Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

In September 1815, Simón Bolívar sat down to compose a letter. At this point, he was still living in Kingston, Jamaica, renting from a landlady he would soon find intolerable, setting the stage for his lucky escape from the assassin’s knife just a few months hence. During the course of his extensive correspondence during these months in exile, a letter came through from an Englishman living on the other side of Jamaica named Henry Cullen. Cullen was curious about Spanish America, its history, the course of the independence movement, and what the prospects were for the future. And Bolívar used this request from Cullen, much like Edmund Burke took a letter asking for his opinion of the French Revolution, as a springboard for a general public treatise. Marshaling the full breadth of his historical education, which was considerable by this point, Bolívar surveyed South America and wrote up his thoughts, clearly intending them to be for a wider audience than just Cullen himself. And Cullen indeed did translate the letter and forward it to friends in England, where it was eventually published.

Now, for about the next decade, the letter from Jamaica was only known to British liberals and a few Spanish American exiles. But in the fullness of time, the letter would be rediscovered and translated back into Spanish, whereupon it would become a centerpiece of understanding Simón Bolívar and the times in which he lived.

So what I want to do here today is run through the letter from Jamaica to start with, but then use it as a springboard to talk about two regions in particular that are about to become very important to the next phase of Spanish American independence: the Río de la Plata and Chile. Because today we are going to introduce two new giant pieces to the board, José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins.

Bolívar began his letter by complimenting Mr. Cullen on the proper degree of hostility Cullen showed for the Spaniards. Bolívar agreed that they were the worst, a wicked stepmother who reigned tyrannically over the oppressed Americans, and most especially Bolívar now blamed them for keeping the Americans in a state of political infancy, governed by peninsular despotism with its heavy mix of censorship, superstition, and inquisition, Spanish Americans had been denied the habits of participatory government. This lack of a practiced republican ethic was the source of Spanish American disunity and why Bolívar would remain a strong centralist for his whole life. As he had already said in the Cartagena Manifesto, emerging states needed a strong central hand, especially when trying to govern a citizen body just emerging from the tyrannical shadow of Spanish despotism.

After properly scolding the Spanish, Bolívar then moved on to tracing the course of events after the abdications of Bayonne, attempting to explain the American response to the chaos in Europe and how it had led to movements for autonomy culminating with all those declarations of independence in 1810. But Bolívar was now riding five years past those heady days when everything was thrilling and romantic. I mean, it’s now September 1815, and Bolívar himself is a thrice-exiled failure. Venezuela lay in ruins after a war to the death. Pablo Morillo’s huge armada was laying siege to Cartagena. King Ferdinand had been restored to the Spanish throne, all of which seemed to spell the end for American independence. So when Bolívar turned his attention to the future, you might think he would wallow in a little pessimism. But if there’s one thing Bolívar was not, was a pessimist. He could be a cynical realist. He could be a cold-blooded killer, but he was never going to be a pessimist.

So Bolívar’s optimistic commitment to independence was unshakeable because he believed independence was now inevitable, as he explained to Mr. Cullen. Employing an argument similar to the one made by Tom Paine in Common Sense back in 1776, Bolívar argued that the very fact of armed conflict had already made future reconciliation impossible, that if the Spanish reconquered the Americas, the whole thing would just play out again a generation later. In Bolívar’s eyes, the bonds were already permanently severed; it was just a matter of when everyone else would wake up to reality. So, as he turned to survey the future course of Spanish America, Bolívar wrote under the assumption that in the end, independence would win. And though he would remain a committed large state centralist, by now he also did agree that Spanish America would not devolve into four large countries roughly conforming to the old viceroyalties, but rather something like 15 to 17 new nations, which is remarkably close to what wound up actually happening.

So, you can probably already guess what Bolívar thought lay in store for New Granada and Venezuela. Even after being kicked out of both countries and seeing very little evidence of their mutual solidarity, Bolívar still believed that in the end, they would join together in a new nation called Colombia. But this nation would be governed by a British-style system with a Senate, House of Commons, and an Executive for life. Centralist republican to his core, Bolívar just couldn’t picture anything but Gran Colombia. And so, in the end, he was wrong about his prediction, but it’s going to take us the whole rest of this series to explain exactly why.

Bolívar also missed the mark with his prediction for the neighboring Isthmus of Panama, though he did make an interesting observation that just didn’t pan out. He predicted that the Isthmus provinces as far north as Guatemala would join into a single confederation, and then that confederation would capitalize on their control of the all-important trade lines between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Bolívar predicted a city as great as Constantinople would one day be planted betwixt the two great oceans. But neither the confederation nor Panama-stinople ever came about.

He was closer to the mark concerning New Spain, of which he wrote, “For reasons of geography, wealth, population, and character, I imagine that the Mexicans will initially attempt to establish a representative republic, granting great powers to the executive, concentrating it in a single individual who, if he performs his duties properly and fairly, will almost certainly hold his authority for life.” But then he also went on to say that if the ruling party is military or aristocratic, it will likely demand a monarchy, which will at first be limited and constitutional but inevitably deteriorate into absolutism. That does actually sound a lot like what goes on in Mexico, though as I’ve also said, we’re not going to worry too much about New Spain in this series because we’re going to deal with all of it when we get to the Mexican Revolution.

So that takes us on down to southern South America, about which Bolívar admitted a lack of information hindered his judgment. But luckily, we do not share his ignorance because we know everything that happened down in southern South America. And so, for the rest of today’s episode, we are going to leap away from the letter from Jamaica and dive headlong first into the Río de la Plata and then Chile. And then we can circle back around to see whether Bolívar’s predictions hold up. But more importantly, beyond solid footing as we enter the next phase of Spanish American independence, which is going to be defined by a great double envelopment of Peru as Simón Bolívar marches down from New Granada and José de San Martín marches up from Chile.

So, the last time I mentioned the Río de la Plata was near the beginning of Episode 5.8 when I said that the fall of Seville in 1810 triggered the May Revolution, which led to a dangerous struggle for power that pitted everyone against everyone else. And at the time, I also said it was a mess that we were not going to fall into. But it is now time to fall into that mess.

Now, the last time we really talked about the Río de la Plata was way back in Episode 5.5 when we discussed the British invasions of 1806 and 1807. And if you’ll recall, the hero of that crisis had been that French mercenary Santiago Liniers. Liniers had been so effective that the Town Council of Buenos Aires deposed the sitting viceroy and promoted Liniers to acting Viceroy. And then he stayed on as acting Viceroy even through the abdications of Bayonne, though he did have to sufficiently prove his hostility to the Bonapartes.

During his two years in power, Liniers opened up Buenos Aires to free trade and used customs duties to pay the wages of 8,000 militiamen now under arms. They were well-drilled, organized, and made up almost entirely of the mixed-race lower classes. But in 1809, the Central Junta took it upon itself to appoint a new Viceroy to replace Liniers. Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros. When Cisneros arrived, Liniers peacefully stepped aside. 

Acting on behalf of the monopoly-loving Cádiz merchants, though, Cisneros quickly undermined his own authority by ending free trade in Buenos Aires. This not only angered the merchants and intellectual liberals, but it also shut down the customs revenue that Liniers had been using to pay the militia.

So, Cisneros was already on thin ice when Buenos Aires heard about the fall of Seville at the end of May 1810. Cisneros and the viceregal authorities tried to navigate the news, but an alliance between disgruntled militiamen and radical intellectuals demanded an open meeting of the Buenos Aires Town Council to discuss the city’s response to the crisis. After days of heated debate, this open council voted on May 25, 1810, to create an independent junta. Viceroy Cisneros was deposed, and he was put on a boat to the Canary Islands, along with any other peninsulares the junta found insufficiently patriotic. The Buenos Aires junta then invited all other provinces in the Río de la Plata to send delegates to join the government. But we’ve seen this game play out before, and the other provinces rejected taking orders from the metropolis. The other major cities of the viceroyalty, Montevideo, Asunción, Chuquisaca, all kept Buenos Aires at arm’s length. And here we find some of the basic divisions that will help turn the four viceroyalties into 15 to 17 new nations, because the three cities I just named are the future capitals of Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. 

The city of Montevideo was always Buenos Aires’ most important rival. The two cities lay on opposite sides of the great Río de la Plata estuary, and since their earliest days, had competed over trade, power, and wealth. If Buenos Aires said butterside up, Montevideo said butterside down. So, two days after receiving an invitation to join the Buenos Aires Junta, the leaders of Montevideo got together and declared their allegiance to the regency. On top of that, the peninsular Governor of the city, Francisco Javier de Elío, learned that Cisneros had been deposed and declared himself the new Viceroy of the Río de la Plata.

But Montevideo was not the only city to keep its distance from Buenos Aires. Deep in the interior, the city of Asunción and the future country of Paraguay had their own interests to think about. Their small manufacturing and livestock and textiles supplied the silver-rich province of Upper Peru with goods and services. The biggest threat Paraguay faced was liberals down on the coast declaring free trade because the flood of cheap goods from Spain and Britain would, and did, crowd out local operators. So when word of the fall of Seville arrived, Asunción called its own junta, rather than sending delegates down to Buenos Aires. The Asunción Junta would soon come under the influence of one of the very few well-educated men in the region, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who everyone called Dr. Francia.

And here we get what makes Paraguay different from the others because over the course of the next few years, Dr. Francia will proceed in stages through member of the junta to President of Asunción, for five years, then President of Asunción for life, to supreme and perpetual dictator of Paraguay. And then he just doesn’t go anywhere. Dr. Francia will rule Paraguay until 1840. Ruling with a strong and, in later years, fairly brutal hand, Dr. Francia’s Paraguay would maintain political stability over the next 30 years that no other country in South America would approach.

But Paraguay was off the beaten path a little bit, and with Montevideo instantly for the regency, the guys in Buenos Aires focused their attention on making sure that Upper Peru remained in their orbit, this is the future Bolivia, because that’s where all the silver was. After the first cry of liberty in 1809, the capital of Chuquisaca had fallen back under the royalist umbrella. So in the summer of 1810, Buenos Aires sent an armed expedition to reassert patriotic control. And this expedition was a mix of political officials and militia forces that were to spread the decrees of the Buenos Aires government and make whatever reforms were deemed necessary to the existing political structure.

But before they even got to Upper Peru, this expedition found themselves blocked by a small counter-revolution that had broken out in the city of Cordoba. This revolt was being led by former acting Viceroy Santiago Liniers. The junta’s forces attacked, though, and in the ensuing battle, Liniers was captured and then executed, which was a very unpopular decision because Liniers was still the hero of those British invasions and most of the militia companies had been formed under his auspices. So just killing him was not going to win Buenos Aires any friends. 

And then things got no better for the expedition once they finally reached Upper Peru. Now, they did successfully clear out the few royalist garrisons around, but then they began imposing all kinds of revolutionary reforms that the locals really didn’t appreciate, especially since the expedition was notoriously secular and had very little respect for the traditional Catholic Church.

So if the point of the expedition was to bring Upper Peru under Buenos Aires’ control, the mission failed miserably, and they would all be getting tossed out in just a few months. 

Meanwhile, back down on the coast, self-declared Viceroy Elío was confirmed at his new post by the Cádiz Cortes, and in February 1811, he declared war on the rebels in Buenos Aires. But he found little support outside of the city of Montevideo itself, because out in the countryside of the Banda Oriental, the cowboys, ranchers, and small farmers all turned against Spanish rule and coalesced around a patriotic general named José Artigas.

Artigas was a little bit like Bolívar, the heir of a wealthy family of ranchers. He received a top-flight formal education but was also raised among the rustic cowboys who ran his family’s estate. Artigas was back in Spain when the abdication of Bayonne hit and then served in the Spanish army during the early stages of the Peninsular War. And in fact, he had only just returned home on the eve of the May Revolution in 1810. Artigas initially stayed in the Spanish army but deserted when Viceroy Elío declared war on Buenos Aires. Offering his service to Buenos Aires, Artigas was made a Colonel, and then he set to work recruiting from among the ranchers and cowboys. And soon he had a large and intensely loyal force behind him. By the summer of 1811, this cowboy army was joining with militia forces from Buenos Aires to lay siege to Montevideo. But there was a problem. The patriots had no navy to speak of, and until they did, Montevideo could be resupplied forever.

But the siege did prompt Viceroy Elío to turn north and beg Queen Charlotte of Portugal for assistance. Still, the one member of the Bourbon royal family free from the clutches of Napoleon, Queen Charlotte had long tried, though with very little to show for it, to become the recognized sovereign of the orphaned Americans. With Montevideo under siege, she had now a golden opportunity to advance Portuguese interests south of the Brazilian border. So not only did Charlotte literally pawn crown jewels to keep Montevideo supplied, she started gathering an armed expedition of her own to help relieve it. 

News that the Portuguese might now be getting into it was just the latest bad news in a year of bad news for Buenos Aires. They had sent a small force up to Asunción, but that force had been repelled by the Paraguayans in March 1811. Then they found out that in Upper Peru, the leader of the junta’s expeditionary force had gotten it in his head to keep marching all the way to Lima. But instead, they were blocked in the mountains and defeated in June 1811. This defeat scattered the junta’s forces and allowed the royalists to retake Upper Peru. As these military defeats mounted and dissatisfaction with the junta growing, radicals inside Buenos Aires staged a coup. With the threat from Portugal now looming, a quick uprising in September 1811 overthrew the existing leadership and put into place a new three-man triumvirate, with the junta reduced to a mere legislative branch. Fearing complete collapse if the Portuguese entered the fray, the new triumvirate signed an armistice with Viceroy Elío that nominally acknowledged his authority, without actually acknowledging his authority. But left hanging out to dry was José Artigas. Cut out of the negotiations by both sides, Artigas and his followers were now exposed to retaliation from Brazil or Montevideo, triggering one of the most famous events in the course of all this: the Exodus of the Easterners.

In October 1811, Artigas led a huge train of covered wagons into the interior. Whole families and communities relocated to the west bank of the Uruguay River. There, Artigas and his people would regroup away from the range of the Portuguese, Montevideo, or Buenos Aires, none of whom they now trusted. 

But though they had been forced to recognize the Viceroy, the men now running Buenos Aires were more radically liberal than ever. The dominant force of the new triumvirate would not be one of the triumvirs, but instead their secretary, Bernardino Rivadavia. A true acolyte of the Enlightenment, Rivadavia married new Benthamite liberal reform policies to old-style enlightened despotism, and he envisioned the whole of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata falling under the jurisdiction of an aggressively liberal reformist government based in Buenos Aires. Free trade, extensive education, respect for property rights, and civil rights, the works, all of it to be done without asking permission or forgiveness.

In December 1811, the old junta tried to stage a coup against the growing tyranny of Rivadavia’s triumvirate, but it failed and was savagely repressed. And in the aftermath, the national junta was dissolved. And then a few weeks later, in January 1812, the triumvirate ordered all provincial juntas to cease operations at once, and then they resumed the siege of Montevideo. But again, without a navy, the whole operation was pretty much doomed. 

So this was the military and political situation in March 1812 when one of the highest-ranking criollo officers in the Spanish army arrived: José de San Martín. The only person who rivals Simón Bolivar in the grand scheme of Spanish American independence is José de San Martín.

Now, I first mentioned him when talking about the early days of the Peninsular War because he fought in the Peninsular War and was at the key Battle of Bailén. But when I mentioned him, I said that he was from Buenos Aires, which is not actually true. He was born in the interior town of Yapeyú, where his father was a provincial administrator. But the family did relocate to Buenos Aires when little José was just three, before moving on again back to Spain, where San Martín would live from the age of seven until his “return home” to the Río de la Plata as a 33-year-old deserter from the Spanish army more than 25 years later.

Once they got to Spain, San Martín and his brothers all joined the army and all enjoyed a similar rise up the ranks. Just a few years older than Pablo Morillo, San Martín joined the cadets in 1789 at the age of eleven and then served through the wars of the French Revolution, once being captured by the British in 1798. San Martín was still in the Spanish army in 1808 when the abdications of Bayonne hit, and he was actually serving as a watch commander in Cádiz. And he was unable to stop a mob attack on French ships anchored in the harbor, an attack that left his friend and commanding officer dead. And San Martín is never going to be a populist radical. He’s always going to be fairly conservative in his political leanings.

After the French invasion, San Martín then joined the patriot Spanish army in 1808 as a lieutenant. And as I mentioned, he was promoted to Colonel after his valor at the Battle of Bailén. By 1810, San Martín was an adjutant General helping run the army of Catalonia, and he was, in fact, one of the highest-ranking criollo officers in the Spanish army at the time. But the disasters of early 1810 seemed to have turned San Martín’s attention back to the Río de la Plata. The Spanish army had been crushed, and Seville had fallen. I mean, how much longer could the regency last against the might of Napoleonic France?

So after 1810, San Martín stayed in uniform, but he also came into contact with various British agents in Cádiz and liberal members of the Order of Rational Knights, a revolutionary Masonic group based in Cádiz. On September 14, 1811, San Martín used a passport forged by the British to cross over to London under an assumed name. After 22 years of service, José de San Martín was a deserter. 

He arrived in London penniless and friendless, but as all penniless and friendless South Americans found upon arrival in London, San Martín was welcomed into Francisco de Miranda’s house on Grafton Street. Now Miranda himself had already departed for his own destiny in Venezuela by the time San Martín arrived in late 1811, but the revolutionary intellectual Andrés Bello still lived there. And though the old precursor was gone and never to return, as it turned out, San Martín found a supportive home on Grafton Street. He was inducted into Miranda’s Grand Reunion Lodge by Andrés Bello and also at Grafton Street met and befriended another young dissident criollo officer named Carlos María de Alvear, and the two discussed plans for the future of the Río de la Plata. After a few months, San Martín arranged passage back to Buenos Aires and departed. Alvear was close behind him.

So upon arrival in Buenos Aires in March 1812, San Martín was eagerly greeted and brought into the patriotic folds. He was, after all, like an adjutant General in the Spanish Army. But San Martin was no passive agent to be used. He immediately founded a branch of the Masonic Rational Knights called the Lautaro Lodge, which created a network of like-minded leaders and probably the most important of their shared philosophies being that they believed that only a Pan-American front against the Spanish would secure their collective independence. This is going to make them natural allies of the Bolívarians up in the north. And it can’t have been too long before San Martín started planning his invasion of Peru. San Martín always saw the big picture, and he believed that removing the royalists from Lima was essential to the security of South America.

But for the moment, he focused on the simple defenses against incursions from royalists coming out of Upper Peru and the grateful leaders of Buenos Aires put San Martín in charge of reorganizing their armed forces, which had not performed well in the field since the May Revolution.

So as San Martín got to work organizing the army and earning its loyalty, his Masonic brother, Carlos María de Alvear, arrived and set to work undermining the triumvirate. The enlightened despotism of Rivadavia had started rubbing people the wrong way. And in particular, San Martín and Rivadavia hated each other. In mid-1812, the popular patriot General was deemed an enemy of the regime and executed along with 40 of his senior officers, which struck many as unjust and harsh. So after a summer spent maneuvering in the shadows, San Martín, Alvear, and their Masonic brothers moved in for the kill in October 1812. They forced the triumvirate to resign and kicked Rivadavia out of office. Then they orchestrated the formation of a second triumvirate with mostly figureheads holding the three positions. San Martín stayed with the armies. Alvear stayed behind the scenes as the triumvirate’s permanent secretary. 

The second triumvirate then called for a Río de la Plata-wide congress to convene in early 1813, but they still found few takers. Montevideo, of course, just ignored them, as did José Artigas and his people, Dr. Francia and the Paraguayans, and then everybody up in Upper Peru. Now, in May 1813, Buenos Aires sent a second expedition to Upper Peru that was able to temporarily reoccupy the region. But by the end of the year, it was all bad news for Buenos Aires, again. In September, Montevideo received some much-needed peninsular reinforcements. And then in November, that second expedition to Upper Peru was also driven out. 

So, the stalemate that was now setting in in the Río de la Plata held until 1814. At the beginning of that year, the second triumvirate gave way to a single supreme dictator, a guy named Gervasio Antonio de Posadas. But he doesn’t really matter because he’s just the face man for Alvear, now promoted to Commander in Chief of the army and the power behind the throne. Now, during this little governmental shake-up, San Martín took what appeared to be a demotion, taking over as Governor of the frontier province of Cuyo. But this was just preparation for San Martín’s grand plan. Believing fervently that Lima must be captured and determining that the road through Upper Peru was much too difficult, San Martín now planned to cross the Andes into Chile and then march north up the coast. The province of Cuyo just coincidentally bordered Chile.

Now, back on the Atlantic coast, Buenos Aires finally emerged victorious in their struggle with Montevideo. They hired an English deserter from the Royal Navy to build them a little navy. And in June 1814, this small fleet defeated the Spanish Navy guarding the harbor of Montevideo. So finally, surrounded on both land and sea, Montevideo was forced to capitulate and put themselves under the control of those no-good bastards over in Buenos Aires. 

Now, for the whole length of this second siege, José Artigas and his people had never emerged from beyond the Uruguay River and thus took no part in the victory. But once Buenos Aires had taken Montevideo, José Artigas came out and said, “Give me control of the city. I’m the only native leader of the patriotic Banda Oriental.” Buenos Aires tried to ignore Artigas and hold the city under their own direct jurisdiction. But even among allies that they had in Montevideo, there was no patience for Buenos Aires’ rule. So those guys withdrew and ceded control of the city to José Artigas, who triumphantly entered the city in the summer of 1814. Artigas then inaugurated a broadly liberal policy that specifically promoted mixed-race ranchers over the criollo elite of the city. And, oh yeah, he also abolished slavery. 

Now, before we leave the Río de la Plata, we have to get through one more little leadership change in Buenos Aires because in January 1815, Posadas resigned and Alvear finally stepped into the spotlight as the supreme dictator of the Río de la Plata. But his rule was immediately unpopular. Already without a hold on Uruguay or Paraguay or Upper Peru, even cities inside of what is today Argentina, like Córdoba and Santa Fe, now revolted as well. Even his Masonic brother and ally, San Martín, was able to offer little support as he was now fully immersed in his plans to invade Chile. So on April 15, 1815, Alvear resigned in favor of yet another military strongman. And this is about as current as events were going to get as Bolívar sat in Jamaica composing his letter just a few months later. And though he pled ignorance, Bolívar knew enough to predict that Argentina would be ruled by a centralized military dictatorship that would eventually devolve into a corrupt oligarchy, you know, not too far off the mark. And though he cannot have been caught up on all the details of the Río de la Plata, to get from four viceroyalties to 15 to 17 new nations, you have to have division somewhere. And Bolívar never implied that the cohesion of the Río de la Plata would hold since there was obviously no cohesion to speak of. 

From here, Bolívar then turned his attention to Chile, currently the southern province of the Viceroyalty of Peru, but destined to become an independent nation. And of Chile, he wrote, “The Kingdom of Chile is destined by the nature of its geography, by the innocent and virtuous customs of its inhabitants, by the example of its neighbors, to enjoy the blessings conferred on the just and gentle laws of the republic. If any American republic is to endure, I am inclined to believe it will be Chile.” So let’s talk about Chile.

Once a ship has navigated its way through the treacherous waters around Cape Horn, it will come up and around the Pacific coast, arriving first in southern Chile and its capital of Concepción. Then further up the coast lay the Chilean capital of Santiago. And from there it would be another two weeks or so up the coast to Lima. And thanks to being on the lower back side of South America, Chile was sheltered from foreign attack, unlike the port to the Caribbean that constantly had to worry about the French or British or United States coming around. They were also far enough removed from Lima that Chile enjoyed local autonomy, and it had been mostly independent Captaincy General since almost the conquistador era. Little changed in Chile after the abdications of Bayonne. The Viceroy in Peru stayed in place. The Captain General in Chile stayed in place. But it was a different matter when the Supreme Junta fell in 1810 because the Captain General of Chile at that point just so happened to be an abusive piece of crap that nobody liked. And his response to the news that Seville had fallen was to crack down, like an abusive piece of crap that nobody liked. 

So in July 1810, the Santiago audiencia, like no radical institution, actually took the lead in deposing this hated Captain General because they were worried his unpopular antics would actually trigger a revolt. The audiencia then replaced him with an octogenarian General named Mateo de Toro Zambrano. But just a few weeks later, they got hit with three pieces of news simultaneously. First, despite the fall of Seville, a new regency had been established in Spain. Second, that regency had appointed a new Captain General of Chile. And third, the boys over in Buenos Aires had already rejected the regency with their little May Revolution. And this last piece of news triggered a patriotic move for self-government in Chile. And on September 18, 1810, at an open town council in Santiago, they agreed to form an independent junta with Zambrano as president. 

The Chilean Junta was the most moderate and prosperous of all the South American juntas. It scrupulously maintained its allegiance to Ferdinand, describing their every move to their brothers in Cádiz and Buenos Aires and Lima, swearing up and down that they were not republican separatists but loyal subjects of the Empire. But that said, they also prudently prepared for an inevitable expedition from Lima to bring them back into the official viceregal fold. 

But the unity and prosperity of the Chilean Junta masked regional rivalries, specifically the rivalry between Santiago in the north and Concepción in the south. As the capital of Chile, Santiago tended to be more elitist and conservative, while the men in Concepción tended to be more liberal and radical. Inside the junta, this came down to a struggle between Juan Martínez de Rozas from Concepción and Juan Miguel Carrera from Santiago. And Carrera, in particular, is important. A young, rich criollo recently returned from military service in Spain. In December 1810, the junta issued a call for a general congress to convene in Santiago to draft a constitution. But when this congress convened, the first thing they tried to do was assume authority over the junta and reduce it to a weak executive branch. But a temporary alliance between Rozas and Carrera launched a coup on September 4, 1811. They purged the congress of moderates and created a new five-man executive. In the wake of this coup, Concepción then went ahead and formed its own junta on November 15th to protect their own interests, which was smart because two months later, Carrera just seized power. He dissolved the general congress without consulting his colleagues, and so, under the leadership of Rozas, Concepción refused to recognize Carrera’s authority and instead went into rebellion. 

The whole of 1812 then played out as Carrera pretending to negotiate with Concepción. But really what he was doing was blockading the south, preventing all traffic from Lima and points beyond to the north from reaching southern Chile. With this done, Carrera could just afford to wait his rivals out. The southern economy tanked under the blockade, and in July 1812, Rozas was deposed and sent into exile. Now, civil war looked like the inevitable end to this conflict, but then both sides were hit with a huge stroke of luck. Kind of. The long-expected invading army from Peru finally landed in March 1813. So instead of fighting each other, the Chileans banded together to fight the invaders. The Chileans, far from being conquered, were now more united than ever. Whoopsie. 

It was the landing of the Peruvians in March 1813 that brought a very important man to prominence: Bernardo O’Higgins. What Bolívar is to Venezuela, and Artigas is to Uruguay, and San Martín is to Argentina, Bernardo O’Higgins is to Chile.

So, first of all, his name is pretty far out, right? I mean, O’Higgins is not the most Spanish name I’ve ever heard of, and for a good reason. Bernardo’s father was an Irishman. Irish Catholics had long sought prosperous relocation to Spanish America, where they were treated as full citizens who could freely exercise their religion, unlike life under the British. So it was that Ambrosio O’Higgins drifted into Spanish imperial service and emigrated to Chile in 1766. He worked first as an engineer and then joined the Spanish army, commissioned as a Colonel in 1777. The very next year, Colonel O’Higgins had an affair with an 18-year-old daughter of a wealthy family in southern Chile that produced an illegitimate son, little Bernardo. His birth a scandal, Bernardo was quietly handed over to arranged foster parents, and Colonel O’Higgins returned to his career, which was about to seriously take off.

But though Ambrosio O’Higgins would not recognize his son, he did make sure the boy was provided for. Bernardo was raised first by foster parents and then later by a distant friend of his father. And his father was becoming a powerful man indeed. He was promoted first to General and then intendant of Santiago, on his way to the Captaincy General of Chile itself, which he was promoted to in 1788. He was now one step below the Viceroy himself. Now, eventually, Bernardo learned who his father was, and though the two did not meet, they did keep up a distant correspondence. At the age of 15, Bernardo was sent to Lima to get a top-flight education before being forwarded back to Europe to complete his studies. But there’s a good deal of suspicion that Ambrosio wanted to get his bastard son on the other side of the world while he made his play for the viceroyalty. 

So, 17-year-old Bernardo O’Higgins landed first in Spain, but he was quickly deflected up to England, where he took up residence with an upper-middle-class family in Richmond. Now, Bernardo was supposed to have an allowance of £300 a year to live on, but the local agents who held the money in trust for his father skimmed most of it away for themselves. So Bernardo wrote to his father, complaining about all this, but he never received a reply. Ambrosio was probably too busy having won his grand prize because in 1796, the Irishman Ambrosio O’Higgins became Viceroy of Peru. With his father now one of the most powerful men in the Western Hemisphere, Bernardo was basically forgotten about and then just ignored. His friends and host family had to take up collections to keep him fed and warm. 

Now, given his lonely and rejected circumstances, it was natural that Bernardo O’Higgins would gravitate to the Grafton Street house in London. And it was natural that Francisco de Miranda would gravitate to O’Higgins. Miranda was very well informed and knew exactly who this boy was and, more importantly, who his father was. So Miranda arranged to become Bernardo’s tutor in math, soon branching out to history, politics, and literature. And O’Higgins became the most successful disciple of Miranda. The other Spanish American liberators, like Bolívar and San Martín, had their own complex relationships with Miranda, but for O’Higgins, this was clearly a master-student relationship. O’Higgins was one of the first initiates into the Grand Reunion Lodge, and he remained a constant presence at Miranda’s side in Grafton Street until shifts in the winds of war forced him to depart London for Spain in 1798. 

Forced to take up residence in Cádiz, the once again miserable Bernardo O’Higgins was turned into an unpaid clerk in the employ of his guardian – a guardian who was not at all happy to be taking responsibility for the bastard son of the Viceroy of Peru. O’Higgins tried to join the Navy, but his illegitimate status got in the way. Then he thought about running away, but the British had everything blockaded. Then Bernardo got yellow fever at the end of 1800 and nearly died. And as if that wasn’t all bad enough, in early 1811, Bernardo O’Higgins was left nearly destitute. His connections to the traitor Miranda had finally filtered back to his father. Then, in early 1811, Ambrosio O’Higgins suffered a nearly fatal brain hemorrhage, in the aftermath of which he drafted a new will that purposefully disinherited Bernardo. But some last-minute pleading from somebody on Bernardo’s behalf, we do not know who, changed Ambrosio’s mind. And in the end, he recognized Bernardo as his son and left him control of a small estate. So in 1822, Bernardo O’Higgins returned to Chile and spent the next eight years focused on his estate, mostly vineyards and cattle, and dabbling in some local politics. 

But throughout this whole period, he was also an active revolutionary Mason and an acolyte of Miranda’s dream of independence. So from the abdications of Bayonne forward, O’Higgins will always be close to the leading edge along with a few of his fellow radical southerners. O’Higgins was made a minor functionary in the junta government after independence in 1810, but he resigned in protest over Juan Miguel Carrera’s unilateral seizure of power. So he returned to the south then and would no doubt have taken a leading role in the looming civil war between Concepción and Santiago. But the arrival of the Peruvians in March 1813 changed everyone’s political calculus. As I said, the Chileans joined forces to repel the invaders, and 35-year-old Bernardo O’Higgins got his first taste of military action. All through 1813, O’Higgins won repeated skirmishes against the royalists and became a popular leader in Chile, much to the annoyance of Carrera. 

On the whole, however, the war was not going great for the Chileans. And in November 1813, the junta dropped Carrera as Commander in Chief and replaced him with a guy who seemed like a winner, Bernardo O’Higgins. But given the circumstances, winning the war was a pretty tall order. And O’Higgins spent the next few months trying to rally a war effort that was short on men and short on cash, and prepared to fall back into the north-south conflict at any moment. With the unity of the Chileans once again fraying, the Viceroy in Peru helpfully sent along another invasion in January 1814 that once again fused them all back together. Carrera and O’Higgins set aside their differences, and everyone went to war, fighting off the new forces. But in June 1814, even more royalist forces arrived, and they started marching on Santiago. O’Higgins set up a defensive line with 1,700 men at the town of Rancagua, hoping to block this royalist advance, but situated in a ravine, it was not ideal for defending, and his rival/partner, José Miguel Carrera, showed no interest in rushing down to reinforce the position. So the disunity of the Chileans is ultimately what would undo them. 

On October 1, 1814, thousands of royalist forces streamed into Rancagua. O’Higgins’ men fought for 30 straight hours, hoping that Carrera would come to their relief. But when Carrera did finally set out, he was routed in the field and never even came close to the city. With defenses crumbling everywhere, O’Higgins ordered a general breakout. But “general” is a pretty generous way of putting it. O’Higgins ordered his cavalry, about 500 men, to bunch together and ride fast in a column through enemy lines and then disperse, which they did. And it’s a famous and heroic moment. But though the cavalry could just ride away, the infantry couldn’t really do anything. They were just doomed. I mean, they had orders to disperse, but how? They were surrounded. So the royalists then streamed in, and they were in no mood for forgiveness. In this battle, the Chileans lost 600 dead, 300 wounded, and 400 prisoners, which, hey, kind of looks like O’Higgins’ total force minus the cavalry. Remember, kids, if you want to live, join the cavalry. 

So royalist forces quickly converged and were able to take Santiago just a few days later, ending the rule of the Santiago Junta and turning this whole era from 1810 to 1814 into a discreet little Chilean historical unit called the Patria Vieja, the Old Fatherland. For the next three years, restored royalists would govern Chile. But in the wake of this reconquest, thousands of patriotic refugees streamed across the Andes into Argentina, Bernardo O’Higgins chief among them. And there they would find welcome and energetic aid from the armies of José de San Martín, who mustered emergency relief shipment for the incoming refugees, all of whom he saw as victims of despotism and ready allies for his long-planned campaign against the Spaniards. His fellow Mason, Bernardo O’Higgins, now joined the inner circle of that campaign. 

So that was the situation as Simón Bolívar would have found it in September 1815 as he wrapped up his letter from Jamaica. Given travel time and delay in communications, to say nothing of the fact that Bolívar had his own problems in early 1815, it’s hard to say exactly what he knew about what had been going on in Chile. I mean, did he know that Chile had been reconquered? He certainly didn’t hint at it when he said that Chileans had the best prospects for success in independence. But there was no further time to dwell on it. The letter completed, Bolívar sent it off to Mr. Cullen. And then a few months later, after a dodged assassination attempt and the depressing news that Cartagena had fallen, Bolívar found himself living in Port-au-Prince, and that is where we will find him next week as he seeks, ever the optimist and never the pessimist, to give Venezuelan independence one more try.

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