The South American Republics Volume II Part 12

Thence there was easy access by water to the sh.o.r.es of the great lagoon, or by land over the coast plain to the north-western slopes of the Andean range which runs south-west to the giant plateau of Pamplona just over the Colombian border. The Andean valleys were filled with gold, and among the higher mountains lay fertile plateaux, cultivated by tribes of semi-civilised Indians. Altogether the region was well calculated to stimulate the cupidity of adventurers.

Charles V. granted the Venezuela coast to the Welser family of Augsburg, the greatest merchants of their time and his heavy creditors. Under their commission the first adelantado, Alfinger, took possession of Coro and conducted various expeditions south-west along the Andes, peris.h.i.+ng near Pamplona about 1531. His successors continued these murdering, kidnapping incursions into the interior, often being led to their ruin among remote mountain fastnesses by tales of a mythical Eldorado, where the rivers ran over silver sands, the palaces were of solid gold with doors and columns of diamonds and emeralds, and the Indian king every morning covered his body with gold dust and bathed in precious aromatic essences.

Eighteen years, however, elapsed before the Spaniards established a permanent settlement in the interior, and only in 1545 was the city of Tocuyo founded in a beautiful Andean valley a hundred and fifty miles south of Coro. But the cruelties of the proprietors' agents scandalised public opinion. Charles V. declared their concession cancelled and a governor, responsible directly to the government, was appointed in 1547.

Thenceforward the settlement of Venezuela proceeded more rapidly. Five years later the city of Barquisimeto, fifty miles north of Tocuyo and near the point where the Andes join the coast range, was established on a secure footing after hard fighting with the Indians; in 1555 the Spaniards penetrated east a hundred miles along the lovely plateaux of the coast mountains, and founded Valencia. The following year they settled Trujillo, fifty miles south-west of Tocuyo, and two years later Merida, a hundred miles farther in the same direction and not far from the Colombian frontier.

To the east of Valencia lay valuable gold was.h.i.+ngs, and to work these the Spaniards fixed a camp at San Francisco in the Aragua Valley about 1560. This is the garden spot of Venezuela, and the warlike Teques Indians, under their terrible chief, Guaicaipuro, ma.s.sacred the miners and defeated several expeditions from Valencia and Barquisimeto. It was not until 1567 that the Spaniards succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng their power in the valley of Caracas, which, a hundred miles east of Valencia, lies close to the sh.o.r.e, although three thousand feet above sea-level and separated from the ocean by high mountains. The defensibility of the site as well as the fertility of the soil pointed it out as the best place for the seat of government. A city was founded which ten years later replaced Coro as the capital of the province, and shortly thereafter a port was opened at La Guaira giving direct communication with Spain. The savage tribes fought more pertinaciously than the civilised natives of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and northern Chile and Argentina, and a greater number of Europeans and negroes replaced those who were slain. Finally, however, the majority submitted, and were incorporated as peasants into the Spanish system.

By the end of the sixteenth century the Spaniards had obtained undisputed possession of that lovely strip of mountainous country which extends from Cape Codera west between two parallel coast ranges to Barquisimeto and thence west-south-west nearly to the head of Lake Maracaibo--a belt some four hundred miles long and fifty or seventy-five wide. They also held the great peninsula east of Maracaibo Gulf, and had established outlying settlements in the llanos south of the mountains, besides the two isolated ports--c.u.mana on the eastern coast and Maracaibo on the western. Notwithstanding the sack of Caracas in 1595 by the daring British buccaneer, Amyas Preston, the colony prospered.

Unlike the Pacific coast, it had easy and direct communication with the Antilles and Europe; the alt.i.tude was great enough to ensure a healthful climate, while its fertile valleys could be reached from the sea in a few hours over easy pa.s.ses, far different from those formidable gorges which are the only ways of reaching the table-lands of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. The interior, instead of being a heavily forested plain like that of the Amazon, practically inaccessible behind tremendous rain-soaked declivities, was an open prairie into which the mountains sank gently, and whose gra.s.sy expanses afforded pasture for innumerable herds. These geographical and topographical features have been determinative of Venezuela's development and history, political as well as industrial.

In the early years of the seventeenth century the long-neglected c.u.mana district on the eastern coast began to be developed. The city of Barcelona was founded in 1617 near a magnificent body of grazing land and in the best tobacco country in Venezuela, where the Indians had grown the plant for untold generations. Barcelona soon became an important centre of population, and the starting-point for missionaries to the interior tribes. The gold placers which had attracted the first adventurers to the mountains west of Caracas became exhausted within a few decades. Nevertheless, the fertile lands, distributed among the Spaniards in encomiendas, continued to be cultivated by Indian and negro labour, but, although maize, bananas, potatoes, and in the higher valleys even wheat, as well as the vine and olive, with the cattle introduced by Europeans, furnished an abundant supply of food, to say nothing of tobacco and sugar, Spain's blind colonial policy virtually prevented export of agricultural products. The Spanish authorities wanted nothing from their American dominions but gold and silver, and when Venezuela's placers were exhausted the colony was neglected. It was in spite of the prohibition of the Spanish government that cacao trees were introduced, and the exportation which soon grew up--the first of any importance from Venezuela--was mostly clandestine. Practically all the goods legally imported had to be procured from the Cadiz monopoly, and were sent to the Isthmus and there trans.h.i.+pped into coasting vessels, paying enormous freight charges, profits, and duties. Tobacco and salt were monopolised by government concessionaires, and not a chicken could be sold in the markets without paying an exorbitant tax.

Education was completely neglected. It was not until 1696 that a priests' school was established in Caracas, and when the city of Merida asked a similar boon, it was denied because "His Catholic Majesty did not deem it wise that education should become general in America." So the Creoles grew up nearly as ignorant as the Indians around them, although retaining all the fierce pride of their Spanish descent, acknowledging no man as superior, and retaining very dim sentiments of loyalty to the mother country. Nevertheless, the ancient munic.i.p.al forms, traditional among peoples of Spanish descent, survived, furnis.h.i.+ng the framework of civil government, while the priesthood const.i.tuted a moral and intellectual tie binding the Creoles to their Castilian ancestors.

The repressive regulations against commerce could not be perfectly enforced. Although the arrival of a s.h.i.+p from Spain was a real event, British, Dutch, and French traders frequented the coast, opening markets with their swords, and often turning buccaneers and sacking a town when not satisfied with their reception. But the burning of a few coast hamlets was more than compensated by the advantages of practical free-trade, and Venezuela owed much of the prosperity she enjoyed during the seventeenth century to these semi-pirates. The settlements crept along the Andean valleys to the Colombian frontier; the Creoles ventured farther and farther into the wide plains of the Orinoco and their cattle were soon roaming half-wild in the immense and luxuriant pastures stretching south of the agricultural strip. From the mixture of the Indians of the llanos with Europeans sprang a new race of men, the semi-nomadic llaneros, whose hardiness, courage, horsemans.h.i.+p, and prowess as hunters of big game have given them equal celebrity with the gauchos of the Argentine, the cossacks of the Russian steppes, or the Texas cowboys. The buccaneers and smuggling traders were especially active in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In 1654 Frenchmen were repelled in an attack on c.u.mana, but in 1669 the Britisher, Morgan, sacked Maracaibo, and in 1679 the French pillaged Caracas itself. The paralysis suffered by Spain during the war of the Spanish Succession nearly destroyed Venezuelan commerce, and it did not recover with the peace of Utrecht. Only five s.h.i.+ps arrived in the first thirty years of the eighteenth century, and from 1706 to 1721 not a single vessel sailed for Spain.

The Spanish government determined to try if another system would not bring a larger revenue into the royal treasury. The Guipuzcoa Company was granted an exclusive franchise to buy and sell in the colony, and the operations of this powerful corporation galvanised commerce into a certain activity. In order to stimulate the receipt of hides, and prevent the incursions of wild plains Indians, trading posts were established in the llanos, and soon the prairies south of Valencia and Caracas rivalled the Barcelona country in cattle, and the ranches extended up the Apure, the great western tributary of the Orinoco, to the foot of the Colombian Andes. Meanwhile expeditions penetrated up the Orinoco from its mouth, and in 1764 the city of Angostura was established four hundred miles from the sea. The operations of the Guipuzcoa Company did not aid in establis.h.i.+ng a more friendly understanding between the home government and the Venezuelan Creoles.

The independent merchants constantly quarrelled with the company's agents; the low prices for which they were compelled to sell their stock outraged the ranch owners; the farmers resented the monopolisation of tobacco and the restrictions on sugar-culture; exorbitant prices were demanded for imported goods. Protests became so loud that special commissioners were sent from Spain to investigate, but they gave no satisfactory relief. Shortly after the foundation of the Guipuzcoa Company, Venezuela had been raised to the dignity of a captaincy-general. The increased efficiency of the administration a.s.sisted the monopoly in suppressing clandestine trading, and the feeling grew to such a height that in 1749 a Creole leader, named Leon, menaced Caracas itself at the head of six thousand armed men, demanding the suppression of the company and the expulsion of its factors. The captain-general was forced to yield and the revolutionists dispersed, but his promise was never redeemed. The active measures of the company effectually shut off foreign trading-s.h.i.+ps, and the ports were so fortified that the British expeditions retired defeated from the attacks they made in 1739 and 1743 on La Guaira and Puerto Cabello, although in 1797 they captured the island of Trinidad and menaced the entrance to the Orinoco. It was not until 1778, when the Spanish government finally abandoned the monopolistic colonial system and opened all the ports of South America to free commerce with each other and with Spain, that the Guipuzcoa Company retired from business. Six years before this the provinces of Maracaibo, c.u.mana, and Guiana--as the lower Orinoco region was called,--all of which had heretofore been directly dependent upon the viceroy of Bogota, were placed under the jurisdiction of the captain-general of Caracas, fixing the modern boundaries of Venezuela.

CHAPTER II

THE REVOLT

Venezuela's conditions during colonial times produced a people possessing in the clearest and most accentuated form the characteristics distinctive of the Spanish Creole. Not more than one per cent. of the total population of over eight hundred thousand were native Spaniards; fifteen per cent. were Creoles of pure European descent; sixty per cent.

were Indian, two-thirds of whom had an admixture of white blood; and three-fourths of the twenty-five per cent. of negroes and mulattoes were free. The majority did not consist of docile, inert, pure-bred natives as in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, though the white element was not so large that the Creoles had ceased to occupy the position of a governing and property-owning caste who lived upon the labour of the half-breeds, Indians, and negroes. They regarded themselves as a superior cla.s.s, ent.i.tled by birth to exemption from manual labour, and even considered commercial pursuits unworthy a gentleman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT INDIAN ROCK FOR GRINDING MAIZE.]

The Spanish government had concerned itself little with this purely agricultural colony, and its hand was felt only in the collection of taxes. The officials were comparatively few, the number of resident Spaniards small, and neither mutual commercial interests nor a solid administration existed to strengthen the flimsy ties that bound Venezuela to the mother-country. So little had the interference of the Spanish government been felt since the abolishment of the Guipuzcoa Company that no well-defined and widespread sentiment in favour of separation existed. There was a vague feeling of dissatisfaction among the ma.s.ses, but their ignorance prevented them from forming any rational plans for the betterment of their condition. However, the Venezuelan coast is so accessible that the fertilising and disturbing currents of trade and ideas had really profoundly modified the people, and the leaven of unrest was at work. The wealthier Creoles had imbibed radical notions and were ambitious of trying their hands at governing. By heredity, social custom, and environment indisposed to industry and commerce, their unemployed activities naturally flowed into the channel of politics, intrigue, and fighting.

The first outbreak owed its origin to events in Spain. In 1796 a republican conspiracy was brought to light on the Peninsula, and several of its leaders were exiled to La Guaira. In their prison they were visited by many prominent Creoles, into whose minds they inculcated their republican principles, and it was not long before the existence of an extensive republican plot among the Creoles of La Guaira and Caracas was denounced to the captain-general. Many persons were arrested, and of the two princ.i.p.als, Espana expiated his treason on the scaffold, while the other, Gual, escaped into exile. But the seed of revolution had been planted, and many leading Creoles entered into correspondence with the British authorities on Trinidad, who promised aid in arms, munitions, and s.h.i.+ps. Francisco Miranda, a native of Caracas, who had fought under Was.h.i.+ngton, and distinguished himself at Valmy and Jemappes as a soldier of the French republic, planned an invasion with the avowed purpose of achieving Venezuelan separation from Spain. With three s.h.i.+ps manned by American filibusters he sailed from New York early in 1806, and attempted to land at Oc.u.mare, near Puerto Cabello. But the Spanish authorities had been warned and he was beaten in a sea-fight where he lost sixty prisoners. Ten North Americans were condemned by court-martial and shot in Puerto Cabello, and their names are inscribed on a monument recently erected in the princ.i.p.al square of the town. The captain-general offered thirty thousand dollars for Miranda's head, but the latter retired to Jamaica, where, with the help of the British authorities, he organised a force of five hundred foreigners. Three months later he made a descent on Coro, effected a landing, and took the city. But the population remained inert, and the indifferent or hostile att.i.tude of the region forced him to withdraw.

Though the western provinces received Miranda so coldly, among the Creoles of the upper cla.s.ses at Caracas aspirations for const.i.tutional government, autonomy, and even for independence had made headway in the ten years since the suppression of the conspiracy of Gual and Espana. In 1808 French commissioners arrived bringing the news of Ferdinand's expulsion. They were empowered to receive the allegiance of the colony for Joseph Bonaparte, but the captain-general hesitated and asked the advice of leading citizens, who proved unanimous against recognising the French regime. The captain-general's vacillation gave the Creoles of the cabildo a predominance in governmental councils. Although in the middle of the following year it was decided to recognise the Seville junta as supreme, pending Ferdinand's return, this decision was reached only after many debates, and a numerous party among the Creoles saw no reason why Venezuela should not establish a junta of her own. The news of the frightful cruelties perpetrated by Goyeneche in suppressing the junta at La Paz excited great indignation among Creoles; the anti-Spanish feeling grew rapidly; and when, on the 19th of April, 1810, the captain-general summoned an open cabildo to receive the news that the French armies had overrun nearly the whole of Spain and that only Cadiz remained faithful to Ferdinand, the electors had no sooner met than, excited by suggestions of ambitious persons, they turned into a mob howling for the resignation of the captain-general and the establishment of a Caracas junta. Accordingly a junta was named which exiled the Spanish functionaries and sent messages to the provincial capitals demanding their adhesion. The cities of the mountain strip extending from c.u.mana to the Colombian Andes responded favourably and sent delegates to Caracas, while Maracaibo, Coro, and Guiana refused. As a matter of fact the ma.s.ses as yet took little interest. The Caracas revolution was effected by a few determined spirits, and the adhesion of the mountain provinces was given by Creole munic.i.p.al authorities who saw in the change an opportunity to better their personal fortunes. Nor was the resistance of Coro and Maracaibo so much inspired by love of Spain as by the presence of the resolute, clear-headed Jose Ceballos, who gathered troops and sent emissaries into the revolted provinces. The Caracas junta responded by raising an army which marched toward Coro, and the civil war was on.

The news of the ma.s.sacre of the Ecuadorean revolutionists at Quito in August, 1810, warned the junta Creoles that they had engaged in no child's play. A commission went to London to solicit the intervention of the British government in reaching an accommodation with the patriot authorities in Spain, but the Seville junta declared the Caracas revolutionists traitors. The commissioners fell under Miranda's influence and he convinced them that an open declaration of independence was the only course left. Meanwhile the troops sent to conquer Coro had been defeated by Ceballos. Threatened by the royalist arms, unable to count on the support of any considerable proportion of the rural population of even their own provinces, the Creoles of the ruling coterie proceeded to extreme measures. A congress met in March and on the 5th of July, 1811, adopted a declaration of independence, proclaiming the seven provinces of c.u.mana, Barcelona, Caracas, Barinas, Trujillo, Merida, and Margarita free and sovereign states. Venezuela was, therefore, the first independent republic in Spanish America.

Congress adopted a Const.i.tution full of the most radical reforms and advanced ideas, and a handful of political theorists and advanced radicals took the direction of affairs, and imposed their crude theories on a bewildered and reluctant population. The ruling clique issued fiat money in immense quant.i.ties, and the resulting disorganisation of business increased discontent.

Miranda, who had come from Europe to take command of military operations, warned them that the fabric was not strong enough to withstand the shock of battle, but the eager young reformers persisted.

The clergy and the native Spaniards were the first to react. Though an outbreak of the Spaniards in Caracas was bloodily suppressed, the priests stirred up the people of Valencia, and that city--the second in the republic--declared against the Caracas government. Miranda succeeded in reducing the place only after costly fighting. The ruling clique did what they could to raise and equip troops to meet the approaching attacks from Coro and the West Indies, but their efforts were hampered by loyalist risings. In February, 1812, Monteverde, a Spanish leader, marched with a small detachment south from Coro, and northern Trujillo welcomed him. Defeating the patriot forces wherever he met them and refusing quarter to his prisoners, he prepared to advance eastward on the centre of the revolution. The junta was already trembling, when, on the 26th of March, a terrific earthquake devastated the revolted provinces. The solid ground rocked with such violent oscillations that in less than a minute the cities of Caracas, Barquisimeto, and Merida were mere heaps of ruins. Twelve thousand persons perished in Caracas alone. The loyalist provinces escaped injury, and the priests preached that the earthquake was a punishment sent by G.o.d upon impious rebellion.

The people of Barquisimeto joined Monteverde, and he marched east, slaughtering the raw recruits with which the patriot leaders tried to block his way. Merida, Trujillo, and Barinas declared for the king, and an expedition sent from Caracas to the lower Orinoco was destroyed.

Monteverde entered Valencia unopposed and only the coast from Caracas east to c.u.mana remained to the republic. In despair the politicians made Miranda dictator, but, though the army numbered five thousand, he had no confidence in his men. He signed a capitulation and tried to fly while his army dispersed or joined the loyalist forces. On the 30th of July Monteverde entered Caracas and the first Venezuelan revolution ceased to exist.

Among the volunteer officers who had been entrusted with positions of confidence by Miranda was a young Creole, named Simon Bolivar. Heir to some of the largest estates in Venezuela he had been left an orphan at three years of age, and was educated by a tutor who filled his marvellously impressible mind with a crude political philosophy, and under whose teachings he evolved original theories of government which all the wars, debates, and revolutions of his stormy life failed to modify. Preoccupied with his own ideas, he gave no heed to the counsels of others, took no thought of obstacles, and, victor or vanquished, stubbornly followed his own way, always confident of infallibility and persevering in the face of difficulties that would have appalled a rational man. From his earliest childhood a little feudal lord, owing obedience to no parent, with hundreds of slaves at his orders, his precocious intelligence the object of that ruinous admiration with which thoughtless strangers and servants spoil a rich and lonely child, his naturally strong will uncurbed by any discipline, he grew into manhood--arrogant, uncompromising, solitary, suspicious, a deep thinker, wildly ambitious, marvellously brilliant, though lacking steady common-sense, blindly confident of his own moral and intellectual infallibility, firmly convinced that he was destined for vague great things, inordinately fond of honours and praise, and absolutely unable to distinguish his desires of gratifying selfish ambitions, and his yeasty notions of regenerating mankind. At sixteen he went to Spain to complete his education; his wealth procured him an entrance into the aristocratic families of Madrid; and he even penetrated the precincts of the ceremonious court and had the honour of playing ball with the lad who afterwards became Ferdinand VII. When only eighteen he married a beautiful girl, who died shortly after he brought her back to Caracas.

For the rest of his life he remained without family ties. Again he went to Europe and wandered through England, France, and Italy, falling more and more under the spell of the mighty spirit of Napoleon the Great. At the age of twenty-three Bolivar returned to his native country and took up his life as a rich slave-owner. When the revolution broke out in 1810 he took no part until the junta requested him to go to England on the emba.s.sy previously mentioned. There he became acquainted with Miranda, and, appreciating that the South American revolution must be decided by arms, made up his mind that only as a soldier could he put himself at the head of affairs in Venezuela. His first essays in the military art were not successful, and it was he who lost Puerto Cabello, giving the first revolution its _coup de grace_. But a situation in which others saw no hope he regarded as an opportunity, and he resolved to devote his life to South American independence.

Bolivar went to Cartagena in Colombia and offered his sword to the patriot junta which ruled that city. Given a small military command on the Magdalena River, he embodied a few militia and surprised two posts which were obstructing the navigation of the river. Delighted at these successes, the Cartagena junta sent him reinforcements, with which he captured Ocana, an important city lying east of the Magdalena and not far from Pamplona and the Venezuelan border. The loyalists had collected a considerable force in the Venezuelan province of Barinas, with which they proposed to advance into Pamplona. The patriot chief of this Colombian province appealed to Bolivar and this suggested to him the Napoleonic plan of relieving Pamplona and reconquering Venezuela. On his own responsibility he dashed with only four hundred men over the Andes in front of Ocana, descended into the plain north of Lake Maracaibo, took the royalists on their march to Pamplona by surprise, and routed them. Joined by the patriots from Pamplona, he received formal authorisation to drive the Spaniards from the Venezuelan provinces of Merida and Trujillo. His movements among the mountain valleys were like lightning flashes, and though the Spanish forces were more numerous their commanders were demoralised by his attacks made in defiance of all the rules of prudent warfare. Within fifty days there was not an enemy left in the two provinces, and Bolivar's army had been trebled by enlistments. The New Granadan government ordered him to pause, but he paid no heed. Issuing a proclamation that no quarter would be given, he crossed the mountains south-west into the province of Barinas, annihilated the Spanish forces there, and rus.h.i.+ng to the east caught another army of a thousand men near Valencia and destroyed it.

Monteverde had no time to concentrate his scattered forces, and the news of this last defeat caused him to flee to the protection of the fortifications of Puerto Cabello. Bolivar occupied Valencia and Caracas without resistance. In a campaign of ninety days, with a handful of New Granadans and mountaineers from western Venezuela, he had defeated and dispersed over four thousand royalists, and conquered the country from the Andes to the capital.

Only the lower plains of the Orinoco and the coast provinces of Maracaibo and Coro remained royalist, for while Bolivar had been overrunning the west, another young Creole, Marino, had led a small expedition from the island of Margarita, captured Maturin just east of the mouth of the Orinoco, and with the military stores found there armed the inhabitants of c.u.mana province, made ripe for revolt by the cruelties of Monteverde. The Spanish attempts to recover Maturin by a.s.sault were repulsed with great slaughter, and Marino followed up his success by besieging c.u.mana. By the time Bolivar reached Caracas the place was in the last extremities of starvation, and Monteverde's flight was a signal for its surrender. There were therefore two dictators in Venezuela, and Marino sent to Bolivar to treat about the form of government, but the latter had determined on a centralised administration with himself supreme. Marino refused to agree, and only the activity of the loyalists prevented a war between him and Bolivar.

Monteverde held out in Puerto Cabello, and when reinforcements arrived from Spain resumed the offensive. Though Bolivar won a victory at Las Trincheiras, and was greeted on his return to Caracas with the t.i.tle of "Liberator," reaction had in fact begun. Reports of loyalist movements came from all sides; Bolivar's power was confined to the towns; the terrible Boves roused the llaneros and gathered the nucleus of a formidable army of hors.e.m.e.n. Ceballos sallied out from Coro and captured Barquisimeto, utterly defeating Bolivar when the latter attacked him.

Difficulties, however, only stimulated this remarkable man to fresh exertions. The patriot leader, Campo Elias, overthrew Boves's hors.e.m.e.n near Calabozo on the llanos south of Caracas, killing the prisoners and butchering every man in the town because it had helped the loyalists.

This cruel deed decided the llaneros for the Spanish side, and though Bolivar, with the a.s.sistance of Campo Elias's troops, won the pitched battle of Araure from Ceballos, Boves had escaped to the plains there to recruit another army of llaneros, which was destined to expel the Liberator.

Bolivar was soon reduced to the possession of Caracas and its neighbouring valleys, with a feeble reserve at Valencia. Marino had thirty-five hundred men, and Bolivar finally agreed to recognise him as dictator of the eastern provinces as the price of his help. But their union only put off the evil day. Boves crushed Campo Elias at La Puerta and advanced on Caracas. Raging like a trapped wild beast, Bolivar ordered the wholesale a.s.sa.s.sination of eight hundred and sixty-six Spaniards confined at La Guaira. His desperation inspired his followers, and when Boves attacked the entrenchments outside Caracas and rushed the patriot magazine, the young Granadan who was in command, seeing that the place could not be held, ordered his men to fly, but when the loyalists triumphantly rushed into the building they found him in the act of throwing a match into the powder. In the explosion eight hundred of the a.s.saulting column were blown into the air and the survivors desisted.

Marino was coming by forced marches from the east along the plains, and Boves retired to cut him off, while Ceballos also abandoned the siege of Valencia. Marino eluded Boves and beat off one attack. If the Liberator had concentrated his forces and united with his colleague the patriots would have stood a chance, but he sent most of his own troops to recover the west, joining Marino with only a few men. At La Puerta on the 14th of June, 1814, the battle decisive of the second Venezuelan revolution was fought. The desperate charges of Boves's llanero hors.e.m.e.n overwhelmed the patriots, and more than half their number were left dead on the field. Bolivar fled to Caracas, gathered all the money and jewels, and, enc.u.mbered by a great mult.i.tude of fugitives, retreated east. But at Aragua the patriots were driven out of their trenches with terrific slaughter. The Liberator took s.h.i.+p at Barcelona with the intention of making a last stand near the mouth of the Orinoco, but his comrades had had enough of him. He was declared a traitor and Rivas put in command. The remaining patriots managed to repulse one attack of the royalists, but in a second they were defeated, and in a third Boves slaughtered them nearly to the last man, although he himself was killed in the melee. Only a few scattered bands on the plateaux of Barcelona and the plains of the upper Orinoco kept up a resistance. The detachment which Bolivar had so imprudently sent west before the battle of La Puerta escaped into New Granada, while the Liberator went by sea to that country and took service under its government.

The revolution headed by Bolivar and Marino had been crushed by Boves, Morales, and Ceballos with troops recruited in Venezuela itself.

Monteverde's defeat and Boves's death left Morales master of Venezuela, and virtually independent of outside control. But by 1815 Ferdinand was securely on the throne of Spain, and absolutism had replaced the Const.i.tution established by the popular leaders of 1812. The Spanish government determined to suppress the revolutionists who still maintained themselves in New Granada and the Argentine, and to reduce the semi-independent royalist chiefs to a more exact obedience. In April, Morillo, Spain's ablest general, arrived near c.u.mana at the head of ten thousand veteran regulars. Morales sailed out to meet the Marshal and place his troops at his orders, but the regular officers gazed in astonishment at the dark-skinned llaneros, wearing only a hat and a waist-cloth, who were the pillars of royal authority in Venezuela. At first the Spaniards accepted the aid of these half-savage allies, but Morillo lost no time in establis.h.i.+ng a military despotism in which the llanero chiefs had no place. Even more unpopular was his leaving three thousand Spaniards to garrison Venezuela while he impressed an equal number of native troops to accompany him on his expedition against New Granada. Nearly a third of the latter deserted rather than embark, and the att.i.tude of the Spanish officers who were left behind to rule the country roused the native instinct for independence.

Meanwhile the scattered bands of patriot guerillas on the western headwaters of the Orinoco, near the Granadan border, had been uniting and increasing in strength. Jose Antonio Paez, a mixed-blood, only twenty-six years old, who could neither read nor write, but of herculean strength and skill in the use of lance and sword, proved the leader for the occasion. A small corps in which he was a simple captain was threatened by the Spanish governor of Barinas at the head of fourteen hundred men. His own commander wished to retreat, but Paez persuaded five hundred reckless fellows to follow him in a night a.s.sault. Leading his men in a furious charge he bore down the enemy with a rush, killing four hundred and taking many prisoners, whom he treated so well that they all joined him. The fame of his success spread through the llanos and the rough plainsmen, dissatisfied with the discipline and routine of the regular Spanish officers, flocked to the banner of this new chieftain, and he began the organisation of the army of the Apure, destined to be the princ.i.p.al instrument in the redemption of Venezuela.

Meanwhile the guerilla chiefs farther down the Orinoco made headway against the Spaniards, and the whole plain turned to the patriot side.

Hearing of these successes, Bolivar resolved to return to Venezuela. He landed near the mouth of the Orinoco, but was soon driven thence and took s.h.i.+p for Oc.u.mare, near Puerto Cabello. From this point he sent a small expedition inland towards Valencia under the command of MacGregor, who achieved some successes against isolated bodies of loyalists, was joined by many llaneros, and finally made his way to the plains of Barcelona, while Bolivar was compelled to re-embark and flee to Hayti.

MacGregor took the city of Barcelona, and then with the a.s.sistance of the negro chief, Piar, who had been besieging c.u.mana, repulsed Morales himself at the battle of Juncal. By the end of 1816 the patriots had gained so many advantages that Morillo thought himself obliged to return to Venezuela at the head of huge reinforcements. However, the patriot cause needed a head. The chieftains were rude and ignorant men with a talent for fighting and nothing more, while Bolivar was a man of wide and varied accomplishments. In spite of his failures he retained great prestige among the Creole officers. He was agreed upon as general-in-chief, and in December landed at Barcelona. But Piar had led his victorious army over to the Orinoco, and notwithstanding Bolivar's entreaties the llaneros persisted in their refusal to return to a country where cavalry could not manoeuvre to advantage. When Bolivar arrived at Piar's headquarters near Angostura he appreciated that the true theatre for a successful war had been found. In those plains the llanero cavalry, which formed the bulk of the patriot force, was invincible. Morillo also realised that the coast would not long remain tenable if the line of the Orinoco were in the hands of the patriots, and he sent a regular force of three thousand men under La Torre down the Apure and Orinoco to Angostura, while he himself quickly made an end of the few insurrectionists who stubbornly refused to retire from the coast to the llanos. During one of Bolivar's absences, La Torre offered Piar battle, and at San Felix, in April, 1817, the plainsmen annihilated the Spanish infantry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE Pa.s.s OF ANGOSTURA, BOLIVAR CITY.]

Bolivar now went vigorously to work to secure complete command of the river and soon had quite a fleet. His ascendancy over his officers increased daily, and when Piar conspired against him he was strong enough to have the negro hero arrested and shot as a traitor. Before the end of 1817 the patriots were in command of the whole line of the rivers except the fortress of San Fernando, near the junction of the Apure and Orinoco, and Morillo could do nothing against them because the plains were flooded. When the waters fell in early spring the royalists achieved some successes, but Bolivar joined Paez, established a blockade of San Fernando, and surprised Morillo himself near Calabozo. Against Paez's advice he now insisted on making a campaign for the recovery of Caracas, but was badly defeated by the marshal at La Puerta--a spot for the third time the scene of a patriot downfall. Though Paez had captured San Fernando his expedition into the mountain country was no more successful than Bolivar's, and the two retreated to the river to raise fresh troops. Morales followed the patriots to the Apure, but was in his turn repulsed by Paez, giving Bolivar a breathing spell.

The Liberator's position was desperate; his infantry had been destroyed; his cavalry reduced in numbers; his men were nearly without arms; his ammunition exhausted. Ill-considered movements had turned the brilliant situation in which he had found patriot affairs a year before into the gloomiest sort of an outlook. On the other hand, a defensive campaign in the llanos could be kept up indefinitely, and though Morillo had twelve thousand men in the populous mountain provinces north of the plains, he also was without money, arms, and supplies. As he reported to the Peruvian viceroy: "Twelve pitched battles in which the best officers and troops of the enemy have fallen, have not lowered their pride or lessened the vigour of their attacks." With that indomitable energy which more than compensated for his inferiority as a strategist, Bolivar set to work to create a new army. Cavalry of the most admirable sort could be recruited in sufficient numbers among the llaneros, but bitter experience had convinced him that against Spanish regulars the native infantry stood little chance. The cessation of the Napoleonic wars had left thousands of European veterans without employment, and Bolivar contracted for a few thousand Britishers and Irishmen, paying a bounty of eighty dollars per man on enlistment and promising five hundred dollars at the conclusion of the war. Some of these troops arrived opportunely late in 1818, and, few as their numbers were, no soldiers in South America could stand against them.

In October Bolivar issued a proclamation foreshadowing the union of Venezuela and New Granada. In the midst of defeat, with all of both countries except the thinly populated Orinoco plains in possession of the Spaniards, he was confidently planning the creation of a great empire. Morillo opened the campaign of 1819 by advancing with over six thousand men against Paez on the upper Orinoco. The Creole's four thousand were mostly cavalry, and he had learned better than to risk a pitched battle. The Spanish columns were hara.s.sed beyond endurance by his light hors.e.m.e.n, and after weeks of heartbreaking marches Morillo had to retire, having accomplished nothing.

From Bolivar's erratic genius now emanated a great stroke of strategy.

West of the plains of the Apure and Casanare, tributaries of the upper Orinoco, rises the giant range of the Cordillera and on its top lay the fertile plateaux of Socorro, Tunja, and Bogota, the populous heart of New Granada. For three years the Spaniards had been in secure possession and all except three thousand troops had been drafted for service in Venezuela and Peru. A small Spanish force came down from Tunja to attack the patriot guerillas in Casanare, and was repulsed. Where the enemy could go he could follow, reasoned Bolivar. Paez's cavalry had proved itself amply able to hold the llanos, so no risk to Venezuela would be incurred by temporarily withdrawing part of the infantry. With two thousand natives and five hundred British the Liberator followed up the Orinoco, Meta, and Casanare to the latter's sources at the foot of the Paya pa.s.s, which leads directly into the fertile valley of Sagamoso, the heart of Tunja province. This pa.s.s is high and very difficult, although the distance to be traversed was only eighty miles. The road was a mere track leading along precipices, crossing and recrossing mountain torrents, and the rain fell incessantly as the patriots struggled up the slippery path. When they reached the higher regions a hundred men perished with the cold, and not a horse survived. The army arrived at Sagamoso in a pitiable condition, but without seeing an enemy except an outpost, which was easily dislodged.

Not knowing Bolivar's numbers, Barreiro, the Spanish commander, dared not attack, and the Liberator thus obtained a much-needed opportunity to rest his men and gather horses for his dismounted cavalry. As soon as he got his army in hand he outmanoeuvred Barreiro and by a rapid march captured the city of Tunja, where he found a good store of arms and material. This movement also placed the patriot army between the Spaniards and Bogota. Barreiro, seeing himself cut off from his base, made a desperate dash for the capital, but Bolivar knew the enemy's route and took up a position directly across his path on the right bank of the small river Boyaca. Though the patriots were only slightly superior in numbers, the Spaniards had to attack at a disadvantage, and fled completely defeated after losing a hundred men. Practically their whole force was dispersed or made prisoners. Small as were the numbers engaged and easily as it was won, Boyaca was the most important battle fought in northern Spanish America. Central New Granada, the wealthiest and most populous part of the country, fell into Bolivar's hands without a further blow. Its revenues relieved his financial difficulties and among its st.u.r.dy inhabitants he recruited a new army. Morillo, now isolated in Venezuela, must expect an attack from the llaneros, reinforced by the Granadan mountaineers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROAD NEAR MACUTO.]

During the Liberator's absence from Venezuela he had been branded as a traitor for abandoning his country without the authorisation of congress, and Marino made commander-in-chief. But the news of Boyaca fell like a thunderbolt among the disaffected, and his return in December quelled them utterly. No opposition was made when he announced that Venezuela and New Granada were united into a single republic, the United States of Colombia, with himself as president and military dictator. The year 1820 pa.s.sed without any decisive campaign. Bolivar occupied himself princ.i.p.ally in recruiting and refitting his armies.

Twelve hundred Irish mercenaries arrived and were incorporated with an army which was sent by sea to threaten the Spaniards in Cartagena, and co-operate with the New Granadans on the lower Magdalena. A strong division of Venezuelans was sent against Quito. Paez with the main army of the Apure was, however, repulsed in an advance into Barinas. In spite of this success Morillo could only lie inactive south of Caracas. His forces were not numerous enough both to retake New Granada and to hold northern Venezuela. But word came that Ferdinand was preparing an army of twenty thousand men which would shortly sail from Cadiz for America, and with this reinforcement the marshal believed he could destroy all the patriot armies. The revolution which broke out in Spain in 1820 against Ferdinand's absolute government overturned his hopes. The expedition never sailed, and the new liberal government showed itself disposed to make terms with the revolted colonies. In November a six months' armistice was arranged pending the despatch of peace commissioners to the mother-country, and Morillo resigned in favour of La Torre.

Bolivar's lieutenants respected the armistice only where convenient, and shamelessly continued warlike operations, wresting the New Granadan coast from the Spaniards, beginning the siege of Cartagena, and encouraging a revolt in the province of Maracaibo. When La Torre declared the armistice at an end late in April, 1821, Bolivar had twenty thousand men in the field disposed in five armies. Montilla was besieging Cartagena with three thousand; one Granadan army held the valley of the Magdalena; another was operating against Ecuador; Bermudez with two thousand men threatened Caracas from the east; and Bolivar and Paez at the head of nine thousand men were ready to advance directly from the Orinoco on Valencia and Caracas. To these forces La Torre could only oppose nine thousand troops besides his garrisons. The moment the armistice was formally terminated Bolivar started straight for La Torre.

The latter had made the fatal mistake of dividing his forces, and had only about three thousand men drawn up on the wide plain of Carabobo, at the northern foot of the pa.s.ses which lead through the mountains from the llanos to the Valencia plateau. Bolivar's six thousand captured the pa.s.ses, but he could not deploy his infantry on the flat ground in front except at the risk of having them cut to pieces. On June 23, 1821, he detached the British legion of one thousand men and fifteen hundred cavalry under Paez around to the left to take the Spaniards in flank.

The charge of the llanero horse was driven back by the musket fire, but the pursuing Spaniards were checked by the steady Englishmen, who stood in their tracks and withstood the fire of the whole Spanish army. Their ammunition was soon exhausted; no help came from Bolivar; all seemed to be over with them; a second cavalry charge was as unsuccessful as the first; and the surviving Britishers made up their minds to carry the enemy's position or perish. Their commander had fallen; the colours changed bearers seven times; still they kept their formation as steadily as if on parade, and bayonet in hand rushed on the Spaniards, who outnumbered them four to one. For a brief time the struggle was fierce and the result doubtful, but cold steel in the hands of such a desperate, forlorn hope was too much for the Spaniards. They began to give ground and at last broke and fled. The llanero horse rode them down, and only a remnant escaped to the shelter of Puerto Cabello.

Bolivar entered Caracas acclaimed--and this time justly--as the liberator of his country.

Meanwhile the const.i.tuent congress of the new republic of Colombia had met at Cucuta, a town near the limits of Venezuela and New Granada. It was composed entirely of civilians and lawyers and proved to be radically republican and opposed to Bolivar's anti-democratic theories.

Though a centralised government was adopted, congress rejected the life presidency and hereditary senate, and abolished the military dictators.h.i.+p by providing that the commander-in-chief, when on active service, should leave his political functions in the hands of the vice-president. Bolivar made a pretence of declining the presidency, but yielded to the importunities of congress and continued in command of the army on the terms proposed, stipulating, however, that he be allowed to organise as he saw fit the provinces he might conquer in the rest of South America.

The Spaniards now held only Puerto Cabello and c.u.mana, but no progress was made toward driving them out of these positions during the remainder of 1821, nor until after Bolivar had, early in 1822, left for the south to co-operate with Sucre in the conquest of Quito. In October c.u.mana surrendered to Bermudez, but from Puerto Cabello Morales led an expedition which reconquered Maracaibo and Coro. He was unable to hold them and the defeat of his squadron on Lake Maracaibo in July, 1823, forced him to surrender. On the 8th of November Puerto Cabello was taken by a.s.sault and the long war for Venezuela's independence was over.