The parties of Carrera and O’Higgins composed their differences in the face of this aggression, marched to the encounter at Rancagua, and were there signally defeated, in October, 1814. The overthrow was so complete that the Chileans who had opposed Spain felt certain that no mercy was to be expected, and, with their wives and families, began an extraordinary exodus from the country over the Andes to Mendoza. The weather was cold, with deep snow and bitter winds; without proper baggage or sufficient food thousands of unhappy refugees crowded the mountain paths and passes for days.
Meanwhile, General Osorio marched north and entered the capital in triumph, welcomed enthusiastically not only by those citizens who remained royalist but by thousands who were tired of the partisan intrigues and condition of civil war to which the Carreras had reduced the country for over two years. A new Spanish Governor, Francisco Casimiro Marco del Pont, was inaugurated, about one hundred citizens prominent in the growing independence of Chile were deported to Juan Fernandez island, and for another twenty-eight months Spain resumed the rule of Chile, as she still retained control of Lower and Upper Peru and Ecuador. A fierce struggle between the Spanish and the northern patriots under Simón Bolívar had begun in 1811 and continued with tremendous reversals of fortune; Venezuela and Colombia (New Granada) were drenched in blood. Over the Andes, Buenos Aires had been actually independent since the middle of 1810, although the Spanish authorities held out with peninsular troops in part of the northwest of Argentina, holding the roads into N. W. South America. Pueyrredon, the Supreme Director of Buenos Aires, seeing that Chile with comparatively facile mountain passes was the key to the West, decided to bring her to the fold of independence, raised an army, and put José de San Martín at its head. While the eldest of the Carrera brothers, with whom San Martín was upon hostile terms, went to the United States to try to get help in the Chilean struggle, a strong force of 4000 men was collected in Mendoza, the celebrated “Army of the Andes.” By this time events had put Spain and the South American colonies into the position of furious opponents; the Peruvian Viceroy’s actions forced Chileans to see patriotism as hostility to Spain. For the plain citizen, lover of his country with a desire to live in peace and to give and take fairly, it must have been difficult to choose sides as regards the authorities to whom he gave recognition and paid taxes; but for such revolutionaries as San Martín the vision was simpler. He hung his own portrait on the wall beside that of the Corsican; the memory of that superhuman conqueror infected his blood and filled his landscape.
The Spaniards in Chile, aware of the situation of the Army of the Andes, were tricked into believing that the main body intended to descend into the central valley by the southerly Planchon Pass. But early in February when the army was ready to set out, most of the troops were marched by the Putaendo and the Cumbre, emerging near the plain of Chacabuco on the 12th. The Spanish troops sent hurriedly to the encounter were scattered like chaff by the hardy South Americans, inured to wild country and able to march for days with sun-dried meat and a handful of toasted maize as their only food. The battle of Chacabuco was a rout so decisive that the Spanish leaders did not even attempt to enter and hold Santiago: they fled hastily to Valparaiso, and, accompanied by scores of their panic-stricken sympathisers, filled nine ships and sailed away to Peru.
In the Chilean Andes.
A Chilean Glacier, Central Region.
Rio Blanco Valley, above Los Andes.
Bernardo O’Higgins, to whose energy this success was chiefly due, was made Supreme Director of Chile, openly independent now, with no more talk of Ferdinand, although the actual proclamation was delayed until February 12, 1818, upon the anniversary of Chacabuco. In the same year Osorio came back, with 5000 Spanish troops, and in March San Martín was surprised and his army badly defeated at Cancha Rayada; it was followed by a repetition of the exodus over the Andes as after the Rancagua defeat, but in better weather. Nor did the exile of the patriots last so long, for on April 5, before the Spaniards could take possession of Santiago, the Chileans attacked again and won the final victory of Maipu. Only about 200 Spaniards escaped to take ship for Peru, all the rest falling upon the Maipu plain or being taken prisoner.