CHAPTER X.
Battalion of Numancia joins the Liberating Army....Victory at Pasco by Arenales....Route of Arenales from Ica....Courts Martial held in the Squadron on Officers....Conduct of General San Martin....Viceroy Pesuela deposed....Expedition to Pisco....To Arica....Action at Mirabe, under Lieutenant-Colonel Miller....Description of Arica....Of Tacna....Of Ilo....Armistice celebrated by Generals San Martin and La Serna....Prorogation of....Lord Cochrane leaves Mollendo, and arrives at Callao.
On the third of December the battalion of Numancia, being six hundred and fifty strong, left the service of the Viceroy of Lima, and passed over to that of the Patria, joining a detachment of the liberating army, sent to meet them at Retes in the valley of Chancay. This corps, which was entirely composed of Colombians, had retained the name of a regiment sent from Spain under General Morillo, and was considered the stay of the viceregal authority in Peru. A private correspondence had been held between San Martin and the officers of this battalion, and promises made to them by San Martin, which, like many if not all similar ones made by this great man, were never fulfilled. The loss of so important a part of the Spanish army was a severe blow to Pesuela and the Spaniards in Lima, and a great addition to the physical strength of the liberating army. The arrival of officers and private individuals from Lima increased daily; on the eighth, thirty-six officers, and a greater number of persons of respectability in Lima, arrived at Chancay, and joined the patriot forces.
On the eleventh, the news of the victory at Pasco, obtained by Colonel Arenales over General O'Reilly and a division of the royal army of twelve hundred men, arrived at Huaura. After the action at Ica on the sixth of October, Arenales marched with his division into the interior, and on the thirty-first he entered the city of Huamanga; but the Spanish authorities had fled, carrying with them the public funds. The inhabitants of Huamanga welcomed the arrival of the patriot forces, and voluntarily declared their independence of Spain and her mandataries. On the sixth the division left the city, and continued their march towards the district of Tarma; and the advanced guard arrived at Jauja, thirty leagues from Lima, at the same time that the Spaniards were abandoning it; a skirmish took place, and the Spaniards lost eight killed and twenty-one prisoners, including four officers. On the twenty-second a division advanced on the city of Tarma, and entered it on the twenty-third. Tarma immediately proclaimed itself independent of Spain. On the sixth of December the action was fought at Pasco; the loss of the enemy consisted in fifty-eight killed in the field of battle, nineteen wounded, three hundred and forty-three prisoners, including twenty-eight officers, two pieces of artillery, three hundred and sixty muskets, flags, ammunition, baggage, and utensils of war; but General O'Reilly made his escape to Lima. On the arrival of the news of the victory obtained at Pasco over the royalists, the city and province of Huanuco declared their independence, and the cities of Cueñca and Loxa, in the jurisdiction of Quito, advised General San Martin of their having also abjured all foreign domination, and enrolled their names in the list of free and independent states. On the fourth of January, the news arrived of the revolution of Truxillo, under the direction of its Spanish governor the Marquis of Torre Tagle.
Such a concatenation of successful events was certainly more than the general of the liberating army could have anticipated. From the fifth of November to the fifth of January the Spaniards had lost the whole of their naval force in the Esmeralda, the Prueba and Vengansa having disappeared: Numancia, considered the flower of their army and the prop of their authority, had deserted their cause; the division under the command of their trusty general, O'Reilly, had been defeated by a minor force; all the provinces to the northward of Lima had declared their independence, and were contributing with men and every other necessary to support the army then encamped within thirty leagues of the capital of Peru; every thing save hope seemed to have abandoned them, while every thing appeared to favour the cause of the liberating forces, and to invite them to crown their career of glory by entering Lima, which at this moment was the pandemonium of oppression and despair.
The incomparable prudence of San Martin, however, revolted at the effusion of blood which must necessarily be the precursor of so much glory: he felt more sympathy at knowing that both his own and the enemy's troops were falling victims almost hourly to the ravages of the tertian fever and other diseases, for want of proper medicines, care, and rest.
The situation occupied by the royal troops between Lima and Ancon, at a place called Asna Pugio, is very swampy, and the number of men who became affected with intermittent fevers increased daily; the hospitals in Lima were filled with them, and their decrease by death, as well as by desertion, was alarming to the Viceroy. The desertions would have increased if the distance of the head quarters of San Martin had not been so great, for several deserters were apprehended, and shot by the royalists.
On the second of February the officers of the ex-Esmeralda, named by General San Martin the Valdivia, in commemoration of the important victory gained by Lord Cochrane over this place, addressed the following letter to Captain Guise: