Historical and descriptive narrative of twenty years' residence in South America (Vol 3 of 3) / Containing travels in Arauco, Chile, Peru, and Colombia; with an account of the revolution, its rise, progress, and results

by active 1803-1825 William Bennet Stevenson

"On the 12th, at six o'clock in the afternoon, an officer arrived at Santiago with a verbal communication from General Maroto, declaring, that he had suffered a total defeat. This was confirmed on the 13th by the arrival of Maroto and Quintanilla; Marcó had left the city with about 1500 men, and resolved on renewing the attack; but after more private conversation with Maroto, he returned to the capital, and summoned a council of war. After a long conference nothing was determined on, and the sub-inspector-general Bernedo, the judge advocate Lescano, and the commandant of artillery, Cacho, fled to Valparaiso. From the 13th at noon to the evening of the 14th, officers, soldiers and civilians continued to arrive at Valparaiso, where they embarked on board several vessels then at anchor in the bay, and fled to Lima; but it was not known till our arrival at Callao, that the president Marcó was left behind at the mercy of Bernardo O'Higgins, to whom the insurgents owe their victory, and we our disgrace."

The most astonishing difference in the behaviour of the Spaniards was now observable. The haughty Maroto, who, when in Lima with his regiment of Talavera, despised and insulted every one, now that he had neither an officer nor a soldier left, was humbled, and the bow of a negro or an indian was most courteously answered by this vaunting coward.

New insurrections in the provinces of Upper Peru began to break out; the victories of General Bolivar in Colombia became known, and although reports from the mother country were flattering, yet the repeated requisitions for money were distressing.

Notwithstanding this state of affairs, the Viceroy Pesuela determined on another expedition to Chile, the command of which was again given to General Osorio. The Spanish troops consisted of a battalion of hussars and the regiment of Burgos, the best troops that had arrived from Europe. Their destination was to Talcahuano, which place, as it had been fortified by the Spaniards, was still held by them, with the auxiliary troops of Chile. For the equipment of this expedition, the Viceroy took possession of the treasury belonging to the commissariat of the crusades, money, which in the opinion of all the lower classes, could only be appropriated to the support of war against Turks, Moors and Infidels, and the greatest clamour was raised when it was applied to the purpose of waging civil war with Christians. This treasure being insufficient, that called of the holy places, santos lugares, at Jerusalem, was also added to that of the bulls.

After many difficulties had been surmounted, the expedition left Callao in October, 1817; and calculating on its success, the Spaniards again resumed their arrogance, which in some was carried to such an extreme as to enter into a bond with one another of two thousand dollars never again to employ a creole. A Spaniard said to me one evening, that he had six children, but if he thought that they would ever be insurgents, he would go to their beds and smother them.

This chivalrous fanaticism had risen to such a height, that a Peruvian officer, Landasuri, said, in the presence of Pesuela, that he hated his father and mother, because he was born in America, and that if he knew in what part of his body the American blood circulated, he would let it out; however Pesuela reprimanded him severely for such unnatural expressions.

Nothing but reports of victories arrived from Chile, the bells scarcely ever ceased ringing in Lima, and the choristers were hoarse with chanting Te Deums; the haughtiness of the Spaniards became insupportable; they paraded the streets in triumph, and, forming themselves into groups, insulted every creole who chanced to pass them. But their insolence was at its highest pitch in April, 1818, when the news of the victory over San Martin and O'Higgins at Cancha-rayada arrived; they considered Osorio more than a human being; his wisdom and valour were the theme of the pulpit, the palace, the coffee-house, and the brothel. The hero Osorio was at Santiago; he would soon cross the Andes, and release his virtuous and brave countrymen from their dungeons at San Luis and las Bruscas, and with the reinforcements expected from Spain, in a convoy under the protection of the Spanish frigate Maria Isabel, he would conquer the Buenos Ayreans, and return to Lima with the heads of San Martin, O'Higgins, and those of all the other chiefs of the banditties.

This ferment of insolence and insults continually increased till the evening of the fourth of May, when about ten o'clock at night a valancin, post chaise, drove up to the gates of the viceregal palace, bringing the hero Osorio, and the news of his total defeat at Maypu. On the morning of the fifth a creole was allowed to pass the streets unmolested, and might even presume to seat himself in a coffee-house at the same table with a Spaniard. Confusion and dismay were visible in the countenances of the royalists, the great Osorio suddenly became an ignorant coward, who had sacrificed his countrymen, and indecently fled to save his own life; even the Americans were now courted to join the Spaniards in declamations against the late demi-god Osorio, and no hope was left but that the arrival of the expedition from Spain would retrieve the losses occasioned by the dastardly conduct of this chief.

The first news, however, which they obtained of the issue of the boasted expedition was, that the soldiers of La Trinidad, one of the transports, had murdered their officers, taken possession of the vessel, and carried her to Buenos Ayres; this was seconded in November, 1818, with the news, that the Maria Isabel and part of her convoy had been taken at Talcahuano and the island of Santa Maria by the insurgents of Chile; and this blow was aggravated with the abandonment of Talcahuano, the strong hold of the Spaniards in Chile, by General Sanches, who took the command after Osorio fled. Still there was gall in reserve for the humbled Spaniards. The Chilean squadron, commanded by the Right Honourable Lord Cochrane, made its appearance off Callao on the twenty-eighth of February, 1819, his lordship's flag waving at the main of the ex-Spanish frigate Maria Isabel, now the Chilean flag ship O'Higgins.