Hello and welcome to Revolutions.
By the summer of 1822, General José de San Martín was not a happy man. After more than a decade of obsessive striving, he had finally fulfilled his dream when he triumphantly entered Lima in July of 1821. But that was probably the last time he was even remotely happy. Since then, he had been plunged into the vicious world of Peruvian politics, which was beginning to make the rivalries back in Buenos Aires look positively restrained.
As we’ve seen repeatedly, San Martín was not really cut out for politics. He was far more comfortable as a General than as a statesman. And for all the differences between San Martín and Bolívar — differences we’re going to talk about here in a minute — they shared a common preference for war over politics, it being far less treacherous terrain. But unfortunately for San Martín, there were now no campaigns to distract him. The last Spanish royalists had abandoned the coast and retreated to their strongholds in the mountains. And San Martín knew he did not have the men or the resources to go defeat them. So, unable to go off to war, San Martín had to sit in Lima. As the Protector of Peru, he tried to oversee the creation of a new government, but it was not going well. And the unhappy San Martín gave himself more over to opium and drinking, and letting his secretaries do the actual work. As the months passed, Lima’s disenchantment with the Protector began to grow.
And disenchantment was a common emotion for San Martín to leave in his wake. Back in Argentina, his name was still mud for stealing the Army of the Andes and never coming back; in Chile, he was now under suspicion because he had transferred all of his time and attention to Peru, leaving his old friends like Bernardo O’Higgins behind. San Martín had then gotten into a huge fight with Lord Cochrane after trying to buy the Chilean Navy, which also had not sat well with the Chileans. And then when Lord Cochrane had sailed back through Santiago, he warned O’Higgins not to trust San Martín.
Meanwhile, inside Lima, the Protector was caught between angry merchants who had been ruined by his blockade, conservative royalists just waiting for the Spanish to come back around, and then patriotic republicans whose support for San Martín was about to be dealt a crushing blow. And then everyone in Lima was equally ticked off that San Martín had left day-to-day operations to his chief secretary, a guy named Benito de Monteagudo. Monteagudo was imperious and arrogant. And with San Martín slumping through a life increasingly filled with opium, the secretary started playing Sejanus to San Martín’s Emperor Tiberius — which, hey, look, two Roman references in as many weeks. I wonder where my head is at these days.
Complicating all of this was the fact that his one base of support inside the city, the diehard patriots, learned a horrifying fact about San Martín. Because one thing that I have not yet revealed about San Martín — no, he doesn’t have another drug addiction — is that not only was he a centralist like Bolívar, he was also, gasp, a monarchist. Now, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of the centralist-monarchist quadrant of the revolution since about 1812, but through all his campaigns of liberation, San Martín was and would remain a monarchist at heart. Now, he was not a believer in conservative absolutism, of course. I mean, he’s an enlightened liberal freemason, after all. But San Martín thought a constitutional monarchy was the ideal structure of government. In his negotiations with the Viceroy of Peru to end the siege of Lima, San Martín had assured the Viceroy that he was open to a monarchy ruling liberated Peru. This did not sit well with his fellow revolutionaries when word got out, Bolívar himself couldn’t believe it, and he thought it was libelous propaganda that had been cooked up by San Martín’s enemies.
The revelations of this monarchism would also negatively impact San Martín’s dealings with Bolívar and the Colombians, though the more pressing issue was Quayaquil. San Martín had sent 1,200 men under Colonel Santa Cruz off to help Sucre defend Guayaquil and liberate Quito. But San Martín firmly believed that Guayaquil belonged to Peru, and he was furious that Bolívar and the Colombians seemed determined to steal it. And his recent correspondence with Bolívar had revealed that both men held mutually exclusive positions. San Martín expected Guayaquil to become a part of Peru. Bolívar was determined to make it a part of Colombia. So when San Martín heard that the Colombians had liberated Quito, San Martín knew that the confrontation over Guayaquil was coming. And so he boarded a ship to sail north to assert Peruvian sovereignty. He could not have been looking forward to the confrontation, but I imagine it was also nice to get out of Lima for a little while.
When San Martín departed, he thought Bolívar was still up in Quito and that San Martín would then have an opportunity to put in at Guayaquil for Peru’s claim to the city while waiting for the Colombians to come down out of the mountains to meet him. But as we saw last week, as soon as Bolívar dashed off his invitation to San Martín, he hopped on a horse and rode to Guayaquil as fast as he possibly could. So, it was to San Martín’s great horror that upon arrival at the port of Guayaquil on the evening of July 25, 1822, he was told that Bolívar was already there and waiting for him. Angry and embarrassed, the proud San Martín refused to get off the ship, as if he was the guest and Bolívar was the host, and a tense little standoff ensued. After more than a day of going back and forth, San Martín finally relented when Bolívar came down in person to board San Martín’s ship, him coming to San Martín rather than the other way around. Bolívar then led the Protector of Peru towards the palace where he would be staying, flanked by an honor guard of patriotic soldiers and pushing through throngs of jubilant inhabitants. The people of Guayaquil knew that they owed their freedom more to San Martín than to Bolívar.
In their first personal interactions, the two great Generals were a study in emotional contrast. San Martín was reserved, aloof, rigidly straight, and somber. Bolívar, on the other hand, was like an excited child, jubilant, pacing the room constantly, and on the verge of tears at the significance of finally shaking hands with the Great General San Martín. But underneath their different exteriors, both were doing exactly the same thing: sizing each other up. And though it would be lovely for the story if they departed as blood brothers who would remain fond pen pals for the rest of their lives, both would, unfortunately, leave very disappointed in the other.
Bolívar and San Martín had three private meetings with no aides or secretaries present, at which we know zero about what they said — no notes, not even a diary entry of what was discussed. But thanks to the correspondence between the two men we do have, leading up to the conference and then immediately after the conference, we know basically what the topics at hand were and what their respective positions were. No doubt exhausted by all the politics, both men were likely happy to begin by focusing on military affairs. The interior of Peru and Upper Peru, the future of Bolivia, were still in royalist hands. What are we going to do about it?
San Martín basically wanted to know how many men Bolívar could provide for a campaign to dislodge the royalists and was gobsmacked when Bolívar said 1,000. By San Martín’s calculation, the Colombian army was 10,000 strong. So what is this “I only have 1,000 guys to spare” nonsense? He thought Bolívar was intentionally withholding troops. And nothing Bolívar said could convince San Martín that that really was all he could spare. And given how many Bolívar ultimately did send to Peru, San Martín does kind of have a point here.
Hitting an impasse over the army, they then ran into a similar impasse when they got to the big issue on the table: and that was the future of Guayaquil. San Martín said, “Of course, it’s for Peru.” And Bolívar said, “Yeah, well, technically it was part of New Granada and therefore it is now a part of Colombia.” Bolívar would finally recommend putting it to a referendum, a vote of the inhabitants of the city. But San Martín was not happy about that, as democracies are made of easily manipulated mobs. This of course raised the uncomfortable reality of San Martín’s monarchism, which not only didn’t he deny, but he tried to convince Bolívar was the only way to go. Bolívar was absolutely crestfallen to hear these words come out of the Protector of Peru’s mouth. The Colombians were all staunch republicans, and as much as it might – might – help diplomatic relations with the kingdoms back in Europe, it would undermine South American solidarity if it was the Kingdom of Peru and the Republic of Colombia.
By now, the two men were wary of each other’s intentions and none too thrilled about their revolutionary colleague. San Martín thought Bolívar an excitable little prince whose dashing charms were just a cover for manipulative glory hunting. Bolívar thought San Martín a dour crank wedded to conservative principles that had no place in the new South America, to say nothing of Bolívar agreeing with Lord Cochrane’s assessment that San Martín was careful and plotting to the point of cowardice.
And it was also clear to Bolívar now that the situation back in Lima was not a bed of roses, that San Martín was not popular there, and that his Sejanus was rubbing everyone the wrong way. No doubt this was all partially informed by Manuela Sáenz, who was deeply plugged into Patriot Society back in Lima. And in their final meeting together, Bolívar asked San Martín how things were going in Lima. San Martín said, “Oh, they’re going fine.” Bolívar said, “Oh, really? Because I’ve got a report of a coup against your secretary, Monteagudo. He’s been overthrown. What do you think about that?” And what San Martín thought about that was that it’s probably time for him to get out of this altogether. The whole thing, leave it all behind.
But Bolívar and San Martín kept up a united front for the people of Guayaquil. And on their second night together, the Liberator and the Protector shared a great banquet. Bolívar acted as host and San Martín as the guest of honor. They toasted to each other and to the glory of South America and to, you know, etc., etc. The raucous dancing and drinking went on long into the night, where Bolívar shined, and from which San Martín flinched. Probably now pushed over the edge. Dejected, full of self-pity, and watching the energetic Bolívar steal the show, San Martín decided that his work here was done, that with his dream of capturing Lima complete, it was time to hand the rest of the job over to Bolívar, who was obviously greedy for the opportunity to win the final victory for himself.
As San Martín would later say, there was simply not room in Peru for both of them, and San Martín was ready to be the one to bow out. At about 1:00 in the morning, San Martín signaled to his officers that he was ready to leave the banquet. His bags were already aboard the ship, and after bidding farewell to Bolívar, San Martín boarded his ship and sailed away without looking back. He had been in Guayaquil for less than 40 hours, and he would never see Simón Bolívar again.
Upon his return to Lima a few weeks later, San Martín discovered that the story of the coup was true, and that his secretary had been ousted from power. Now thoroughly dejected, San Martín hung around in town long enough for the first official meeting of the newly constituted Peruvian Congress to meet on September 20, 1822. At the inaugural session, he announced that he was resigning from the army and relinquishing any political power he might hold. The Congress rose to applaud him, to praise his name, to heap upon him honors that reached to the stars, but nobody made a move to stop him. If San Martín was ready to go, they were ready to see him leave. And that very night, José de San Martín sailed away from Lima, never to return.
So now that Bolívar and Lima have both bid farewell to San Martín, I think it’s time for us to bid our final farewell to him too. Enormously weary from ten years of revolutionary wars and plagued by physical ailments and drug addiction, you might think that San Martín would be dead within the week. But setting down his burdens appears to have revitalized him. Although his life in South America was soon over. He passed back through Chile on his way to his old province of Cuyo. He planned to settle amongst his old people, but the revolving coups back in Argentina now found the province under very unfriendly management. So by 1823, he was back in Buenos Aires, where he was treated with deep suspicion and encouraged to please keep moving along. His young wife having died while he was away on campaign, San Martín packed up his one daughter and sailed for Europe. They landed first in France, where the revolutionary liberal General was denied entry, forcing them up to London, where they stayed just long enough for San Martín to arrange passage to Brussels, where he would find his permanent home in exile.
In Brussels, San Martín remained in contact with events back in South America, which were, god, just a mess of interconnected civil wars, and foreign wars, and everything in between. He actually sailed back to the Río de la Plata in 1828 to lend a hand in the war against Brazil, but upon arrival discovered that another coup had put his enemies back in power. So he turned around and headed back across the Atlantic without even disembarking. So, he was back in Brussels when the revolutions of 1830 broke out and he was invited by Belgian patriots to lead them in their secession from the Netherlands. But he declined and moved to Paris instead. There he was kept abreast of the further wars and civil strife back in his homeland, offering advice through a network of correspondents, many of whom were probably his old Masonic brothers. But he never returned to the actual fray. San Martín fled Paris on the eve of the revolution of 1848 and died in Bologna in 1850 at the ripe old age of 72.
When he sailed away from Peru, San Martín probably did not think that he had much longer to live. But shedding his burdens and leaving them for Bolívar, he managed to outlive Bolívar by 20 years. And in the end, he even found a few nice things to say about the Liberator — once the Liberator was dead, of course.
So the stage was now set for Bolívar alone. But, like always, nothing was going to be easy for him. The royalists up in Pasto, who had surrendered after the capture of Quito, suddenly went back into rebellion in the late summer of 1822. And an old name was at the forefront of that rebellion because it was led by a young Colonel named Benito Boves. That’s right, the nephew of José Tomás Boves, the long-dead caudillo leader of the Legions of Hell. Young Colonel Boves gathered up royalist forces in the countryside outside Pasto and, in September 1822, started actively raiding the countryside. A month later, he was strong enough to enter Pasto with the help of sympathetic inhabitants and reclaim the city for God and the King.
Frustrated that this rebellion was getting out of hand, Bolívar dispatched Sucre back up to bring Pasto under control. But the campaign turned out to be hard and bitter. Sucre forced a battle on November 24, but was beaten back. He then had to wait a month before launching a more direct assault on December 22. This assault drove Boves and the royalists back into Pasto, with the patriots following close enough behind that they were able to push their way into the city too. The battle ended in bitter street fighting, with the patriot forces furiously venting their frustration on the population. Sucre’s men slipped out of discipline and sacked the city, killing upwards of 400 civilians over the next few unruly days. But even after their discipline was restored, the punitive measures on Pasto were harsh. Royalist leaders were arrested and executed, although Boves himself got away, and then a thousand more men, identified as suspicious, were conscripted into the Patriot army and marched to their new assignments down in Quito and Guayaquil, most never being allowed to return to Pasto.
While this was ongoing, Bolívar was himself back in Quito, trying to further consolidate Colombian hold of the region and mostly enjoying his time with Manuela Sáenz. As I said last time, Manuela was an ardent patriot and so committed to the cause that she habitually donned a dragoons uniform and joined in military exercises. Immaculate in her revolutionary politics and now proving her military mettle, Manuela was fast becoming not just Bolívar’s mistress, but, along with Sucre, really one of his principal revolutionary partners.
Nowhere was Manuela more valuable than in discussing affairs down in Lima. Personally plugged into the situation through multiple official and unofficial channels, she kept Bolívar in the loop about how things were progressing in Peru. And after the abrupt resignation and departure of San Martín, the question became how long should Bolívar wait before he moved south? And the conclusion the couple settled on was: we will wait until Lima is begging on bended knee for the Liberator to come save them, because anything less than that would cause everyone major political heartburn.
It took a little while for the real begging to come, though, even after a military disaster hit the Peruvians in January, 1823. The last 1,700 or so men remaining from San Martín’s liberating army — so we’re talking Argentinians and Chileans here — were cornered by a royalist army that descended out of the mountains and crushed them. All 1,700 men were either killed or captured. These were the best-trained troops in Peru. And just months after San Martín’s departure, the last forces he had brought with him, the final remnants of the Army of the Andes, was destroyed. This military disaster led to a political coup inside Lima that gave rise to a guy: José de la Riva Agüero. Riva Agüero wrote letters to San Martín begging him to return, but San Martín laughed in his face. Riva Agüero also requested aid from the Liberator, but Bolívar continued to bide his time, saying that he had not yet received permission from the Colombian Congress to leave Colombian soil. But really, this was about the begging not being hard enough yet. When Bolívar entered Lima, he wanted to be treated like the savior he believed himself to be.
By the spring of 1823, though, events were finally moving Bolívar down to Peru. With Pasto and the surrounding countryside quiet and the rest of the cities in the region seemingly peaceful, Bolívar felt like he could now really get the ball rolling, mustering the full strength of the Patriot army — that is, those brought originally by Sucre and then what Bolívar had come down out of Bogotá with, plus new recruits raised since their arrival — I mean, a good 6,000 total men. They were all sent down to Lima under Sucre’s command to pave the way for Bolívar’s eventual arrival.
You’ll notice that that 6,000 is quite a bit more than the 1,000 Bolívar said he could reasonably spare San Martín, which no doubt added a bit to San Martín’s later griping about Bolívar’s machinations.
But transferring this army down to Peru led to a host of new problems. For one thing, it turned out the royalist rebels in Pasto had only been biding their time.
As soon as Sucre departed for Lima with the bulk of the Patriot army, Pasto re-rose in rebellion, forcing Bolívar himself to hastily raise a force of local militia that he personally led to re-re-suppress the rebellious city. Leading about 1,800 new recruits, Bolívar was able to put down this latest uprising at the Battle of Ebara on July 17, 1823. Though this would not yet be the end of Pasto’s resistance, it did help convince Bolívar that if he was going to be fighting, he might as well move on to the real show in Peru rather than wasting his time and risking his life for rear guard actions.
Fortunately for Bolívar, the situation in Peru was now getting pretty grim and the begging getting pretty fierce, much of it now coming from Sucre. Having arrived in June 1823 with 6,000 reinforcements, the new President Riva Agüero, said, “Good, I can lead these men out on campaign and start to clear the last of the damned royalists from my country.” But San Martín’s caution about going up into the mountains had never been about cowardice, always about a kind of ruthless prudence. 6,000 men was just not enough to get the job done. The march into the mountains alone was going to take its toll, and then they’d all have to immediately fight against well-defended royalist fortresses while likely suffering from altitude sickness. But Riva Agüero was ready to fight and so out he marched.
The big problem, though, was that this left Lima totally open. And as soon as Riva Agüero was out of the city, one of the main royalist Generals mustered fully 9,000 men and pounced. Sucre, who had been left behind to manage the defense of Lima with a meager garrison was lucky to have time enough to gather up the Peruvian Congress and deposit them in the fortress of Callao before the royalists entered the city. But this force was not here to occupy Lima permanently. That was no longer a part of the Spanish strategy. Instead, they resupplied themselves at will with forced requisitions and tribute demanded from the inhabitants at bayonet point. Sufficiently stocked up with wealth and supplies, they then marched south to go track down the Patriot army led by General Santa Cruz. So the temporary occupation of Lima was a bad blow, but it wasn’t fatal. It did, however, convince the Congress of Lima that they absolutely had to get Bolívar down here right now. Please, immediately. Do it. We beg you.
But just as Bolívar was finally hearing what he wanted to hear, he was also getting word of major trouble back home. Santander was now balking at Bolívar’s request to keep moving to Peru. It didn’t sound like Quito was well in hand, and the economic and political situation back here at home isn’t, like, great. Santander did not want the entire economy of Colombia to go towards Bolívar’s war machine. And then, way, way way back home in Venezuela, came news that might actually force Bolívar to turn around and return to Caracas, because the final coda of the Venezuelan War of Independence was about to play out.
After the Battle of Carabobo in 1821, the last royalist garrisons had retreated to Puerto Cabello, and there, even now in 1823, they continued to sit. The Colombians wanted to take the fortress, but there was no point in wasting time, men, or resources trying to do it. No reinforcements were coming from Spain, and there was no way for the Spanish inside the fortress to break out. So it was annoying that they were still there, but not, you know, anything to really trouble yourself about.
Leading this last rump of Spanish holdout was General Morales, he, too, of the old Legions of Hell. Well, after nearly two years of forced captivity, he was ready to break out. After coordinating with what was left of the Spanish Navy in the region in June of 1823, Morales surprised the Venezuelan garrison keeping an eye on him. He charged out of Puerto Cabello and headed west towards Lake Maracaibo, where royalist sentiment had always been pretty strong. But Morales was not going to get very far. General José Antonio Páez, the supreme military leader in western Venezuela, raised his llaneros from their subdued lethargy and rode down to box Morales up in Maracaibo; the rebellion would not spread.
But with Morales now trapped around Lake Maracaibo, something was going to have to be done about the Spanish Navy that was also now trapped down there with him. So in July 24, 1823, a Patriot navy of 22 ships cornered the small royalist fleet and brought them to battle. This Patriot fleet was led by Brigadier General José Prudencio Padilla. Now, since Padilla is a bona fide revolutionary hero and will come back around later to mark another stain on Bolívar’s career, I want to end today by telling you all about José Prudencio Padilla.
Padilla was born in the port city of Riohacha, northeast of Cartagena, in 1784. A dark-skinned, mixed-race son of a shipbuilder, Padilla spent his childhood around ships, and as a teenager, he joined the Spanish Navy as a porter. This was just in time for his ship to be called back for service in the Mediterranean for the Battle of Trafalgar. So young Padilla was there at the Battle of Trafalgar, and he was, in fact, captured by the British. He then spent three years as a prisoner of war before being released in 1808 and returned to Cartagena. When the first cries of liberty then started sweeping through South America, Padilla found himself an eager patriot, supporting all the early independence efforts in Cartagena and lending them what assistance he could.
But it took until 1815 for him to take on a more active role, when he joined General Bolívar’s army, when the Liberator had to come back down the Magdalena River, aiming at dislodging the royalists from Santa Marta, only to be fatally detained when Cartagena shut its gates to him. This is just before Bolívar departed for Jamaica to write his famous letter. When Bolívar departed, Padilla stayed behind, and so he was there for the siege of Cartagena. And when it came time to break out in December 1815, he captained one of the getaway ships that took the refugee revolutionaries first to Jamaica and then to the Republic of Haiti, looking for Bolívar. So you can add José Padilla to the list of men who were at the great revolutionary summit that was held under the auspices of President Pétion.
Padilla was then folded into Luis Brión’s little navy that would carry the revolutionary expedition back to Venezuela. And Padilla was a part of a forward guard that helped drive off the few Spanish ships in the area, clearing the way for the landing on Margarita Island. Now promoted to full Captain, Padilla served under Luis Brión in the far east as the patriots moved to the Orinoco River and captured Angostura. After Bolívar raced into the mountains and captured Bogotá in 1819, Padilla was put in charge of the Patriot siege of Cartagena, and there he remained until the city finally capitulated and the royalists evacuated. Promoted to Brigadier General in April of 1823, General Padilla became the highest-ranking pardo officer in the Venezuelan army, taking the mantle that had once been held by Manuel Piar, whose fate Padilla would himself share in a few short years.
But for now, Padilla was given command of the Patriot navy, operating in and around Lake Maracaibo just in time for the sudden crisis triggered by Morales to hit. Leading 22 patriot ships against the royalists, Padilla routed them decisively, and Morales signaled his complete surrender, departing the country for good in early August of 1823.
Now, the Battle of Carabobo is considered the culminating battle of the War of Venezuelan Independence. But the Battle of Lake Maracaibo was truly the final nail in the coffin, as the royalists were now actually physically gone from the country and Puerto Cabello fell into patriot hands. Admiral Padilla was the hero of the battle and became a symbol of racial advancement in the new race-free world of liberated Venezuela. But unfortunately, as I mentioned, he would eventually share the fate of Manuel Piar, the man who had once held that same distinction of being the highest-ranking pardo officer in the Venezuelan army, executed by order of Simón Bolívar.
By the time the Battle of Lake Maracaibo was wrapping up, Bolívar was getting on a ship to sail even further away from home. After personally escorting royalists captured in Puerto Cabello down to Guayaquil, he received yet another letter from Lima, this one full of the kind of begging and pleading he could finally respond to. Having also finally gotten permission from the Colombian Congress to depart Colombian soil, Simón Bolívar boarded a ship in of August of 1823 and set sail for Lima, where he would begin the last great campaign of his career.
So we’ll leave the story off there as I take a temporary leave of absence. The manuscript for “The Storm Before the Storm” is due in four short weeks, and I am going to spend every waking minute between now and then making sure that the book is as awesome as I’m hoping you are all expecting it to be. I mean, hopefully, you’re not expecting it to be complete trash. I’ve been working on the book continuously now for this whole year while producing “Revolutions” full-time, and it feels pretty crazy that I might actually live to see this thing through to the end. But to finish it, I am going to go on an extended break and will not return with a new episode of “Revolutions” until January 15, 2017. After I come back, we will do the final hard charge of Spanish American independence, which should wrap up another five or six episodes as we liberate Peru and Bolivia and then send Bolívar back to Bogotá to dodge assassins and political enemies en route to his depressing but mercifully brief fifth and final exile.
Now, after we wrap up with Spanish American independence, I have a sneaky little surprise for you. Simón Bolívar just so happens to die in 1830, which coincides with the July Revolution back in France, the revolution that overthrows the Bourbons and brings the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe to life. Well, since the 1830 Revolution sets up the 1848 Revolution and since 1830 also sees the return of both Lafayette and Talleyrand for one last revolutionary hurrah, I thought it might be nice to follow up the epic that is Spanish American independence with a palate-cleansing miniseries on the Revolution of 1830 four to six episodes. So I’ll be back on January 15 to finish the epic that is Spanish American independence. Then we’ll do a little miniseries on 1830 on our way to the insanity that is the revolutionary year of 1848.
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