“Then let Paez command you, and those who choose may follow me to Casanare.”
Paez, left with 500 men, marched out to meet the enemy, whom he found on the 16th February, 1816, near to the sources of the Apure. Paez, advancing alone to reconnoitre the position, had his horse killed under him by a musket-ball. It was near nightfall; some advised him to wait for daylight.
“It is as dark for them as it is for us,” said Paez, and shouted to his men, “Comrades, they have killed my horse. If you will not revenge his death I will revenge him alone, and will die in the enemy’s ranks.”
The men shouted back that they would go wherever he would lead them. He formed them in two lines and led them on under a heavy fire. Such was the fury of the charge that two-thirds of the Royalist cavalry were driven in confusion from the field. As he led an attack upon their second line his horse was wounded, and burst the girths of the saddle with his plunges. The attack was beaten off. Springing on to the first horse he could catch, Paez rallied his men and again charged at full speed upon the rest of the Royalist cavalry, and bore them down in the rush. While the Patriots pursued the broken cavalry the Spanish infantry retreated through the woods. Four hundred killed and two hundred prisoners were the trophies of the day. Paez treated his prisoners so well that they all voluntarily took service with him.
This brilliant affair attracted the attention of the Llaneros, who were weary of the brutal rule of Boves and Morales, and won them over to the cause of independence.
Paez became at once the first general of cavalry in America. He was the bond of union between the Llaneros and the Patriots. He was proclaimed the chieftain of the plains, and from the recruits who poured in to join his standard he organized the famous Army of the Apure. On taking command he told his men that he would do his best to merit the confidence they had placed in him, but exhorted them above all to put faith in Divine Providence. In September, 1816, he invaded the Province of Barinas.
While the Army of the Apure was thus gathering itself together, the parties of guerillas, scattered along the banks of the Upper Orinoco, and on the eastern plains, also collected, forming divisions of as many as 1,500 men, under Monagas, Saraza and Cedeño. The Governor of Guayana sent a strong column against Cedeño, which was completely routed by him on the 8th March, 1816. A second expedition of 1,500 men, sent in boats up the Orinoco, had no better fortune, and was forced to retire to Angostura, the capital of Guayana.
While Bolívar, in exile at Kingston, Jamaica, was turning over in his mind many plans for renewing the War of Independence, he had a narrow escape from assassination. A slave of his who had followed his fortunes went one night into his room when all was dark, and seeing a man asleep in his hammock, gave him two stabs with a poniard, killing him on the spot. The dead man was found to be a poor emigrant named Amestoy, who, knowing that Bolívar would not sleep at home that night, occupied his room. The slave was caught, and confessed that it was his intention to kill Bolívar, but said not a word about accomplices. He was hung, but it was generally believed that an emissary of General Moxó had paid him to do the deed.
From Jamaica Bolívar crossed to the island of Santo Domingo, hearing on his way of the fall of Cartagena, where, too late, he had been offered the command. The famous mulatto, Alexander Petión, was at that time President of Haiti. He was an ardent partisan of the emancipation of Spanish America, and not only supplied Bolívar with arms for another expedition, but opened a credit for him for the necessary expenses with the house of a wealthy English merchant named Robert Sutherland. Bolívar also met here a Dutch shipbuilder named Luis Brion, who, becoming deeply interested both in him and in his designs, placed seven armed schooners at his orders, with 3,500 muskets, and offered his life and fortune in the same cause.
Bolívar commenced his preparations early in 1816, at the port of Cayos de San Luis, which has given its name to this famous expedition. There the refugees from Cartagena, and many officers from New Granada and Venezuela had collected. Among them were Piar, Mariño, Bermudez, Montilla, Soublette, the English Colonel MacGregor, who had served with Miranda, Doucoudray-Holstein, and Francisco Zea. There was anarchy among them; many of them refused to recognise the authority of Bolívar. Petión interposed his influence, and Brion declared that he would entrust his ships and armament to no one but to the Liberator. He was at length accepted as leader of the expedition, from which Montilla, who had challenged Bolívar, and Bermudez, who had led the opposition, were excluded.