Rondeau was the last weak representative of the centralized system of government, which had so far led the revolution; now the Argentine people took the matter into their own hands, and by civil strife crushed out the last remnant of the colonial system. Now was heard for the first time among them the word Federation. The people, groaning under a load of taxation to supply revenues in the disposal of which they had no voice, found the domination of Buenos Ayres equally oppressive with that of Spain, and gave a new interpretation to the word liberty: they now construed it to mean provincial independence.
At the close of the year 1819 the Army of the Andes was the only Argentine representative of the American propaganda. Stationed on foreign soil, it had escaped the contagion of party spirit, which had infected all the other armies of the Republic, and was ready to follow its great captain whithersoever he should choose to lead it.
Still San Martin hesitated. To obey Rondeau was to plunge into civil strife, to the destruction of his great plan; his regard for discipline impelled him to obey at any cost. He had already given orders to march, when news reached him that the Province of Tucuman had declared itself independent; that the army under Belgrano had mutinied and imprisoned its general; and that there was a similar conspiracy on foot in Cordoba among the officers of the army there, which had ramifications even in Cuyo.
He was suffering severely at the time from rheumatism, and leaving Alvarado in command of the division in Cuyo, he retired to the baths of Cauquenes in Chile, after writing to Rondeau that in view of these complications he had postponed the departure of the army until further orders; but before that he had written to O’Higgins asking him to collect mules in the valley of Aconcagua, in readiness for the day when he should recross the Andes.
Neither Rondeau nor Congress seem to have had any idea of the true state of affairs; they still thought that they could control public opinion by force, and the answer to the despatch from San Martin was a fresh order to him to march at once with all his army to Buenos Ayres. To this San Martin replied by sending in his resignation for the third time. Government refused to accept it, but gave him leave of absence until his health was restored.
The conduct of San Martin at this time has been very severely criticised, but there is no question that his 2,000 men would have been of no real assistance to Government, which fell a victim to its own errors and incapacity; and it is equally unquestionable that without him the expedition to Peru would never have set out. Without his co-operation the success of Bolívar in Columbia is highly problematical, and it is certain that had the Royalists been able to send another expedition from Upper Peru, they would have met no effective resistance in the northern provinces of what is now the Argentine Republic.
San Martin took upon himself the “terrible responsibility” of this disobedience, an act by which the accomplishment of the mission of emancipation which the Argentine people had undertaken was finally secured. Condemned by his contemporaries, he appeals to the judgment of posterity.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CONVENTION OF RANCAGUA.
1820
THE army of Cadiz, decimated by yellow fever, was for sanitary reasons dispersed. On the 1st January, 1820, Don Rafael del Riego, Colonel of the regiment of Asturias, then in quarters at the village Cabezas de San Juan, proclaimed in front of his regiment the constitution of the year XII., opening an era of liberty for his own country, and putting an end to an era of war in America. The revolution triumphed, the King was forced to swear the constitution, and, by common accord between the people and the government, a new policy was inaugurated in regard to the insurgent colonies, one that sought to solve peacefully the question which the appeal to arms had only made more complicated.
It was at this juncture that San Martin by his disobedience saved from destruction in the vortex of civil war the one army which could secure the emancipation of America. San Martin crossed the Andes carried in a litter, but it was not in mineral baths that he sought the cure for his rheumatism and neuralgia; that cure he sought and found in the active prosecution of the plan which lay at his heart.