Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

The first Venezuelan Republic fell in the summer of 1812 when Francisco de Miranda surrendered the patriot army to the royalist general, Domingo de Monteverde. Now Monteverde made extravagant promises about respecting patriot lives and property, but in the aftermath of Miranda’s surrender and the capture of Caracas, Monteverde dropped any pretense of benevolence. Republican leaders were arrested, property was confiscated, and the ports were closed to prevent anyone from getting away. Hardcore patriots were now forced to either prostrate themselves before Monteverde and hope for mercy or make a run for it. And as we saw at the end of last week’s episode, Simón Bolívar engaged in a bit of both, using a high place connection to secure a passport. But many of his republican comrades had to essentially smuggle themselves out of Venezuela any way they could. The captured Miranda, meanwhile, was left to languish in his prison cell in La Guaira until Monteverde transferred him to the more secure fort at Puerto Cabello, the very fort Bolívar had fatally lost back in July.

Those who did manage to escape Monteverde’s clutches sought asylum in various foreign island colonies off the mainland. So British Trinidad and Tobago, or Aruba, and then most especially the Dutch island of Curaçao, which is just about 50 miles north of the Venezuelan coast. So not too far as the crow flies, but politically safe from Spanish royalist retribution.

And I do want to insert a little terminology note here to distinguish the two sides in the battles to come in the rest of today’s episode. I will be using “royalist” as a tag for the enemies of Bolívar and his friends. But I do want you to remember that this means that there are partisans of the Regency, the Cádiz Cortes, and the liberal monarchy enshrined in the Constitution of 1812. Now, some of these royalists are unreconstructed conservatives who would welcome the return of the old Bourbon imperial regime. Monteverde is actually secretly one of those guys. But at the moment, Bolívar is fighting for independence from the liberal Cortes in Cádiz, not yet from the conservative court of King Ferdinand. That will come later.

After securing a passport and sailing from La Guaira on August 27, 1812, Bolívar joined the band of Venezuelan exiles in Curaçao, many of them old friends, family, and neighbors, including an uncle named José Félix Ribas, who would become Bolívar’s chief lieutenant during the Admirable campaign.

Upon arrival, though, the Dutch customs officials confiscated what baggage Bolívar carried with him until he could pay for his passage. But this turned out to be a problem because he was no longer the massively wealthy young man who had been able to buy his way into an ambassadorship to Britain. Bolívar learned from one of his sisters that Monteverde had confiscated all the family property—the mines, the estates, the businesses, everything. Bolívar could expect no money. He was now an indigent refugee. So that left him stranded in Curaçao for the next two months until he finally managed to secure a loan from a local merchant that he befriended. 

During this period of forced idleness, Bolívar’s mind turned and turned and turned as he tried to make sense of what had happened and what he could possibly do next. And by the time he was preparing to leave Curaçao, he had pretty clearly worked out a plan of action. He was going to sail for Cartagena, which still enjoyed the independence Caracas had lost, and rally the New Granadans into a pan-American patriotic war of independence because only if they all worked together could they hope to win their collective freedom from Spain.

So at the end of October 1812, Bolívar and a small band of loyal Venezuelan exiles sailed from Curaçao to Cartagena, and upon arrival, got about the business of planning their own personal reconquista.

I purposely set aside talking about events in New Granada after that wave of Independence Day swept through South America that we talked about in Episode 5.8 because I knew that Bolívar’s arrival in Cartagena in November 1812 would be a really nice opportunity to play catch-up. So we’re going to play catch-up here, and I will try to keep this as straightforward as possible. But I do want to warn you that for the rest of today’s episode, there is going to be a quick succession of new names entering the picture, but really, there are only two big ones that you’re going to need to remember. I’ll tell you when we get to them. So mostly, I just want you to sit back and enjoy the ride.

So we left New Granada in July of 1810, with the news of the fall of the Central Junta spreading from Cartagena up to Bogotá and triggering the formation of independent juntas in every city that the news reached. All of this culminated in July 1810 with the overthrow of the viceroy in Bogotá.

Well, since then, New Granada has been enduring the same four-quadrant divisions that have plagued Venezuela. Remember, that’s the centralist-federalist axis on one hand, and the monarchist-republican axis on the other.

In New Granada, the centralist republicans were pretty much all in Bogotá. As the capital of the viceroyalty of New Granada, the patriot leaders in Bogotá naturally assumed that Bogotá would become the capital of independent New Granada and exert the same level of authority once wielded by the viceroy. But all the other cities in New Granada were like, “Hell no.” They were all staunch republican federalists. They were interested in building a confederation of independent cities, not subordinating themselves to some Bogotá dictatorship. And that was just on the patriot republican side. In between and amongst them were monarchists and royalists, a mixture of unreconstructed conservative peninsulares and then more moderate liberals who wanted to remain in the fold of the empire. And then, of course, the mixed-race lower classes who were all justifiably concerned about the tyranny of independent criollos. And this would all lead to a very messy running conflict of everybody fighting against everybody else.

So the way it played out specifically was that after the overthrow of the viceroy in Bogotá, the Bogotá Junta set about organizing what they thought was going to be a centralized government. They tried to do this all through 1810 and 1811 but found, to their dismay, that nobody else wanted to join.

Instead, a radical patriot lawyer named Camilo Torres took the lead in organizing a rival federalist government that would be based in the city of Tunja. The centralists and federalists then vied for the loyalty of the other cities in New Granada, with the federalists in Tunja coming out way ahead because they were promising political autonomy for local municipal leaders, with a shared congress in Tunja acting as little more than a glorified summit of independent city-states. The centralists in Bogotá then watched in dismay as most of New Granada rejected their authority. And to try to right the ship, they turned to a man that we have not heard from since Episode 5.3 when he was arrested for translating and distributing the Declaration of the Rights of Man. You remember that guy, Antonio Nariño.

If you will recall, after escaping from Spanish captivity, Nariño had gone back to New Granada. But upon concluding that his fellow New Granadans were not yet ready for independence, he turned himself into the viceroy in 1797, whereupon he then sat in a Cartagena prison off and on until the winds of independence came sweeping through in 1810.

Well, here we are. Freed from his cell, Nariño returned to Bogotá, where he was venerated as an early martyr for the patriotic cause. As brilliant and passionate as ever, Nariño was elected president of the centralist government in Bogotá in 1811, and his core mission was to bring Camilo Torres and the Tunja government to heel and make Bogotá the true capital of New Granada. But spoiler alert, Nariño is not going to succeed.

So in March of 1812, that is just as the Caracas earthquake was dooming the first Venezuelan republic, President Nariño dispatched a small army to go subdue the federalists in Tunja and bring it under Bogotá’s authority, but as soon as this army got to Tunja, the general entrusted with the job switched sides and declared for the federalists. Pretty soon, that army Nariño had sent had turned around and was marching back towards Bogotá, forcing the centralists to scramble a defense. And this little patriotic civil war was, of course, very bad for the larger republican cause because royalist forces, those still loyal to God and the King, took advantage of the situation. And as we’ll see in a moment, for example, pretty much the entire length of the Magdalena River was soon held by royalists, cutting off all communication between the ports along the coast and the interior cities. It was into this very messy political and military situation that Bolívar and his friends arrived in Cartagena in November 1812.

Now, to add one further wrinkle to all this, because Cartagena was at the moment pretty much cut off from the interior, they weren’t linked to neither the centralists in Bogotá nor the federalists in Tunja. They were essentially their own little city-state at the moment. And it was to the government of Cartagena that Bolívar and his friends presented themselves and said, “What can we do to help you?” These exiled Venezuelans were warmly received by the civilian Cartagena government but much less so by the officer currently running Cartagena’s small military force. That man was a French adventurer named Pierre Labatut. Labatut had been a sergeant in Napoleon’s imperial army and had served in the opening stages of the Peninsular War but had then left service and become a pirate operating in the Caribbean. Labatut actually led a fairly interesting life. When he heard that Venezuela had declared its independence, Labatut then went down and offered his services to General Miranda and the First Republic as a mercenary. Now, generally speaking, Miranda did not like Frenchmen, but in short order, Labatut became one of Miranda’s favorite officers, probably for no other reason than Labatut at least knew something about proper European soldiering.

When the First Republic fell, Labatut made his escape from Venezuela courtesy of the United States Navy. He finagled himself a spot on the USS Matilda that spirited him directly to Cartagena without the months of purgatory in Curaçao. Thanks to his high rank in the Venezuelan army, his European war experience, and close connections to General Miranda, the Cartagena government made Labatut Commander in Chief of their armed forces in the summer of 1812. And so, he had been on the job for just a few months when the Venezuelans arrived in November, and Labatut wanted no part of them. He knew Bolívar’s reputation well, that he was a cocky hothead who would allow Puerto Cabello to fall and then betrayed Miranda. So when the Cartagena government ordered Labatut to find a place for Bolívar in the Cartagena army, Labatut said, “Fine,” and appointed Colonel Bolívar to lead 70 men in Barranco Vieja, a strategically insignificant town that lay on the lower banks of the great Magdalena River. There, Bolívar was supposed to sit and not get in Labatut’s way.

But Bolívar had no intention of just sitting around. He had reflected on his experiences fighting a losing war for the First Republic. And above all, had learned one big lesson in military strategy: that cautious defense is a strategy for losers. Miranda had sat back on his heels and refused to take the fight to the enemy. And as a result, he had lost the war. Bolívar was now convinced that fast-paced, aggressive campaigns were the only way to go. They would keep the enemy surprised and off-balance. And from here on out, Bolívar would never play defense. He would always play offense. And if George Washington’s signature move was the coordinated retreat, Bolívar was the lightning, bordering on reckless, offense. And he is about to launch a doozy of a lightning offensive that will, for the first time, make people stand up and take notice of the name Bolívar.

But Bolívar’s reflections on the fall of the First Republic resulted not just in military lessons learned, but also political lessons learned. And his months spent in purgatory in Curaçao had afforded him time to work out a systematic analysis of what had gone wrong and what must be done to make it right. And on December 15, 1812, just before he left to take up his post in Barranco Vieja, Bolívar published an open letter to the residents of Cartagena that has since become one of the core Bolivarian texts. It is known as the Cartagena Manifesto.

The Cartagena Manifesto was an open letter in two parts. The first part spelled out why he thought the first Venezuelan republic had failed. And the second part spelled out what the New Granadans should and should not do if they wanted to avoid the fate of unhappy Venezuela.

Bolívar highlighted a number of factors: the lack of political unity, the lack of military resolve. He thought the leaders of the Republic entirely too lenient towards enemies of the state. He thought the reliance on temporary militias rather than building a real professional army had doomed them all on the battlefield. But nothing did he single out more than the federalist structure of the Constitution. He said that the Spanish Americans were ill-suited for federalism because their centuries under absolutist rule had failed to give them the habits and virtues of true republican citizens. That emerging states needed a strong central government or they would fail. And even more particularly, he thought the Venezuelan constitution, with its emphasis on decentralized government and individual rights, was a document made for a time of peace, not of war—and they were at war.

He summed this all up by saying,

“From the foregoing, it is clear that among the causes leading to the fall of Venezuela, first was the nature of her Constitution, which was, I repeat, as inimical to her interests as it was favorable to those of her enemies. Second was the spirit of misanthropy that took hold of our governors. Third was the opposition to the establishment of a standing army that could have saved the republic and warded off the blows dealt by the Spaniards. Fourth was the earthquake, accompanied by the fanaticism that gave such dire interpretations to this event. And finally, were the internal factions that were, in reality, the mortal poison that pushed the country into her grave.”

He then moved on to what needed to be done. And in Bolívar’s estimation, there was no question what needed to be done: Beyond obvious need to unify and centralize and work together, the New Granadans needed to help him undertake the reconquest of Venezuela, which was at present poised to act as the beachhead for all Spanish political and military action on the continent. Having already commented in the Cartagena manifesto about the failure of Caracas to subdue Coro, allowing it to become a fortified base for the royalist invasion, he now said that Venezuela threatened to become the Coro of the whole of South America. He said literally, “Applying the example of Venezuela to New Granada and expressing it algebraically, we could say that Coro is to Caracas what Caracas is to all America.” So if the New Granadans wanted to maintain their freedom, they needed to look beyond their own parochial concerns and help him expel the Spanish from Venezuela. Or surely the Spanish would soon be coming from Venezuela to extinguish the liberty in New Granada.

Bolívar wrapped up the Cartagena Manifesto by saying,

“The honor of New Granada absolutely demands we teach these audacious invaders a lesson, pursuing them to their last strongholds. Since our own glory requires that we undertake the campaign against Venezuela to liberate the cradle of Colombian independence. The martyrs and worthy people of Caracas, whose cries are addressed only to their beloved compatriots the Granadans, whom they await with mortal impatience as their redeemers. Let us march forth to break the chains of those victims groaning in dungeons still awaiting salvation from us. Do not betray their trust. Do not be deaf to the pleas of our brothers. Rush forth to avenge death, to give life to the dying, succor to the oppressed, and freedom to all.”

The Cartagena Manifesto has entered the pantheon of Bolivarian texts, along with the letter from Jamaica and a few others, as one of the principal statements of Bolívar’s emerging worldview. And most of the things that he highlights in the Cartagena Manifesto—the need for a strong central government, his skepticism that Spanish Americans are ready for the kind of enlightened liberalism of the United States and Britain, the need for a professional army rather than part-time militias —these would all be drums that he would beat constantly for the rest of his life, even as that beat ultimately carried him into a depressed and bitter exile. 

But that is still quite a ways off, and when Bolívar arrived in Barranco Vieja, he was still young and bursting with reckless energy, and he had no intention of following Labatut’s order to sit and do nothing. The royalists held the entire stretch of the upper Magdalena River, really everything south of Barranco Vieja, and Bolívar planned to do something about it. After acquiring ten large riverboats and recruiting additional men to bulk up his forces, Bolívar and 200 men, launched themselves up the river on December 21, 1812, beginning what would become known to history as the Magdalena Campaign.

The first target was the small town of Tenerife, where 500 royalist troops occupied an armed camp. These royalists were so surprised when Bolívar’s men came whipping around a bend in the river, guns blazing, that they just scattered to the winds, leaving behind a cache of guns, and ammo, and supplies. Bolívar loaded up everything onto his boat and ordered his men to keep moving. 

Their next destination was the city of Mompox, which was actually held by republicans who had been isolated by the surrounding royalist forces. The people of Mompox were thrilled to see Bolívar’s force arrive, and the residents of the city outfitted him even further. And then he recruited 300 more men to his cause, bringing Bolívar’s little army up to about 500.

Setting out from Mompox, Bolívar then charged up the river, clearing out all royalist units he came across with relentless speed and aggression. And this was not an easy push—the water was filled with crocodiles, the land was filled with snakes, it was all swampy and overgrown, it was humid, difficult terrain. But captured royalist camps brought him even more guns and ammunition, while estates run by friendly republicans offered him provisions and assistance. But Bolívar never stopped moving, and the pace and ferocity of the campaign turned in an extraordinary result. By January 8, 1813, just 15 days after setting out, Bolívar and his men had traveled 300 miles up the Magdalena River and cleared the entire stretch of royalist troops.

The capstone of the campaign came just a few days later when he moved off the river to capture the city of Ocaña, near the border with Venezuela. And yes, there is a map of these campaigns at revolutionspodcast.com.

The Magdalena Campaign put Simón Bolívar on the map. Until now, he had been a fairly anonymous and inconsequential young man. He enjoyed some local infamy in Caracas as a barely tolerated radical, easily dismissed by more serious leaders. I mean, who knows how many people even bothered to read the Cartagena Manifesto when it was first published. But after the Magdalena Campaign, the name Bolívar was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. “My God, look at what this man has done now.”

Pierre Labatut was incensed when he found out about the unauthorized offensive and demanded that Bolívar be court-martialed. But the Cartagena government said, “Ha ha, yeah, right,” and ordered Bolívar to go link up with a small force manning the borderlands between New Granada and Venezuela. Because there were reports that Monteverde was planning an invasion of New Granada, and troop buildups in western Venezuela seemed to confirm those reports.

But in what would become a recurring problem for Bolívar, the enthusiasm of the men who had fought their way up the Magdalena River was now spent. They had done their duty and now wanted to go home. So Bolívar was forced to go find new recruits. So, in February 1813, he traveled back to Mompox, where he was now a famous hero, and raised 400 new men. Then he turned around and marched those guys up into the mountainous borderlands between New Granada and Venezuela. And the change in terrain during the wars of Spanish American independence is pretty remarkable. After coming up the swampy and humid Magdalena River, Bolívar and his men now crossed wide-open mountain plains, cold and dry and windswept, and mostly devoid of inhabitants. 

As they advanced on the border city of Cúcuta from the northwest, Bolívar and company spied a royalist force that had indeed advanced into New Granada from Venezuela, and they were now occupying a critical mountain pass. To dislodge these guys, Bolívar sent up a spy carrying a letter about a fake republican army advancing from the south, an easy army for the royalists to pounce on. When the spy was captured, the royalist commander read the letter and thought, “Aha! I have a chance to get the drop on my enemies.” And he moved out of the pass to attack. But as soon as he moved, Bolívar’s forces, the real forces in the region, snuck up behind and pounced on the royalist rear, sending them running headlong back to the city of Cúcuta.

Bolívar’s company then linked up with that other Patriot unit. And on February 28th, they all launched an attack on Cúcuta. Despite being outnumbered two to one, the patriot forces charged in and took the royalists by surprise. And it was not just the timing that surprised the royalists, but also the ferocity of the attack. The turning point in the battle came when José Félix Ribas led a bayonet charge uphill against a superior force, which is pretty much the opposite of what you’re ever supposed to do. And he was awarded for his audacity when the royalists panicked, broke, and fled back across the border into Venezuela. The victory at Cúcuta pretty much ended any invasion threat posed by Monteverde, and all the patriots in New Granada, centralist and federalist, both could breathe a little easier. And as a reward for his service, Bolívar was promoted to Brigadier General.

By the time Bolivar was reporting these victories, the civil war between the centralists and federalists was winding down, with the Bogotá centralists recognizing that they were never going to be able to impose their authority on the rest of the country. And pretty soon, the rival presidents, Torres and Nariño, agreed to form a Union of New Granada under a federalist structure. Nariño himself would transition from being a President to a General, and by June 1813, he would be leading a republican army southwest in the direction of Quito, hoping to liberate that city from the royalist occupation they had been enduring since 1809.

Bolívar, meanwhile, now wanted to take his army east into Venezuela, and he sent his uncle, José Félix Ribas, to confer with the New Granadan leadership in Tunja to make them sanction this invasion of Venezuela. Caracas must not become Coro. It took some cajoling, but finally, the New Granadan leadership agreed to sanction Bolívar’s invasion, but he was only supposed to go as far as the city of Trujillo, which was not quite halfway between Cúcuta and Caracas. This was good enough for Bolívar, though, and he prepared to march.

But most of the New Granadan soldiers under his command were not super interested in transitioning from a defensive New Granada to an invasion of Venezuela. Indeed, the New Granadan Colonel that Bolívar had been working alongside hated the idea so much that when official permission to invade Venezuela came on May 7, 1813, the Colonel and 100 of his men resigned on the spot. So that left what was left of that company under the command of a man Bolívar would come to have a long and tumultuous partnership with. And as I said, there would be two men introduced in today’s episode that you actually need to pay attention to, and this is one of them: Francisco de Paola Santander, the man of laws. 

Santander was, at this point, a young man. He had been born in April 1792, so he was just approaching his 21st birthday when he met Bolívar for the first time. Santander was actually born in Cúcuta to a respectable criollo family that grew cocoa, and his father was also a respected provincial administrator. Young Santander got a good elite education and then went off to Bogotá to study law and was in the capital city as a promising 18-year-old law student when the viceroy was overthrown in July 1810. An enthusiastic patriot, Santander joined the republican army in Bogotá and wound up serving as secretary to that first General that President Nariño sent against the federalists in March 1818, the general who immediately switched sides. While Santander had no problem following his boss over to the federalists because his political philosophy leaned heavily in the direction of federalism. And that philosophy would forever put him at odds with Bolívar, even as the two men worked side by side on the project of liberating South America and creating Gran Colombia. Santander would also come to embody the belief that civilian authority and the rule of law were superior to the kind of military dictatorships that Bolívar would soon come to embody. The partnership and rivalry between Bolívar and Santander will be a defining feature of the story of Gran Colombia. And it is here in the spring of 1813 that they had their first confrontation.

So, though he elected to stay in the army, Santander was not enthusiastic about the invasion of Venezuela, and he dragged his feet releasing his men to Bolívar’s command. It got to the point where Bolívar was shouting at Santander, “March at once. You have no choice in the matter. March. Either you shoot me or by God, I will certainly shoot you.” Now, Santander himself did not march. He stayed to administer Cúcuta, but he did release his men to Bolívar’s authority. And so, on May 23, 1813, Bolívar crossed the border into Venezuela, beginning what has become known as the Admirable campaign, which is an unintentionally ironic name, to be sure. 

Now, General Bolívar only led about 500 men across the border, headed in the direction of Mérida. But as he approached, the royalists holding the city got scared and ran away. It was a bit like how Pompey fled Rome when he heard Caesar had crossed the Rubicon. The assumption was that if the enemy was invading, it must be like a huge army, not like 500 bedraggled soldiers led by some fanatic. So Bolívar entered Mérida without firing a shot, and the cheering residents of the city were the first to assign him the honorific that would become synonymous with his name forever: el Libertador, the Liberator.

While he was in Mérida, Bolívar also recruited 600 more men, bringing his total numbers up to about 1,000 as he set off towards Trujillo. And while his patriotic army marched, they did not hold back their wrath against royalists and peninsulares that they ran into along the way. At all. The men who had been recently recruited into Bolívar’s forces had lived for the past year under Monteverde’s retaliatory authoritarianism, and now they wanted revenge. But the men who really wanted revenge was that small corps of officers who had traveled with Bolívar from Curaçao to Cartagena and up the Magdalena River and into Venezuela again. They wanted the blood of their enemies to quench their thirst for vengeance. A 150-man company, led by one of Bolívar’s old neighbors, went out on a wide patrol that turned out to be more of a hunting expedition than anything else. They killed and maimed and tortured anyone they decided was the enemy. Bolívar knew that this was going on, but he did nothing to stop it and decided that the psychological terror it invoked was too useful to rein in. And he wasn’t exactly wrong. When his main army approached Trujillo, the royalists just abandoned the town. Bolívar was now nearly halfway to Caracas, and he had yet to even fight a battle. So the exaggerated fear of his army was doing the work for him. 

Now, technically, Trujillo was supposed to be the end of the line. I mean, that was as far as he had been authorized to go. But Bolívar is obviously not going to worry about a little thing like orders from New Granada. He was on a mission to liberate Venezuela, all of Venezuela, and he planned to see it through. But what’s interesting here is that Bolívar’s mission was not just the liberation of Venezuela, it was now that he be the man to liberate Venezuela. Like Miranda before him, Bolívar dreamed of being the liberating savior of Venezuela. So when he arrived in Trujillo and was deciding, “Do I stay or do I keep going?” He learned that he might have strong competition on the Liberator front because while Bolívar was invading western Venezuela, eastern Venezuela was being engulfed by a mass patriot uprising. An uprising led by the second guy you really need to pay attention to today because he’s really super important: Santiago Mariño.

Santiago Mariño was a rich criollo, born and raised in the eastern part of Venezuela, and he was a strong supporter of independence, going back to the first coup of April 10. He was also, in fact, a high-ranking revolutionary Freemason. He joined the Republican Army at the rank of Colonel. And after Miranda surrendered in July 1812, Mariño had fled the country, though he did not go to Curaçao but instead to British Trinidad, where his family owned some property and he had personal connections. Mariño then sat and stewed for a few months. But as reports filtered back up to him about all the terms of the peace that Monteverde was breaking, Mariño got agitated to the point where he could take it no more. So he gathered a small band of 45 hardcore patriot exiles in January 1813, this was just as Bolívar was finishing the Magdalena campaign, and they all sailed back down to Venezuela to restart the war in the east. This small corps of 45 men had among them a few of the leaders who would become the principal leaders in the coming wars, including José Francisco Bermúdez, but even more importantly, the mixed-race General Manuel Piar. And if there’s a third name you remember today, it should probably be Manuel Piar.

So Santiago Mariño and the 45 men who came with him found eastern Venezuela all but devoid of royalist troops, as Monteverde had not unwisely arrayed all his forces in a double line facing New Granada. I mean, those troops were initially put in place in preparation for an invasion of New Granada, but now they were there to block Bolívar’s invasion from New Granada. So that left Mariño and his guys free to recruit and stir up patriotic fervor in the east. And they found the region very receptive to this lobbying and, most importantly, to the long-term project of independence, Santiago Mourinho was the first to convince black and mixed-race men to join his army, really for the first time, convincing them that life would be better under an independent republic than under the thumb of royalist peninsulares. By the time Bolívar was crossing into Venezuela in May, Mariño had gone from leading 45 men to close to 5,000, with loyal armed men in every town in the east and a huge central army readying itself to march on Caracas.

Believing that the time to act was now, because he needed to beat Mariño to Caracas, on June 15, 1813, Bolívar issued the most infamous declaration of his career, one of the most infamous declarations in the entire history of the wars of Spanish American independence. The Decree of War to the Death. And because this decree is not too long, I’m just going to go ahead and read it in full:

“Venezuelans, 

An army of brothers sent by the supreme congress of New Granada has come to liberate you, and it now stands among you after having expelled the oppressors from the provinces of Mérida and Trujillo. We are sent to destroy the Spaniards, to protect Americans, and to reestablish the republican governments that form the federation of Venezuela. The states protected by our arms are once again ruled by their former constitutions and leaders in the full enjoyment of their freedom and independence. Because our sole mission is to break the chains of servitude that still oppress some of our people, not to make laws or seize power, as the rules of war might authorize us to do. 

Moved by your misfortunes, we could not witness with indifference the afflictions visited upon you by the savage Spaniards who have annihilated and destroyed you with pillage and death, who have violated the sanctity of human rights, rendered null the most solemn articles of our surrender and treaty, and committed every imaginable crime, reducing Venezuela to the most horrific desolation. 

Thus, justice demands retribution, and necessity obliges us to take it. Let the monsters who have infested Colombian soil, covered it with blood, vanish forever. Let their punishment be equal to the enormity of their perfidy, thus washing away the stain of our ignominy and demonstrating to the nations of the world that one cannot offend the sons of America with impunity. 

Despite our resentment against the foul Spaniards, our generous hearts still see fit, one last time, to open the way to reconciliation and friendship. We invite them once again to live peacefully among us under the condition that, renouncing their crimes and acting henceforth in good faith, they cooperate with us in the destruction of the Spanish government of occupation and in the reestablishment of the Venezuelan republic. Any Spaniard who does not join our fight against tyranny to further this just cause actively and effectively will be regarded as an enemy and punished as a traitor to the country and consequently put to death without appeal. 

On the other hand, a general and absolute pardon is hereby granted to those who come over to our armies, with or without their weapons and who lend their support to the good citizens who are struggling to shake off the yoke of tyranny. Military officers and civil leaders who join us in proclaiming the government of Venezuela will keep their rank and offices. 

In a word, Spaniards who render distinguished service to the state will be regarded and treated as Americans. And you Americans who have been led from the path of justice by error and perfidy, be sure that your brothers forgive you and sincerely lament your offenses, convinced in our hearts that you cannot be to blame, that only the blindness and ignorance in which you have been held hitherto by the instigators of your crimes could have led you to commit them. Do not fear the sword that comes to avenge you and sever the ignominious bonds that bind you to the fate of your executioners. You may count on absolute immunity regarding your honor, your lives, and your property. The mere title of Americans will be your guarantee and your safeguard. Our weapons are here to protect you and will never be turned against a single one of our brothers.

This amnesty extends even to the traitors who have most recently committed acts of felony. And it will be so religiously fulfilled that no reason, cause, or pretext will be sufficient to cause us to break our promise, no matter how grievous and extraordinary the motives you give us to arouse our loathing. Spaniards and Canarians, even if you profess neutrality, know that you will die unless you work actively to bring about the freedom of America. Americans, know that you will live even if you are guilty.

Simón Bolívar

Trujillo General Headquarters, June 15, 1813.”

Now, it might not be apparent at first blush, but what Bolívar is proposing here is the abandonment of the traditional rules of war. He is promising summary execution to Spaniards and Canary Islanders who are not just caught under arms or helping the royalist cause, which would on its own be a war crime. He’s talking about death for anyone who even tries to stay neutral. And this was not an empty threat. From here on out, Bolívar’s forces will indeed wage a war to the death. 

But also in there is that promise to protect Americans, that no matter what, they would be treated leniently. So Bolívar’s ruthless orders are designed most especially to plant the idea that Americans, as Americans, are the only legitimate members of the body politic. Anyone from across the Atlantic could only justify their continued existence by unqualified service to the patriot cause.

Bolívar’s Decree of War to the Death had its intended effect as inhabitants in any region he passed through flocked to his banner rather than be accused of neutrality, a crime now punishable by instant death. Soon Bolívar’s army would be up to 1,500, and he would be welcomed with open, desperately open arms wherever he went. But the Decree of War to the Death also opened the door for Bolívar’s royalist enemies to feel free to answer in kind. And the next phase of the Venezuelan War of Independence would be bitter, bloody, and to the death because out in the grasslands, the Legions of Hell are already forming.

After issuing the Decree of War to the Death, Bolívar’s army then advanced on two fronts: a small advanced unit under José Félix Ribas and a main column under Bolívar himself. And the terrain changed again as the patriot armies descended from the mountains down into the flat grasslands. Monteverde’s forces tried desperately to set up a defensive line, but Bolívar’s double-time advance shredded their plans. When Bolívar’s men departed Trujillo, there were something like 5,000 royalist soldiers standing between him and Caracas, and after just a week and a half of running skirmishes, almost all of them had been killed, captured, or defected to the patriot cause. Now, momentum is an overused cliché most of the time, but right now Bolívar has all the momentum in the world.

The decisive battle of the Admirable Campaign came at the end of July outside of Valencia near the spot where Bolívar had first seen military action. Monteverde had come out of Caracas to lead the royalists personally, but he could now only muster 1,200 men against Bolívar’s 1,500. And with all the momentum on their side, Bolívar’s forces smashed the royalists and sent them flying in every direction. Monteverde himself did not even waste time running back to Caracas. He fled all the way to the fortified port of Puerto Cabello, and once there, one of the first things he did was order Miranda be dragged out of his cell and dumped onto a boat to Puerto Rico so that the old precursor could not be saved.

On August 6, 1813, Simón Bolívar approached Caracas, and his small army was greeted by a delegation from the city, including that old family friend who had given Bolívar asylum, and secured the passport that had made all of this possible. There was also a contingent of young women who greeted him in pristine white dresses. And when Bolívar entered the city at the head of a procession, it resembled nothing so much as a Roman triumph.

Bolívar had set out from Barranco Vieja on December 21, 1812, and in seven and a half months of campaigning, he had traveled over 1,200 miles. Just to get a handle on what that means, he basically marched from New York City to Kansas City. Less than a year after setting sail from the wreckage of the First Republic, Bolívar had returned to Caracas and now stood poised to found the Second Republic.

But though Bolívar had achieved everything he had dreamed of and no doubt even faster than he imagined, his triumph would ultimately prove to be short-lived. And next week, we will see him try to make the transition from military leader to civilian leader and impose his notions of strong centralist republicanism on a people who might not yet be ready for federalism but who are also not yet ready to be told that they weren’t, especially not Santiago Mariño, who is currently ruling eastern Venezuela as an autonomous dictator and who is not about to start taking orders from Simón Bolívar.

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