While the royalist reaction was thus closing in around the revolution in central New Granada, the mass of the people cooled, the patriot leaders fought among themselves, and the interior was a prey to anarchy. Dictator Nariño had broken completely with the ambulatory congress, and was sending his troops into the adjacent provinces. Congress protested and a civil war broke out in central Granada. Nariño was defeated in an attack on Socorro, but the federalists were in their turn repulsed when they lay siege to the capital, and Bogotá declared itself an independent state. In the midst of these disorders, the alarming news was received that General Samano, advancing from Quito and Pasto, at the head of two thousand well-equipped men, had retaken Popayan, and was already menacing Antioquia and the lower Cauca. In the face of this common danger Nariño and congress came to terms. The latter advanced to meet Samano and badly defeated him at the battle of Calivio, January 15, 1814. The re-occupation of Popayan was the only result of this victory. Pasto remained faithfully loyalist—a Vendee into which many republican armies were destined to dash in vain. The Spaniards brought up reinforcements, and when Nariño again advanced his army was overwhelmed and himself captured. However, the loyalists were not able to equip an army large enough to justify undertaking the conquest of central Granada, so the jarring factions and provinces were left alone for the present to waste their energies in internecine conflicts.
ROPE BRIDGE OVER THE MAGDALENA RIVER.
Cartagena had all the while remained independent, and in 1813 Bolivar, flying from his native Venezuela after the suppression of its first insurrection, took service with the Granadan city. With a handful of militia he drove the Spaniards from the lower Magdalena, and retook the important city of Ocana near the Venezuelan border. His unexpected success created such enthusiasm that the Cartagena dictator gave him a small body of regulars, and with them the daring Venezuelan began that marvellous campaign which for the second time expelled the Spaniards from Venezuela. His triumph was shortlived, and by September, 1814, his forces had been dispersed by the loyalist llaneros and he was back in New Granada. He now offered his services to the federated provinces, and in spite of his recent defeats, the prestige of the 1813 campaign secured him the command of the army which was about to march on Bogotá to force that recalcitrant province into the union. At the head of eighteen hundred men Bolivar prosecuted the campaign with all his usual activity. The outlying towns of the province surrendered at his approach, and the capital itself, which had been denuded of troops by Nariño for his ill-fated expedition against Pasto, and which in fact was tired of the dictatorship, could not make much resistance. The seat of the federal government was transferred to Bogotá, and the victorious general, though a Venezuelan, became captain-general of its forces, and to his title of "Liberator" was added that of "Illustrious Pacificator." If the adhesion of Cartagena could be secured, the union of New Granada would be well-nigh complete; so with two thousand men he proceeded to the lower Magdalena and established his headquarters just above the delta and within striking distance of the sea-port. However, his intrigues with its government led to nothing. Cartagena refused to co-operate with the confederation on any terms, and finally Bolivar made a foolish attempt to besiege the strongest fortress in America without artillery. He soon came to his senses, raised the siege, gave up his command of the Granadan army, and withdrew to Jamaica to wait a new opportunity to make war on Spaniards.
The revolutionary cause was in a bad way. The loyalists of Venezuela, Ecuador, and southern New Granada had put down the insurgents in their own provinces. Bogotá was only held back by the military pressure of a few resolute republicans from declaring for the king, and the other provinces were disgusted with civil disorder and wavered in their allegiance. However, they were destined not to be given the opportunity to return peaceably to obedience on reasonable terms. Wellington's peninsular campaigns and Napoleon's fall changed the face of affairs in Spain. Ferdinand once more on the throne of his fathers, and absolute government re-established, all thought of compromising with the American rebels on the basis of autonomy or representation in the Cortes was abandoned. In April, 1815, Marshal Morillo, Spain's ablest general, arrived on the Venezuelan coast with more than ten thousand veteran regulars. Having reinforced himself among the Venezuelan loyalists, and leaving a large garrison of Spaniards in Venezuela, he proceeded to Cartagena at the head of over eight thousand troops. The defenders numbered less than four thousand, but behind the strongest fortifications in America they prepared to make a desperate resistance. So formidable were the walls that Morillo did not try to take the place by assault. His main body landed at Santa Marta and crossed the Magdalena to blockade the city from the rear, while his fleet cut off communication by sea. The besiegers suffered terribly in the pestilential swamps, but the defenders were reduced to the most horrible extremities during four months and a half. The provisions ran out; fevers decimated the people; the starving garrison ate rats and hides, sentinels fell dead at their posts; the commander drove out of the city two thousand old men, women, and children, and of this procession of spectres only a few reached the Spanish lines. Finally, the surviving soldiers escaped by boats in the midst of a storm which dispersed the Spanish squadron, and Morillo entered a deserted city where the very air was poisoned by the rotting bodies of famished people. It is calculated that six thousand persons died of hunger and disease. The Spaniards hunted down and shot the revolutionary leaders; the absolute powers of the governor were revived; and even the inquisition re-established.
While Cartagena was being besieged, a Spanish army advanced along the Venezuelan Andes to the Granadan border and climbed to the Pamplona plateau. There they defeated the local patriots, and the latter fled from the province after killing all the Spanish non-combatants on whom they could lay hands. Desperately alarmed, the congress at Bogotá made Camilo Torres dictator, and he resolutely advanced with twenty-five hundred recruits against Pamplona. The Spanish general retreated to Ocana, with the patriots following, but receiving reinforcements, turned upon Torres, and on the 22nd of February, 1816, utterly defeated him. The revolution lay helpless at Morillo's feet. The royalist forces promptly occupied the great plateau provinces of Pamplona and Socorro, as well as Antioquia. Bogotá had in fact long been disaffected to the insurgent cause and now became openly royalist. Torres resigned, and when Madrid, whom the revolutionary chiefs appointed in his place, called for volunteers only six men presented themselves. Congress dissolved, and the dictator and a few determined leaders, with a remnant of the army, fled north to Popayan. There they joined a band of local patriots under Mejia, and gave unsuccessful battle to General Samano, who had advanced from Quito. This fight of Tambo seemed the revolution's coup de grâce in New Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Only on the plains of eastern Venezuela, and in the llanos on the Apuré and Casanare headwaters, did a few guerrilla bands maintain themselves. In far away Argentina, the town of Buenos Aires and the gauchos were still defiant, but elsewhere in all Spanish South America resistance to the King's generals had ceased.
Marshal Morillo fully appreciated how dangerous to Spanish domination in New Granada and Venezuela were the fierce, hard-riding, llaneros, uncatchable and unconquerable in the vast Orinoco plains. Fighting on the royal side under guerrilla chiefs they had beaten the republicans and Bolivar, but they turned insurrectionist the moment Spanish regular officers assumed command. Morillo resolved to crush the towns completely, and hoped gradually to wear out or exterminate the llaneros. In pursuance of this policy all officers above the rank of captain were denied amnesty, and shot wherever found. The same fate was reserved for those who had held high civil office during the insurrection. The Marshal came to Bogotá in person to see that his bloody orders were carried out. The city's prisons were filled with unfortunates whose wives and daughters pleaded in vain for mercy. The most prominent patriots were shot in the back as traitors and their bodies hung on gibbets. The great scholar, Caldas, the pride of Bogotá for his world-wide reputation as a scientist, suffered a not much better fate. In the capital alone one hundred and twenty-five of New Granada's brightest and best perished on the scaffold, their property was confiscated, and their families reduced to abject poverty. Because they had not actively resisted the rebellion, the entire male population were adjudged to have forfeited all civil rights, and gangs of Granadan youth were impressed into the army, or, worse still, forced to work on the public roads. Even the ladies of Bogotá were sent to country towns to remain under police surveillance with women of doubtful character.
While thus engaged in stamping out the revolutionary embers in New Granada word came to Morillo that the Venezuelan llaneros had risen against his lieutenants, and that Bolivar had landed near Valencia. Leaving a garrison of Venezuelan and Pasto royalists at Bogotá under the command of Samano, the Marshal, with four thousand Spanish troops, took the plateau road to the frontier, carrying with him some prisoners to shoot on the line. Samano's first act on assuming the government of Bogotá was to erect a gallows in the great square facing the windows of his palace, and to set up four execution benches on the public promenade. Of the victims who sat thereon with their backs to the firing squad, one of the first was the beautiful Policarpa Salabarrieta, with seven men also implicated in sending information to the llanero insurgents. She died exhorting her companions to meet their fate like men, and under the name of La Pola her memory is preserved in the songs of the Colombian people. Sixty years after her death the Colombian congress voted a pension to her surviving relatives.