Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

The Battle of Boyaca was, for once, an indisputable and permanent triumph for Simón Bolívar. He had been a professional revolutionary for nearly a decade now, and he had spent most of it trapped in a revolving door. He was exiled, and then returned, and then exiled and returned again. He won battles, but then suffered equivalent reverses. He suffered equivalent reverses, but then somehow bounced back. He was constantly on the move, but he never seemed to get anywhere. Well, now he had finally gotten somewhere. New Granada was cleared of any peninsular royalist army. The republicans had seized Bogotá, and they would not be giving it back. The nation that would become modern Colombia was now free and independent and would remain so. The only part of the colony still under Spanish control was now Cartagena. And though Cartagena was a city that could be defended militarily by six guys in a slingshot, it could be reduced by prolonged siege. And in short order, it would be under a prolonged siege.

But this was no time to sit back and bask in the glow of victory, to get lazy or complacent. Quite the opposite. The liberation of New Granada only fueled Bolívar’s momentum. He remained in Bogotá from the first week of August to the last week of September 1819. But as we ended last week’s episode, Bolívar put the government in the hands of Santander and then himself rode off on a slow-moving tour northeast through the newly liberated cities of New Granada on his way back to Venezuela. In every city he passed, there were celebrations and balls and parties and dancing. Bolívar’s entourage became a traveling celebration as the people rejoiced in their liberation. And though Bolívar celebrated, and the whole thing must have been something of a dream, reality did not waste much time crashing back down on his head. 

For one thing, even though Bolívar was constantly surrounded by secretaries and soldiers and civilian well-wishers, at this moment of his greatest triumph, he was personally in a very lonely place. It had now been fully three years since he had laid eyes on his longtime mistress, Pepita Machado. He did not know where she was or whether or not he would see her again. Now, if you recall from back in Episode 5.14, Pepita had been with him through the disaster at Ocumare in the summer of 1816, but after redepositing her on the island of St. Thomas, they had just never linked back up. In the intervening years, Bolívar had been re-exiled to Haiti in 1816, then returned to Venezuela and gone off and captured Angostura in 1817, then led that failed campaign to capture Caracas in 1818, and then marched across the Llanos and up into the mountains of New Granada in 1819. Pepita had been present for none of this. Now, mostly, this was because in the chaos of war, they had lost touch with each other. I mean, it’s the early 1800s, keeping in contact with somebody over long distances is tricky in the best of times, but in all of this mess, forget it.

So after returning to Angostura in the summer of 1818, Bolívar finally said enough is enough, and he sent a nephew to personally track Pepita down. Now, this was a search that took months, but ultimately the happy news that Pepita had been finally located on the island still of St. Thomas and would soon be on her way. But it was still a while before Bolívar got confirmation that she had actually boarded a ship. And even then, days continued to pass without any sign of her.

In the meantime, Bolívar kept busy arranging the Congress of Angostura and then preparing for his still-secret plan to invade New Granada, a plan that included a place for Pepita by his side, but she just kept not showing up. By the time he had to march into New Granada in May 1819, he had to ride without her. And so, he was now forced to celebrate his greatest triumph alone. 

Adding to his depressed spirits, after leaving Bogotá, Bolívar proceeded to get hit by a continuous string of bad news. I don’t know exactly the order that all of this came in, but I would guess that the first thing he heard was that Santander had gone and done something really dumb.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Boyaca, most of the senior royalist commanders had been captured alive, including the Commander in Chief, General José María Barreiro. With the war to the death ancient history, Bolívar treated his prisoners with all due courtesy, and he hoped to eventually exchange them for republican prisoners. But almost as soon as Bolívar departed Bogotá, Santander decided he could not risk letting these officers live. On October 11, Santander ordered General Barreiro and 38 others removed from confinement and marched into the center of town. They were given no explanation for the sudden rousting and not even the courtesy of a perfunctory tribunal. It was, in fact, only when Santander ordered Barreiro to kneel that the royalist General finally understood what was going on. With no further ceremony, Santander ordered the kneeling general shot in the back. Then the other 38 men were lined up against a wall and executed. It was a shocking scene for the residents of the city. Though they were happy the viceroy was gone, General Barreiro himself had never been particularly disliked. I mean, many people actually liked him quite a bit. And then, to add insult to injury, Santander then led a parade to celebrate and capped it all off with a splendid ball. The sudden cruelty of Santander’s new regime came as an unwelcome surprise to the residents of Bogotá. When Bolívar was told about all this, he wrote a tense letter back to Santander saying, “Okay, I understand that you were afraid that they might have gotten up to something, but really, this is not how I wanted things handled, and it will make our lives difficult. But okay, I forgive you for doing what you thought was best.” Clearly, though, this was through gritted teeth. Though he could not risk Santander going completely rogue, so Bolívar kept the chastisement to a minimum. 

Shortly thereafter, Bolívar was told that another General he couldn’t risk alienating had also ignored his orders. Because it turned out that José Antonio Páez had never gone to Cúcuta as he had been ordered. That instead of guarding the rear while Bolívar pushed up into the mountains, Páez had ridden hundreds of miles east to winter in the small town of Achaguas.

So, as Bolívar crossed back into Venezuela, he recognized that he was going to have to once again walk a fine line between reprimanding Páez and alienating him. Now, in general, I did give you an order, and you did say you would do it. I know you’re not a military man by training, but that does have to mean something. But he couldn’t go too far and drive Páez away from the cause, because without Páez, there was no free Venezuela. And it really was that simple. 

Then, once he crossed the border into Venezuela, Bolívar got hit with two pieces of personally tragic news. The first was that one of his favorite officers and a guy Bolívar had been grooming for a prominent position in the hierarchy of the new Republic had suddenly gotten sick and just died. And as if that wasn’t depressing enough, the really terrible news hit. The reason Pepita Machado had never appeared in Angostura was that she, too, was dead. There is no confirmed version of what actually happened to her. Some say she never left St. Thomas. Others say that she sailed away but died en route. Others said she made it to the mainland but died before reaching Angostura. And others say that she passed through Angostura, made it up the Orinoco River, and out onto the Llanos before finally succumbing to a fatal illness. The common link does seem to be that that fatal illness was tuberculosis, but even that is built on unsubstantiated rumors. Frankly, nobody knows what really happened to Pepita Machado. The news hit Bolívar like a ton of bricks, but he was good at compartmentalization and all about that old-style Roman stoicism in the face of adversity. But just a few months after riding triumphantly into Bogotá after the Battle of Boyaca, he had to have just been emotionally deflated. 

And then came even more bad news. News that turned his slow procession into a rapid march. It had been just about nine months since Bolívar had departed Angostura, and he had left behind what he thought was a functional government in what he thought were the capable hands of Vice President Francisco Antonio Zea. The armies of the eastern caudillos were supposedly sitting there just awaiting further instructions, but now he received dispatches that all was not well back east. That Santiago Mariño had refused an order from the vice president to join his forces with Bermúdez. And further, that another key General, a guy whose name I have not specifically mentioned yet, but it’s Juan Bautista Arismendi, had been insubordinate enough that Bermúdez had tossed him in jail. And though Bolívar did not know it at the time, the situation was further being rocked by a strong rumor that Bolívar himself had been killed in New Granada. Bolívar quickened his return home, but events would move faster than he could. 

Indeed, by the time Bolívar found out that things were amiss back east, they had likely already gotten even more amiss. Bolívar had studiously avoided major confrontations with insubordinate commanders over the years, Manuel Piar being the one notable exception. But Vice President Zea had tried to test the legitimate authority of the civilian government by sacking General Santiago Mariño for his refusal to follow orders. But Mariño had quite a bit more juice, both politically and, of course, militarily, than Vice President Zea did. So after getting fired, Mariño began conspiring with the aforementioned General Arismendi, and that conspiring took real shape when the rumors came round that Simón Bolívar was dead. Mariño and Arismendi decided to overthrow Zea, which turned out to be not too hard at all. All they had to do was roll into Angostura and have a very frank chat with the members of Congress about the future of the Republic. “If Bolívar is dead, we cannot trust ourselves to this old man who controls no armies, has fought no battles, and spilled no blood.” And the members of Congress agreed. They voted to depose Zea from office. Arismendi was elected the new Vice President, and Mariño went from being fired to Commander in Chief of all the eastern armies. 

After this simple little coup, Mariño returned to his base up along the north coast to reorganize the army to his own specifications, while Arismendi remained in Angostura to cement the new order of things. Then, in early December 1819, Arismendi rode out on a military inspection tour of his own. So he was not around when a ghost rode into Angostura in the middle of the night.

At 3:00 in the morning, on December the 11, 1819, the Liberator, Simón Bolívar returned, not dead, very much alive. The people of the city were thrilled. And even though it was the middle of the night, word got out that the Liberator was coming back, and they flocked to greet him.

Exhausted from his journey, though, which had taken him from Bogotá to Angostura in just 64 days, Bolívar spent the next two days holed up in his house recuperating and taking interviews with men and women who could fill him in on what had happened in his absence. And then he visited the deposed Zea to get his version of events. Arismendi, meanwhile, was alerted that Bolívar had returned and I have to imagine he went a little bit white when he got the news. But he mounted his horse and rode straight for Angostura to try to head off what may turn out to be dire consequences. But when Arismendi arrived, Bolívar did not greet him with fireballs of wrath, but instead welcomed him with open arms and told him, “You’ve done a good job. It sounded like things got very confused and maybe even a little dangerous, and you did what you thought best to preserve the Republic. Isn’t that right? Isn’t it?” And Arismendi was like, “Yeah, that’s absolutely right.” And Bolívar said, “Well, now that that’s all cleared up and everything’s fine, you’ll be happy to return the vice presidency to Zea, right?” And Arismendi recognized the face-saving out Bolívar was handing him on a silver platter. So Arismendi announced that, “Yes, of course, immediately I will resign now that the Liberator is home.” And he did. 

Santiago Mariño, meanwhile, continued to face no consequences for his own repeated insubordinations. Although when Bolívar goes out for his next major campaign, he will make sure Mariño joins his staff and will not let him out of his sight. 

With all that settled, Bolívar convened the Congress of Angostura on December 14 to deliver a formal report. New Granada has been liberated, Bogotá is in republican hands, and the time has come to make good on the grandiose proclamations we made when the Congress first convened back in February. We must unite and form Gran Colombia for real. On December 17, the Congress agreed and voted that the union would go into full effect. Bolívar was given the title Liberator President and Zea was confirmed as Vice President of the whole republic. But then they also created two junior vice presidencies. Santander was elected Vice President of the Department of New Granada, and a guy named Juan Germán Roscio, who is a minor figure in the grand scheme of things but for the record, was one of the signatories to the original declaration of Venezuelan independence back in 1811, he was elected Vice President of the Department of Venezuela. Then the Congress voted to convene a new constitutional convention in Cúcuta on January 1, 1821, to work out the details of a joint government, now that both New Granada and Venezuela would be able to fully participate. 

The government, hopefully now back on the right track, Bolívar turned back to his last military problem: General Pablo Morillo and the 7,000 or so royalist soldiers who still occupied the critical northwestern coast of Venezuela. And though Morillo was hemmed in, Bolívar had learned back in the summer of 1818 that it was not wise to just go launching a full frontal attack, especially because retaining soldiers in the Republican army was becoming nearly impossible. The wars of independence had been going on for nearly a decade now, and the Grim Reaper had already harvested half a generation’s worth of young men, and it was hard to convince the rest to stay in the army, especially when they were never paid or fed what they had been promised they would be paid and fed. It seemed like for every man recruited into the army, two more would slip out the back of the tent. Not that there were tents. That’s just a metaphor. 

So supplying and paying the army became Bolívar’s overriding concern, and Bolívar was eventually furious with Zea, for example, when he discovered that rather than directing cattle meat from the Llanos to the army, Zea had been selling it to merchants from the United States. And then, and I’m not making this up, after facing a shortage of meat in Venezuela, buying meat from the United States and losing money on the deal. It was pretty amateur hour stuff, to be honest, and Bolívar started to suspect that maybe Zea was not actually the man for the job. 

Ever on the move, though, Bolívar departed Angostura again almost as soon as he had arrived back out to inspect what troops he had and then really to make his way all the way back to New Granada to recruit men to serve in what he hoped would be the final campaign to liberate Venezuela. After all, we liberated you. It’s time for you to return the favor. So he rode and rode, retracing the journey he had just made because they don’t call him Iron Ass for nothing. He was soon riding back up into the mountains and back through the cities of New Granada on his way to Bogotá to check in with Santander. But the recruitment effort was disappointing, as were reports from Santander that the tax receipts were not as robust as they needed to be. When Bolívar reached Bogotá, he and Santander conferred over what to do. Bolívar told him, first of all, to just squeeze the provinces for money. Voluntary patriotic contributions were not going to get the job done.

But Bolívar also raised a subject that would help drive a wedge between the two men. After being converted to the cause of emancipation by Alexandre Pétion, Bolívar had not wavered in his commitment to freeing the slaves, and he told Santander that when the Constitutional Convention met in Cúcuta, that emancipation must be written into the fabric of the Republic of Colombia. And beyond the moral dimension, there was a very simple military dimension, that the newly freed black citizens must be given the opportunity to show their loyalty and fight in the army. It simply isn’t fair that they haven’t been given the chance to fight for their own freedom. But Santander balked and would continue to balk at emancipation. He did not think it wise to upend the few money making plantations left in the country, and he agreed only that if emancipation came, that it would have to be done slowly and carefully. The fate of the slaves would remain a point of contention between the two for the remainder of their revolutionary partnership. 

After just three weeks in Bogotá, Bolívar moved out of the capital again and set up a base of operations in Cúcuta, which was the most centrally located city in republican hands, and from there, he could keep his eye on Bogotá, the Magdalena River, the ongoing siege of Cartagena, the Venezuelan Llanos, and hopefully be ready to strike at Morillo in Caracas if the Republican army could get its act together.

So through the whole first half of 1820, a tense stalemate settled in everywhere. Morillo obviously had no intention of making any offensive moves until he could get some reinforcements, which he had been told for quite a while now, were on their way but never seemed to be on their way. Meanwhile, Bolívar for once did not risk losing everything by launching an offensive campaign before his army was really ready. Both commanders made limited moves, but mostly just to mask their respective weaknesses from each other. 

But in June of 1820, word of a major, major, major development back in Spain leaked that would change everything. It was information that was by now months old, but, you know, that’s how it goes with cross Atlantic communications, especially cross Atlantic communications that are supposed to remain top secret. So to grasp the magnitude of this development, we have to hop back over to Spain for the first time in quite a while.

Now when last we checked in, it was back in Episode 5.12 – “The Desired One”, when we covered the return of King Ferdinand VII, aka the Desired one, to the Spanish throne. If you will recall, Ferdinand’s return spelled the end for the regency government that had ruled in his absence, and through the entirety of the Peninsular War, and the liberal Constitution of 1812 that they had ratified. But though the Spanish population in general wanted to reject the very French sounding ideas lodged in the Constitution of 1812, I don’t think anybody really wanted it to go back to how it had been before the abdications of Bayonne. There had to be some reforms, and Ferdinand was encouraged by many petitioners to call the original version of the Cortes, the medieval version, with the clergy and nobility and commons coming together to work out an understanding of how the restored monarchy was going to work going forward. And Ferdinand said, “Yeah, sure, that sounds great. Okay, I’ll let you know.” And then nothing. He never called the Cortes and he and a small group of loyal ministers went about trying to bring back the absolutist Ancien Régime in its entirety. And it did not take long for the desired one to not be very desirable at all. 

So, there’s no need to get into the thickets of the high-handed incompetence of Ferdinand’s government as it affected Spain itself. What we need to focus on is their American policy. And when it came to the rebellious colonies, the regime’s policy was full pacification and the reestablishment of the old order, to turn the clock back to 1807 and pretend like nothing had ever happened. That had been the basic set of instructions the King had given General Morillo when the great Armada had set sail for Venezuela in February 1815. And for a long while, the reports coming back across the Atlantic confirmed the viability of this strategy of uncompromising reconquest. Morillo made a clean sweep through Venezuela and New Granada, and after capturing Bogotá, was preparing to move on Peru. But then the news took a sharp downward turn. Now, Morillo’s report said, “Venezuela has re-revolted, so instead of going to Peru, I’m going to have to go back to Venezuela.” And these new reports were always accompanied by Morillo’s request to be relieved of duty. And then news came in that a rebel army, led by the defector José de San Martín, had crossed the Andes, captured Chile, and now threatened Peru. So instead of a grand royalist army parading into Lima to complete the reconquest, it now appeared that the rebel scum were poised to attack the most lucrative colony in the whole empire. So Ferdinand’s ministers made plans to send reinforcements to Morillo in Venezuela, but even more importantly, to send a second Armada to the Río de la Plata to follow in the footsteps of San Martín and undo everything he had done. 

But even as this new invasion was being planned, there seemed to be a clear change of direction coming out of the ministry by the beginning of 1818. One guy in particular who had been put in charge of all this, a senior minister named José Pizarro, started pointing out that they might be spitting into a hurricane here, that at a minimum, negotiating with the Americans was probably going to be more effective than reconquest. Pizarro said, “Look, you can save it all by compromising. You can dig in your heels and maybe save some of it, like Peru. But most likely, continuing down this uncompromising path is going to lose us everything.”

So in June 1818, Pizarro produced a massive pile of recommendations, an all-encompassing plan to keep the Americas in the Spanish orbit by conceding the end of Spanish absolutism. Pizarro recommended that the Spanish Americas be open not just to foreign trade, but also foreign settlement to rebuild the population and revitalize the American economy. He recommended increased participation of the criollos in their own government, an end to the trade monopolies, the works —everything, basically, that the Americans had been asking for. But the King did not want to hear it. After mulling it over with his closer advisors, Pizarro and anyone associated with him were dismissed in September 1818 and told to vacate the capital immediately. The King then got back to the business of uncompromising reconquest. 

In the end, that uncompromising reconquest did not die in the Americas, but right there in Spain. To begin with, the Spanish Navy was hardly a navy at all. All the good ships had gone off with Morillo, with the first Armada, and not much had been built up in the meantime. So the King had personally authorized the purchase from Russia of a small fleet of ships. But when these ships arrived, they turned out to be lemons —scraps from the junk heap that were barely seaworthy. Basically, Russia ripped him off and there was nothing he could do about it.

But still, the King persisted, and over the course of 1819, men were transferred to Cádiz to muster for the expedition, and ultimately, they would number 14,000 men. But when these men arrived, they just sat there, and despite being something like 400 million pesos that had been spent so far on the expedition since it had first been dreamed up back in 1816, were as ill-fed, ill-supplied, and ill-paid as any of the troops in the Americas, rebel or royalists. The soldiers were reduced to begging food and supplies from the Cádiz merchants. And then, to top it all off, a little epidemic of plague swept through town, decimating the ranks of soldiers and civilians alike. 

Now, as is often the case, the men had not been told why they were all being reassigned to Cádiz. They did not know what this was all about, certainly not that they were going to be sent to the Americas. But when the final preparations were being made in September 1819, the final destination leaked out, and the soldiers were dismayed and furious. They had heard plenty about the bloody, disease-ridden chaos of the Americas. They knew from their brothers, who had gone over with Morillo, what they could expect. Nothing good — probably just a grim death. And on top of that, this fight is to what? Reconquer the Americas? That meant nothing to them personally. I mean, it was one thing to suffer and die, to expel the French from the peninsula, but to go across the Atlantic to put down some provincials who are probably on the right side of history anyway, forget it.

The men started talking amongst themselves, and they agreed that, no, we are not going to do it. They can’t make us. The leader of this brewing mutiny was a guy named Colonel Rafael del Riego, commander of one of the ten battalions that composed the expedition. Riego was, like everybody else, a veteran of the Peninsular War, but he was also a strong liberal, and he had always begrudged the King for nullifying the Constitution of 1812. The return of the Desired One, in Riego’s mind, had been an unmitigated disaster, and it had sent Spain right back under the yoke of ignorant, backward repression. Riego looked around and decided that he might be able to convince the 14,000 disgruntled soldiers in Cádiz to turn their backs on the planned invasion of the Río de la Plata and instead march on Madrid. 

On January 1, 1820, Riego and his fellow conspirators staged a mutinous revolt. They seized the commander of the expedition and declared themselves defenders of the Constitution of 1812. They demanded the King acknowledge the constitutional monarchy. Now, at first, Ferdinand scoffed at these demands, and he tried to blow off the mutiny as just unhappy soldiers who would soon be sailing across the Atlantic anyway, so there’s no point in giving it all too much credence. Except that the mutiny in Cádiz set off a string of similar mutinies in garrisons across Spain, and the civilian population was ominously sympathetic. Basically, the Spaniards had been willing to give Ferdinand the benefit of the doubt in 1814. But having been given the benefit of the doubt, King Ferdinand had blown it. And they were all now ready to say, “Eh, maybe the constitutional monarchy of 1812 is actually worth another look.” So through January and into February 1820, the mutinous revolt spread out, and soon it was knocking on the King’s doorstep in Madrid. Ferdinand tried his best to keep his head lodged firmly in the sand. “Now, this is all going to blow over. I don’t have to give in. I’ll just hold out a few more days.” But by March, the noose had been tied, placed around the King’s neck, and was now tightening, even if the King didn’t quite realize it yet. Finally, on March 6, the King and his ministers decided they might be able to buy themselves some time by officially calling for the Cortes, which they had been avoiding for so long, but that only bought them a few days. On March 9, 1820, in the midst of popular agitation consuming Madrid, the King was forced to go out onto the balcony of the Royal Palace and announce to the crowd that, yes, I accept the Constitution of 1812. The six years of restored Bourbon absolutism was dead, and the dawning of a new liberal era was at hand. 

Now, what this means for the wars of Spanish American independence is that the expedition that was supposed to invade the Río de la Plata never sailed. And instead of the next chapter beginning with a huge army arriving in Buenos Aires, the next chapter started with nothing at all. The Río de la Plata would never face reconquest. José de Martín never had to break off his approach to Peru and go back to rescue them.

Because this army never showed up, the royalists in America were just going to have to make do with what they had on hand, and that was never going to be enough to stave off independence. So it’s all pretty much just an inevitable run from here on out. Now, probably the Americas wind up breaking away anyway, even with the influx of 14,000 new soldiers, because they probably would have just staved off that inevitability. I mean, eventually, it was just not going to be worth the men and resources to try to hold an entire continent in bondage against its will. That had kind of been Juan Pizarro’s ultimate point. So probably the Spanish eventually decide that they’re going to stop sending armies across the Atlantic no matter what. But instead of that coming in the future, it’s coming right now, today.

In Venezuela and still awaiting his allotment of reinforcements, General Morillo did not get word that all of this unrest in Cádiz really was a really real problem until May of 1820, when the stunning news came of the King’s capitulation and acceptance of the Constitution of 1812. Oh, also, by the way, you are not getting any reinforcements. And you can imagine just how deep Morillo must have sunk into his chair when he read all this. But the kicker was that his new orders were to spread the good news to the Americans that they were all now equal citizens in a liberal kingdom and they can lay down their arms and go back to being happy and productive subjects of the Spanish Crown. Morillo positively exploded at the stupid ignorance of this order. No one in Spain obviously had the first idea what is going on over here. These people are not going to accept that they are going to be happy subjects of the Crown again. Not now, not after all this. It was over, and Morillo knew it.

General Morillo sat on the information as long as he could, but by June, he was stuck because he couldn’t keep it under wraps forever. Just as he was about to announce what had happened back in Spain to Caracas, Bolívar’s spies intercepted a letter from the King to Morillo, spelling out everything. And as deeply as Morillo must have sunk into his chair when he heard the news, you can imagine how quickly Bolívar must have sprung out of his or whatever he happened to be sitting on, probably a cattle skull or something. All that was left in all of Gran Colombia, standing between Bolívar and independence, were 7,000 Spaniards clinging to the coast without hope of reinforcement. You beat those guys, just those guys, and it’s all over. It had to be. And once word got out, General Morillo didn’t really do anything to pretend otherwise.

On July 6, 1820, messengers arrived at Bolívar’s headquarters in Cúcuta bearing a request for a summit with Morillo to discuss a ceasefire. Now, it took months of negotiations to arrange this summit, as both sides were very cautious about the intentions of the other. But they finally agreed to meet in the city of Trujillo at the end of November. And on November 21, 1820, representatives from both sides met and formally agreed to a ceasefire that would last for six months. The royalists would recognize Bolívar as president of this thing called the Republic of Colombia, and the particulars of the cessation of hostilities and the terms of prisoner exchanges were all worked out. With the details finalized, it finally became time for the two commanders to meet face to face for the first time. 

On November 27, 1820, at the tiny village of Santa Ana, the two Generals finally laid eyes on each other. Morillo arrived first, decked out in his best uniform and accompanied by 50 splendid cavalrymen. Then he saw Bolívar’s little party arrive, consisting of just 15 men. And Morillo was shocked when Bolívar was pointed out to him because Bolívar was riding a donkey and wearing the uniform of a common soldier. Not wanting to be outdone in chivalry, Morillo ordered most of his cavalry to depart. And then he dismounted to greet Bolívar. And there, on the side of the road, the two men embraced. Then both sides retired to a small house to share a celebratory lunch that involved multiple toasts to each other, as professional soldiers do, to the valor and heroics of each other. And in the midst of all this, and probably quite drunk, they all agreed to build a great pyramid on the spot in the road where the two generals had embraced to forever mark the peace. And they went out, they found a big rock and plopped it down to mark the spot where the foundation needed to be laid. The toasting and drinking then continued into the night until eventually, rather than go their separate ways, Morillo and Bolívar each strung up a hammock in the same room, and they slept that night side by side. In the morning, they awoke, they returned to the big rock that they had left on the side of the road, probably now quite hungover, and embraced again. Then each rode off in their separate directions, never to meet again. 

If the world was a better place, that would have been the end of it. The fighting and the killing would have stopped there at Santa Ana. But unfortunately, the world is not a better place. And when we return to our story, it will sadly turn out that the armistice would not even last its prescribed six months. Talking their way to independence was never going to work. If the Americans wanted to be free, they were going to have to decide the issue on the battlefield. 

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