Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  It was probably in Fanny du Villars’s salon, in September 1804, that Bolívar met Alexander von Humboldt, recently returned with Aimé Bonpland from their American travels. The conversation passed into history and became another Bolivarian fable. Bolívar referred to the glittering destiny of a South America freed from the yoke of oppression, and Humboldt replied that although the country was ready for liberation there was no one capable of leading it. An apt exchange, except that there is no evidence that it ever took place.4 The time was not yet right for a meeting of minds between an unknown liberator and the distinguished liberal. In public Humboldt was politically discreet about the Hispanic world. Over–impressed, perhaps, by the opinions of affluent creoles, he thought that the Spanish colonies were reconciled to their condition and did not wish to exchange peace and security for revolutionary upheaval. As for Bolívar, his political ideas were still unformed and he was not so presumptuous in 1804 to imagine himself a leader of a liberation movement. In the event Humboldt, unlike Bonpland, was not impressed by Bolívar. Half a century later he admitted to o’Leary his early doubts. In 1804, he wrote, he had met the young man in Paris and noticed his love of liberty and lively conversation, but saw him as a dreamer: ‘I never believed he was destined to be leader of the American crusade.’ During his sojourn in America, he added, he had not encountered serious opposition to Spain, though once the struggle began he then saw the deep hatred that existed: ‘But what most surprised me was the brilliant career of Bolívar, so soon after our separation in 1805 when I left Paris for Italy.’5 Subsequent relations between the distinguished scientist and the young creole were distant and intermittent. Bolívar was deferential to Humboldt and in a letter of 1821 called him ‘a great man’ who had served America well and become for its people a model of high moral purpose.6 Humboldt had no contact with Bolívar in the years 1806–21, but then wrote three letters of recommendation on behalf of European visitors, expressing his admiration for ‘the founder of the liberty and independence of your beautiful homeland’. A trace of scepticism remained; as one who had seen the divisions in American society he believed that peace would prevail only if correct social institutions and wise legislation preserved the republic from civil dissension.

  Political Awakening

  Bolívar’s years in Europe from 1804 to 1806 were not consumed by his social life: they were above all the time of his intellectual awakening, when he began to read, observe and experience politics. His innate curiosity was stirred as the international situation developed before his eyes. Now the weakness of Spain was impossible to ignore, threatened as it was by imperial France and confronted by the sea power of Britain, the victor of Trafalgar. In a changing world, what did the future hold for Spanish America? And what did Spanish America promise for Bolívar? The slavery of his country and the glory of freeing it were a personal challenge. The prospect of power attracted him, but what were his chances? It was in Paris that the Napoleonic myth first entered his mind. It is not certain that Bolívar was actually in Paris when the empire was instituted on 18 May 1804 and Napoleon, previously first consul, was proclaimed emperor at St Cloud. But he was in Paris on 2 December, that bitterly cold day when Napoleon warmed the hearts of Frenchmen, crowning himself emperor in Notre Dame in the presence of Pope Pius VII. Bolívar was attracted and repelled. The sources are divided, as were his own responses.

  According to o’Leary, Bolívar was invited to attend the ceremony in the suite of the Spanish ambassador, and he not only refused but shut himself in his house the whole day. The reason? For Bolívar, Napoleon was no longer the hero of the republic, ‘the symbol of liberty and glory, the object of his political admiration’ that he had been two years previously when he ratified the peace of Amiens, but a tyrant and a hypocrite, an enemy of freedom.7 There is another version of his thoughts, as reported in the diary of Peru de Lacroix, a Frenchman who had served in the army of the emperor before gravitating towards Bolívar’s campaigns. There he expressed himself inspired by the event, less for the pageant than for the spontaneous outpouring of love that more than a million people lavished on the French hero, an experience that he saw as the supreme ambition of man.

  The crown which Napoleon placed on his head I regarded as a miserable thing and a gothic fancy: what seemed great to me was the universal acclaim and interest that his person inspired. This, I confess, made me think of my country’s slavery and the glory in store for the man who would free her. But how far was I from imagining that such a fortune awaited me! Later, it is true, I began to flatter myself that one day I would be able to participate in her liberation but not that I would play the leading role in so great an event.8

  Notre Dame was not Bolívar’s last opportunity to see Napoleon. Between social distractions and serious reading, Bolívar’s life in the French capital reached a time of decision. Influenced perhaps by Simón Rodríguez, whom he met again in Paris, and his political instincts aroused by the events around him, he embarked on a tour of Italy early in 1805. The influence of Rodríguez on Bolívar’s intellectual formation is difficult to define, intermittent as it was, though attested by Bolívar himself: ‘You formed my heart for liberty, for justice, for the great, for the beautiful…. You cannot imagine how deeply engraved upon my heart are the lessons you gave me.’9 Rodríguez was an inspiring teacher, perhaps, but not a contributor to the thought of the Enlightenment or the philosophy of the eighteenth century. For Bolívar, however, he seems to have been a channel of independent thinking.

  In April 1805 Bolívar took his leave of Fanny du Villars and sealed the parting with a ring. With a Venezuelan friend, Fernando del Toro, son of the marqués del Toro, and accompanied by Simón Rodríguez, he set off on a walking tour to the south, though how much actual walking the trio did is a matter of conjecture, as is the notion that this was a health cure after months of dissipation. Via Lyons and Chambéry, in deference to Rousseau, they crossed the Alps to Milan, where the triumphant entry of Napoleon and the throng of people to welcome him were unforgettable sights. Near Castiglione they witnessed a great march past with Napoleon seated on a throne on a small incline, and Bolívar was struck by the emperor’s plain clothing in contrast to that of his officers.

  Bolívar continued his tour, travelling via Verona, Vicenza and Padua to Venice, whose beauties he could not ignore, but the glory of Venice, from which his country took its name, had been exaggerated in his mind and he was disappointed. In Florence he paused to admire the monuments and art but not, apparently, the writings of Machiavelli, whose ideas provoked in him an instinctive dislike for their amorality. Long afterwards, a few months before his death, Bolívar visited o’Leary in Cartagena and, seeing on his table a new edition of the works of Machiavelli, observed that he should have better things to do with his time. In the course of a conversation on the merits of Machiavelli, Bolívar appeared to be quite familiar with the contents of the edition and o’Leary asked him if he had read it recently. Bolívar replied that he had never read a word of Machiavelli since he’d left Europe twenty–five years before.10

  On the approach to Rome, Bolívar’s excitement grew as he recalled the history of ancient Rome and gazed upon the sites of former glories; a mind already filled with the classical past and modern philosophy was now fired by hopes for the future of his country and himself. The ruins of the Capitol stirred his imagination and in the August heat he hurried to the Aventine, the Monte Sacro where Sicinius led the people of Rome in protest against their patrician rulers. Mind and heart responded to the scene. ‘On Monte Sacro,’ writes o’Leary, ‘the sufferings of his own country overwhelmed his mind, and he knelt down and made that vow whose faithful fulfilment the emancipation of South America is the glorious witness.’11

  The vow was made on 15 August 1805 in the presence of his mentor Rodríguez and his friend Toro. The lengthy preliminary, where the pen of Rodríguez may well have prevailed, reviews the history and civilization of ancient Rome, its heroes and traitors: ‘This nation has examples for eve
rything, except for the cause of humanity…. For the emancipation of the spirit, the elimination of cares, the exaltation of man, and the final perfectibility of reason, little or nothing…. The resolution of the great problem of human freedom seems to have been something inconceivable, a mystery that would only be made clear in the New World.’ In this review of European civilization there is a curious silence on the great ages of Christian Rome, explained perhaps by awareness that to have included such a reference would be to say that it too had given nothing to ‘the great problem of human freedom’, which had to await its resolution in the New World, and Bolívar at any rate would not wish to say that.12 The final statement, the oath itself, contained no ambiguity: ‘I swear before you, I swear by the God of my fathers, I swear by my fathers, I swear by my honour, I swear by my country that I will not rest body or soul until I have broken the chains with which Spanish power oppresses us.’13 Bolívar never forgot the vow of Rome. For him it became a great truth. ‘Do you remember,’ he asked Rodríguez years later, ‘how we went together to the Monte Sacro in Rome, to vow upon that holy ground to the freedom of our country? You cannot have forgotten that day of eternal glory for us, a day when we swore a prophetic oath to a hope beyond our expectations?’14

  O’Leary received the details of his narrative from Bolívar himself and from many of the people who were in Rome at the time, where it aroused much comment. In the same way he heard of an episode that occurred a few days later in the Vatican and created a greater sensation than the action on Monte Sacro. Bolívar accompanied the Spanish ambassador to an audience with Pius VII and refused to kneel and kiss the cross on the shoe of the pontiff, shaking his head when the ambassador insisted. The pope noticed the embarrassment and said in a sympathetic way, ‘Let the young man from the Indies do as he pleases,’ and extended his hand to Bolívar to kiss his ring, which he did respectfully. The pope, aware that he was a South American, asked some questions of him and seemed pleased with his replies. On the way out the ambassador reproached the young man, who replied, ‘The pope must have little respect for the sign of the Christian religion if he wears it on his sandals, whereas the proudest sovereigns of Christendom place it upon their crowns.’15

  After his time in Rome, Bolívar visited Naples where, contrary to legend, he did not climb Vesuvius with Humboldt, or with anyone else. He made his way back to Paris in April 1806, though not to Fanny, who was herself travelling in Italy. He was resolved to return to Venezuela and a serious life. Bolívar’s political attitude in 1805–6 was a mixture of determination and diffidence, a young man anxious to do something for his country yet unsure of his role. In later reflections he rejects the idea that he was chosen by God: ‘Circumstances, my nature, character and passions were what set me on the road, and my ambition, constancy, spirit and insight kept me there.’ On his own estimate he did not see himself as the sole author of the Spanish American revolution and suggested that in default of himself another leader would have emerged during the struggle.16 But there were few others available at the time with the qualifications already acquired by Bolívar in 1804–6 when his sojourn in Paris, his journey to Italy and his act of commitment on the Aventine were all steps towards political maturity. During this time too his knowledge of the international politics of Europe was growing. He was aware of the threat from Napoleon, who might swallow Spanish America as well as Spain. If subjection by France was avoided there was still the possibility of control by Britain, whose sea power before and after Trafalgar gave the country a decisive role in South America. How many Venezuelans were aware of these things in 1804–6? How many, even among the enlightened, knew that liberty in itself was not enough and would never be an answer unless it was accompanied by independence?

  A Spanish American in the Age of Revolution

  It was in these years that Bolívar began his serious reading of classical and modern authors. In Caracas he had received a basic, if not very systematic, primary and secondary education. Family tradition and social convention then placed him in the militia, not the university. In Madrid, he tells us, he had studied mathematics and foreign languages. Now in Paris he began a lifetime’s reading of the works of Locke, Candillac, Buffon, D’Alembert, Helvetius, Montesquieu, Mably, Filangieri, Lalande, Rousseau, Voltaire, Rollin and Vertot, and of the classical literature of antiquity, Spain, France, Italy and, he adds, ‘a great many English authors’.17 It was a purely secular course of reading, devoid of religious sources. Religion had a place in Bolívar’s idea of education, as he later explained to his nephew, though simply as a useful moral code ‘in the form of religious maxims and practices conducive to the preservation of health and life’. When he returned to Venezuela and threw himself into the struggle for independence he continued to read and study, and for the next twenty years he could be regarded as self–taught. On campaign and in politics his books were an essential part of his baggage, hardly less important than his equipment, his weapons and his horses. His library did not compare with that of Miranda but was still impressive for the conditions in which he assembled it. His first library, which he had with him until 1816 when it fell into the hands of the Spaniards as booty, was replaced in the following years through friends and contacts in all parts of South America; as he travelled from north to south and back again he always had cartons of books with him for immediate use, leaving the bulk in store in the major towns.18 According to o’Leary, he rarely had a book out of his hands, reclining in his hammock in his spare time, reading his favourite authors, which in these years were Montesquieu and Rousseau. Other observers cited Voltaire as his particular choice. His preferred discipline was history – ancient, American and world history. Bolívar himself advised his nephew to study history, inverting normal chronology and proceeding ‘from the present day backwards by stages to ancient times’.19

  Bolívar reflected the age in which he lived and so we see in him evidence of Enlightenment and democracy, of absolutism and even counter–revolution. In addition to Montesquieu and Rousseau, o’Leary lists other authors who especially impressed him: Hobbes and Spinoza, Helvetius, Holbach and Hume. But it does not follow that these thinkers exercised a precise or exclusive influence. Bolívar read widely as an exercise of the mind in order to educate himself, to acquire general knowledge rather than a specific programme of knowledge. He studied ancient history for the quality of its narrative, the interest of its wars and politics, the character of its leaders, not for practical lessons or exemplary institutions; the messages from Athens, Sparta and Rome, he would explain at Angostura, were mixed, yielding icons rather than laws, and not suitable for imitation in modern state building. In his reading of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries he found sources that appealed to his mind and developed his ideas, but his reading seems more likely to have confirmed his scepticism than created it, to have enlarged his liberalism than implanted it. Precision in tracing ideological influences and intellectual causation is notoriously elusive, not least in a leader like Bolívar, whose ideas were a means to action and whose actions were based on many imperatives: political, military and financial, as well as intellectual. To insist too much on the intellectual origins of Bolívar’s revolution and to overemphasize the influence of the past is to obscure his real originality. Bolívar was not a slave to French or North American examples. His own revolution was unique, and in developing his ideas and policies he followed not the models of the Western world but the needs of his own America.

  Bolívar read not to imitate but to equip his mind for independent analysis in preparation for new policy. Beyond philosophy he was interested in applied enlightenment, practical liberalism. He was the model of the revolution to come. Asked what was the cause of American protest, he would reply American interests, and as for ideas, they were there to test and explain. Spain’s deconstruction of the creole state, its replacement by a new imperial state, the alienation of the American elites – these were the roots of independence as he saw it. Creole resentment was acc
ompanied by popular unrest – Venezuelans had observed this in neighbouring colonies and experienced it in their own – with potential for social revolution rather than political change. In this sequence, ideology does not occupy prime position and is not seen as a ‘cause’ of independence. Nevertheless, this was the age of democratic revolution when ideas appeared to cross frontiers in North America and Europe and to leave no society untouched. In Spanish America too Bolívar heard the language of liberty in the last decades of empire. Then, after 1810, as Spanish Americans began to win rights, freedom and independence, Bolívar would invoke ideas to defend, to legitimize and to clarify the revolution, drawing on his wide reading to provide arguments and examples.

  In the maturity of his political thought Bolívar addressed the Congress of Angostura in 1819 and he described the Spanish American revolution as he saw it: ‘A republican government, that is what Venezuela had, has, and should have. Its principles should be the sovereignty of the people, division of powers, civil liberty, prohibition of slavery, and the abolition of monarchy and privileges. We need equality to recast, so to speak, into a single whole, the classes of men, political opinions, and public custom.’20 These few words not only embody his hopes for the new Venezuela; they also describe to perfection the model of revolution developed in the Western world since 1776. Looking at the world from the vantage point of France, Bolívar saw an age of revolutionary change in Europe and America, a time of struggle between the aristocratic and the democratic concept of society, between monarchical and republican systems of government. Reformers everywhere put their faith in the philosophy of natural rights, proclaimed ideas of popular sovereignty and demanded written constitutions based on the principle of ‘separation’ of powers. To what extent was Bolívar influenced by the ideas of the age and a protagonist of democratic revolution?