Simon Bolivar

by John Lynch

  The liberators had a further advantage – the enemy’s disarray. For the Spaniards too were subverted by Peru, and they too suffered demoralization and disunity. At the end of 1823 this was not apparent. While Americans fought and failed each other, the royalists consolidated their position. In the north General Canterac commanded an army almost eight thousand strong based on Huancayo. Viceroy La Serna had a thousand men in Cuzco. In Arequipa the army of the south under General Valdés comprised some three thousand. And behind them, in Upper Peru, General Olañeta had a force of four thousand men. These formidable armies were poised to concentrate and move on the Colombians. It was vital that they acted quickly, to anticipate Bolívar’s own build–up, and to avoid the unpopularity which a parasite army of occupation incurred in a lengthy campaign. But at this point the Spanish position was undermined from within. On 1 October 1823 Ferdinand VII, released from constitutional bondage by a French army, abolished the constitution and restored abolutism, provoking in Peru a royalist split between former constitutionalists, La Serna, Canterac and Valdés, and absolutist Olañeta. But this was a struggle for power rather than a conflict of principles.82 At the end of 1823 Olañeta defected, withdrew his military collaboration and established in Upper Peru a crudely conservative regime; with a cry for king and religion, he ousted the constitutional administration and packed the government with his relations and supporters. The royalist hinterland, hitherto one of the viceroy’s most valuable assets, suddenly became a liability. The army of General Valdés was drawn off in a vain attempt to reduce Olañeta. And this diversion prevented the royalists from striking at the Colombians in February or March, when the latter were just beginning to regroup and were extremely vulnerable, inferior in numbers, weapons and resources.

  Bolívar had long pondered his strategy. Should he attack, anticipating his prospects? Or should he defend, wasting his resources? The problem required all his judgement, skill and experience. Delay in receiving intelligence of enemy movements, combined with problems in his own camp, prevented Bolívar from answering this question immediately and from exploiting La Serna’s embarrassment to the full. But once he was aware of the situation he moved, confident that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking the offensive. ‘I am consumed by the demon of war, determined to finish this struggle, one way or the other.’83

  Junín and Ayacucho

  In May 1824 the Liberator led his army forward and upward to Pasco in one of the classic marches of the war of independence, ‘over the most rugged districts, of the most mountainous country in the world, presenting at every step difficulties which in Europe would be considered perfectly insurmountable’.84 As the troops struggled through the labyrinth of valleys and mountains across the cordillera in lands untouched by roads and still occupied by Indian communities, they were tortured by altitude sickness, radiation from the minerals, hazards of the terrain and night temperatures below freezing. Infantry and cavalry had to pick their way in single file along precipitous tracks. They were followed by columns of Indians carrying supplies and equipment, and in the rear driving a three–hundred mule train and herds of cattle as reserve provisions.

  The leadership of Bolívar and the planning of Sucre came together in perfect collaboration in this their most decisive campaign. By the beginning of August, high in the sierra at Cerro de Pasco, the liberators had assembled an army of almost nine thousand; there were men from Caracas, Panama, Quito, Lima, Chile and Buenos Aires, many of them veterans of Maipú, Boyacá, Carabobo and Pichincha. With an inspired sense of occasion, Bolívar reviewed and addressed his troops: ‘soldiers! You are going to free an entire world from slavery, the freedom of the New World is the hope of the universe, you are invincible.’ The ranks resounded with cheers.85 At last, on 6 August, they engaged Canterac on the plateau of Junín, and Bolívar’s proven skill in manoeuvring his army into a favourable position was again on display. It was a sharp and furious battle in which not a single shot was fired; the breathless silence was broken only by the clash of swords and lances and the stamping of the horses. And it was the patriots’ superior cavalry and longer lances that won the day and forced the royalists into flight. ‘The charges of our llaneros’ wrote o’Connor, ‘made the earth tremble.’86 Bolívar slept that night on the battlefield, where 259 of the enemy were killed for the loss of forty–five patriots dead and ninety–nine wounded.

  Victory gave the liberators strategic command of the fruitful valley of Jauja, though the Spanish army was still largely intact and its spirit unquelled. Bolívar had to take steps to raise his own forces to maximum strength and he commissioned Sucre to bring in the lost, the stragglers and the convalescents, a task which he performed correctly but then complained that it had caused him to lose face among his colleagues, and he requested leave to retire. Bolívar knew Sucre as a vain and touchy individual and his reply was tactful but firm: ‘If you think I wanted to insult you then you must have taken leave of your senses. I entrusted the assignment to you believing you could do it better than me, and it was proof of my esteem not of your humiliation. This excessive sensitivity and attention to the gossip of little people is unworthy of you. Glory consists in being great and useful.’ Sucre had second thoughts, and Bolívar subsequently went out of his way to commend the post–Junín exertions of Sucre on behalf of the wounded and the missing, describing him as ‘el general del soldado’.87

  Leaving Sucre as commander–in–chief of the army, with discretion to engage the enemy, Bolívar moved in early October, first to Huancayo, where Manuela awaited him, then to the coast, organizing civil administration as he went, and in December he liberated Lima and received a hero’s welcome. But even after victories Bolívar was never allowed undiluted pleasure. First Sucre, then Santander. In Huancayo, news reached him from Bogotá that congress had passed a law (28 July 1824) revoking Bolívar’s extraordinary powers and transferring them to Santander, giving as their reason that Bolívar had accepted the dictatorship of Peru. Another dispatch from Santander ordered Bolívar to give Sucre command of the Colombian troops.

  The Liberator was enraged by these gratuitous insults but stifled his injured pride, and when he reached the coast he dictated friendly letters to Santander repaying meanness with generosity: he gave news of the successes, thanked him for the troops he had sent, assured him that Sucre already commanded the army and, at Ayacucho, had just won ‘the most brilliant victory of the American war’.88 He played down the loyal protests of Sucre and senior officers and held back from Bogotá their angry petition. There is no doubt that he could have led a revolt against this petty decision, inspired as it was by Santander, but he immediately delegated to Sucre command of the Colombian army. As o’Leary wrote, ‘Bolívar thus gave an example of obedience to the law of his country, when a single word or sign on his part would have been sufficient to gain the wholehearted support of the army and the people of Colombia.’89 But he did not forget the outrage to his leadership or overlook the intervention of Santander; after years of close contact Bolívar ended his private correspondence with the vice–president. And he remained dictator of Peru.

  Meanwhile in the sierra La Serna fought back quickly. Leading the joint forces of Canterac and Valdés, an army of 9,300 with superior weapons and resources, he advanced on Sucre and sought to encircle him, while Sucre manoeuvred his six thousand men out of distance, both sides moving as though choreographed for a spectacle. As a general Sucre was supreme, brave, talented and indefatigable, alert to the details as well as the big picture. He wrote his own dispatches, controlled the espionage, reconnoitred, visited the outposts at all hours, made sure the rations were delivered. He was qualified to lead the last great victory. On 8 December 1824, on the plain of Ayacucho encircled by mountains and itself over ten thousand feet above sea level, the two armies finally confronted each other. Sucre’s advice to his men was terse: ‘Upon your efforts depends the fate of South America.’ Their own fate was also at stake: royalist Indians who had already harassed the patri
ots now waited in the wings to cut them down in the event of their defeat and flight. Lieutenant–Colonel Medina of the Colombian army was killed by the Indians of Huando on his way to Lima with Sucre’s dispatch of the battle.90 But in the battle itself it was the royalists who were defeated, as much, perhaps, by the hopelessness of their cause as by the tactics of Sucre. This last great battle of the American war, fought high in the Andes by troops in brightly coloured uniforms, was a strange anticlimax and casualties were not heavy (sixty–seven on the patriot side), though off the field of battle the Rifles were decimated defending the patriots’ baggage train. Viceroy La Serna was taken prisoner, and on 9 December General Canterac conceded unconditional surrender, on terms that provided for the surrender of all remaining royalist forces in Peru. ‘The battle for Peru is complete: its independence and the peace of America have been established on this battleground.’91 The royalists could conceivably have concentrated all their remaining forces in Peru and Upper Peru and fought yet again. But what were their prospects? They had no hope of reinforcements from Spain, and this perhaps was the most demoralizing knowledge of all.

  Military victory in Peru enabled Bolívar to clarify his political position. He sent his resignation from the presidency to the congress of Colombia; this stunned the assembly into silence, followed by applause for the Liberator, and rejection of his resignation. He ordered the congress of Peru to assemble on 10 February 1825, when he presented his resignation and congratulated Peru on no longer having a dictator. But Peruvians loved a victor and would not let him go: congress immediately conferred on him supreme political and military authority until it next met in 1826. By remaining cool and reasonable Bolívar retained his panoply of power. At the same time he reminded Santander of his place in the hierarchy of the revolution: ‘It is an honour that two of my friends and assistants have emerged as two prodigies. … I am the man of difficulties, you are the man of law, and Sucre is the man of war.’92 The meaning was clear: I am supreme, the one who solves the great problems. I command, you administer.

  On Christmas Day Bolívar proclaimed the great victory: ‘soldiers! The good cause, the cause of the rights of man, has won with your arms the terrible struggle against the oppressors.’ And on 27 December, declaring that ‘this glorious victory is due exclusively to the skill, bravery, and heroism of General in Chief Antonio José de Sucre, the other Generals, Commanders, officers and troops’, he decreed honours for the victors and appointed Sucre Grand Marshal, a Peruvian rank beyond the control of the small minds in Bogotá.93 He was generous in his recognition of the role of Sucre and wrote a paper on his life and achievement, concluding, ‘The battle of Ayacucho is the summit of American glory and the work of General Sucre …. Posterity will represent Sucre with one foot on Pichincha and the other on Potosí.’94 Soon the grand marshal took the war to Upper Peru and Potosí, though it would be another year, after a lengthy and costly siege, before Callao, the port of Lima, capitulated on 23 January 1826.

  ‘These were glorious days in the life of the Liberator,’ o’Leary remarked of the time after Ayacucho, when Colombia and Peru competed in their praises and even his enemies suspended their calumnies.95 Bolívar spent the early part of 1825 in civil administration, applying republican principles of liberty and equality, reforming political, legal, and economic institutions, and establishing a system of schools on the Lancaster model. The Peruvian Congress awarded him one million pesos, which he accepted only on condition it was diverted to charitable works in Venezuela. In Peru he lived like a prince in a country house outside Lima. La Magdalena was his palace, Manuela his lover, Peruvians his admirers, poets his flatterers. Interests and lobbyists came to press their claims, women to enjoy his company, messengers to bring and collect his mail. He loved it all. He was the centre of the world, seduced though not satiated by success. What more could he want? Action and glory in the whole of Latin America, wherever danger led? But his own revolution still called.

  In April he left Lima for Arequipa with a travelling office of political and military aides, and a mobile library including works by Helvetius, Montesquieu, Napoleon, De Pradt and Bentham. But he left Manuela with a heavy heart, accepting the claims of her marriage. Amidst the banquets and balls celebrating his visit he still had time to make his mark as a reforming minister and a dispenser of justice and good government. He also reminded the bishop of his duty to preach republican, not monarchical, principles, so that people would know that religion did not deprive them of their natural rights.96 His civil regime in Peru, however, would have needed an army of Bolivarian bureaucrats to make it work, and in their absence many of the projected reforms were not carried out. As he crossed the cordillera to Cuzco his progress was retarded not only by the effects of the soroche at an altitude of over three thousand metres but by the isolation of the highland departments from the coast; in an effort to improve communications he ordered the construction of three highways into Cuzco and Puno and outlined their routes, but the project was neglected once he had left.

  The ancient capital of the Incas, for Bolívar a monument to a noble history and historic injustice, gave him another hero’s welcome, unsurpassed in ceremonial and generosity, and in turn was the object of enlightened policies towards education, social reform and Indian welfare, in particular the termination of forced service and other inequalities.97 Observers might have drawn two conclusions from Bolívar’s programme in Cuzco. Where vested interests were strong enough to resist innovation – for example the landed elite’s use of Indian labour – the reforms were ignored or diluted. But where traditional institutions, no longer enjoying the prestige and resources of former times, were the targets, modernization could be made to succeed. Thus the republican concept of liberty as opposed to obedience, and state action as distinct from charity, undermined the convents of Cuzco when Bolívar issued decrees for the care of orphans, a state school for boys and a new school for girls, funded from property and income taken from the convents.98 In Bolívar’s view of the world there were losers as well as winners. And from the sierra his view of Peru was now more benign. After two years of turmoil he wrote to his close friend Fernando de Peñalver: ‘At present this country is more peaceful than Colombia, and it has admirable respect and gratitude for its liberators.’99 He also had time to criticize an ode written by the Ecuadorian poet José Joaquín Olmedo, and to advise him to take Alexander Pope as his model, whose translation of the Iliad the Liberator seems to have known.100

  From Cuzco and its historic sites he travelled south through further landmarks of the Inca empire to Puno and Lake Titicaca, and in early August he set out on his final journey of liberation. General Sucre came to meet him in Zepita and together they crossed the Desaguadero into Upper Peru.

  *The 1st Rifles, the British unit that had fought for Bolívar since 1818.

  Chapter 9

  THE MAN OF PROBLEMS

  Across the Desaguadero

  Liberation was a rolling enterprise. One conquest succeeded another from Venezuela onwards, and a further target was always in sight. In these serial campaigns Bolívar could use his talents for big thinking and detailed improvisation, and exercise an indomitable will. Under his direction, the revolution moved on, fifteen years of slow but sure advance against the Spanish empire. Yet there was a limit to the boundaries of liberation, an end to the enemy armies. The last victory stopped the charge forward, and as the liberators reined in and looked around they saw not Spaniards but Americans. The scene changed from liberation to reconstruction. State building too was within the Liberator’s competence, and another stage for glory, but the enemies were new and their challenges different. It was a cruel fate that in the world he had created no one was his equal, anyone his critic. In describing himself to Santander as ‘el hombre de las dificultades’, he forecast the course of the year 1826, the end of the revolution and the beginning of post–war problems, his problems.

  The last Spanish army of occupation took its stand in Upper Peru. It had beaten off
attempts by Buenos Aires to export the May Revolution, the liberal doctrines of which did not appeal to creoles reluctant to subvert a society in which they were vastly outnumbered by Indians. Resistance was kept alive by mestizo guerrilla bands who fought not so much for national independence as for freedom from outside control, whether Spanish or Argentine; before 1819 they had not even heard of Bolívar.1 The Indians, unlike creoles and mestizos, took sides not for individual motives but in conformity with traditional allegiances, whether these were royalist or guerrilla chieftains, and their preference was to avoid the war, from which they had nothing to gain. While the peninsular leaders were fighting Bolívar in Lower Peru, the Spanish forces were left under the command of tough creole officers who supported the Spanish cause. The majority of the creole elite also supported that cause, or at least did not challenge it. When, in 1823, General Santa Cruz, a mestizo from La Paz and himself a former royalist, invaded Upper Peru, he sensed the lack of support for liberation and, surrounded by royalist forces, he quickly retreated.