“Our rulers did not consult codes which would teach them the practical science of government, but those drawn up by dreamers who built republics in the air on the basis of the perfectability of human nature. We had philosophers as leaders, philanthropy for legislation, arguments instead of tactics, and sophists for soldiers.”
He also denounced the federal form of government as contrary to the interests of young societies in face of a foreign war, and the folly of placing trust in raw levies in place of devoting all their energy to the organization of regular troops, and wound up by insisting that the safety of New Granada lay in the reconquest of Venezuela.
President Torres read this memorial with great attention, and though it clashed with his ideas as a federal, he saw that it was the work of a deep thinker who was also a man of action, and the language used appealed both to his reason and to his heart. The successes achieved by Bolívar in his first daring attempt decided him. He resolved upon the reconquest of Venezuela.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE RECONQUEST OF VENEZUELA.
1813.
BY the surrender of Miranda Monteverde was left unopposed in Venezuela, and was made Captain-General, with the title of “Pacificator.” He commenced his work of pacification by deeds from which the warmest partisans of Spain now turn away their eyes in horror. He violated the capitulation by imprisoning so many citizens that the gaols could not hold them; many died of hunger and suffocation in filthy dungeons. In the provinces his reign of terror assumed forms still more barbarous; the whole country seemed given up to hordes of banditti.
Colonel Cervéris, pro-consul of Cumaná, acted with such inhumanity as even disgusted the hard hearts of his superiors, who replaced him by Antoñanzas, and the Audiencia complained of his misconduct to the Home Government. All this was but the prelude to a war of extermination, which was provoked by the Royalists by murders, by mutilations and by torture.
The people, cowed in spirit by their sufferings, by their political calamities, and by the natural catastrophes which had befallen them, were only too anxious for rest on any terms under the domination of the colonial system. Clemency would have kept them peaceful, but the reign of terror drove superstitious fears from their minds, and changed weakness into strength. They fled from their persecutors into the woods and mountains; the leaders emigrated. Misery and despair created a desire for vengeance in the breasts of the most timid.
A handful of exiles gave the signal from a rock in the Antilles, and the whole of the eastern part of the territory rose in rebellion.
Famous in the history of the New World is the gulf called “Triste,” discovered by Columbus on his third voyage, when he, without knowing it, landed for the first time on the Continent of which he was in search. At its mouth, between the eastern extremity of the Peninsula of Paria and the island of Trinidad, there lies a smaller island called Chacachacare; on it the fugitives from Cumaná took refuge. Though only forty-five in number, they resolved to renew the war and to raise the country against the Spaniards. A gallant youth of good family, from the island of Margarita, Santiago Mariño by name, put himself at their head. Manuel Piar, a handsome mulatto, two brothers, José Francisco and Bernardo Bermudez, and the engineer Ascue, formed his staff. With no other arms than six muskets and some pistols, they landed on the coast on the 13th March, 1813, surprised a guard, captured twenty-three muskets, and marched resolutely on the fortified town of Güiria. The garrison, who were all natives, joined them; on the 16th March they had 200 well-armed men.
With seventy-five men Bernardo Bermudez took the town of Maturin, where there was a deposit of military stores; his brother fortified Irapa on the Gulf, and Mariño made this place his head-quarters.