These two celebrated men had never met before, but had for some time corresponded. San Martin presented himself as a subordinate, but Belgrano looked to him as a master in the art of war, and regarded him as his successor. After some delay, due to the reluctance of San Martin to supersede his friend, he at length assumed the command on receipt of positive orders to that effect from Government, Belgrano remaining with him in command of a regiment. Belgrano died in the belief that San Martin was the tutelar genius of South America, and San Martin to the end of his days honoured the memory of his illustrious friend as that of one of the purest patriots of the New World.

On the 22nd January, 1814, the executive power was concentrated in one person, who took the title of Supreme Director. Don Gervasio Antonio Posadas was selected by the Lodge to fill this post, and was duly elected by the General Assembly. No one was more surprised than himself at this appointment, for which his only special recommendation was that he was the uncle of Alvear, who for the present contented himself with the command of the army of the capital, until such time as he could take command of the army of Monte Video, and there achieve such military glory as should entitle him to supreme power.

The first care of San Martin, on assuming command of the army of the North, was to insist upon the regular payment of his men. There existed in the army chest a sum of thirty-six thousand dollars, drawn from Upper Peru, which Government had directed should be paid over to the General Treasury. San Martin disobeyed the order and applied the money as he wished, giving Government at the same time his reasons for so doing. Government approved of his conduct as justified by necessity, for the army was at the time in the last stage of destitution.

CHAPTER V
UPPER PERU.
1814.

THE military policy of the United Provinces had three distinct ends: first, to construct a new nation within the geographical limits of the old Viceroyalty of the River Plate; second, to aid in the establishment of other South American nations, who would be their natural allies; and third, to carry their arms beyond their frontiers for the removal of obstacles to their expansion. Hence the expeditions to Paraguay and Monte Video, the aid given to the insurgents in Chile, and the war waged with the Viceroyalty of Peru. The army of the North, as the embodiment of this threefold policy, was styled “The Auxiliary Army of Peru,” and its mission was to incorporate the Provinces of Upper Peru as a portion of the old Viceroyalty, to capture Lima, the centre of Spanish power in South America, and to bring Lower Peru into an alliance similar to that already contracted with Chile.

For four years Upper Peru had been the battlefield of the Patriots and Royalists; it was now completely in the power of the latter. The four provinces known as Upper Peru are shut in by mountain ranges, and have no fluvial communication with either ocean. Situate within the tropics, their high tablelands and intervening valleys furnish at once examples of perpetual winter and perpetual spring, and yield all the natural products of the globe.

Upper Peru is divided by two spurs from the Andes into three districts. The western range runs parallel to the Pacific Ocean from the desert of Atacama—which is a high tableland—to the first valleys of Lower Peru on the coast, cutting off an arid and thinly-peopled district. The central plain, well peopled but inclement, is the natural road from the Argentine Republic to Lower Peru, and was the theatre of operations during the preceding campaigns. The eastern range, with lofty peaks covered with perpetual snow, looks down upon a truly intertropical paradise. At its foot extends to the west the smiling valley of Clisa, where stands the city of Cochabamba, with easy access over the hills to the central plateau, and to Chuquisaca by valleys on the south-east. Behind Cochabamba and to the east of the range lies the Valle Grande, which collects the mountain streams and delivers them to the Amazon. More to the north-east lies Santa Cruz da la Sierra in the midst of a vast grassy plain, which slopes gradually away to the confines of Brazil, Paraguay, and the Argentine Chaco.

The social organization of Upper Peru was a continuation of the system of the Incas, complicated by the antagonism of races. Europeans had established themselves in six cities, whose former inhabitants, driven out to the ice-covered hills or to the torrid valleys, worked as serfs for their lords and masters as cultivators of the soil or as miners. The lower class in these cities consisted of half-breeds, and formed the greater part of the population. All the rest of the country was peopled exclusively by two indigenous races, who paid a capitation tax, and had no civil rights. The language of the conquerors was unintelligible to the mass of the people.

In this country the first rebellion against the domination of Spain was quenched in blood in 1809, but news of the revolution of Buenos Ayres in 1810 rekindled the smouldering embers. The movement was supported by Argentine troops under Balcarce, who won the first victory of the war at Suipacha, but was afterwards totally defeated on the Desaguadero. The Patriots of Cochabamba being thus left alone, fought another battle by themselves at Sipe-Sipe on the 13th August, 1811, but were defeated. The repulse of the second invasion under Belgrano in 1813 was another great disappointment to them, but still the spirit of the people was not crushed. There was, however, no cohesion among them; they had the courage to resist and to die on the field of battle or on the scaffold, but they were unable to concert any plan of action; thus these successive disasters greatly weakened the ties which bound them to the Patriots of Buenos Ayres, but vain were the efforts of the Spaniards to overcome the passive resistance of the people. Heads of rebels were exposed along the public roads, the properties of such as had fled were confiscated and sold, towns were sacked, military commissions terrorized the country, prisoners taken in the last campaign were sold as slaves to the owners of the vineyards and plantations of Peru, but still insurrectionary movements constantly broke out; even the Indians, armed with nothing more than clubs, slings, and arrows, braved death with the utmost stoicism, certain that they would be avenged. The Spanish general, unable either to retreat or to advance, established his headquarters at Tupiza; and while a portion of his army kept open communications in the rear, his vanguard advanced to Salta, constantly harassed by the country people, who rose in arms on the retreat of the Patriot army to Tucuman.

The army which had twice defeated the armies of the United Provinces was almost entirely composed of natives of the Highlands of Lower Peru. They were men inured to hardships and privations, untiring on the march, faithful to their flag, obedient to their officers, and undaunted under fire. They were half-breeds, who spoke the same language as the people of the country in which they fought. The climate of this country was the same as that of their own, and they were accustomed to the peculiar requirements of mountain warfare. All this gave them great advantages over the Argentine troops on that field of action, and the remembrance of defeats disheartened the Patriot army.