Mad for Glory

by Robert Booth

  Everyone wanted a piece of Porter. He was treated to banquets, tributes, and gifts. Several families named newborns “David Porter,” and at least one vessel owner christened a privateer by that name. In Philadelphia he was given another grand parade, and there Sindbad met with Washington Irving, now editor of the Analectic Magazine. Irving and others had been plying the newspapers for a year with praise for Porter in the Pacific; now, the famous author was drafting a nineteen-page “biographical memoir” with a portrait of Captain Porter, curly-haired and indomitable, whose last cruise was “conducted with wonderful enterprise, fertility of expedient, consummate seamanship, and daring courage.”

  In Washington, he was invited to dine with President James Madison and Navy Secretary William Jones at the White House. That was a great relief to Porter, who regaled them with tales of the South Pacific. Madison was entertained but not impressed, for he had no interest in annexing Pacific islands, nor did anyone else in government. That was fine with Porter. Somehow Nooaheevah and Gattanewa and Gamble had become unreal, and the whole Marquesan matter was not worth pressing. Even the most violent events had faded after the apocalyptic battle of Valparaiso and its still-vivid scenes and terrifying chaos. Still, the island interlude made for great reading in Porter’s forthcoming book, already being typeset from his journal, with engravers working to turn his own drawings of giant tortoises, battling frigates, and half-naked island girls into illustrations worthy of a best-seller.

  Back in Boston, William Bainbridge, Porter’s former commander, sent him a message indicating that all was forgiven. Rendezvous with him at the navy yard soon, he wrote, and Bacchus “shall overflow you,” and Bainbridge “will drown you, in lieu of hanging.”

  *James R. Lyman of Connecticut had sailed on a merchant vessel (perhaps the Colt) that had been sold in Chile after a voyage to the Northwest coast.

  *Farragut would apply this lesson fifty years later on the Mississippi in the Civil War.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rancagua

  José Miguel Carrera and his brother Luis, freed at Chillan and warned to stay clear of Bernardo O’Higgins, proceeded directly to Talca and walked right into army headquarters, where the Spanish flag was flying. O’Higgins looked as if he had seen a ghost. Confronted by the person of his old comrade in arms, he stepped to José Miguel and gave him an unsmiling embrace. In private, he begged Carrera not to take to the streets and resume the war. Carrera responded, “You know I never do favors that demean me. I have nothing to hide. I miss my friends in the capital, and I will do what I have to, by negotiation or by bayonet.” O’Higgins made no reply. They had a brief lunch, and the Carreras were given rooms in the barracks. That night they slept with their pistols close by, and next day they departed for Santiago, with two cavalrymen to protect them and a third to keep them under surveillance. O’Higgins sent a messenger to Lastra, who posted a reward for the Carreras’ capture.*

  On May 19 they arrived at their father’s ranch outside Santiago and notified Lastra that they would be asserting their rights as citizens. Having thrown down the gantlet, they withdrew toward the Andes and thought about going to Mendoza to fetch their banished brother, Juan José. Finding the passes blocked by snow, they returned and sent messages to their old friends in the officer corps and government, nearly all of whom slipped out of the city and went up into the mountains to meet with the Carreras, assess the condition of the country, and brainstorm the elements of a rebellion. On June 18 the Carreras’ father, Ignacio, was arrested by Lastra. Two weeks later, José Miguel came down from the hills and met secretly in Santiago with his adherents over the course of a week. Then Luis came to town accompanied by twelve riflemen. José Miguel wisely removed his headquarters to a suburb, but Luis was betrayed and captured on July 9. Mackenna, in the capital with Lastra, was completing his long report about the “execrable” Carreras and their crimes. He sent off a note to O’Higgins suggesting that Luis be sent across the continent to prison in Montevideo. O’Higgins concurred, but first Luis was put on trial for treason.

  José Miguel Carrera had done all he could to revive the national independence movement. He could not be sure that he had succeeded, but his father and brother were in prison, he was being hunted, and he had no time left for organizing. On July 23, at three in the afternoon, the revolution began in downtown Santiago. By the hundreds, infantrymen marched into the central plaza, and cannon were trundled down the streets and placed at every intersection. A few of Lastra’s officers were arrested, and it was over. Accompanied by Rivera and his cavalrymen, José Miguel Carrera, wearing a brightly colored poncho, rode into the square. The capital resounded with the cheering of ecstatic soldiers, followed by the jubilation of the general populace, who came flooding into the streets to celebrate.

  Mackenna and Irassari, abandoned by their adherents, were soon captured—Mackenna in a haystack, Irassari in a sewer. Supreme Director Lastra was taken from the palace and imprisoned, and Luis Carrera was set free. As Arteaga’s “Birth of a Nation” battalion stood by, a new three-man junto was sworn in to run the national government, with José Miguel Carrera at its head. The flags of Spain came down, and the tricolor banners of the republic of Chile were unfurled over the capital.

  President Carrera immediately revoked the Treaty of Lircay, then turned his attention to military resources. There were none. Under Lastra, the Santiago defense force had dwindled to 600 men in the barracks, with 200 operable rifles and no money in the treasury. He met with the soldiers and ordered the mint to pay them, and he set in motion the process of intense recruitment of troops and the fabrication of 4,000 new uniforms. With 900 men, Luis Carrera marched to Valparaiso and threw Formas in jail. José Miguel Carrera proceeded with the banishment or imprisonment of eighty-five monks and seventy Larrain adherents. He advised Roberts Poinsett, in exile at Buenos Aires, that he had resumed authority in Chile and that El Consul would do him a great honor by returning as his advisor and comrade. Poinsett replied with congratulations but regretted that he must return to his own country and help to win its war with England. In the meantime, Poinsett made arrangements for the shipment of 500 rifles—may-be a thousand—and ammunition to Carrera.

  Carrera sent José Miguel Infante south to Talca to confer with O’Higgins. On August 2 Carrera had the pleasure of sending Mackenna, Irassari, and five more of his bitterest enemies into exile in Mendoza, noting in a letter to San Martin that he had been generous toward men who had not been so to him, and who had neither honor nor love of country. Carrera sent Joaquin Larrain and four other former government officials into exile in the north. In mid-August, Carrera’s emissaries met with O’Higgins, who was reminded that Carrera had once resigned his generalship of the army in order to save the country and that O’Higgins now had the same chance to put Chile ahead of his own ambitions. It was not too late to join forces against General Gainza at Chillan; after victory, their quarrels could be settled at the ballot box.

  O’Higgins opted for civil war and kept his men marching northward.

  Carrera had not had time to organize a real army—most of his followers were militiamen, and most had no weapons. Many had not fought for Carrera’s officers, and some had not fought at all. On August 19, Carrera deployed his brother Lucho in command of the second division vanguard, heading south toward Paine, about thirty miles from Santiago, to slow O’Higgins at the pass. Other former patriot officers of Carrera were in the countryside trying to raise new fighters. Colonel Diego Benavente and 200 horsemen followed Luis, and four days later Colonel J. M. Portus reported with a huge corps of 1,200 cavalrymen, most armed with lances.

  O’Higgins proceeded toward Santiago despite having received, two weeks earlier, the alarming news of an invasion at Talcahuano by a large force sent from Lima under General Mariano Osorio to combine with Gainza. O’Higgins kept the news to himself, and on August 26 his troops, scouted by Lucho’s retreating outriders, arrived on the outskirts of Santiago at the Plains of Maipu. There, at noon, the b
attle commenced.

  For two hours the nationalist armies clashed, with Luis Carrera’s division slowly gaining against O’Higgins’ infantry. Finally, José Miguel deployed Portus’s cavalry, which charged into the center and split the enemy force in two. The rout was on, but the men largely refrained from killing. Carrera’s troops took 400 prisoners, captured thirteen officers and two guns, and achieved total victory. At nightfall, Carrera learned of Osorio’s invasion and sent a proposal to O’Higgins that they unite to defend the capital. O’Higgins had only 800 fighting men left, with 250 good rifles. To the south were thousands of well-armed, well-disciplined Spanish troops, fresh from the battlefields of Europe. His old comrade Bernardo repented in tears to José Miguel, who assured him that all he wanted was “a sincere reconciliation in order to exterminate the tyrants.”

  On September 4, 1814, seven weeks after the coup, O’Higgins placed himself and his army under the command of José Miguel Carrera with the understanding that he, O’Higgins, would lead the vanguard into battle. Osorio’s army, in good health and good spirits, about 3,500 soldiers strong, had been marching north without opposition and had already reached Talca, fifty miles from Santiago. Carrera, deprived of the chance to draw Osorio into a series of battles, had done his best to gather an army but had not had time to organize, equip, or train it, and his men had expended most of their ammunition and much of their energy in the battle at Maipu. The Carrera-O’Higgins troops, very recently fighting each other, would be at a severe disadvantage, with no room for failure. One bad defeat, and there would be nothing to keep Osorio from taking the capital.

  On September 23 the preternaturally slow Cherub arrived at Valparaiso, returned from her foray into the western islands. Tucker made a point of taunting the American-friendly people of the port by entering under the ensign and pendant of the United States, with the captured banner of “Free Trade and Sailors Rights” at his foremast head. On board were American prisoners John Gamble and his men, who were “extremely disappointed at seeing the old Spanish flag displayed in the forts.” Gamble wondered if all had been lost, but “a boat soon came alongside, with the agreeable intelligence that the patriots were still advancing in their great work, and intended shortly again to hoist their own flag.”

  Although a prisoner, Gamble was allowed to visit in Valparaiso. There were still twenty sailors from the Essex in town—and a few more who had gone off with the rebel army—according to Vice-consul Blanco, Poinsett’s successor, who “received him in his arms as a father, and entertained him in the most friendly manner.” To Blanco, Gamble told the sad story of the uprisings and the massacre at Nukuhiva and its aftermath.

  With his wounded and broken crew, Gamble had sailed on through the Pacific night after barely escaping the furious Enana. “Our situation was deplorable,” he related, “inasmuch as we were at sea in a leaky ship without either boats, anchors, or hands to navigate her, having only two sound men out of seven.” They had no charts and no hope of getting upwind to Chile or to some island where they would be safe from the British. “In this situation,” he had thought that the only possible means of “escape from death, was to run the trade winds down to the Sandwich islands, a distance of 1,800 miles. No time was lost in bending the necessary sails for this purpose, which we accomplished by means of a windlass and capstan.” Under heavy canvas, but with no experience in navigating a large vessel over unknown seas, they had accomplished the amazing feat of making landfall two weeks later, on May 23.

  “To our great joy, we discovered the high land of Hawaii, the windward island of the Sandwich group.” These islands were known to be inhabited by the Kanaka people, with a few British and American traders and beachcombers. After encounters with islanders in canoes and a nighttime brush with breakers, Gamble and his crew had found some Boston traders who were waiting out the war. Unable to make the trip to Chile without acquiring naval supplies, Gamble had shipped nine new men at the bay and taken off to visit the storehouse of Tamaahmaah, the king of the islands, at Hawaii.

  John Gamble and his men began to think they might survive this adventure in paradise and return to Valparaiso, but at dawn on June 13, as they approached Hawaii, a strange vessel appeared dead ahead. Gamble first supposed her to be the Albatros, then thought of the Seringapatam. His mind, he feared, was playing tricks, but he had no spyglass and could not be sure. At eight in the evening, in perfect calm, the stranger hoisted American colors. Suddenly Gamble perceived her as “a ship of war, and an enemy.” Horribly, a large, white pennant was unfurled, emblazoned with the words “Free Trade and Sailors Rights,” and she fired a shot at the Hammond. Gamble had no choice but to surrender. Taken on board, he found that he was the guest of Captain T. Tudor Tucker, commander of the Royal Navy sloop of war Cherub, cruising for American whalers ten weeks after having helped to defeat an American frigate at Valparaiso.

  For Gamble, the terrible news about the Essex had been the start of a new nightmare. With Porter defeated, there was no hope of Gamble and his crew being set free or getting home. They had been held prisoner for several weeks, during which Tucker had captured two American vessels and tried to lure Americans out from their island hideaways. Finally, Tucker and Cherub had sailed for Chile, trailed by three American prizes.

  José Miguel Carrera and Bernardo O’Higgins had little time to prepare a proper strategy or coordinate their meager assets. Their armies were poorly provisioned and desperately short of ammunition and weapons. For three weeks, throughout September, they tried to organize and arm their forces, but only about half the men had rifles that still fired. Still, there was no time left, and they marched south to meet the enemy. Above the Maule River, at the Pass of Paine nine miles north of the town of Rancagua, Carrera found good high ground to hold, but O’Higgins had already deployed his division of 850 men below, near the Cachapoal River, and would not budge. Carrera warned him that he was too far forward and his men too exposed. Carrera wanted to fight a decisive action with the full weight of both armies thrown against each other, and O’Higgins’s salient would prevent that, but O’Higgins was adamant. And so on September 21, Carrera sent his brother Juan José in command of a division of 750 men to join O’Higgins south of the Cachapoal, and meanwhile moved 700 men of the National Guard—184 of whom were armed with rifles and the rest with lances—farther down the road that led to Rancagua. José Miguel kept the third division, with 1,300 militiamen under Luis Carrera, in reserve, as the last line in the defense of Santiago.

  When Osorio and his large army reached the Cachapoal River, O’Higgins was badly intimidated and immediately fell back to a new position in Rancagua. There his men quickly turned the main plaza into an Alamo of logs, rocks, and cattle hides, with snipers on the roofs and cannons in the walls. Juan José Carrera, taking a seat in a priest’s house, turned over his troops to God and O’Higgins. On the afternoon of September 30, under cover of artillery, Osorio hurled a first wave of men against fortress Rancagua. They were thrown back. The Spanish regrouped and sent more than 3,000 men and twenty cannon across the plain and into the town, completely surrounding the rebel position. Two more assaults, however, could not penetrate the inner perimeter.

  That night, O’Higgins dispatched a messenger up the road to tell José Miguel Carrera, “Send ammunition and the third division, and all will be accomplished.” The president, without ammunition, replied, “It will have to come in the form of a bayonet charge. You are completely surrounded, and must break out your men to the north.” At dawn, Osorio began a barrage, and soon the town was bombed into a hell of burning buildings and stone rubble. O’Higgins now fought under a Chilean flag cinched with a black ribbon, the symbol of a battle to the death, without quarter given or expected. As before, the Chilean defenders, with little ammunition, held off Osorio, suffering with large losses. One gun crew, out of grape shot, primed its cannon with doubloons. Hundreds fell dead and wounded as they fought on through the morning. At eleven o’clock, they heard from a lookout in the church tow
er: “!Viva! !Viva la patria!” Luis Carrera and José Miguel Portus had arrived in the distance at the head of 900 men from the third division.

  Inside the perimeter at Rancagua, O’Higgins ordered an assault on three fronts. His bravos poured yelling over the barricades, charging and firing, but they did not break out to the north, and Luis Carrera’s division could not fight through the forces that barred their way. Portus’s hussars were repulsed several times, and still they tried to force their way in on side streets, but the Spanish army, fighting from behind fences and from trenches and houses, was too strong. For four hours the third division and the National Guard tried to break through, but finally their lines began to crack, and José Miguel Carrera ordered a retreat to Paine. “The ruin of Chile seemed decreed by Providence,” wrote Carrera. “All was blindness and error.”

  Late on the second day at Rancagua, after thirty-six hours of continuous fighting and bombardment, the troops of O’Higgins and Juan José Carrera made a desperate thrust through Osorio’s soldiers and escaped northward to Paine. Night had fallen, and chaos ensued. With a Spanish army of 3,500 coming toward his milling mob of perhaps 1,800, José Miguel Carrera ordered them to withdraw, but the retreat became a rout as hundreds of terrified men, no longer an army, poured into the capital.

  After burning government documents and gathering wagonloads of specie from the mint, the Carreras and hundreds of their followers fled to the north, hoping to regroup and renew the fight. O’Higgins and his adherents did not follow, but fled east en masse, looking over their shoulders as they started up the foothills toward the high passes of the cordillera, shedding money, supplies, and weapons as they went; and they did not stop until they crossed over to Mendoza, in Argentina. José Miguel Carrera’s remaining officers and troops would not go north to Coquimbo—panic had set in, and the army had completely dissolved. Accepting the totality of the disaster, Carrera turned toward the eastern mountains.