The South American Republics Volume II Part 14

Three great territorial divisions corresponded to the three directions in which the conquest had been effected. From Cartagena, Antioquia and the lower Cauca had been settled; from Quito, Popayan, Pasto, and the upper Cauca; and Bogota was the centre of the region extending from Pamplona south along the plateaux and into the valley of the upper Magdalena. This division of the country soon brought on disputes as to pre-eminence and jurisdiction between the authorities, foreshadowing the demand for local independence which desolated Colombia with civil war during so many years of the last century. Lugo, the new adelantado, who had displaced Quesada, deprived many of the original conquerors of their grants of lands and Indians, and the old and new comers fell to fighting among themselves. But their numbers were too small to make their disagreements really threatening to the interests of the Spanish Crown. In 1545 the Spanish government sent out a commissioner to reduce the country to order. The first royal commissioner was replaced by a second in 1553, who carried things with a high hand, depriving proprietors of their grants, nominating members of his own family to the lucrative posts, and finally even exiling Quesada himself and executing some of the most famous of the original conquerors. Under instructions from Madrid he promulgated many laws for the protection of the Indians from the exactions and tyrannies of the encomenderos--regulations which, as in Peru, excited great dissatisfaction among the colonists and were constantly evaded. It was forbidden for any encomendero to be military governor of his district, and the original conquerors were replaced in all positions of authority by officials newly brought out from Spain.

However, the office of commissioner was an irregular and extraordinary one and his powers ill-defined. Even at Bogota his authority was defied by the audiencia and the munic.i.p.al councils, and over the remote provinces of Antioquia and Popayan, Cartagena and Panama, his power was a mere shadow. The Spanish government resolved to erect Quito and Bogota into presidencies, whose governors would be responsible directly to Madrid and have greater authority over subordinate officials.

CHAPTER II

COLONIAL TIMES

In 1564 the president arrived in state with all the trappings appropriate to his high rank. His powers were most ample; he was practically vicegerent of the Castilian king; his jurisdiction extended not only over the Bogota-Pamplona plateaux and Tolima on the upper Magdalena, but also over Santa Marta, Cartagena, Antioquia, and even to Panama and the Mosquito coast. The name of New Granada, which Quesada had given to his conquests in honor of his native province in Spain, was extended to the whole presidency. To it were also attached, though loosely, the provinces that now make up the republic of Venezuela. But access to the Venezuelan coast from Bogota was so difficult as to prevent that region from ever being really a part of the New Granada presidency, and it became an independent captaincy-general in 1731. The eastern boundary of the president's immediate jurisdiction included the provinces which naturally communicated with the Colombian plateaux, but the extension of the Andes north-east from Pamplona along the Venezuelan coast was left to be settled from Coro. For similar reasons the valley of the upper Cauca--Cali and Popayan, as well as Pasto--was attached to the presidency of Quito, and the subordination of its governor to Bogota was only incidental and gave rise to many disputes and conflicts. The administrative ent.i.ty of New Granada may be said to have included the territory which the Spaniards had reached by the line of the Magdalena, and in addition the Cartagena region and the Isthmus.

The last named province was a source of constant trouble, because the difficulties of communication and the diversities of interests really made it separate from the rest of New Granada. Panama's governor and independent audiencia frequently defied the commands received from Bogota.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NATURAL BRIDGE AT GUARANDA.]

The disorders near Bogota ceased after the arrival of the first president, Neiva. He actively engaged in promoting new colonisation, founding the city of Ocana in the Maracaibo watershed north-west of Pamplona, as well as Leiva and several other towns. He opened a road down from Bogota to Honda at the head of navigation on the Magdalena, and in his time great flatboats were introduced. These were poled against the river's rapid current, and they continued the sole means of river freight transportation for nearly three centuries. The cornerstone of the Bogota cathedral was laid, and schools established which soon counted among the most successful and famous in Spanish America. The country prospered after a fas.h.i.+on. The fertile plateaux from Bogota to the north were admirably adapted to the residence of Europeans, and the rich soil soon produced large crops of wheat and fed great herds of cattle. This region was so attractive that the Spaniards became attached to the country and contentedly established themselves as semi-feudal proprietors of estates cultivated by the docile and industrious Indians.

A considerable proportion of the successive generations of office-holders sent out from Spain, applied for land-grants and remained in the country, founding new Creole families. Mixture with the aborigines occurred on a large scale and the process of Caucasianising the population made greater progress than in many other parts of Spanish America. The region was too far from the sea-coast to attract haphazard adventurers or to serve as a Botany Bay for convicts; the Spanish settlers belonged as a rule to good families; and the standard of living, education, and manners was exceptionally high. Bogota became one of the princ.i.p.al centres of Spanish American culture, and Colombian authors are celebrated for their excellence throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In the invigorating climate the Creoles retained their physical vigour and the concentration of population on these densely inhabited plateaux increased their mental alertness. Living, however, as a superior cla.s.s in the midst of a subject population, they acquired no taste or capacity for commerce or industry. A Creole was by birth a gentleman and exempt from manual labour. The Colombian plateaux made little material progress, and settled down into an eventless, patriarchal existence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FALLS OF TEQUENDAMA.]

Conditions were entirely different in the deep, hot valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca and on the sweltering sea-coast plain. The semi-savage Indians did not make good labourers, and were ma.s.sacred or driven into the fastnesses on the mountain sides, while their places were taken by negro slaves. The white population fell into much the same position as it occupies in the West Indian Islands. In the mining regions the Indians were pretty nearly exterminated. Antioquia, the great mineral province, has always contained a larger proportion of white blood than any other part of Colombia, and with the decline of its mines it became a centre whence white emigration poured into the other departments. Still different conditions prevailed in the extreme south, where the highlands of Popayan and the dry, cold tablelands of Pasto offered the same aspect as adjoining Ecuador. In those utterly isolated and comparatively unattractive regions the Indian population remained predominant.

In Colombia, as in all the other Andean countries, the impulse toward conquest, expansion, and colonisation seems to have died out completely with the disappearance of the first generation of conquistadores. We read of the foundation of new cities from time to time, but it usually means that previously existing villages were given munic.i.p.al charters.

After one brief spurt the Spaniards settled down to enjoy the fruits of their ancestors' heroic marches and battles. Except near Panama the rainy Pacific coast was left untouched, and the forests of the Amazon in the south-east could not be penetrated. The open prairies of the Orinoco north-east of Bogota could be occupied and the province of Casanare at the foot of the eastern Andean range became a stock region, inhabited by the same hard-riding, semi-civilised llaneros as the adjoining Venezuelan plains.

The Spanish government applied its restrictive colonial system with the utmost rigour. The obnoxious market tax was imposed as early as 1690; tobacco and salt were made monopolies; the exportation of agricultural products was discouraged; and the production of gold, emeralds, platinum, and silver, was jealously watched and heavily taxed. In the early history of the colony the profits of mining were prodigious, but during the seventeenth century, after the cream of the surface placers had been skimmed, progress was slow. The unhealthful climate of the mining regions almost exterminated the settlers; the native population diminished so rapidly that soon the mines were short-handed; and the importation of negro slaves was so costly that the smaller proprietors could not operate on their own account, and even the great mine owners had to be content with moderate profits. One-fifth of the gross product was required to be paid to the government, and there were other fiscal exactions. The efforts of the authorities to prevent the smuggling of gold introduced a swarm of soldiers, collectors, and guards with whom the miners were in a constant turmoil.

The influence of the Church was very powerful, and the population became devotedly Catholic. Great tracts of the best lands were given to the bishoprics and the religious orders. Piously disposed persons left property in trust charged with the payment of so many dollars a year for the saying of so many ma.s.ses, and the stewards.h.i.+ps, or rights to administer these estates, were the subject of sale or descended from father to son. In 1630, a daring president, Jiron, presumed to arrest and banish the archbishop of Bogota, but fifty years later one of his successors wrote back to Spain that "in New Granada there is much Church and little king." The poor Indians were decimated not only by war, ma.s.sacre, and forced labour in the mines, but the white man's diseases played havoc with them. The small-pox was introduced on the plateaux within a few years after the conquest, and continued to ravage the country throughout the early part of the seventeenth century. The third president died of the leprosy within a few months after his arrival in 1579, and the first case of elephantiasis, which has proved a curse to Colombia, occurred in 1646.

The quarrels and disagreements between the president and the governors and audiencias of the a.s.sociated provinces, especially Panama, to say nothing of the disputes with the president of Quito and the governor of Venezuela on account of conflicting jurisdiction, became so acute early in the seventeenth century that the Spanish government determined to erect New Granada into a viceroyalty, extending the power of the Bogota central authorities over Ecuador and Venezuela. The first viceroy was inaugurated in 1719, but he recommended a return to the old system. In the year 1740 the viceroyalty was re-established and all connection with Peru ceased. Although in the meantime Caracas had been made a captaincy-general, it was placed nominally under the viceroy's jurisdiction, and Ecuador was again detached from Lima. Within a few years the attempt to govern Maracaibo, c.u.mana, Margarita Island, and Guiana from Bogota was abandoned, and these provinces transferred to the Venezuelan captaincy-general. But the high rank and royal powers of the viceroys did not save them from troubles. They were engaged in an almost continual struggle against the encroachments of the clergy, while the laity protested vigorously at the constantly increasing taxation. A special royal commissioner came out in 1774 to perfect the tobacco monopoly, and five years later another agent arrived with instructions still more irritating. The Creoles of Santander arose in the "Rebellion of the Communes" and so formidable was the insurrection that the authorities were compelled to make a feint of yielding to the people's demands. They promised to expel the obnoxious commissioner; to abolish not only the tobacco monopoly, but the market-tax on the sale of domestic products, the requirement that every s.h.i.+pment be accompanied by a high-priced official invoice, and the poll-tax; to lower the stamp duties, the curates' t.i.thes, and the Indian tribute; to cease burdening commerce with unreasonable highway, bridge, and ferry dues; and to require the priests to give up the practice of forcing the Indians to pay for ma.s.ses. The viceroy also promised to open public employments to Creoles, to permit the establishment of a militia, and to concede to the people the right to confirm the governors nominated by the Crown or viceroy. But no sooner had the insurgents dispersed, than the government repudiated all these pledges and dragged the popular leaders to the scaffold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVE HOUSES IN COLOMBIA.]

The foreign commerce of the viceroyalty had diminished until only one small fleet came each year to Cartagena and Porto Bello, and though, during the latter part of the colonial period, certain viceroys did something to open up roads by which wheat, sugar, cacao, and hides could be exported at a profit, no measures could prove effective while the enormous fiscal exactions of the Spanish government continued. During the last few years of the eighteenth century, commerce was made nominally free, but this meant simply that the old prohibitions on private s.h.i.+pments by sea were abolished, and the ports opened for trade with Spain and the other colonies. These wise measures were, however, accompanied by such an increase in taxes that their effect was nugatory.

Meanwhile New Granada had also had her external troubles. In 1586 Sir Francis Drake reached Cartagena and forty years after the Spanish government fortified the place at great expense. Nevertheless Duca.s.se took it in 1695 though Admiral Vernon, with a great fleet and army, unsuccessfully besieged the place in 1741, after having captured Porto Bello. The unsettled Central American coast north from the Isthmus was nominally a part of the vice-royalty, but had been completely neglected by the Bogota authorities, and in 1698 a colony of twelve thousand Scotchmen, with authority from Parliament and backed by a vast popular subscription, landed on the north sh.o.r.e of the Isthmus. They purposed the establishment of a general emporium for all nations on the spot which the great financier, William Paterson, who originated the scheme, regarded as "the key of the commerce of the world." There was to be free-trade; the Indians were to be protected; religious liberty was to be established; and the Spanish monopoly of South and Central America destroyed. The far-sighted Paterson hoped to found a colonial empire and to enrich his own country by the resulting trade. But the enterprise was wrecked by the fatal climate and the supineness of the British Government. Provisions fell short, and within a year the survivors re-embarked in a miserable plight. Two small supplementary expeditions arrived in 1699 to find a.s.sembled a Spanish fleet and army against which no serious resistance could be made. After a little half-hearted fighting the Scotchmen capitulated and the colony was definitely abandoned. The Bogota government continued to neglect that coast. It was placed under the jurisdiction of the captain-general of Cuba, and the claim that Colombia set up after she became an independent nation has never held good against the Central American republics.

CHAPTER III

THE WAR AGAINST SPAIN

The stirring events of the year 1808 in Spain and the disorganisation of the monarchy produced great excitement in the New Granadan cities. When the news of the establishment of a junta at Quito came in September of the following year, Amar, the Bogota viceroy, summoned an a.s.sembly of the authorities and leading citizens for consultation. The Creoles favoured an independent junta, but the prestige of the Spaniards and Amar's popularity prevailed, and it was resolved to recognise the home revolutionary government, and to send an expedition to crush the Quito junta. Meanwhile the Ecuador patriots had despatched troops to Pasto, but the st.u.r.dy conservative mountaineers resented the invasion and repulsed the Quitenos. Thenceforth to the end of the war Pasto remained a loyalist stronghold. Though Quito soon laid down its arms under promise of amnesty, the re-established Spanish government ma.s.sacred the insurgent leaders, and reports of these cruelties threw the Creoles of the cities into effervescence, though the Indian and negro population of the rural districts remained indifferent. On May 22, 1810, the citizens of Cartagena demanded and obtained an independent revolutionary junta; shortly after an insurrection broke out among the llaneros on the Orinoco plains north-east of Bogota; on the 4th of July Pamplona followed Cartagena's example and set up its own junta; and a little later Socorro did likewise. By this time things were ripe in Bogota for an anti-Spanish revolution. Ambitious Creoles intrigued among the people; the natural feeling of jealousy and hatred between Spaniards and Americans became inflamed; a contemptuous remark about Creoles made by a Spaniard in the streets was the signal for the gathering of a great mob which rushed tumultuously to the public square and howled for an open cabildo and the immediate appointment of a junta. With six thousand armed men in front of his palace the viceroy had no choice. The junta was named and a circular sent to the other cities inviting them to name deputies for a congress to arrange a federal union. But local jealousies, hardly held in check by the rigid colonial system, now flamed forth; the people instinctively grouped along geographical lines; and divergencies of opinion and ambition among leaders increased the confusion. Cartagena and other provinces declined to send delegates to Bogota, preferring to act independently until the re-establishment of regular government in Spain.

When the congress met it represented only a part of the territory, and but a small percentage of the population. Narino and other popular young leaders in Bogota intrigued for a centralised system in which Bogota was to be master province. An insurrection against the junta installed him as dictator, and congress fled from the capital. The royalists had made no effort to oppose the revolution in the centres of population, contenting themselves with sending expeditions from Quito to occupy Pasto and Popayan, with keeping possession of the Isthmus, and establis.h.i.+ng themselves on the lower Magdalena. Cartagena was thereby isolated from the rest of the revolted provinces, and Bogota cut off from communication with the sea. In March, 1811, the patriots marched up the Cauca from Cali and defeated the Spaniards in Popayan. Quito rose in rebellion a second time, and the Ecuadoreans advanced north into Pasto, only to be beaten once more by the loyalist peasantry. The Granadans, who invaded by way of Popayan, met with no better success, and their forces under the command of a North American adventurer, Macaulay, were annihilated. The re-establishment of the royal authority at Quito followed, and Bogota again lay open to attack from the south.

While the royalist reaction was thus closing in around the revolution in central New Granada, the ma.s.s of the people cooled, the patriot leaders fought among themselves, and the interior was a prey to anarchy.

Dictator Narino had broken completely with the ambulatory congress, and was sending his troops into the adjacent provinces. Congress protested and a civil war broke out in central Granada. Narino was defeated in an attack on Socorro, but the federalists were in their turn repulsed when they lay siege to the capital, and Bogota declared itself an independent state. In the midst of these disorders, the alarming news was received that General Samano, advancing from Quito and Pasto, at the head of two thousand well-equipped men, had retaken Popayan, and was already menacing Antioquia and the lower Cauca. In the face of this common danger Narino and congress came to terms. The latter advanced to meet Samano and badly defeated him at the battle of Calivio, January 15, 1814. The re-occupation of Popayan was the only result of this victory.

Pasto remained faithfully loyalist--a Vendee into which many republican armies were destined to dash in vain. The Spaniards brought up reinforcements, and when Narino again advanced his army was overwhelmed and himself captured. However, the loyalists were not able to equip an army large enough to justify undertaking the conquest of central Granada, so the jarring factions and provinces were left alone for the present to waste their energies in internecine conflicts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROPE BRIDGE OVER THE MAGDALENA RIVER.]

Cartagena had all the while remained independent, and in 1813 Bolivar, flying from his native Venezuela after the suppression of its first insurrection, took service with the Granadan city. With a handful of militia he drove the Spaniards from the lower Magdalena, and retook the important city of Ocana near the Venezuelan border. His unexpected success created such enthusiasm that the Cartagena dictator gave him a small body of regulars, and with them the daring Venezuelan began that marvellous campaign which for the second time expelled the Spaniards from Venezuela. His triumph was shortlived, and by September, 1814, his forces had been dispersed by the loyalist llaneros and he was back in New Granada. He now offered his services to the federated provinces, and in spite of his recent defeats, the prestige of the 1813 campaign secured him the command of the army which was about to march on Bogota to force that recalcitrant province into the union. At the head of eighteen hundred men Bolivar prosecuted the campaign with all his usual activity. The outlying towns of the province surrendered at his approach, and the capital itself, which had been denuded of troops by Narino for his ill-fated expedition against Pasto, and which in fact was tired of the dictators.h.i.+p, could not make much resistance. The seat of the federal government was transferred to Bogota, and the victorious general, though a Venezuelan, became captain-general of its forces, and to his t.i.tle of "Liberator" was added that of "Ill.u.s.trious Pacificator."

If the adhesion of Cartagena could be secured, the union of New Granada would be well-nigh complete; so with two thousand men he proceeded to the lower Magdalena and established his headquarters just above the delta and within striking distance of the sea-port. However, his intrigues with its government led to nothing. Cartagena refused to co-operate with the confederation on any terms, and finally Bolivar made a foolish attempt to besiege the strongest fortress in America without artillery. He soon came to his senses, raised the siege, gave up his command of the Granadan army, and withdrew to Jamaica to wait a new opportunity to make war on Spaniards.

The revolutionary cause was in a bad way. The loyalists of Venezuela, Ecuador, and southern New Granada had put down the insurgents in their own provinces. Bogota was only held back by the military pressure of a few resolute republicans from declaring for the king, and the other provinces were disgusted with civil disorder and wavered in their allegiance. However, they were destined not to be given the opportunity to return peaceably to obedience on reasonable terms. Wellington's peninsular campaigns and Napoleon's fall changed the face of affairs in Spain. Ferdinand once more on the throne of his fathers, and absolute government re-established, all thought of compromising with the American rebels on the basis of autonomy or representation in the Cortes was abandoned. In April, 1815, Marshal Morillo, Spain's ablest general, arrived on the Venezuelan coast with more than ten thousand veteran regulars. Having reinforced himself among the Venezuelan loyalists, and leaving a large garrison of Spaniards in Venezuela, he proceeded to Cartagena at the head of over eight thousand troops. The defenders numbered less than four thousand, but behind the strongest fortifications in America they prepared to make a desperate resistance.

So formidable were the walls that Morillo did not try to take the place by a.s.sault. His main body landed at Santa Marta and crossed the Magdalena to blockade the city from the rear, while his fleet cut off communication by sea. The besiegers suffered terribly in the pestilential swamps, but the defenders were reduced to the most horrible extremities during four months and a half. The provisions ran out; fevers decimated the people; the starving garrison ate rats and hides, sentinels fell dead at their posts; the commander drove out of the city two thousand old men, women, and children, and of this procession of spectres only a few reached the Spanish lines. Finally, the surviving soldiers escaped by boats in the midst of a storm which dispersed the Spanish squadron, and Morillo entered a deserted city where the very air was poisoned by the rotting bodies of famished people. It is calculated that six thousand persons died of hunger and disease. The Spaniards hunted down and shot the revolutionary leaders; the absolute powers of the governor were revived; and even the inquisition re-established.

While Cartagena was being besieged, a Spanish army advanced along the Venezuelan Andes to the Granadan border and climbed to the Pamplona plateau. There they defeated the local patriots, and the latter fled from the province after killing all the Spanish non-combatants on whom they could lay hands. Desperately alarmed, the congress at Bogota made Camilo Torres dictator, and he resolutely advanced with twenty-five hundred recruits against Pamplona. The Spanish general retreated to Ocana, with the patriots following, but receiving reinforcements, turned upon Torres, and on the 22nd of February, 1816, utterly defeated him.

The revolution lay helpless at Morillo's feet. The royalist forces promptly occupied the great plateau provinces of Pamplona and Socorro, as well as Antioquia. Bogota had in fact long been disaffected to the insurgent cause and now became openly royalist. Torres resigned, and when Madrid, whom the revolutionary chiefs appointed in his place, called for volunteers only six men presented themselves. Congress dissolved, and the dictator and a few determined leaders, with a remnant of the army, fled north to Popayan. There they joined a band of local patriots under Mejia, and gave unsuccessful battle to General Samano, who had advanced from Quito. This fight of Tambo seemed the revolution's _coup de grace_ in New Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Only on the plains of eastern Venezuela, and in the llanos on the Apure and Casanare headwaters, did a few guerrilla bands maintain themselves. In far away Argentina, the town of Buenos Aires and the gauchos were still defiant, but elsewhere in all Spanish South America resistance to the King's generals had ceased.

Marshal Morillo fully appreciated how dangerous to Spanish domination in New Granada and Venezuela were the fierce, hard-riding, llaneros, uncatchable and unconquerable in the vast Orinoco plains. Fighting on the royal side under guerrilla chiefs they had beaten the republicans and Bolivar, but they turned insurrectionist the moment Spanish regular officers a.s.sumed command. Morillo resolved to crush the towns completely, and hoped gradually to wear out or exterminate the llaneros.

In pursuance of this policy all officers above the rank of captain were denied amnesty, and shot wherever found. The same fate was reserved for those who had held high civil office during the insurrection. The Marshal came to Bogota in person to see that his b.l.o.o.d.y orders were carried out. The city's prisons were filled with unfortunates whose wives and daughters pleaded in vain for mercy. The most prominent patriots were shot in the back as traitors and their bodies hung on gibbets. The great scholar, Caldas, the pride of Bogota for his world-wide reputation as a scientist, suffered a not much better fate.

In the capital alone one hundred and twenty-five of New Granada's brightest and best perished on the scaffold, their property was confiscated, and their families reduced to abject poverty. Because they had not actively resisted the rebellion, the entire male population were adjudged to have forfeited all civil rights, and gangs of Granadan youth were impressed into the army, or, worse still, forced to work on the public roads. Even the ladies of Bogota were sent to country towns to remain under police surveillance with women of doubtful character.

While thus engaged in stamping out the revolutionary embers in New Granada word came to Morillo that the Venezuelan llaneros had risen against his lieutenants, and that Bolivar had landed near Valencia.

Leaving a garrison of Venezuelan and Pasto royalists at Bogota under the command of Samano, the Marshal, with four thousand Spanish troops, took the plateau road to the frontier, carrying with him some prisoners to shoot on the line. Samano's first act on a.s.suming the government of Bogota was to erect a gallows in the great square facing the windows of his palace, and to set up four execution benches on the public promenade. Of the victims who sat thereon with their backs to the firing squad, one of the first was the beautiful Policarpa Salabarrieta, with seven men also implicated in sending information to the llanero insurgents. She died exhorting her companions to meet their fate like men, and under the name of La Pola her memory is preserved in the songs of the Colombian people. Sixty years after her death the Colombian congress voted a pension to her surviving relatives.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOME OF BOLIVAR.]

Morillo never returned to New Granada. Before he arrived in Venezuela, Bolivar had temporarily retired, and the llaneros retreated to the vast solitudes in which they were unconquerable. Though the Spanish regulars won battle after battle their victories were fruitless, and Bolivar soon returned to Venezuela to be again placed at the head of the patriots and to wage unremitting warfare with cavalry from a secure base in the llanos, while he imported British mercenary infantry capable of making headway against the Spanish regulars. From 1816 to 1819 New Granada suffered hopelessly and silently the b.l.o.o.d.y despotism of the Spanish generals, while the tide of war rolled to and fro in Venezuela.

In the early part of the latter year Samano sent a small expedition down the steep Cordillera slope against the guerrillas in the Casanare plains north-east of Bogota. This gave Bolivar a great strategical idea. He knew that the tableland of New Granada had been denuded of troops; but it was useless to try an attack from the direction of the provinces south of Maracaibo Bay because this well-travelled route and its populous towns were in secure possession of the enemy. Where Spaniards could go he could follow--so he reasoned--and determined to a.s.sault Bogota directly from the Orinoco plains, thus striking the centre of the Spanish line.

With a mixed army of British mercenaries and hardy Venezuelans the Liberator mounted the difficult pa.s.s which leads from Casanare up to Tunja. Samano had only three thousand troops and these he sent under the command of General Barreiro to meet Bolivar. Though the patriots were somewhat inferior in numbers and arrived on the plateau fatigued, starving, and without horses, Barreiro, not knowing their real numbers, hesitated about attacking. Bolivar was given time to rest and remount his men, and then took a vigorous offensive. His rapid movements confused the Spanish commander, and the latter allowed the patriot army to get between him and Bogota. Thus cut off from his base, Barreiro made a desperate dash to reach the capital, but ran against the patriots posted directly across his path at Boyaca, on the 7th of August, 1819.

The loyalists attacked at a disadvantage and without hope. After losing a hundred men they fled in disorder and the whole army dispersed or was captured. The way to Bogota lay open, and Samano had no forces to defend the city. Within three days Bolivar had traversed the hundred miles from the battlefield, and Samano fled in such precipitous haste that he left behind the government archives and even the money in the treasury. A month later the whole of New Granada, except the stubbornly loyalist Pasto and the fortress of Cartagena, was free. Bolivar had himself made president and military dictator, naming Santander vice-president, and giving each province two governors, one military and the other civil, responsible directly to Bogota. The munic.i.p.al governments were preserved, and the Spanish system of taxation continued, but patriot republicans displaced loyalists in all the offices.

Bolivar soon returned to his Venezuelan headquarters on the Orinoco to fight Morillo and organise the grand republic he had dreamed of so many years. Though all of Venezuela except the Orinoco valley, all of Ecuador, and the sea-ports and southern provinces of New Granada still remained in the hands of superior Spanish armies, and although the Creole ruling cla.s.s had already proved strongly prejudiced in favour of local autonomy and the tearing down of aristocratic forms, his imagination vaulted all obstacles and he planned the new state down to its minutest details. His idea was a centralised system with himself at its head as life president, backed by a hereditary senate, and ruling the three grand divisions of his empire through docile vice-presidents.

But his military power and prestige were insufficient to overcome the opposition of jealous generals and ambitious lawyers. He spent the year of 1820 in futile intrigues among the politicians, and in unsuccessful campaigns against the Spaniards in Venezuela, while the patriots trembled at the news that a great army was a.s.sembling at Cadiz which would surely sweep them out of existence. A liberal revolution in Spain came opportunely to interrupt military operations.

Bolivar was obliged to compromise with the advocates of federalism and democracy. A congress representing the Granadan and Venezuelan provinces then in the hands of the patriots a.s.sembled at Cucuta early in 1821.

Composed of ambitious civilians it was opposed to centralisation or military rule, and in spite of the Liberator's protests adopted a compromise Const.i.tution. Though Bolivar was conceded the t.i.tle of president, he was required to give up his civil authority whenever he took command of the army, and this meant an abolishment of the dictators.h.i.+p. The idea of a life presidency or a hereditary senate was abandoned, and the only part of his system which Bolivar managed to retain was the subordination of the provinces to the central government.

The Liberator now devoted himself to the direction of the war, leaving that long-headed schemer, Santander, in power at Bogota as vice-president. The winning of the battle of Carabobo in Venezuela in June, 1821, and the surrender of Cartagena in September, made necessary the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the Isthmus. Panama immediately declared itself independent, in November, 1821, and announced its intention of joining the great confederation of Colombia, then composed of the provinces of Venezuela, and New Granada, and later of those of Ecuador.

Pasto alone remained in the hands of the Spaniards. Bolivar determined to expel them from this province, and also from Quito and Guayaquil, while visions of conquests in Peru and Bolivia, and of returning to his dazzled countrymen in Colombia crowned with laurels gathered on southern battle-fields, floated through his mind. Congress gladly gave him leave of absence and Santander promised supplies of money and soldiers. In 1822 he advanced against Pasto, sending his able lieutenant, Sucre, around by sea to Guayaquil to take Quito from the south. Gathering three thousand men at Popayan he marched into Pasto and on the 7th of April came upon the royal army at Bambona. A b.l.o.o.d.y battle followed and Bolivar by inciting his men to reckless charges remained master of the field. However, he lost three times as many men as the royalists; the latter retired in good order, and the Liberator, after encamping eight days on the plateau, surrounded by a hostile population, hampered by the difficulties of the mountain paths, with a strong enemy in front, was compelled to retreat on Popayan, leaving his sick and wounded. He remained inactive until the glorious news of Sucre's overwhelming victory at Pichincha arrived. The loyalists in Pasto were now completely isolated. The Spanish commander made terms with Bolivar and the indomitable mountaineers were induced to submit on the promise that they should be allowed to retain their local laws and customs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PANAMA FROM THE BAY.]

CHAPTER IV

MODERN COLOMBIA

After Bolivar's departure for Peru, a period of relative quiet ensued.