From this time Bolívar assumed a new attitude, as the independent representative of the Republic of Venezuela, and became a sort of Dictator. In contravention of the express orders of the Government of New Granada, he on the 15th June fulminated in a proclamation an order for the extermination of all Royalists, which he established by decree on the 6th September as a fundamental law of Venezuela. The atrocities committed by Monteverde and his myrmidons produced their natural effect.
“Every Spaniard who does not conspire against tyranny in favour of the just cause, in the most active and efficacious manner, shall be held to be an enemy, shall be punished as a traitor, and shall be put to death.”
A new system of dates was also adopted by him:—“Third year of Independence and first of the War to the Death.”
This decree of extermination has found many apologists; with the exception of some Spaniards no one has condemned it as an act of personal atrocity. Only two men have utterly censured it. One of them, an historian of Venezuela named Gonzalez, says:—
“It created thousands of enemies to the Republic in the interior, and alienated exterior sympathy. It was the fury of a storm, a stain upon our history.”
The other who condemned it was Bolívar himself, who in his last days spoke of it as a “delirium.”
This struggle did not assume a ferocious character until the indigenous races took part in it. The Spanish leaders, Miyares, Ceballos and Cajigal, always acted with humanity and repressed the excesses of their subordinates, as also did Cortabarria, the agent of the Regency. Nothing that the Royalists had yet done could in any way justify this decree as a measure of retaliation.
At Trujillo Bolívar received orders from the Government of New Granada to proceed no further. As his ambition was to encircle his brow with the civic crown as liberator of his native land, to pause was to endanger the advantage he had already gained. From the east came echoes of the success achieved by Mariño and his comrades, but he aspired to be the man who should rescue the ruins of Caracas, the city of his birth, from the enemy. They might forestall him. On his own responsibility he went on.
Tiscar, the Spanish general, who occupied Barinas with 1,300 men, had done nothing to prevent the capture of Mérida and Trujillo, but at last determined to cut off the retreat of the invaders, and detached Colonel Marti with 700 men for that purpose. Bolívar at once crossed the mountains in his front with a strong vanguard, after detaching Rivas and Urdaneta with 500 men, by a more southerly route, in the same direction. On the 1st July Rivas found himself confronted by the entire column under Marti in a very strong position, from which he drove the Royalists to another stronger still, where he on the next day completely defeated them after five hours fighting, capturing a gun and 400 prisoners, all the Spaniards among whom were at once shot.
Tiscar retreated on the approach of Bolívar, who occupied Barinas on the 6th July, taking 13 guns and a large quantity of military stores, while Tiscar was so actively pursued by Girardot, that his men dispersed, and he fled to Guayana.