The South American Republics, Part 2 of 2

by Thomas Cleland Dawson

Among the volunteer officers who had been entrusted with positions of confidence by Miranda was a young Creole, named Simon Bolivar. Heir to some of the largest estates in Venezuela he had been left an orphan at three years of age, and was educated by a tutor who filled his marvellously impressible mind with a crude political philosophy, and under whose teachings he evolved original theories of government which all the wars, debates, and revolutions of his stormy life failed to modify. Preoccupied with his own ideas, he gave no heed to the counsels of others, took no thought of obstacles, and, victor or vanquished, stubbornly followed his own way, always confident of infallibility and persevering in the face of difficulties that would have appalled a rational man. From his earliest childhood a little feudal lord, owing obedience to no parent, with hundreds of slaves at his orders, his precocious intelligence the object of that ruinous admiration with which thoughtless strangers and servants spoil a rich and lonely child, his naturally strong will uncurbed by any discipline, he grew into manhood—arrogant, uncompromising, solitary, suspicious, a deep thinker, wildly ambitious, marvellously brilliant, though lacking steady common-sense, blindly confident of his own moral and intellectual infallibility, firmly convinced that he was destined for vague great things, inordinately fond of honours and praise, and absolutely unable to distinguish his desires of gratifying selfish ambitions, and his yeasty notions of regenerating mankind. At sixteen he went to Spain to complete his education; his wealth procured him an entrance into the aristocratic families of Madrid; and he even penetrated the precincts of the ceremonious court and had the honour of playing ball with the lad who afterwards became Ferdinand VII. When only eighteen he married a beautiful girl, who died shortly after he brought her back to Caracas. For the rest of his life he remained without family ties. Again he went to Europe and wandered through England, France, and Italy, falling more and more under the spell of the mighty spirit of Napoleon the Great. At the age of twenty-three Bolivar returned to his native country and took up his life as a rich slave-owner. When the revolution broke out in 1810 he took no part until the junta requested him to go to England on the embassy previously mentioned. There he became acquainted with Miranda, and, appreciating that the South American revolution must be decided by arms, made up his mind that only as a soldier could he put himself at the head of affairs in Venezuela. His first essays in the military art were not successful, and it was he who lost Puerto Cabello, giving the first revolution its coup de grâce. But a situation in which others saw no hope he regarded as an opportunity, and he resolved to devote his life to South American independence.

Bolivar went to Cartagena in Colombia and offered his sword to the patriot junta which ruled that city. Given a small military command on the Magdalena River, he embodied a few militia and surprised two posts which were obstructing the navigation of the river. Delighted at these successes, the Cartagena junta sent him reinforcements, with which he captured Ocana, an important city lying east of the Magdalena and not far from Pamplona and the Venezuelan border. The loyalists had collected a considerable force in the Venezuelan province of Barinas, with which they proposed to advance into Pamplona. The patriot chief of this Colombian province appealed to Bolivar and this suggested to him the Napoleonic plan of relieving Pamplona and reconquering Venezuela. On his own responsibility he dashed with only four hundred men over the Andes in front of Ocana, descended into the plain north of Lake Maracaibo, took the royalists on their march to Pamplona by surprise, and routed them. Joined by the patriots from Pamplona, he received formal authorisation to drive the Spaniards from the Venezuelan provinces of Merida and Trujillo. His movements among the mountain valleys were like lightning flashes, and though the Spanish forces were more numerous their commanders were demoralised by his attacks made in defiance of all the rules of prudent warfare. Within fifty days there was not an enemy left in the two provinces, and Bolivar's army had been trebled by enlistments. The New Granadan government ordered him to pause, but he paid no heed. Issuing a proclamation that no quarter would be given, he crossed the mountains south-west into the province of Barinas, annihilated the Spanish forces there, and rushing to the east caught another army of a thousand men near Valencia and destroyed it. Monteverde had no time to concentrate his scattered forces, and the news of this last defeat caused him to flee to the protection of the fortifications of Puerto Cabello. Bolivar occupied Valencia and Caracas without resistance. In a campaign of ninety days, with a handful of New Granadans and mountaineers from western Venezuela, he had defeated and dispersed over four thousand royalists, and conquered the country from the Andes to the capital.

Only the lower plains of the Orinoco and the coast provinces of Maracaibo and Coro remained royalist, for while Bolivar had been overrunning the west, another young Creole, Mariño, had led a small expedition from the island of Margarita, captured Maturin just east of the mouth of the Orinoco, and with the military stores found there armed the inhabitants of Cumaná province, made ripe for revolt by the cruelties of Monteverde. The Spanish attempts to recover Maturin by assault were repulsed with great slaughter, and Mariño followed up his success by besieging Cumaná. By the time Bolivar reached Caracas the place was in the last extremities of starvation, and Monteverde's flight was a signal for its surrender. There were therefore two dictators in Venezuela, and Mariño sent to Bolivar to treat about the form of government, but the latter had determined on a centralised administration with himself supreme. Mariño refused to agree, and only the activity of the loyalists prevented a war between him and Bolivar.

Monteverde held out in Puerto Cabello, and when reinforcements arrived from Spain resumed the offensive. Though Bolivar won a victory at Las Trincheiras, and was greeted on his return to Caracas with the title of "Liberator," reaction had in fact begun. Reports of loyalist movements came from all sides; Bolivar's power was confined to the towns; the terrible Boves roused the llaneros and gathered the nucleus of a formidable army of horsemen. Ceballos sallied out from Coro and captured Barquisimeto, utterly defeating Bolivar when the latter attacked him. Difficulties, however, only stimulated this remarkable man to fresh exertions. The patriot leader, Campo Elias, overthrew Boves's horsemen near Calabozo on the llanos south of Caracas, killing the prisoners and butchering every man in the town because it had helped the loyalists. This cruel deed decided the llaneros for the Spanish side, and though Bolivar, with the assistance of Campo Elias's troops, won the pitched battle of Araure from Ceballos, Boves had escaped to the plains there to recruit another army of llaneros, which was destined to expel the Liberator.

Bolivar was soon reduced to the possession of Caracas and its neighbouring valleys, with a feeble reserve at Valencia. Mariño had thirty-five hundred men, and Bolivar finally agreed to recognise him as dictator of the eastern provinces as the price of his help. But their union only put off the evil day. Boves crushed Campo Elias at La Puerta and advanced on Caracas. Raging like a trapped wild beast, Bolivar ordered the wholesale assassination of eight hundred and sixty-six Spaniards confined at La Guaira. His desperation inspired his followers, and when Boves attacked the entrenchments outside Caracas and rushed the patriot magazine, the young Granadan who was in command, seeing that the place could not be held, ordered his men to fly, but when the loyalists triumphantly rushed into the building they found him in the act of throwing a match into the powder. In the explosion eight hundred of the assaulting column were blown into the air and the survivors desisted. Mariño was coming by forced marches from the east along the plains, and Boves retired to cut him off, while Ceballos also abandoned the siege of Valencia. Mariño eluded Boves and beat off one attack. If the Liberator had concentrated his forces and united with his colleague the patriots would have stood a chance, but he sent most of his own troops to recover the west, joining Mariño with only a few men. At La Puerta on the 14th of June, 1814, the battle decisive of the second Venezuelan revolution was fought. The desperate charges of Boves's llanero horsemen overwhelmed the patriots, and more than half their number were left dead on the field. Bolivar fled to Caracas, gathered all the money and jewels, and, encumbered by a great multitude of fugitives, retreated east. But at Aragua the patriots were driven out of their trenches with terrific slaughter. The Liberator took ship at Barcelona with the intention of making a last stand near the mouth of the Orinoco, but his comrades had had enough of him. He was declared a traitor and Rivas put in command. The remaining patriots managed to repulse one attack of the royalists, but in a second they were defeated, and in a third Boves slaughtered them nearly to the last man, although he himself was killed in the mêlée. Only a few scattered bands on the plateaux of Barcelona and the plains of the upper Orinoco kept up a resistance. The detachment which Bolivar had so imprudently sent west before the battle of La Puerta escaped into New Granada, while the Liberator went by sea to that country and took service under its government.

The revolution headed by Bolivar and Mariño had been crushed by Boves, Morales, and Ceballos with troops recruited in Venezuela itself. Monteverde's defeat and Boves's death left Morales master of Venezuela, and virtually independent of outside control. But by 1815 Ferdinand was securely on the throne of Spain, and absolutism had replaced the Constitution established by the popular leaders of 1812. The Spanish government determined to suppress the revolutionists who still maintained themselves in New Granada and the Argentine, and to reduce the semi-independent royalist chiefs to a more exact obedience. In April, Morillo, Spain's ablest general, arrived near Cumaná at the head of ten thousand veteran regulars. Morales sailed out to meet the Marshal and place his troops at his orders, but the regular officers gazed in astonishment at the dark-skinned llaneros, wearing only a hat and a waist-cloth, who were the pillars of royal authority in Venezuela. At first the Spaniards accepted the aid of these half-savage allies, but Morillo lost no time in establishing a military despotism in which the llanero chiefs had no place. Even more unpopular was his leaving three thousand Spaniards to garrison Venezuela while he impressed an equal number of native troops to accompany him on his expedition against New Granada. Nearly a third of the latter deserted rather than embark, and the attitude of the Spanish officers who were left behind to rule the country roused the native instinct for independence.

Meanwhile the scattered bands of patriot guerillas on the western headwaters of the Orinoco, near the Granadan border, had been uniting and increasing in strength. José Antonio Paez, a mixed-blood, only twenty-six years old, who could neither read nor write, but of herculean strength and skill in the use of lance and sword, proved the leader for the occasion. A small corps in which he was a simple captain was threatened by the Spanish governor of Barinas at the head of fourteen hundred men. His own commander wished to retreat, but Paez persuaded five hundred reckless fellows to follow him in a night assault. Leading his men in a furious charge he bore down the enemy with a rush, killing four hundred and taking many prisoners, whom he treated so well that they all joined him. The fame of his success spread through the llanos and the rough plainsmen, dissatisfied with the discipline and routine of the regular Spanish officers, flocked to the banner of this new chieftain, and he began the organisation of the army of the Apuré, destined to be the principal instrument in the redemption of Venezuela.

THE PASS OF ANGOSTURA, BOLIVAR CITY.