(1810—1817.)
To an understanding of Lord Cochrane's share in the South American wars of independence a brief recapitulation of their antecedents, and of the state of affairs at the time of his first connection with them, is necessary.
The Spanish possessions in both North and South America, which had reached nearly their full dimensions before the close of the sixteenth century, had been retained, with little opposition from without, and with still less from within, down to the close of the eighteenth century. These possessions, including Mexico and Central America, New Granada, Venezuela, Peru, La Plata, and Chili, covered an area larger than that of Europe, more than twice as large as that of the present United States. Through half a dozen generations they had been governed with all the short-sighted tyranny for which the Spanish Government is famous; the resources of the countries had been crippled in order that each day's greed might be satisfied; and the inhabitants, who, for the most part, were the mixed offspring of Spanish and native parents, had been kept in abject dependence and in ignorant ferocity. There was plenty of internal hatred and strife; but no serious thought of winning their liberty and working out their own regeneration seems to have existed among the people of the several provinces, until it was suggested by the triumphant success of the United States in throwing off the stronger but much less oppressive thraldom of Great Britain. That success having been achieved, however, it was soon emulated by the colonial subjects of Spain.
The first leader of agitation was Francisco Miranda, a Venezuelan Creole. He visited England in 1790, and received some encouragement in his revolutionary projects from Pitt. He went to France in 1792, and there, while waiting some years for fit occasion of prosecuting the work on which his heart was set, he helped to fight the battle of the revolution against the Bourbons and the worn-out feudalism of which they were representatives. During his absence, in 1794, conspiracies against Spain arose in Mexico and New Granada, and, these continuing, he went in 1794, armed by secret promises of assistance from Pitt, to help in fomenting them. They prospered for several years; and in 1806 Miranda obtained substantial aid from Sir Alexander Cochrane, Lord Cochrane's uncle, then the admiral in command of the West India station. But in 1806 Pitt died. The Whigs came into power, and with their coming occurred a change in the English policy. In 1807, General Crawfurd was ordered to throw obstacles in the way of Miranda, then heading a formidable insurrection. The result was a temporary check to the work of revolution. In 1810 Miranda renewed his enterprise in Venezuela, still with poor success; and in the same year a fresh revolt was stirred up in Mexico by Miguel Hidalgo, of Costilla, a priest of Dolores. Hidalgo's insurrection was foolish in design and bloodthirsty in execution. It was continued, in better spirit, but with poor success, by Morelos and Rayon, who, sustaining a serious defeat in 1815, left the strife to degenerate into a coarse bandit struggle, very disastrous to Spain, but hardly beneficial to the cause of Mexican independence.
In the meanwhile a more prosperous and worthier contest was being waged in South America. Besides the efforts of Miranda in Venezuela, which were renewed between 1810 and 1812, when he was taken prisoner and sent to Spain, there to die in a dungeon, a separate standard of revolt was raised in Quito by Narinno and his friends in 1809. After fighting desperately, in guerilla fashion, for five years, Narinno was captured and forced to share Miranda's lot. A greater man, the greatest hero of South American independence, Simon Bolivar, succeeded them.
Bolivar, a native of Caraccas, had passed many years in Europe, when in 1810, at the age of twenty-seven, he went to serve under Miranda in Venezuela. Miranda's defeat in 1812 compelled him to retire to New Granada, but there he did good service. He improved the fighting ways and extended the fighting area, and in December, 1814, was appointed captain-general of Venezuela and New Granada, soon, however, to be driven back and forced to take shelter in Jamaica by the superior strength of Morillo, the Spanish general, who arrived with a formidable army in 1815. In 1816 Bolivar again showed himself in the field at the head of his famous liberating army, which, crossing over from Trinidad, and gaining reinforcements at every step, planted freedom, such as it was, all along the northern parts of South America, in which the new republic of Colombia was founded under his presidency, in the neighbouring district of New Granada, and down to the La Plata province, where he established the republic of Bolivia, so named in his honour. With these patriotic labours he was busied upon land, while Lord Cochrane was securing the independence of the Spanish colonies by his brave warfare on the sea.
As the cause of liberty progressed in South America, it became apparent that it had poor chance of permanence, while the revolutionists were unable to cope with the Spaniards in naval strife or to wrest from Spain her strongholds on the coast. This was especially the case with the maritime provinces of Chili and Peru. Peru, held firmly by the army garrisoned in Lima, to which Callao served as an almost impregnable port, had been unable to share in the contest waged on the other side of the Andes; and Chili, though strong enough to declare its independence, was too weak to maintain it without foreign aid.
The Chilian struggle began in 1810, when the Spanish captain-general, Carrasco, was deposed, and a native government set up under Count de la Conquista. By this government the sovereignty of Spain was still recognised, although various reforms were adopted which Spain could not be expected to endorse. Accordingly, in April, 1811, an attempt was made by the Spanish soldiers to overturn the new order of things. The result was that, after brief fighting, the revolutionists triumphed, and the yoke of Spain was thrown off.
But the independence of Chili, thus easily begun, was not easily continued. Three brothers, Jose Miguel, Juan Jose, and Luis Carreras, and their sister, styled the Anne Boleyn of Chili, determined to pervert the public weal to their own aggrandisement. Winning their way into popularity, they overturned the national congress that had been established in June, and in December set up a new junta, with Jose Miguel Carrera at its head. A dismal period of misrule ensued, which encouraged the Spanish generals, Pareja and Sanchez, to attempt the reconquest of Chili in 1813. Pareja and Sanchez were successfully resisted, and a better man, General Bernardo O'Higgins, the republican son of an Irishman who had been Viceroy of Peru, was put at the head of affairs. He succeeded to the command of the Chilian army in November, 1813, when a fresh attack from the Spaniards was expected. At first his good soldiership was successful. The enemy, having come almost to the gates of Santiago, was forced to retire in May, 1814; and the Chilian cause might have continued to prosper under O'Higgins, had not the Carreras contrived, in hopes of reinstating themselves in power, to divide the republican interests, and so, while encouraging renewed invasion by the Spaniards from Lima, make their resistance more difficult. Wisely deeming it right to set aside every other consideration than the necessity of saving Chili from the danger pressing upon it from without, O'Higgins effected a junction with the Carreras, hoping thus to bring the whole force of the republic against the royalist army, larger than its predecessors, which was marching towards Santiago and Valparaiso. Had his magnanimous proposals been properly acted upon, the issue might have been very different. But the Carreras, even in the most urgent hour of danger, could not forget their private ambitions. Holding aloof with their part of the army, they allowed O'Higgins and his force of nine hundred to be defeated by four thousand royalists under General Osorio, in the preliminary fight which took place at the end of September. They were guilty of like treachery during the great battle of the 1st of October. On that day the royalists entered Rancagua, the town in which O'Higgins and his little band had taken shelter. They were fiercely resisted, and the fighting lasted through thirty-six hours. So brave was the conduct of the patriots that the Spanish general was, after some hours' contest, on the point of retreating. He saw that he would have no chance of success, had the Carreras brought up their troops, as was expected by both sides of the combatants. But the Carreras, short-sighted in their selfishness, and nothing loth that O'Higgins should be defeated, still held aloof. Thereupon the Spaniards took heart, and made one more desperate effort. With hatchets and swords they forced their way, inch by inch and hour by hour, into the centre of the town. There, in an open square, O'Higgins, with two hundred men—all the remnant of his little army—made a last resistance. When only a few dozen of his soldiers were left alive, and when he himself was seriously wounded, he determined, not to surrender, but to end the battle. The residue of the patriots dashed through the town, cutting a road through the astonished crowd of their opponents, and effected a retreat in which those opponents, though more than twenty times as numerous, durst not pursue them.
That memorable battle of Rancagua caused throughout the American continent, and, across the Atlantic, through Europe, a thrill of sympathy for the Chilian war of independence. But its immediate effects were most disastrous. The Carreras, too selfish to fight before, were now too cowardly. They and their followers fled. O'Higgins had barely soldiers enough left to serve as a weak escort to the fourteen hundred old men, women, and children who crossed the Andes with him on foot, to pass two years and a half in voluntary exile at Mendoza.