The Viceroy and his commissioners threw the blame of the rupture of the negotiations upon San Martin, which accusation he answered in a dignified address to the Peruvian people.
The armistice came to an end on the 5th October, and on the same day Arenales left the encampment in the valley of Chincha, at the head of a strong detachment of the Patriot army, for the Highlands, while San Martin masked the movement by manœuvring with the rest of his army on the road to Lima.
On the 24th October, San Martin issued a decree establishing the flag and escutcheon of the new Republic of Peru, the flag white and scarlet, the escutcheon a sun rising over mountains with a tranquil sea at their feet. On the following day he re-embarked his army and sailed off for the North, apparently leaving Arenales behind him, but in reality going off to meet him.
Cochrane in his Memoirs severely criticises the disembarkation and delay at Pisco, but Camba, who was better able to judge, speaks of this measure as the first step in the destruction of the military power of Peru. The same opinion was expressed by Pezuela in his report to Government. Cochrane seems to have been anxious only to conquer the country; the object of San Martin was to revolutionize it by winning the confidence of the Peruvian people, and so securing their concurrence in founding a republic of their own, which concurrence as yet only a minority of them were prepared to give.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE OPENING OF THE CAMPAIGN.
1820—1821.
THE Generalissimo of the Liberating Army of Peru had two campaigns before him—one military, of which he carried the plans in his own head; the other political, the secret ramifications of which were in his own hands. The first described a circle, one half of which was drawn along the coast by the keels of Cochrane’s ships; the other half was drawn through the Highlands of Peru by the feet of the flying column under Arenales. These two halves separated at Pisco to reunite in the north, enclosing Lima between them.
The second was more complicated. The idea was to raise into activity the moral force of public opinion, stirring up a spirit of insurrection among the Peruvian people, without the aid of which his military force was inadequate to the task before it. From Pisco he flooded the country with proclamations, and organized secret agencies in Lima and throughout the interior.
On the 29th October the squadron sighted the island of San Lorenzo, and, passing it, entered the Bay of Callao, sailing in regular order beyond the range of the batteries, a glorious pageant. The ships of war came first, with their crews at quarters and the guns run out. Then came the long line of transports, their decks crowded with troops in all the varied uniforms of the Liberating Army, including those of the division left behind under Arenales. The walls of the city and the heights behind were crowded with spectators. One of these spectators, who has described the scene, says: “The Liberating expedition and the capital of Peru were on mutual exhibition.”
A part of the squadron remained to blockade Callao, the rest, with the transports, sailed on to the Bay of Ancon, twenty-two miles to the north of Lima. Two hundred infantry and forty of the grenadiers, under Captain Brandzen, landed, under command of Major Reyes, a Peruvian, with the object of occupying the village of Chancay, and collecting horses and provisions.
The Royalist army, encamped at Asnapuquio, six miles from Lima, sent against them a column of 600 men, under Colonel Valdés, upon which Reyes retired. Brandzen, who brought up the rear with his forty horsemen, turned upon the enemy as they passed a narrow defile, and charged with such impetuosity that he drove their cavalry back in confusion upon the infantry, and gained time for Reyes to make good his retreat with all the cattle he had collected.