But the people, in their desire to honor their hero, have not been satisfied with statues alone. Coins bear his name and image, towns and states are named after him. More than this, his name has been given to one of the South American republics—Bolivia—a republic, formerly a part of Peru—Upper Peru—which owes its very existence to him.
But who was Simon Bolivar, one will ask, and what has he done to achieve such distinction and to command recognition in such diverse ways and in regions so widely separated?
His admirers say that he was the Washington of South America—the one who secured the independence of the Spanish colonies, after three centuries of misrule and oppression. According to them, he was one of the world’s greatest geniuses in military science, a genius in state-craft, a genius in everything required to make a great and successful leader of men.
Sr. Miguel Tejera does not hesitate to characterize him as one who was “Bold and fortunate as Alexander, a patriot like Hannibal, brave and clement like Cæsar, a great captain and a profound statesman like Napoleon, honorable as Washington, a sublime poet and a versatile orator, such was Bolivar, who united in his own mind all the vast multiplicity of the elements of genius. His glory will shine in the heaven of history, not as a meteor that passes, and is lost in the bosom of space, but as a heavenly body, whose radiance is ever-increasing.”[19]
Even more extravagant are the claims made for his hero by Don Felipe Larazabel in his bulky two-tome Vida de Bolivar.
“A noble and sublime spirit, humane, just, liberal, Bolivar was one of the most gifted men the world has ever known; so perfect and unique that in goodness he was like Titus, in his fortune and achievements like Trapan, in urbanity like Marcus Aurelius, in valor like Cæsar, in learning and eloquence like Augustus....
“He was a poet like Homer, a legislator like Plato, a soldier like Bonaparte.... He taught Soublett and Heres diplomacy, Santander administration, Gual politics, Marshal Sucre military art.
“Like Charlemagne, but in a higher degree, he possessed the art of doing great things with ease and difficult things with promptness. Whoever conceived plans so vast? Whoever carried them to a more successful issue? A quick and unerring glance; a rapid intuition of things and times; a prodigious spontaneity in improvising gigantic plans; the science of war reduced to the calculation of minutes, an extraordinary vigor of conception, and a creative spirit, fertile and inexhaustible, ... such was Bolivar.
“‘Deus ille fuit, Deus, inclyte Memmi.’ He was a god, illustrious Memmius, he was a god.”[20]
Col. G. Hippisley, who served under Bolivar in the War of Independence, does not give such a flattering estimate of the Liberator. “Bolivar,” he writes, “would willingly ape the great man. He aspires to be a second Bonaparte in South America, without possessing a single talent for the duties of the field or the cabinet.... He has neither talents nor abilities for a general, and especially for a commander-in-chief.... Tactics, movements and manœuvre are as unknown to him as to the lowest of his troops. All idea of regularity, system or the common routine of an army, or even a regiment, he is totally unacquainted with. Hence arise all the disasters he meets, the defeats he suffers and his constant obligations to retreat whenever opposed to the foe. The victory, which he gains to-day, however dearly purchased ... is lost to-morrow by some failure or palpable neglect on his part. Thus it is that Paez was heard to tell Bolivar, after the action at Villa del Cura, that he would move off his own troops, and act no more with him in command; adding, ‘I have never lost a battle wherein I acted by myself, or in a separate command; and I have always been defeated when acting in connection with you or under your orders.’”[21]