Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

We left off last time with Simón Bolívar convening the Congress of Angostura in February 1819 and setting it to work drafting a constitution for what they all called the Republic of Colombia. A republic that they claimed covered all of the old Viceroyalty of New Granada. And for the moment, this was a laughably grandiose proclamation. The Republic as such was little more than a loosely knit together collection of armies led by quarrelsome caudillos, entering into a rickety chain of command, with a headquarters tucked away deep in the Venezuelan interior. Caracas and the Venezuelan coast remained in royalist hands, and the entirety of New Granada continued to live under a restored viceregal regime that had been in place since General Pablo Morillo had arrived way back in 1816. But despite the apparent fantasy of it all, Simón Bolívar was about to audaciously bend reality to fit the fantasy. Gran Colombia would be a thing. Of that, for some reason, Bolívar was positive. 

Despite Bolívar’s closing statement to the Congress that his work was done, one of the first things the Congress did was elect Bolívar President of the Republic. But everybody understood that he would focus almost exclusively on the war, and the actual business of civilian government would be left in the somewhat capable hands of a long-exiled New Granadan intellectual named Francisco Antonio Zea. Now, Zea is an interesting guy who’s actually been around quite a bit, and he offers a different perspective on the events that we’ve covered so far. So before we head back out to war with Bolívar, let’s go back and do Francisco Antonio Zea. 

At 53 years old, Zea was positively ancient compared to his fellow revolutionaries. Bolívar himself was still just 35. Santiago Mariño was 31. José Antonio Páez was just 29. Santander was 27. Born in New Granada shortly after the revolt of the Comuneros, Zea started in seminary, but his liberal curiosity got the better of him, and he moved to Bogotá to study secular law. He emerged from university in 1789 as a professor of philosophy, but his liberal curiosity then landed him in big trouble. He was a member of that little enlightened social circle that surrounded Antonio Nariño, and when Nariño published the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1794, Zea was amongst those arrested, and he was shipped off back to Spain, where he spent two years in the same Cádiz prison that would eventually swallow the bones of Francisco de Miranda 20 years later. Zea was paroled in 1796 and then pardoned in 1798, but the authorities barred him from returning to the Americas. So, trapped in Europe, Zea’s curiosity then took him in a scientific direction, and he got himself appointed to a scientific mission to France in 1799.

So arriving in France on the eve of Bonaparte’s coup of Brumaire, Zea witnessed firsthand the hopeful dawning of an enlightened end to the chaos of revolution. And he became an admirer of Bonaparte and a confirmed Francophile, seeing in the French the polar opposite of the medieval ignorance of the Spanish. He finally returned to Spain in 1803, and now a somewhat renowned scientist and intellectual, Zea was appointed head of the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid. But his French connections and worldview were very strong now. And when the abdications of Bayonne hit in 1808, Zea was one of the 85 deputies selected by Napoleon to rubber-stamp the transfer of power to Joseph Bonaparte. Zea was then rewarded with a provincial governorship, and he loyally served the French regime until the end. So through the whole of the Peninsular War, Zea was on the other side. When Napoleon’s Empire started imploding in 1814, Zea fled back to France. 

Instead of remaining in Europe, though, for the final collapse of Imperial France, Zea decided it was time to return home after 20 years of exile. Now I lose track of him for a little bit, and I’m not sure where exactly he landed, but the next time I can nail him down is 1816 when he shows up in Haiti to join Bolívar’s little band of revolutionary caudillos who were gathering under the patronage of Alexandre Pétion. So Zea was amongst those who traveled back with everybody to Venezuela in March of 1816.

But Zea was an intellectual, not a soldier. So though he was respected, he was not exactly a force to be reckoned with in a company where the number of scars you had counted for more than the number of books you had read. But he was also something of an acceptable neutral party between all the caudillos. And after Bolívar had been sent back into exile following his disaster at Ocumare, Zea was the one who made the trip back to Haiti at the end of 1816 to tell the Liberator, “Come back. We actually do still need you.” 

After Bolívar and company successfully captured Angostura in the summer of 1817, Zea was then dispatched on a mission to London to assist in the recruitment of British legionaries, and so he was amongst those running around painting happy little trees for would-be recruits. But then rumors started filtering back home that Zea was overstepping his bounds, taking out unauthorized loans, and possibly embezzling money. So Bolívar recalled him to Angostura. But obviously, there were no hard feelings because upon his return, Bolívar made Zea an editor-in-chief of a new patriotic newspaper that had been started to promote the Republic. And that was the job that Zea held until his election to Vice President of the Republic in February 1819, which, as it would turn out, was an office worth quite a bit more than a bucket of warm spit. Because when Bolívar rode off to resume his grand war of liberation, Zea became the de facto president of the Republic. But though there was something pleasantly respectable about a civilian running the government, it would not be long before the caudillos, who even Bolívar had trouble keeping in line, would begin looking sideways at the bookworm in Angostura telling them how to do their jobs. Especially once the rumors started filtering back that Simón Bolívar was dead. 

After issuing some final instructions to the eastern caudillos, Mariño and Bermúdez and those guys, Bolívar gathered up a company of about 300 newly arrived British legionaries and headed west up the Orinoco River in the direction of the western Llanos and the army of José Antonio Páez. Now, the relationship between Páez and Bolívar was critical to the success of the revolution, but that relationship was complicated. Páez was simultaneously deferential and insubordinate. He continued to act like Bolívar’s orders were mere recommendations to be taken under advisement. But he did not budge from his belief that Bolívar was the right man to be El Jefe Supremo. So, for example, in the summer of 1818, after Bolívar had returned to Angostura following his disastrous attempt to take Caracas, that was all the stuff we talked about last time, elements in Páez’s command, most especially a few of the newly arrived British officers, tried to orchestrate a coup to make Páez El Jefe Supremo and send Bolívar to his fifth and hopefully final exile. But Páez wouldn’t have it. And at Bolívar’s order, he tossed the principal British agitator in jail and then deported him from the country. 

So though Páez took Bolívar’s orders under advisement, he did follow them when he agreed with the orders. And after departing for Angostura, Bolívar ordered the Lion of the Apure to avoid any major battles with General Morillo’s royalist army until Bolívar came back, and Páez complied. He followed this order even as Morillo marched on Páez’s headquarters in the city of San Fernando. Refusing to fight but also refusing to let Morillo take the city, Páez ordered San Fernando burned to the ground and then withdrew with his men out into the open plains. Morillo later said that when he saw the flames rising from San Fernando, he pretty much lost all hope of ever winning the war. How do you fight an enemy that simply does not care about living naked out in the wilderness if they have to? Páez then continued to avoid any set engagements while harassing Morillo mercilessly with guerrilla attacks. And the only thing Morillo really has going for him here is that he was a veteran of the Peninsular War, and so he was well acquainted with guerrilla tactics, and he had some idea how to deflect them. He kept his men together, he prevented anyone from getting isolated. He maintained strong defensible positions and tried not to take any obvious bait. But it was hard, and it was demoralizing, and it was exhausting. And General Morillo’s request to be relieved continued apace. 

So those things were going according to his instructions, when Bolívar reached Páez’s headquarters finally in March 1819, his first question was, “Where do you and your men stand? Are you with me or what?” Páez said, “Yes, we are with you. Nothing has changed.” “Okay, good. Let’s get back to it.” So reported troop strength numbers fluctuate a lot, depending on the source you read, but combined, Bolívar and Páez currently led somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 men. And though they would ultimately disagree about where this year’s campaign was headed, they once again agreed that attacking General Morillo was the obvious opening move. And at the moment, Morillo was headquartered at a spot called Las Queseras del Medio. And again, numbers are difficult to establish, and in total, Morillo commanded somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 men, but how many were actually there with him is unclear to me. In fact, picking through the details of what happened next has been pretty tricky in general, because accounts differ and provide different significant details. But it’s a pretty big moment in the wars, so I’m pretty sure that this is how things unfolded. 

On April 2, 1819, Bolívar granted Páez permission to launch an attack on Morillo’s forces. But the ever-daring Páez only rode off with 150 men – one, five, o. He broke his men up into small squadrons to ride around, kicking up dust to make sure it seemed like the whole republican army was on the move. Now, Morillo was probably tricked into thinking that more than just 150 men were on the way, but he was by now fully aware of Páez’s standard hit and run tactics, and so Morillo was at least prepared for that when it came. And in fact, he laid a pretty careful trap. When the dust clouds were reported, Morillo mobilized about a thousand cavalrymen and arrayed them at the far wings of his army with the infantry and heavy guns in the center. When Páez’s llaneros charged in for the hit, Morillo launched his own cavalry on a diagonal line to cut off the run. So this started out according to plan for both sides. Páez came charging in for the hit and then turned around for the run. But now an overwhelming cavalry force was threatening to close off their escape. So Páez ordered one of his best officers, a guy named Juan José Rondón, to wheel around with a small company and charge headlong back into the center of the royalist infantry. And this had the intended effect. The royalist cavalry wings took the bait and collapsed in on Rondón’s little band, while Páez and the rest of his llaneros were able to keep riding away. But just before he was fully enveloped, Rondón and his men broke off their attack, wheeled around again, and then burst through the last little sliver of daylight. With the royalist cavalry now ramming into each other and the infantry, everything in their lines devolved into a tangled mess of confusion. When Páez saw all the disarray, he gave the most famous order of his career. Now, the official sanitized version is that he yelled “¡Vuelvan caras!,” or “About face!,” but historians make it far more likely that he yelled “¡Vuelve a carajo!,” which has a few literal ways it can be translated, but my Spanish-speaking friends on Twitter think I can go with “Go back, goddamn it.” And yes, you can come find me on Twitter at @mikeduncan. It’s actually way easier to get a hold of me there than by email.

Anyway, after yelling “Go back, goddamn it!”, all 150 of his men wheeled around and charged headlong back into the disorganized mess of royalists. With confusion reigning and believing that they were well and truly under attack by the whole republican army, the royalists all panicked. The cavalry just rode off, leaving the infantry to fend for themselves and understandably spooked, the infantry then broke and fled in all directions, just trying to get out of this alive. When the dust finally cleared, upwards of 500 Spaniards lay dead, and all their heavy artillery pieces were just sitting around waiting to be picked up. Having beaten a force that was at a minimum ten times larger than his own, the Lion of the Apure lost two dead and six wounded. In the aftermath of the battle, General Morillo sent back a report stating that he had been attacked by at least 700 men, and it’s not clear whether he believed that or was exaggerating to cover his butt, as Generals throughout history have been wont to do. 

The two sides then spent the rest of April and May 1819 waging an indecisive war of skirmishes. Bolívar desperately wanted to deliver one more decisive blow before moving on, but Morillo wasn’t having it, and he refused to be baited into a battle. This was frustrating because the rainy season was starting to set in, and Bolívar couldn’t afford to wait much longer to execute the plan that he had been keeping secret for months — a surprise invasion of New Granada. But the final piece of that secret plan finally fell into place at the end of May when he got a letter from Francisco de Paula Santander, and Bolívar knew it was time to move on. 

So, backing up a little bit, after Bolívar and Páez and Santander had gone their separate ways in the summer of 1818, with Bolívar going back to Angostura and Páez staying in the Venezuelan Llanos, Santander had crossed back over into New Granada to recruit men, and most especially, gather intelligence on the state of affairs and whether New Granada could even be taken by an invasion. After nine months of work, Santander finally wrote back to Bolívar to say, yes, New Granada is ripe for the plucking. Come on over. And though Santander is not exactly an unbiased observer, I mean, he wants Bolívar to invade New Granada, he wasn’t wrong. Remember, General Morillo had brought most of his own army back into Venezuela, leaving behind a small core of peninsular soldiers to manage things with the help of some local militia. Santander was able to report that these forces were not exactly crack units. They were underpaid, under-supplied, and very low on morale. And then, just in general, the viceroy that Morillo had reinstalled in Bogotá believed that harsh repression was the most effective means to bring the country back into line. Morillo counseled ruling with a lighter hand, but the viceroy wanted no part of it, and Bogotá had become a repressive hub of summary executions, property confiscation, and just general maltreatment of the locals. Whether they were diehard patriots or not, the people of New Granada did not like the new viceregal regime. All of this Santander jubilantly reported to Bolívar. 

So Bolívar now made his move. On May 23, 1819, he called his senior officers for a small council of war in the town of Setenta. There, using cattle skulls for chairs, Bolívar revealed his plan. They would march across the Llanos, up into the mountains of New Granada, surprise the royalists, and seize Bogotá. Now, this is Bolívar at his most recklessly daring. Remember, this is the beginning of the wintry rainy season, and already the Llanos were filling with water from rains that never ceased. The mountains would be more of the same, except everything would be freezing cold to boot. Now was the time to retire for the winter, not literally march into some of the steepest mountains in the world, but Bolívar believed that it could be done. And more importantly, if it were done, it would be a strategic masterstroke. 

Now, his plan was inspired both by the recent example of José de San Martín, who had just liberated Chile with his own surprise invasion through the Andes, and also by the most famous general in history. Because it goes without saying that Bolívar was well-versed in the life and career of Hannibal. And if you guys remember from back in the History of Rome, Hannibal always preferred difficult terrain to the fortunes of a battle not of his choosing. His own march through the Alps in terrible weather is legendary. But even more impressive was that time he marched three days through a supposedly impenetrable swamp to split the legions and surprise the Romans at their rear. That was when he lost his eye.

Taking an army into the mountains now was brilliant because it was insane. General Morillo suspected Bolívar’s ultimate intention was to invade New Granada, but there was plenty of time to prepare for that because it’s not like they were going to leave tomorrow. And as for the royalist forces in New Granada, well, it quite rightly did not even occur to them that an invasion might be coming from Venezuela, which was Bolívar’s point. His officers agreed that it was crazy. But doable. 

The only dissenter to all this was Páez, which drove Bolívar crazy because Páez had actually been the first man Bolívar had confided his plans to. And he seemed at the time to have been in full agreement. But now that it was actually before him, the Centaur of the Plains did not want to leave the plains, and you can’t really blame him. Half-naked cowboys who ride around in grasslands are not exactly well-suited for frozen, steep, mountainous terrain. But though furious at the perceived betrayal, Bolívar once again recognized that he could not risk losing a staring contest to Páez. So Bolívar compromised. He ordered Páez to take up a position at Cúcuta, which was still on the other side of the border in New Granada and still off the Llanos. But rather than participating in the full invasion, Páez would watch the rear and make sure that Morillo did not follow. To this, Páez agreed, and he also further agreed to let some of his men go with Bolívar, including the hero of Las Queseras del Medio, Juan José Rondón. But even with this compromise in place, Páez still continued to take Bolívar’s orders under mere advisement. And after Bolívar rode away, Páez turned around and headed east. He never would go to Cúcuta. 

On May 26, 1819, Bolívar set out with 2,100 men divided into four infantry battalions and three cavalry squadrons. Also in the mix were various noncombatant auxiliaries, including families of some of the men, especially from among the 300 or so British legionaries who, as I said, had signed up for service in South America as much to try to start a new life there as to go on some grand military adventure. And one of the women present was, I kid you not, nine months pregnant. I don’t know her name, but we’ll get to her in a second. Now, no one was told what the ultimate destination was going to be because Bolívar quite rightly feared mass desertion. 

Now, before they could even begin the grueling march up into the mountains, they had to get to the mountains. So Bolívar pointed them in the direction of Tame on the other side of the border in New Granada, where Santander was waiting with his own small army. But Tame was over 250 miles away, and by now the rains were nonstop and torrential. As I mentioned a few times, during the dry season, the Llanos is bone dry, but during the rainy season, everything floods. So this is not a time to go out marching. But the only way to get from here to there was to march from here to there. In the best of conditions, this meant slogging through thick mud that enveloped their feet and their carts and their horses and their animals. Worse conditions meant wading through standing water up to their knees and then up to their waists. The worst conditions meant literally swimming alongside improvised leather boats that held their gear. And always it rained and always there were bugs. Animals died, supplies, guns, and carts were abandoned if they became immovable, and even if this all hadn’t ended with a march through the mountains, this march through the wintry Llanos rain would have been impressive all on its own. Just before the army crossed the border into New Granada, Bolívar finally revealed to his men what this was all about, that this was, in fact, the beginning of the invasion of New Granada. And by this point, the only way out was forward. 

Finally, in the last week of June, the beleaguered army hit dry ground as the grasslands gave way to the foothills at the base of the mountains, and they successfully linked with Santander’s forces at Tame. The men were given a week to recuperate from their long march through the flooded plains. But on July 1, 1819, it was back to it. And now the going was going to get really tough. 

The small army traveled west as the crow flies, but mostly they went up, up, up, up. The rains never stopped, except now. Instead of mud and floodwater, it was all slick rocks and iced-over paths that ran along narrow ravines. And it’s not like these guys had gone to REI to get outfitted for the ascent. They were poor peasant soldiers. These guys were marching barefoot. They marched in tattered rags that could only charitably be called a uniform. As they struggled up the mountain, the strong started to carry the weak, and Bolívar personally carried men broken from whatever combination of hunger and fatigue, sickness or injury had taken them down. Many just didn’t make it. They dropped dead, and everyone else just kept walking up, up, up, because you can’t go back now. They would hit torrential creeks, raging from winter rain, and have to cross in a single-file line, with each person holding the hand of the man in front of them and behind them, forming a human chain until they all reached the other side. They would reach chasms that could only be crossed by stringing a rope between the trees and fixing improvised leather hammocks to take men and women across one by one. And eventually, they crested 13,000 feet as they wound their way around the tallest peaks, hypothermia set in. And even if you wanted to stop, you couldn’t because you would just freeze to death. 

On July 3, on the third day of the climb, that pregnant woman I mentioned, she gave birth. Now, as the father of two small children, I’ve just been through all of this, and frankly, I consider the woman’s presence on the march to be insane already. But then, on top of that insanity, right now, in the middle of all this, she gives birth. The next day, Bolívar spotted her with a newborn strapped to her chest under a blanket as she just kept walking. Now, I have no idea what happened to her because after this, she just disappears from the record, but I have to say, of everything I’ve talked about over the whole course of the show, all of it, everyone, this unnamed woman giving birth in the middle of this deadly, treacherous hike, it might be the single most badass moment I’ve ever heard of. I mean, my god, this isn’t something I’m making up. This actually happened. 

On July 6, after six days of marching, the bedraggled little army finally hit a safe oasis, the town of Soacha, about 150 miles northeast of Bogotá. The residents there had been alerted that this liberating army was doing this insane thing and rushed out to their aid. They brought food and blankets and water and gave them fire, literally the essentials of life, to save these men and women who had done this crazy, reckless, brave thing. But there was one upside to all this. The royalist forces had no idea that they were there. They had no garrisons even remotely close, and no prearranged plan for how to deal with an invasion right now in all this crappy weather in July 1819. Bolívar’s men were all half-dead. But to a certain degree, they had the enemy right where they wanted them. 

Now, as he himself struggled up the mountains, Francisco de Paula Santander was able to observe Bolívar’s relentless energy, his courage, and genuine compassion for the men who were following him. Now, as with Páez, Bolívar and Santander had a complicated relationship and, for example, Santander had never gotten over that time Bolívar threatened to shoot him right at the beginning of the Admirable campaign six years earlier. But here Santander was blown away by Bolívar’s resolve, his determination, and his genuine spirit of patriotic unity. I mean, all that talk of everyone being in this together was one thing when Bolívar was trying to convince New Granadans to come help him liberate his home country of Venezuela, but now Bolívar was showing the same relentless resolve the other way. He was leading Venezuelans to liberate New Granada, and Bolívar then wasted no time making sure that their shared sacrifice was not all in vain. He immediately began planning the next stage of the campaign, and Santander later said,

“Here is where this man distinguishes himself above the rest, exhibiting extraordinary resolve and energy. In three days, he remounts and arms the cavalry, musters ammunition, reassembles the army, then sends out patrols, energizes the citizens, and plans an all-out attack.”

Now, even though Santander and Bolívar would spend as much time in conflict with each other as in partnership, at this moment Santander came to realize that whatever else he thought about Bolívar, Bolívar’s shtick was not empty vanity; he was the real deal. 

By now, word was spreading that this republican army had appeared out of nowhere, and the ranking Spanish General, a guy named José María Barreiro, quickly mustered what forces he could, ultimately about 4,000 men, to put them between Bolívar’s army and Bogotá.

Now, after the dead were subtracted and new recruits added, Bolívar was now leading an army of about 2,600 men, and near the end of July, they were on the move towards Bogotá. On July 25, they finally ran into the royalists at Pantano de Vargas, literally the Vargas Swamp, a region of swampy marshes rimmed by low hills, and General Barreiro was able to occupy those hills with his royalist forces, which gave him two essential advantages: he both outnumbered Bolívar and held the high ground, and this is usually game, set, match. But Bolívar, of course, decided to launch a full frontal assault right into the teeth of this. When things, quite predictably, started going badly for the republicans, their left flank was being turned to disarray, the British legionary stepped into the breach and held back any finishing blow, which gave just enough time for Juan José Rondón, the hero of Las Queseras del Medio, to lead the cavalry on a furious charge up into the high ground wielding nothing but spears and machetes. They crashed into the shocked royalist line just as heavy rain started to fall. The royalist soldiers had been preparing for a long winter of sitting around doing nothing, not, you know, standing here in the rain being attacked by machete-wielding crazy people from Venezuela. They completely caved, broke, and fled. Santander later reported that the Battle of Pantano de Vargas had been won by the calm of the British and the intensity of the llaneros. 

In the aftermath of his defeat at the Vargas Swamp, though, the royalist General Barreiro made a critical decision. He decided to lie his head off to the viceroy about the battle. He sent a dispatch assuring the viceroy that the republicans had been beaten soundly and that everything was well in hand. Now, what I’m guessing here is that Barreiro did this for two reasons. First, he did not want to provoke a panic in Bogotá that might trigger a patriotic insurrection. And second, he wanted to buy himself some time to regroup, catch Bolívar, and deliver the crushing blow he now already claimed had been delivered. But that’s not how things are going to go. Instead, this lie would set the stage for the decisive battle of the campaign, the battle that to this very day marks the beginning of true independence for Colombia: the Battle of Boyaca. 

On August 7, 1819, the two sides were maneuvering around Tunja, once the capital of the now-defunct Union of New Granada. Bolívar’s forces still numbered about 2,600, Barreiro’s about 2,800. But as the royalists moved around Tunja, trying to get onto the main road back to Bogotá, they split in two, with an advanced guard approaching a key bridge over the Boyaca River and a rear guard about a mile behind them. Now, Bolívar had posted a small cavalry unit near the bridge to keep an eye on things. And when this advanced guard approached and saw that little unit, they thought it was the only small unit in the area. But Bolívar’s entire army was just behind a hill, out of sight. So these two little cavalry units skirmished against each other. But when the republican forces fell back, they fell back not out of sight, but into the waiting embrace of a much larger force led by Santander. The royalist vanguard realized they had made a mistake, that a much larger army was right around the corner. But then they made another mistake. Rather than racing back to reunite with the rear of the army, they raced forward to capture the Boyaca Bridge. Now, this seemed like a good idea at the time, hold the critical bridge, but it split the royalist army in two, and the force led by Santander was hot on their heels. And so, yes, they took the bridge and got to the other side, but now they were pinned down there and cut off from their comrades.

Meanwhile, the rest of Bolívar’s army came pouring out around the hill. They located the royalist rear guard strung out along the road and hit them from all sides. Bolívar ordered the British legionaries to attack the front of the royalists. Rondón and the llaneros rode around the back and hit them from the rear. And then Bolívar ordered everyone else on a bayonet charge right into their center. General Barreiro’s forces were hit from three sides simultaneously by a surprise attack. All told, the Battle of Boyaca lasted no more than 2 hours, and it was a complete republican victory. General Barreiro himself was cornered and captured, as were 1,600 of his men. Another 500 lay dead, and the rest just scattered. There was now quite literally no royalist army within 500 miles of Bogotá. The question now was not whether the republicans would take the capital, but whether they would capture the viceroy in the process. 

They nearly did capture the viceroy, but about 50 of the men who had been pinned down by Santander at the bridge managed to get away. They raced for Bogotá to raise the alarm. Now, the city had no idea anything was even remotely amiss. The viceroy was, in fact, sitting around having dinner when a messenger burst in and told him the enemy was victorious and nothing was standing between them and Bogotá. After getting over his shock, the viceroy had no time to do anything but just run. His attendants dressed him up like a peasant, and he snuck out of town. Bolívar would later send agents out looking for him, but the viceroy was never located, and he never stopped running either. He wound up making it all the way to Cartagena, and then he immediately got on a ship and sailed back to Spain, never to return. 

Meanwhile, Bolívar was on a race of his own. With the smoke at Boyaca barely cleared, he was off like a shot at full gallop to close the 100 miles or so to Bogotá. And when he arrived in the city, he found himself greeted by bewildered citizens. I mean, less than 12 hours ago, they had been under the impression that whatever small invading force that had come up through the mountains had been beaten, and that was if they knew anything about any of this at all. And instead, what? General Bolívar is here, and he’s won? The viceroy is gone? And then Bolívar discovered just how close he had come to capturing the viceroy. There were literally still bags of money on his desk just left behind in the rush. The treasury was full. The munitions depot were stocked. This was a complete victory on all fronts.

But Bolívar had been in the dark himself about a lot of what had gone on in New Granada. And when he greeted men that he had known from the last time he had passed through Bogotá in 1815, he asked around for the others. “Where’s President Camilo Torres, the man who supported me in my darkest hours?” He was dead. His head had been chopped off and posted on a spike. Or what about this guy? What about that guy? They had all been killed in the aftermath of Morillo’s reconquest. It was a sobering back end to an otherwise jubilant moment. 

Now, since we know how this all turns out, we know that the Battle of Boyaca marks the beginning of Colombian independence, real, permanent independence. There was no guarantee at the time that it would, nor any way that anyone could have known that it would. But it did. Bolívar’s dramatic push into New Granada had fundamentally altered the political and geographic axis of the war. The republicans were no longer confined to a few interior bases, hiding out in Angostura, playing congress. They now controlled a huge stretch of territory reaching from the Orinoco River to Bogotá, and in no time, they would bring all of the interior of New Granada under Republican jurisdiction. It was now the royalists who were confined, restricted to a few ports along the coast, short of men, and now knocked thoroughly back on their heels.

When General Morillo was briefed about what had happened, he wrote a report to the Ministry of War back in Spain and said,

“The rebellious Bolívar has occupied the capital of Bogotá, and the deadly outcome of this battle gives him dominion over the enormous resources of a highly populated, abundantly rich nation, from which he will take whatever he needs to prolong the war. This unfortunate loss delivers into rebel hands, apart from the kingdom of New Granada, many ports in the south, where he will now deploy his pirates, the interior of the continent, all the way to Peru, is at the mercy of whoever rules in Bogotá. In just one day, Bolívar has undone all that we have accomplished in five years of this campaign, and in one single battle, he has reconquered all the territory that soldiers of the King have won in the course of so many past conflagrations.” 

Bolívar then set up shop in the great capital of Bogotá and began putting together the bare bones of a new government to rule New Granada. But it was never his destiny to be a man of laws. And he was itching to get back on his horse to ride triumphantly through liberated New Granada, spreading the good news that they were all free. And most especially, to return to Venezuela to trumpet the success of the invasion. And then return to Angostura to make preparations for the true union of Venezuela and New Granada. To no longer hide on the Orinoco river, but to meet out in the open and in full dignity. So, at the end of September 1819, he appointed Santander, the man who was destined to be the man of laws, vice president of New Granada, and left him the difficult task of organizing a restored republic. And this was truly a job for Santander, always a mediocre soldier at best, who did not fit in easily with the rough men who had been so easily won over by Bolívar. Santander was completely in his element, seated behind a desk, drawing up edicts and reforms and tax codes and an entire political apparatus. And that is where Santander would stay, becoming the founder of modern Colombia, as Bolívar himself left the capital in September 1819.

Next week, the Liberator will return to Venezuela to forge the union of Gran Colombia. But he would discover that in his absence from Venezuela, the tenuous alliances that had held the eastern caudillos together had broken apart. And it would take careful cajoling and careful soothing to bring everyone back together to complete Bolívar’s first and most compelling desire: to liberate Venezuela once and for all.

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