In the encampment at Mendoza matters were far different; there methodical activity and automatic obedience blended with intelligent enthusiasm; there one far-seeing will reigned supreme. There everything was known that Marcó either thought or did, each man worked diligently at his appointed task, and all trusted blindly in their chief. The forges blazed day and night, the arsenal turned out cartridges by the hundred thousand. Fray Beltran made special carriages for the artillery, adapted to the mountain passes, the guns themselves were to be carried on the backs of mules; slings were prepared for carrying them over dangerous places, and sleds of raw hide in which they might be hauled up by men when the gradients were too steep for the mules.
The General-in-Chief, silent and reserved, thought for all, inspected everything, and provided for every contingency. Large provision was made of charquicán, a food much in vogue among the muleteers, composed of beef dried in the sun, roasted, and ground to powder, then mixed with fat and Chile pepper and pounded into small compass. A soldier could carry enough of this in his knapsack to last him eight days. Mixed up with hot water and maize meal ready roasted, it formed a soup at once nutritious and appetising. San Luis alone furnished 2,000 arrobas, and the total provision amounted to 3,500 arrobas (87,200 lbs.). The soldiers made for themselves closed sandals of raw hide called tamangos, which were lined with fragments of old clothes collected for that purpose from all the province. Water-bottles were made from the horns of the animals slaughtered in the encampment, and slings were made for them out of the rough edges of the cloth from which their uniforms were made. The sabres of the cavalry were carefully sharpened, but they had only three trumpets till Government sent them two more. Thirty thousand horseshoes were prepared, which was a great innovation, as the Argentines were not accustomed to shoe their horses; without them the hoofs of the cavalry horses would have been worn down in the transit over the stony passes. Four cables, each 170 feet long, and two anchors formed a portable bridge. Cuyo alone furnished 13,000 mules, but the promises of Government to replenish the exhausted treasury were not fulfilled. A rebellion had broken out in Cordoba which taxed the resources of Pueyrredon to the utmost to repress; but he aided San Martin in every way he possibly could, with clothes, saddles, tents, and arms, and wrote him:—“Don’t ask me for anything more unless you wish to hear that I have hung myself to a beam in the fort.” And also: “You may well say that among us there has never been seen an army so well fitted out; but neither has there been seen a Director who had equal confidence in a general, and, it must be added, never a general who so well merited that confidence as yourself. After all, my mind would be easier if you had another thousand good soldiers with you.”
Everything was ready. The army consisted of 3,000 infantry in four battalions, led by Alvarado, Cramer, Conde and Las Heras; five squadrons of the mounted grenadiers, 700 sabres, led by Zapiola, Melian, Ramallo, Escalada, and Necochea; and 250 artillery, with ten 6-pounders, two howitzers, and nine 4-pounder mountain guns, under command of La Plaza. Twelve hundred mounted militia from Cuyo accompanied the army, besides muleteers and artisans.
The army was arranged in three divisions, each entirely independent of the others. The vanguard under Soler, and the reserve under O’Higgins, marched by the pass of Los Patos. Las Heras with the artillery marched by that of Uspallata, which was the only one practicable for guns and ammunition. All the food necessary for fifteen days they took with them, also 600 bullocks for slaughter, and a special supply of onions and garlic, very necessary at high levels both for man and beast.
As flankers to the main army, a detachment of militia and Chilian emigrants left San Juan under Cabot, by the pass of La Ramada, marching upon Coquimbo, and another left Rioja by the pass of Vinchina, marching on Copiapó and Huasco. To the south another detachment, composed of mounted infantry, grenadiers, and Chilians, marched under the Chilian Captain Freyre, by the Planchon pass, in support of the Chilian guerillas, and were aided by a party of thirty dragoons under Captain Lemos, who went by the Portillo Pass.
Both the main body and the detachments had orders to debouch on Chilian territory from the 6th to the 8th February, 1817. Each general of division was given by San Martin himself a pen-and-ink plan of the route he was to follow, with notes and written instructions. San Martin himself went by the pass of Los Patos, but had arranged a system of flag-signals by which Las Heras could communicate with him across the intervening valleys.
His last instructions from Government were:—
“The consolidation of the independence of America from the Kings of Spain and their successors, and the glory of the United Provinces of the South, are the only motives of this campaign. This you will make public in your proclamations, by your agents in the cities, and by all possible means. The army must be impressed with this principle, and shall have no thought of pillage, oppression, or of conquest, or that there is any idea of holding the country of those we help.”
He was also authorized to raise a national army in Chile, which should remain under his orders even when a new Government was established; was prohibited from capitulating with the enemy under any circumstances; and was charged to avoid any interference in party questions among the Chilians. He was also authorized, after the re-establishment of the municipality of Santiago, to preside over the free election of a provisional president. He was instructed to use his influence to postpone the election of a Congress until Chile was entirely free from the enemy, and to persuade the Chilians to send deputies to the Congress of the United Provinces, in order to establish a perpetual alliance between the two countries.
As the leading files of the army entered the passes, San Martin, on the 24th January, 1817, wrote to Godoy Cruz:—