in return for a recognition of its independence—a concession which even the revolutionary Spanish government could not confirm. The suggestion reflects little credit upon the political acumen of the great Argentine general. San Martin, in fact, seems never to have appreciated the motives and instincts which had pushed the Creoles into rebellion. The revolutionary movement in South America was in its essence separatist and republican; no monarch, whether the scion of a European House, or a Bolivar trying to play the rôle of a Napoleon, could ever have kept the Spanish colonies together.
The first six months of 1821 were consumed in these fruitless negotiations, and by this time the position of the Spaniards at Lima had become untenable. It was necessary for them to retire to the plateau, where the sturdy natives furnished a supply of excellent recruits and the mines, fields, and pastures would maintain an army. On July 6, 1821, La Serna evacuated the capital and retired to Jauja, leaving a well-provisioned garrison at Callao against the hoped-for arrival of a fleet from Spain. Even then a dozen well-fought frigates might have undone all San Martin's work and changed the fate of South America. Three days later the Argentine general entered the city, and on the 28th of July, 1821, Peru was proclaimed an independent republic, with San Martin as temporary dictator under the title of Protector. During the rest of the year he was occupied with trying to secure the adhesion of the whole coast, and made no effort to undertake the redemption of the interior. When the Frenchman Canterac, the most enterprising of the Spanish commanders, made a descent on Lima, San Martin merely maintained the defence, being well assured that the enemy must soon retire on account of want of provisions. But he found himself hampered in consolidating coast Peru by the fact that he was a foreigner. The Peruvians were jealous and suspicious, and he feared that troops recruited among them might turn their arms against him, while his Argentine officers regarded the country as their own property, and monopolised the positions of honour and profit to which the Peruvians thought themselves more justly entitled.
Matters remained virtually at a standstill until the summer of 1822. San Martin had been unable to make his position stable enough to justify his devoting himself to military operations, nor had he succeeded in gathering and equipping an army with which he was willing to undertake a decisive campaign. Canterac even took the offensive, although he made no effort to re-occupy permanently the coast plain. Outside help was necessary, and San Martin, despairing of obtaining it from Chile or the Argentine, turned his eyes to the north. Bolivar's battles of Boyacá and Carabobo had redeemed northern Granada and Venezuela in 1819 and 1821, and he was now advancing toward Quito to complete the expulsion of the Spaniards from that viceroyalty. With a force of Colombians Sucré went to Guayaquil by sea and climbed to the Ecuador plateau. Defeated and driven back on his first attempt, he was reinforced by a division sent by San Martin, and renewed the effort with better success. Although Bolivar had in the meantime been checked in his southward march on Quito by the loyalists of southern Colombia, Sucré alone destroyed the Spanish army which had held Ecuador for so many years. The battle of Pichincha, fought in May, 1822, left Bolivar and Sucré free to employ their numerous and well-disciplined troops in completing the liberation of Peru and Bolivia.
CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO IN LIMA.
Bolivar joined his victorious lieutenant at Quito, incorporated Ecuador with his new republic of Colombia, and proceeded overland to Guayaquil, where San Martin lost no time in going to meet him for a conference. The Argentine expected to find as unselfish a patriot as himself, but the "liberator" was not single-minded. He had formed plans for his own glory and aggrandisement to the accomplishment of which San Martin might be an obstacle. When the latter broached the subject of a joint campaign against the Spaniards in Peru and Bolivia, Bolivar gave him no satisfaction, and evaded the Argentine's noble offer to serve in a subordinate capacity. The silent soldier made no protest and uttered no reproaches. Confiding not even in his closest friends, he calmly considered his plight on his way back to Lima. His situation in Peru, bad already, would be made ten times worse by Bolivar's intrigues. Seeing that he could be of no further service to the cause of South American independence, he formally resigned his authority to a national congress, deliberately sacrificing his own future for the cause he loved, but leaving behind him a name untarnished by any suspicion of self-seeking or personal ambition.
Bolivar waited in vain for the expected invitation to come with his veterans. The leaders in Peru did not propose to jeopard their own supremacy. They thought they were strong enough to whip the Spaniards by themselves, and made great efforts to drill and equip an efficient army. By the end of the year four thousand men under the command of Alvarado were sent to the southern coast to make an attempt to reach Lake Titicaca and thereby get between the Spanish armies. It failed before the astonishing energy of the Spanish general, Valdez, who by forced marches reached the pass which the Peruvians were trying to climb, and taking up a strong position, beat them back with great slaughter. Alvarado retreated, but was caught by Valdez and completely routed; hardly a third of the army escaped to the seashore. The news of this defeat brought about a change of government at Lima. A revolution, headed by the principal officers, made Riva Aguëro, the leader of the Peruvian liberals, president, while General Santa Cruz, a Bolivian, received chief command of the forces, in place of Arenales. Word was sent to Bolivar that his offer of help would be accepted; and another Peruvian army was recruited. Before the six thousand men promised by Bolivar had arrived, the Peruvians had regained confidence. With the aid of a London loan, the patriots got seven thousand soldiers ready for service, and in May, 1823, five thousand men under the command of Santa Cruz sailed from Callao for southern Peru. This time they advanced so promptly that the Spanish generals could not get to the passes in time to dispute the way. Santa Cruz entered La Paz and defeated the first army which came against him. But the two main Spanish bodies hastened up from Cuzco and Charcas, outmanœuvred Santa Cruz, united their forces, and routed his army in a panic, not a fourth ever reaching the seaboard.
Shortly after Santa Cruz's departure on this ill-fated expedition, Sucré arrived at Lima with the first instalment of the promised Colombian auxiliaries. The Spanish general, Canterac, had concentrated a large army at Jauja and descended on the capital; Lima was denuded of Peruvian troops; the government helpless against the Spaniards or Sucré. The Colombian was made commander-in-chief, and retiring to the fortifications of Callao before Canterac's overwhelming numbers, procured Riva Aguëro's deposition and the nomination of one of his own tools as nominal president, while he sent off an urgent message to Bolivar to come in person. Canterac, after holding Lima for a few weeks, went back to the mountains, and Bolivar himself landed at Callao on the 1st of September, almost at the very moment when Santa Cruz's army was getting involved in that snarl out of which it never extricated itself. The news of its destruction left Bolivar undisputed master of the situation, and in February the submissive rump of the Peruvian parliament conferred upon him an absolute dictatorship. He now devoted all the wonderful energy with which nature had endowed him to preparation for a campaign which he meant to be final; and united ten thousand men under his command, two-thirds of whom were Colombian veterans and the rest Peruvians, Argentines, and Chileans who fought for the sheer love of fighting. His officers were the pick of South America, men who had proven their bravery and skill on all the hundred battle-fields from Venezuela to Chile. With such a force he did not hesitate to attack the Spaniards, although the latter were nearly twice as numerous.
Suddenly, however, his plans were seriously disturbed by a revolt of the garrison in Callao castle—Argentines and Chileans who had not received their pay. The mutineers hoisted the Spanish flag and sent word to Canterac that he might come in and take possession. This event produced a great sensation at Lima. Many citizens who distrusted Bolivar or were fearful of the final result vacillated in their allegiance. Even men who had been prominent liberals went over to the royalists. Bolivar abandoned the capital and removed his base of operations to Trujillo, three hundred miles north. But discouragement gave place to confident enthusiasm when news came that the Spanish generals were fighting among themselves. Olañeta, the renegade Argentine, who commanded in Bolivia, had quarrelled with La Serna, whom he regarded as a pestilent liberal and an enemy of the absolute pretensions of the Spanish king. The viceroy sent Valdez against him, and some hard fighting had taken place, when this fratricidal war was interrupted by the news of Bolivar's preparations.
MILK-WOMAN OF LIMA ON HORSEBACK.
Though just recovering from a dangerous illness, Bolivar lost no time in taking advantage of Olañeta's revolt. His army numbered nine thousand men; it was well supplied with cavalry, and the troops received their liberal pay punctually. The patriots advanced rapidly and unopposed over the Maritime Cordillera, covered by a cloud of Peruvian guerillas, under whose protection Sucré marked out the daily route and brought in provisions. The city of Pasco, just south of that transverse range which forms the northern limit of the great Peruvian plateau, was reached and Bolivar's army hastened south along the western shore of the lake of Reyes to the marshy plain of Junin at its southern end, where he met Canterac hurrying up from Jauja with a slightly inferior force.
When Bolivar caught sight of the royalist army he held his infantry back in a defensible position, and sent his cavalry toward the enemy. Canterac rashly charged in person at the head of all his cavalry, but instead of the easy victory he expected, his squadrons were thrown into some disorder when they encountered the patriot lancers. The latter, however, were compelled to retreat, and fled into a defile, followed by the royalists. The royalists did not notice that a Peruvian squadron had been drawn aside, and scarcely were they in the defile than they were charged from the rear. The fugitive patriots in front rallied, and the disordered and huddled royalists, caught between two fires, could make no effective resistance. They were quickly cut to pieces and driven from the field. The whole affair had not lasted three-quarters of an hour; the numbers engaged did not much exceed two thousand; the royalist loss was only two hundred and fifty, yet this battle of Junin produced almost decisive results. As the fugitive cavalry rode up to the protection of the muskets of the infantry, the latter retreated. Though Canterac was not pursued, he did not stop in his precipitate flight until he had nearly reached Cuzco, five hundred miles away, losing two thousand men by desertion on the road.
Leaving Sucré in command of the army, which now threatened Cuzco itself, Bolivar returned to Lima to look after his political interests, collect money, and urge the sending of reinforcements from Colombia. La Serna called in all his outlying divisions, while Sucré confidently scattered his forces. He underestimated the strength of the royalists, for to his consternation La Serna suddenly broke out of Cuzco at the head of ten thousand men, and before Sucré could concentrate, his opponent was threatening his rear and manœuvring to cut him off from his base. Happily, the royalists were compelled to march in a semicircle, and Sucré, by desperate exertions, united his forces and cut along the radius, coming in sight of La Serna just as the latter had succeeded in getting between him and the road to Jauja. Sucré's position was desperate. The valleys to the north were rising in favour of the royalists; a patriot column advancing from that direction to reinforce him was driven back; his provisions and ammunition were beginning to fail. Sucré's army was La Serna's real objective. Even if he could shake off the pursuit, another march to Lima would be as barren of results as Canterac's last descent, and to leave the Colombian army at Guamanga would expose Cuzco and Bolivia to invasion. During three days the opposing armies marched and counter-marched among the ravines on the west bank of the Pampas River, and finally Sucré took the desperate resolution of crossing the deep gorge in which the river runs in order to reach the high grounds on the other side. He managed to get his main body over safely, but the Spaniards fell upon his rearguard, killing four hundred men and capturing one of his two cannon. The two armies were now opposite each other on the high, narrow, and broken plateau which lies between the Eastern and Central Cordilleras, separated only by the gorge of the Pampas. They marched in plain sight of each other, the royalists along the slopes of the Central Cordillera, while the patriots skirted the foothills of the Eastern. Sucré hoped to outrun the enemy and reach the main road to Jauja, but La Serna again outflanked him; he offered battle, but the viceroy had determined to engage under conditions where not a patriot could escape, and by skilful manœuvres the royal army succeeded in getting into the protection of the eastern range at a point north of Sucré. Irretrievably cut off from the Jauja road, convinced by his previous failures that he could not better his position by any further manœuvres, the Colombian general resolved again to offer battle, although this time upon a field chosen by La Serna. He ceased marching and allowed the enemy to dispose their forces at will.
On the 8th of September, 1824, La Serna's army, numbering eight thousand five hundred men—of whom only five hundred were Spaniards—encamped on the high grounds overlooking the little plain of Ayacucho, which sloped gently eastward to the little village of Quinua. To the left the level ground was bounded by a deep and precipitate ravine, and on the right by a valley which, though less difficult, was impracticable for fighting. Sucré's army lay at the eastern extremity of the plain, at the edge of the slope which rises from Quinua. Behind was no cover to re-form in if defeated. His forces were a little less than six thousand, and he had only one cannon against the enemy's eleven, but three-fourths of his men were the pick of the Colombian veterans and the rest Peruvians of the highest spirit. Tired of interminable marching through the mountains, isolated in a hostile region, starvation staring them in the face, confident of their superiority, man for man, to the royalists, and led by fiery young generals,—Sucré was only thirty-one and his chief lieutenant twenty-five,—they welcomed the opportunity to fight it out once for all, face to face and man to man.
The morning sun of the 9th rose radiant behind the mountains where the Spaniards lay encamped. Sucré deployed his army in the open plain, riding down the line exclaiming, "Soldiers, on your deeds this day depends the fate of South America," while the Spanish columns descended in perfect order from the heights. La Serna realised that his men would not fight with the same spirit as the patriots and that defeat might be followed by wholesale desertion, but he counted on his artillery and the reserve he had left on the high ground as a sure refuge in case of a reverse.
The story of the battle is soon told. The patriots advanced to meet the Spanish attack; musketry volleys on both sides did terrific execution, and the two armies met bayonet in hand. On the left the Spanish columns were unable to make any impression on the Colombian infantry, and while the conflict was still undecided the royalist cavalry rashly charged, hoping to strike a deciding blow. But they were met by a counter-charge of the patriot squadrons and rolled back in defeat. The whole left of the royalist army dispersed, and such was the confusion that the impetuously pursuing Colombians reached the Spanish camp and spiked the artillery, defeating on their way the enemy's centre. In the meantime the Spanish right under Valdez had outflanked the Peruvians who held that part of the line and driven them back, but before he could reach the patriot centre the battle had been decided. Attacked by the victorious cavalry, Valdez's men were cut to pieces, and by one o'clock in the after noon the Spanish army, except the reserve under Canterac, had ceased to exist as an organised body. Of the royalists fourteen hundred were dead and seven hundred wounded, while the patriots had lost six hundred wounded and three hundred dead. The viceroy was wounded and a prisoner, his men deserting and dispersing by hundreds. Canterac sued for terms, and that afternoon fourteen generals, five hundred and sixty-eight officers, and three thousand two hundred privates became prisoners of war. Never was a victory more complete and decisive than Ayacucho. The war for independence was over. Only under Olañeta in far southern Bolivia and at Callao castle did a Spaniard remain under arms. Sucré marched to Cuzco, where he rested and refitted and then went on to Puno and La Paz. Olañeta's troops deserted as the Colombian approached, and the last of the Spanish generals fell at the hands of his own men as he was bravely trying to suppress a mutiny. Callao castle held out for thirteen months, and with its surrender was hauled down the last Spanish ensign which floated on the South American mainland.
