On the other hand, also, the system made exports impossible, except the precious metals mined in the north, and drugs, and other easily transportable products. Hides, hair, wool, agricultural products and hard woods would not stand the cost of such long and difficult hauls. The Peninsula authorities acted upon the theory that America should be confined to producing gold and silver. The Plata settlements, especially, and all others south and east of the Peruvian-Bolivian mining region, suffered from this ruinous suppression. Having no mines, they were considered worthless, so far as the royal treasury was concerned, and were in consequence ignored—until they came in conflict with home industries by the cultivation of olives and grapes, and then, to protect the Peninsula growers, the Argentinos were forced to cut down their olive trees and uproot their vines. The inevitable results followed. Smuggling, bribe-giving, evasion and contempt for all law, and hostility to the fiscal authorities of the Peninsula grew up when, in their stead, the colonists could have been developed into a bulwark for Spain, which was so soon to totter from her proud position as the greatest of the world powers. Where science of government and national up-building should have been taught and fostered, revolution became the only political refuge.
In 1808, when Napoleon forced the abdication of Charles IV, held him and his successor, Ferdinand VII, prisoners in France, and established his brother Joseph on the throne, came the colonists’ opportunity. In April, 1809, a Junta (national assembly) was formed in Caracas; in July of the same year the example was followed in Peru, and in August at Quito; in May of the next year, Santa Fé de Bogotá and Buenos Aires followed, and Santiago elected the Chilean Junta in September. The colonists expected by these steps to release the Indians from slavery in the mines in the north and west; to restore and develop the cultivation of grapes, olives and tobacco, and build up their grazing and agricultural industry in the south and east; also to open their ports to commerce with Europe, so that they might buy commodities essential to their growth, and export their own products by way of exchange; also to lighten the crushing imposts and internal taxation, to abolish the tithe system, and reclaim and parcel out the vast feudal estates which had gradually been absorbed by the Spanish officials in the course of an administration which could only be likened to that of the rapacious Roman proconsuls against which Cicero inveighed so impotently.
But the ambitious attempts at reform met with immediate and successful opposition. The country was full of Spanish office-holders who saw in them their dismissal and the death blow to their spoils system. In the short struggle that followed, the success of the royal forces was almost universal. The colonists had had no training in warfare, nor had they yet developed as a people the unity of purpose and sturdy self-dependence which was eventually to bring them their freedom. The junta governments were everywhere effectively suppressed, except in Bogotá and Buenos Aires, where the fires of revolution smouldered during the succeeding years of Peninsula chaos that preceded Waterloo, and the colonists, with eyes opened at last to the true and only remedy for their ills, were formulating their great resolve to separate themselves entirely from the mother country; for, while their measures of reform had been suppressed, the ideas that called them into being could not be obliterated. Furthermore their unsuccessful clash with the viceroys and lesser officials brought even more glaringly before their eyes the extortions and brutal indifference of the ruling class. The attitude of the Peninsulares toward the creoles and mestizos of the colonies had always been contemptuous, and now at last the creoles, being for the most part of unmixed Spanish descent (they were called creoles only because born in America) found their resentment of that attitude more than they could endure.
The series of military successes that was destined to lead to the desired result began with the fights at Tucumán in the northern part of Argentina, in the fall of 1812, and at Salta, a little farther north, in February, 1813. By these battles the persistent efforts of the royalist forces in Peru to put an end, to the junta government of 1810 in the Plata settlements, were checked under the leadership of Manuel Belgrano. But on the first of October following, the Royalists, in violation of the armistice entered into after Salta, almost destroyed Belgrano’s army at Vilcapujio. Disastrous as was the reverse for the time-being, this before long proved a distinct service to the colonists, for it placed in command of the remnants of Belgrano’s army General José de San Martín, one of the two great patriots who finally brought the war to a successful issue, and who had then just returned with the experience and prestige acquired by twenty years’ service in the Peninsula armies against Napoleon’s famous marshals. The other of these great patriots was Simon Bolívar.
San Martín recognized at once the futility of pursuing the campaign and attacking the Royalists in the mountainous regions of Bolivia, with over a thousand miles of difficult roads between his army and base of supplies. He conceived, therefore, the idea of compelling Spain to defend her own bases at Lima and Callao, and to this end elaborated a plan for the invasion of Chile and capture of Valparaiso, and, from thence, a combined military and naval attack on the capital of Peru, the seat of Spain’s continental power. With this purpose in view, he repaired to the almost inaccessible town of Mendoza on the Argentine slope of the Andes, on about the same parallel with the Chilean capital, Santiago, and remained there two years, recruiting and training a strong force and accumulating equipment.
Shortly after he had established his camp of instruction, the Chileans under General Bernardo O’Higgins had extorted from the Royalist General at Talca a truce whereby the protracted struggle to maintain the junta government in Chile was for the moment suspended. This truce of Talca, however, was repudiated by the Viceroy at Lima, and General Ossorio was soon on his way south with another Royalist army, against which, weakened by local political dissensions, the Chilenos were unable to prevail, and were decisively beaten at Rancagua in October, 1814. As this meant a complete restoration of Spanish authority in Chile, O’Higgins and a few of his officers made their escape with the wreck of their army, crossed the Andes and placed themselves under the command of San Martín.
In January, 1817, San Martín’s army, four thousand strong, was ready to move against the unsuspecting Spanish in Chile, who had been led by a stratagem to believe that he would enter the country through one of the more easily accessible of the Andean passes to the south. San Martín, however, chose the highest and most terrible of them all, one four thousand feet higher than St. Bernard, and which lay to the north instead of south of Aconcagua, and accomplished a feat which, in endurance and skill, is thought by the historians to have surpassed Napoleon’s famous crossing of the Alps. Descending the western slope, he fell upon the Spanish outpost at La Guardia on the 7th of February, and on the 12th, surprised and defeated Ossorio’s main force at Chacabuco. Two days later the liberating army entered Santiago. The patriot government was at once re-established and the directorship conferred on O’Higgins after San Martín, refusing to be diverted from his plans for the liberation of the entire continent, had declined the honor.
On the first day of the ensuing year the independence of Chile was proclaimed. De facto independence was not achieved until the decisive defeat of the Royalists on the plains of Maypú, on the 5th of April, 1815, and then, with Chile cleared of Spanish troops, and the port of Valparaiso at his service as a base of supplies, San Martín was ready to enter upon the next stage of his work—the liberation of Peru.
SAN MARTÍN’S PASSAGE OF THE ANDES—FROM VILA’S FAMOUS PAINTING.