Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  He knew he was stretching things. To win this victory he had to assemble all his available troops, leaving the rest of the liberated territory unprotected and many fronts from Coro to Caracas dangerously exposed. The prisoners taken from the royalist army were mostly Venezuelans, and promptly after the victory he addressed a proclamation from his headquarters at San Carlos offering a full pardon to all provided they presented themselves at a patriot camp within a month’s time. The invitation was ignored, and the royalists continued to recruit troops from Venezuelans, and ‘American blood continued to be shed by American hands’. Also by Spanish hands. They too waged war to the death and took no prisoners: when Ribas entered Ocumare he found three hundred corpses in the church – men, women and children who had taken no part in the fighting.

  Bolívar would have to confront Boves who, having devastated the llanos from the banks of the Orinoco to the Valles de Aragua, destroying all the towns along his route and terrorizing their inhabitants, was threatening Valencia and Caracas. Bolívar’s position, already weakened by a rival dictatorship in the east, was now wrecked by the intervention of this guerrilla chief turned general who fought to destroy the republic in collaboration with hardcore defenders of the colonial order. Mariño eventually brought his forces to join those of Bolívar and fought alongside him in February and March 1814. The joint army regrouped at Valencia and Bolívar yielded the command to Mariño, ‘as a sure sign of his high opinion of his person and services, and also in this way to ensure the adhesion of the eastern officers to the common cause of Venezuela’.55 But neither the eastern caudillos nor their forces distinguished themselves in these engagements.

  After Boves defeated Campo Elías at La Puerta, Bolívar assembled all available troops and took up a position on his own estate at San Mateo. But he was soon surrounded, without hope of reinforcements, and this did not become a victorious last stand on his patrimonial soil. Campo Elías was killed, and the young Captain Antonio Ricaurte in blowing up the defenders’ military stores in the manor house killed himself as well as the attackers.56 Bolívar was forced to retreat to Valencia, and it was left to Ribas to hold Boves at bay, defeating him temporarily at La Victoria on 12 February 1814. It was now that Bolívar signed the order condemning to death the Spanish prisoners in Caracas and La Guaira. But this made little difference to the strength or the morale of the royalists, who again assembled an army and threatened to destroy the republic. Again Bolívar had to respond, this time with the united forces of Cumaná and Caracas, Mariño and Bolívar. The two armies fought on the savannahs of Carabobo on 28 May 1814 in heavy rain, eastern and western patriots side by side; they won a ‘signal victory’, but to little avail. With his endless supply of llaneros Boves always emerged hydra–like from any slaughter.

  Boves advanced again from Calabozo and mounted another attack on La Puerta, where Mariño had stationed his weakened forces in sound defensive positions in a gorge with his artillery on a hill. The arrival of Bolívar from Caracas with his secretary, a chaplain and a few aides, changed defence into attack, not a wise decision; on the plains Boves’s cavalry were able to destroy the patriot forces within a few hours and started killing prisoners, reducing the patriot ranks by about a thousand. Diego Jalón, who had recently benefited from a prisoner exchange, was invited to lunch by Boves who had him beheaded immediately afterwards. This defeat, on 15 June 1814, was the beginning of the end of the second republic. Bolívar, Mariño, Rivas and a few other officers escaped to Caracas, while Boves occupied the fertile valley of Aragua and cut communications between the capital and Valencia. There the garrison held out stubbornly until forced into a negotiated surrender, according to which the lives and property of the citizens and garrison would be guaranteed. Boves swore to this before the eucharist during mass. The next evening, while their wives danced, he had the husbands killed and the massacre continued until all the patriots were eliminated.57

  In Caracas Bolívar desperately sought a way out of the calamity. There were not enough supplies to sustain a siege or enough money to pay an army. From churches he took silver and jewels, filling twenty–four boxes, and sent them eastwards. His token resistance to Boves approaching from the west was brushed aside and panic overcame the people of Caracas. He began to evacuate the capital, taking a few troops he had managed to save and those who had come by sea from the siege of Puerto Cabello. Pepita Machado was sent to St Thomas. A mass of civilians swarmed eastwards, fleeing in terror from Boves and his hordes, an exodus of hopeless refugees, ravaged by hunger, disease and trials of the terrain; the survivors reached Barcelona twenty days later and some of these made it to Cumaná. There was a brief pause to organize some resistance at the patriot headquarters at Aragua de Barcelona, but Bolívar could not avoid another humiliating defeat, this time at the hands of another royalist chief, Francisco Morales, or prevent his undisciplined troops deserting at the mere sight of the enemy. Indeed, he was not even in command in this engagement, which took place in Mariño’s territory under the command of his lieutenant, Francisco Bermúdez. Morales killed all civilians in Aragua; altogether 3,700 patriots lost their lives in the battle of Aragua de Barcelona, and 1,011 royalists.58 Most of the casualties were Venezuelans, a further commentary on the war to the death. Hunting and killing refugees on the way, Morales made for Barcelona, which he entered on 20 August.

  Boves reached Cumaná in October and quickly occupied it, beginning another reign of terror and the final destruction of the second republic. A thousand victims were slain in this city alone, including many of the unfortunate families who had fled from Caracas. The eastern caudillos now began to dispute with western officers and among themselves. Mariño had wanted to evacuate Cumaná and concentrate resistance in Margarita or Güiria. Ribas insisted that the patriots should hold Cumaná at all costs. He won the argument but Cumaná was not exactly a prize, for the royalists already had it in their sights and the patriot leaders fled further east, together with most of the inhabitants. Maturín was the next target. There Bermúdez wanted to keep the patriot forces in defensive posture, while Ribas insisted on marching out to attack Boves. His opinion prevailed and the patriot army of some three thousand met Boves at Urica with a force twice as large. The patriots were slaughtered and few managed to escape to Maturín. The life of Boves ended in that fatal battle, killed by a patriot lancer, but so did the life of the second republic. It only remained for Morales to mop up in Maturín, which he did with as much cruelty as his former chieftain, and his followers boasted of having raped every woman in the place. It was here that Ribas was taken in flight, shot and dismembered; his head was cooked in oil and taken to Caracas, where it was displayed topped by his red cap.59 By the end of January 1815 the entire province was in the possession of the royalists and independence seemed as far away as ever.

  Bolívar was not an actor in these tragic scenes. When he reached Cumaná on the night of 25 August 1814 he found utter confusion, civilian refugees, disorganized troops, no supplies and no possibility of establishing order or organizing resistance. Once more, as yet another of his constructs collapsed under the dread hand of chaos, he had to decide to leave the republic to its fate. But even escape was difficult.60 The next day he sailed with Mariño for the island of Margarita, carrying the church silver and jewels, which he was obliged to share with the corsair Giovanni Bianchi, the commander of the vessels conducting the evacuation of patriots. There they found another caudillo in control, Manuel Piar, an ambitious mulatto staking out space for himself in eastern Venezuela, who declared the two liberators outlaws. Bolívar was seething and never forgot the affront. They returned to the mainland and, landing at Carúpano on 3 September, found that Ribas too had turned rival and declared them deserters of the republic, making himself supreme chief of the west and Piar supreme chief of the east. He arrested Mariño and forced Bolívar to turn over the remaining boxes of church wealth and the supplies on their ships. He then allowed them to board their vessel and sail to Cartagena, one of his last acts b
efore his own undoing. It was painful for the Liberator to fail and flee yet again.

  Before sailing he issued his ‘Manifesto of Carúpano’, in which he defended himself and explained the failure of the second republic, a moving document expressing his sense of helplessness and determination, his failure and his defiance.61 He deplored the divisions in American society that caused so many to reject their liberators. ‘It appears that heaven, to our humiliation and glory, has determined that our conquerors shall be our brothers and that only our brothers shall triumph over us.’ The army of liberation might destroy the enemy, but, as Bolívar insisted, it could not force men to be free. How could political philosophy, he asked, prevail over vice and greed? ‘The choice of liberty over ambition and avarice, and with it our fate, lay in the hands of our compatriots who were deluded and pronounced against us.’ Look for the original source of all misfortune – human frailty. ‘To expect politics and war to march in step with our plans is like seeking to achieve, through human resources, results attainable only by a divine power.’ He accepted that he was not blameless and was the ill–fated instrument of the country’s miseries, but while his conscience may have advised him wrongly or ineffectively it had never been party to wilful error or act of malice. Let the supreme congress of New Granada be his judge. ‘I swear to you that as Liberator, alive or dead, I will always be worthy of the honour you have accorded me; nor is there any human power on earth which can hold back the course which I have set for myself– to return a second time, by that western road already drenched with so much blood and adorned with so many laurels, to make you free.’ But for now the western road was closed.

  Exit and Exile

  On his journey across the Caribbean, Bolívar’s morale was undiminished. Beaten and banished in the east, he was still held in respect in New Granada, and in Cartagena, where he arrived on 19 September 1814, he promptly took up residence in the palace of the absent bishop. He himself was still a general and Liberator and as such held senior military rank; he was expected to play a leading part, as yet undefined, in a country divided into rival factions and a weak confederation. Within a month he was moving up the Magdalena River towards the seat of congress in Tunja, when he met the troops of General Urdaneta, who had fought his way out of western Venezuela and was also on his way to Tunja apparently on a rival mission. Urdaneta’s troops broke ranks and presented themselves to Bolívar with cries of ‘Viva el Libertador!’ Urdaneta had to accept the inevitable, and Bolívar to hail and also to rebuke the troops, which he did in memorable words:

  Soldiers! You have filled my heart with joy. But at what cost? At the cost of discipline, of subordination, which is the first virtue of every soldier. Your chief is the distinguished General Urdaneta; and he deplores as I do the excess to which your love has led you. Soldiers! Do not repeat these acts of disobedience. If you love me, prove it by your loyalty and discipline and submission to your chief. I am only a soldier who comes to offer his services to this sister nation. For all of us our native land is America; our enemies are the Spaniards; our ensign is independence and liberty.62

  They escorted him into Tunja on 22 November, where he gave an account to congress of the rise and fall of the second Venezuelan republic and received the warm support of its president, Camilo Torres. ‘The congress of New Granada will give you its protection because it is satisfied with your record. You may have been an unlucky soldier but you are a great man.’63 He was appointed captain–general of the Colombia State Federation and given command of all troops with a mission to bring Cundinamarca into the union and Cartagena to heel. But Bolívar needed New Granada for another mission – to recover Venezuela. Could he reconcile the two?

  After the capture and exile of Nariño, who opposed the confederation and preferred a strong central government, Cundinamarca was governed by Manuel Bernardo Alvarez, a political incompetent and religious fanatic who refused to accept the union. Bolívar marched his troops up to Santa Fe de Bogotá and offered conciliation, but Alvarez rejected this and launched criminal accusations against Bolívar and the Venezuelan troops, declaring for good measure that they were excommunicated from the Church. Alvarez and his clerical allies allowed their political prejudices and poor information to make them look fools when one week they excommunicated Bolívar for coming to sack churches and rape virgins, and exonerated him the next as a good and faithful Catholic. What a farce, thought Bolívar. In repudiating the accusations, he denied that he ever intended to declare war to the death in his approach to Santa Fe, ‘nor will I ever do so in this peaceful country, where the Spaniards have behaved very differently than in Venezuela’.64 But his troops were forced to fight their way into Santa Fe street by street until, on 12 December 1814, they were able to occupy the city. Bolívar could rightly claim that he had come as a liberator and a unifier.

  The congress moved from Tunja to Santa Fe in January 1815 and became the union congress; it then named Bolívar captain–general of the union armies and approved his plans for the defence of the frontiers and invasion of Venezuela. His own message to congress was a plea for unity and solidarity against external threats and the enemy within: if so far we have experienced horror and disaster ‘it is through our own fault and not the power of the enemy’. ‘Let us persuade the people that this half of the globe belongs to those whom God has ordained to be born here and not to transatlantic defectors who wish to establish here the tyranny they are leaving at home.’65 The most urgent task for Bolívar was the security of the Atlantic front, where the Spaniards possessed a vital bridgehead, and the stability of Cartagena, where Castillo was stirring up trouble. He liberated Ocaña and Mompós, but before he could reach the last Spanish base at Santa Marta he was fatally diverted.

  The stubborn refusal of Cartagena to accept the authority of Bolívar or of any central institution, and the personal animosity of its commander, Colonel Manuel del Castillo, trapped the Liberator in a civil war. For six weeks from Mompós he tried negotiation and conciliation, but it became obvious that Castillo would never cooperate with a man whom he personally disliked, considered an invader of his space and scorned as an inferior strategist who wasted the military resources of New Granada on wild adventures in Venezuela. Against his better judgement Bolívar agreed with his military colleagues to lay siege to Cartagena and on 27 March he established his headquarters in the monastery of La Popa on the hill overlooking the city. He took measures to secure his supply routes and Castillo countered by having La Popa’s water reservoir poisoned; while Castillo’s military sorties failed, Bolívar’s army was disappearing through desertions. This was a battle neither side could win: the only victor would be the royalists. As Bolívar fought to bring Cartagena within the mainstream of the revolution, the royalists were able to recover lost ground in the Magdalena valley and open a gap through which the republic could be invaded. Bolívar agonized. He signed a peace pact with Castillo, resigned his commission – something he had been trying to do since March – and, despairing of resolving New Granada’s problems, left for Jamaica. A Spanish expedition under General Pablo Morillo landed at Santa Marta in July 1815. Cartagena maintained a suicidal resistance to a siege that lasted a hundred days, and was finally occupied on 6 December. The town was dead, its streets and houses were littered with corpses, and the few patriots still alive were butchered by the royalists. Castillo was taken and executed.

  Bolívar departed in a vessel belonging to the English merchant Maxwell Hyslop and reached Jamaica on 14 May 1815. Before embarking he took a rueful leave of his soldiers, lamenting the campaign they had been forced to wage, not against the tyrants but against their own countrymen; yet while he had to leave the decisive action, they were to continue the struggle for freedom and on them depended the republic.66 The lesson he took with him was clear: they were defeated not by Spaniards but by Americans. ‘In New Granada,’ he wrote, ‘the excessive powers of the provincial governments and the lack of centralization in the federal government have reduced that fair country to
its present state. For this reason its enemies, though weak, have been able to hold out against all expectations.’67 America needed strong, not liberal, government.

  The years 1813–15, the time of the Admirable Campaign in Venezuela, victories in New Granada, and the triumph of the counter–revolution, were another chapter in the history of Bolívar’s personal progress and public frustration. His own analysis pointed to an inescapable conclusion: when he personally imposed his policies and projects they worked. His success stopped when other interests intervened, and creole hostility and caudillo rivalry crowded in to obstruct him. The caudillos presented the next challenge. So far, glory was his, but power remained beyond his reach.