“To establish a definitive form of government, and to give to the country the constitution best adapted to it.”
He at the same time appointed the Marquis of Torre-Tagle Deputy-Protector, while he himself went off to Guayaquil in the hope of obtaining an interview with Bolívar.
Not daring to leave La Serna unmolested while he arranged with the Liberator of the North the plans for united and decisive action, he despatched General Tristan and Colonel Gamarra, both Peruvians, with 2,000 men, to occupy the valley of Ica, and spread a false report that Arenales was about to return with another expedition to the Highlands. La Serna was too well informed to trouble himself about reports, and knew well the quality of the two Patriots now in command at Ica.
Early in April Canterac, with 2,000 men and three guns, marched from Jauja, and Valdés with 500 from Arequipa. The Patriot army evacuated Ica at their approach, but their retreat by night was intercepted, they were thrown into disorder and cut to pieces. The Royalists made more than 1,000 prisoners, including fifty officers, took four guns and two flags, and returned in triumph, after shooting one in every five of the officers of the Numancia battalion, whom they had made prisoners.
Tristan and Gamarra were tried by court-martial, and shown to be utterly incompetent for such a command; but the chief blame of the disaster fell upon San Martin himself, who had appointed them.
This defeat was in some measure compensated the following month by the fall of Quito, which terminated the war in the North, and San Martin not having been able to effect his proposed interview with Bolívar, who did not come to Guayaquil when expected, when he returned to Lima left the civil administration in the hands of Torre-Tagle, and devoted his attention exclusively to the army. He issued a proclamation in which he promised the Peruvian people that the war should be concluded in the year 1822, then current, and on the 4th July signed a provisional treaty with Columbia.
At the same time he applied for help to the Government of Chile, and to the governors of the various Argentine Provinces, bordering the eastern slopes of the Andes, now de facto independent States, an endeavour to unite all Spanish America in one grand effort to crush the Royalist cause in its last stronghold, the Highlands of Peru.
Still harping on the ideas he had disclosed at Punchauca and Miraflores, he also wrote to La Serna, proposing a cessation of hostilities, on the basis of the recognition of the independence of Peru. To this the Viceroy returned a curt answer, “That however beneficial independence might be to Peru, it could only be hoped for or established by decree of the nation (Spain).”
San Martin also wrote to the same effect to Bolívar, but found that their ideas did not at all coincide. And wrote to O’Higgins proposing a naval expedition to the coasts of Spain.
Torre-Tagle was but the nominal head of the civil Administration, the real ruler was his Minister, Monteagudo, an inveterate enemy of all Spaniards, who thought the true way to victory was to make the struggle one of race. On the 31st December he issued a decree, that all Spaniards who had not been naturalised should leave the country; in January, that they should also forfeit half their property; and in February, that the infraction of these decrees should entail banishment and confiscation. After the disaster of Ica still more barbarous decrees were issued, and a commission was appointed to enforce them.