These were the last sensible words that he was heard to speak. Delirium supervened, and he died on the 17th December, 1831, at the age of forty-seven years four months and twenty-three days.
In October, 1832, San Martin, then resident in France, was attacked by cholera. He was living in great poverty on the proceeds of the sale of the house given him by the Argentine Congress after the victory of Maipó. He thought he was to die in a hospital. The Spanish banker Aguada, who had been a comrade of his in the Peninsular War, came to his assistance, saved his life, and relieved his distress. He gave him the small country-house of Grand Bourg, on the banks of the Seine, close to that old elm which, according to tradition, was planted by the soldiers of Henry IV., when besieging Paris. There, surrounded by trees and flowers which he tended himself, he passed many quiet years, complaining sometimes of the ingratitude of men, deploring the sad state of the peoples for whom he had done so much, but never despairing of their destiny. Once only did his old enthusiasm blaze out. He thought the independence and honour of his country were threatened by France and England in the questions of 1845—1849, and came from his seclusion to show that America could not be conquered by Europe. Subsequently, in his will, he left his sword to the Argentine Dictator:—
“As a proof of the satisfaction with which I, as an Argentine, have seen the firmness of General Rozas in defending the honour of the Republic against the unjust pretensions of the foreigners who sought her humiliation.”
As the end approached, his eyes were obscured by cataract. Reading, which was with him a passion, was forbidden him. He went to Boulogne to breathe the sea air, as Bolívar had done. On the 13th August, 1850, as he was standing on the beach, gazing with dim eyes over the Channel, he felt the first mortal symptom. He pressed his hand to his heart, and with a feeble smile said to his faithful daughter:—“C’est l’orage qui mene au port.” On the 17th of the same month he died in her arms, at the age of seventy-two years and six months.
Chile and the Argentine Republic have raised statues to him. Peru owes him one, which she has decreed. The Argentine people, now united and consolidated as he desired, brought back his mortal remains to his own country, and in May, 1880, laid them to rest in the Cathedral of Buenos Ayres, as those of the greatest man among them.
In San Martin and Bolívar were combined, in unequal proportions, the two elements which make history: the active element which produces immediate effect in deeds, and the passive element from which springs the future. The effect of their combination marks the present and influences posterity. The political work of Bolívar died with him; that of San Martin lives after him; South America has organized itself as foreshadowed by his genius, within the geographical lines he drew out with his sword.
The Argentine Republic instructed her General:—
“That no idea of oppression or conquest carried her arms beyond her territory; that the independence of the United Provinces was the purpose of the campaign.”
Thus, when Chile was free, alliance was made with her on the basis of their mutual independence. Nations were emancipated and left to work out their destinies themselves. This was the work of San Martin as a liberator, and has produced an international equilibrium in South America, to which Europe has not yet attained.
A very different plan was followed by Bolívar. Under his leadership frontiers disappeared; Venezuela, New Granada, and Quito, became one giant nation, powerful for war, but intrinsically weak from lack of geographical and social cohesion. Bolívar freed Peru from Spain, only to make her a parasite of Columbia, and of Upper Peru he made a feudal territory dependent upon himself. He tried to establish a monocratic empire in opposition to natural laws and to the tendencies of the Revolution; to bring back the colonial system in defiance of the democratic instincts of the people.