Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

CHILEAN FARMER.

Engraved for Stevenson's Narrative of South America.

A

HISTORICAL

AND

DESCRIPTIVE NARRATIVE

OF

TWENTY YEARS' RESIDENCE
IN
SOUTH AMERICA,

IN THREE VOLUMES;

CONTAINING TRAVELS IN ARAUCO, CHILE, PERU, AND COLOMBIA;
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF
THE REVOLUTION, ITS RISE, PROGRESS, AND RESULTS.

BY W. B. STEVENSON,

FORMERLY PRIVATE SECRETARY TO THE PRESIDENT AND CAPTAIN GENERAL OF QUITO,
COLONEL, AND GOVERNOR OF ESMERALDAS, CAPTAIN DE FRAGATA, AND LATE
SECRETARY TO THE VICE ADMIRAL OF CHILE,—HIS EXCELLENCY
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD COCHRANE, &c.

VOL. III.

LONDON:
HURST, ROBINSON, AND CO.
CONSTABLE & Co. AND OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH.
MDCCCXXV.

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER I.

First Revolutionary Symptoms in South America....Morales and Quiroga....Character of Morales....Of Quiroga....Discovery made by Captain Salinas to two Friars....Their Report to the Government....Imprisonment of Morales, Quiroga, Salinas, and Riofrio....Character of Salinas....of Dr. Riofrio....Liberation of the Prisoners....Junta formed at Quito....Advice of to the President, Count Ruis....Manner in which the Revolution was conducted....New Oath....Marquis of Selva Alegre....Character of....Dissensions in the New Government....Count Ruis reinstated....Arrival of Troops from Lima and Santa Fé....Imprisonment of the Insurgents....Trial of....Character of the Count Ruis....Of the Oidor Don Felipe Fuertes Amar....Of the Fiscal Arrechaga....Of Colonel Arredonda....Proceso sent to Santa Fé.

Shortly after the arrival of his Excellency the Count Ruis de Castilla at Quito, the capital of his government, the collegians of San Fernando presented him with four theatrical representations, at which the whole of the nobility attended as spectators. The pieces chosen were Cato, Andromacha, Zoraida, and the Auraucana, the whole of them tending in their design and argument to inculcate a spirit of freedom, a love of liberty, and principles of republicanism. However, as is often the case with people who visit public exhibitions with a predetermination to be pleased, this tendency passed unobserved by the president and the other members of the government. Inattentive to what the state of affairs in the mother country might produce in the colonies, the American rulers judged that they themselves were surrounded by the same obedient vassals whom their predecessors had governed, without ever dreaming that the people were awake to what was actually passing in the parent state; for, although the opportunity of deriving information from the press was prevented by the government, yet the Americans who resided in Spain at this period were very actively employed in communicating to their friends in America the true state of affairs, and the natives were generally better informed of what passed in the mother country, than the Spaniards resident in America or even the government itself; because Spanish correspondents being loath to place their property in America in jeopardy, or judging that the colonists had only to obey whatever orders they might receive, either gave indistinct or favourably exaggerated accounts; or else treated the Americans with that contempt which as their superiors they fancied they had a right to exercise.

After the performance of the pieces, I became gradually acquainted with the individuals who had selected them—Dr. Quiroga and Don Manuel Morales; the former an advocate of some respectability, a native of Arequipa in Peru, married in Quito; the latter, a native of the city of Mariquita in the Viceroyalty of Santa Fé de Bogotá, had been secretary to the government when the Baron de Carondelet was President; but having offended him, Morales was discarded from his situation by the orders of the Baron. He hoped to have been restored on the arrival of the Count Ruis; but this chief having in his suite a young advocate of the name of Don Tomas Arrechaga, whom he had educated, and for whom he wished to provide, the claims of Morales were disregarded, and Arrechaga was nominated secretary to the government.

Morales was possessed of a strong mind, had received a liberal education, and having been employed many years in the secretary's office, had obtained a knowledge of the affairs of the government and an insight into the intrigues of the Spanish court. He considered himself unjustly dealt with by the Baron de Carondelet, and more so by the Count Ruis, who could only know his failings through the too often distorted medium of report: he saw his situation filled by a stranger, himself an exile, and was determined to be revenged on those whom he regarded as the supporters if not the authors of his disgrace. To this end circumstances that could not possibly escape his observation aided him; and had not rashness prompted him to execute his designs prematurely, he might have succeeded, and have lived to receive the thanks of his countrymen; whereas, his ashes can only be revered by them, his name can only dwell in their memories with painful regret, or gratitude drop a tear at the recollection of his untimely death.

Quiroga was of an unquiet aspiring disposition, rash and undaunted in his undertakings, but very self-opinionated: unable to brook controul in any shape, but open to conviction when persuasion was the medium. He was successful as a pleader at the bar, loquacious and eloquent, but even here his hasty temper drove him into difficulties; he was repeatedly reprimanded by the tribunal, and at length was not only mulct, but even suspended from the exercise of his office as an advocate. In one instance, when a fine was imposed upon him, he declared that he could in no manner pay it, because the tribunal was not competent to levy it; that the Regent and Oidores had taken possession of their seats on the bench contrary to law, or held them contrary to justice; and he proved his assertions by stating the cases, quoting the laws, and citing the regulations of the tribunal. This necessarily drew down upon him the hatred of the members, and obliged him to leave the bar. Quiroga was the constant companion of Morales, and, like him, expected that on the arrival of Count Ruis, an appeal to his Excellency, as President of the royal audience, would restore him to the exercise of his profession; but a report from the Regent Bustillas prevented the fulfilment of his expectations, and this circumstance drove him to despair.

These two disappointed individuals chose the dramatic pieces which were performed at the college of San Fernando in October, 1809, selected perhaps in order to probe the government; if so, the result was completely satisfactory to their views, for not the least suspicion was evinced, nor any alarm taken.

In February, 1809, Captain Salinas, who was commander of the infantry at Quito, informed two friars, Father Polo and another, of a plan that was about to be formed to depose the Spanish authorities in Quito, and to elect others from among the most respectable citizens, as substitutes. The information was immediately reported by the friars to the President, and a secret commission was given to the Oidor Fuertes Amar to proceed against all suspected individuals according to law. Don Pedro Muños was appointed to act as privy secretary, but this man had no other qualification than that of being a native of Spain. Quiroga, Morales, and the parish priest of Sangolqui, Dr. Riofrio, and Captain Salinas, were apprehended, and placed under an arrest in the convent of La Merced. Their declarations were taken down in writing by Muños, and every possible means employed to prevent the people from becoming acquainted with the state of the proceso; no person was allowed to see the prisoners, and they were deprived of the means of communicating to their friends any particulars relating to their situation; the secretary was not allowed the assistance of an amanuensis, and every inquisitorial practice was brought into action. In the beginning of April, when Muños was going in the evening to the palace to report on the proceedings to the President, the papers were stolen from him. This accident produced considerable confusion; many who were really concerned in the plot were assured that their names had never been mentioned by the prisoners, who uniformly denied having any knowledge of it; and Salinas protested against having mentioned any thing concerning it to the friars. Thus by a fortunate accident the plans of the government were frustrated, the prosecution ceased, and the prisoners were liberated. This occurrence, however, taught them to be more on the alert, and to be more careful in future; but the torch was lighted, and although the flame had been smothered for a short time, it was not extinguished.

The character of Salinas was well known to Morales and Quiroga. He was a true Quiteño, volatile and variable, embracing every novel object with avidity, without reflection, or discrimination; the pursuit of any new scheme was as ardently begun by Salinas, as it was easily abandoned the moment it ceased to be new, or the moment that another was suggested; but as this officer was at the head of the infantry, which consisted of about four hundred men, with part of which he had been formerly stationed at Panama, and which in their opinion was considered a campaign in a foreign country, he had become the idol of the soldiers; so that it was absolutely necessary that Salinas should be brought over to second the plans of Morales and Quiroga; and this was easily effected—the plan was novel, and promised a succession of what was most congenial to his feelings.

Dr. Riofrio was a secular clergyman, of a sullen morose temper, ready to coincide with any set of men whose plans were calculated to bid defiance to any thing that did not please him; yet, whether from natural imbecility, or natural cowardice, he seemed to be only an instrument, and probably became acquainted with the plans in agitation by being a frequent visitor at a house in Quito where Morales had lived, and on account of his own house being sometimes the residence of Morales, when he was estranged from Quito by the President Carondelet. This man and Salinas were both natives of Quito, but neither of them of families of rank or fortune, although from the situations which both had held they were very respectable.

After the release of the four denounced conspirators, Salinas and Riofrio returned to their former occupations; Quiroga to his home, more injured than ever; and Morales went into the country, without having reaped any advantage except experience. The government now appeared quite satisfied in having declared the acquittal of the prisoners honourable; they were pleased that no act of injustice had been committed, and flattered themselves that the papers lost by Muños had fallen into the hands of some pick-pocket, or that having been dropt in the street, they had ceased to exist in a shape which might betray their intentions. But they were deceived; the papers found their way into the study of Quiroga, who drew such conclusions from them as best suited his own ends, and disseminated their contents among such individuals as he judged most proper to entrust them with. From April to August, 1809, nothing particular occurred, except new advices from Spain; so that the abdication of Carlos, the accession of Fernando, the imprisonment of the King, and the invasion of the country by the French, were the subject matter of every conversation. But still tranquillity reigned in every part of the colonies, and their inhabitants seemed to vie with each other in enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty and attachment to their amado Fernando. Every new advice from Spain served to increase the apprehension and the dismay of the governments and Spaniards residing in America; and their whole attention was so engrossed with the state of affairs in the country to which they belonged, that they had not time to meditate on the effects which might be produced by it in the country in which they were stationed—satisfied that the colonies must follow the fate of the parent state, just as if it had been annexed to it by the ties of nature, instead of being attached to it by the most unnatural connexions. But the bubble burst when and where it was perhaps least expected to happen, and although the effects of the explosion were soon repressed, yet it rent the veil, and laid the foundation of that emancipation which the whole of the heretofore enslaved nations of the new world now enjoy.

On the morning of the 10th of August, 1809, at an early hour, two natives of Quito, Ante and Aguire, waited on the president with a letter. The orderly who was at the door of the antechamber objected to carry any letter or message to his Excellency at so unusual an hour; but Ante persisted in the necessity of its immediate delivery, saying, that it contained matters of importance from the Junta Soberana, sovereign junta, a name as new in the ears of the orderly as was the body itself new in America. The orderly awoke the president, delivering the letter, and repeated the words which he had heard, as an excuse for his untimely errand. The president having read the superscription—"From the sovereign junta to the Count Ruis, ex-president of Quito," dressed himself, and read the following:

"The present unsettled state of Spain, the total annihilation of the lawfully constituted authorities, and the dangers of the crown of the beloved Ferdinand VII. and his domains falling into the hands of the tyrant of Europe, have impelled our trans-atlantic brothers to form provincial governments for their personal security, as well against the machinations of some of their traitorous countrymen, unworthy of the name of Spaniards, as against the arms of the common enemy: the loyal inhabitants of Quito, resolved to secure to their legitimate King and Master this part of his kingdom, have established a sovereign junta in this city of San Francisco de Quito, of which, and by the command of his Serene Highness the President and the vocal members, I have the honour to inform your lordship, and to announce to you, that the functions of the members of the old government have ceased: God preserve your lordship many years. Hall of the junta in Quito, August 10th, 1809: Manuel Morales secretary of the interior."

After reading this unexpected epistle, his Excellency entered the antechamber, and walked towards the messengers, who inquired whether he had received the note, and on being answered in the affirmative, they bowed, turned round, and retired. The count followed them to the outer door and attempted to pass it, but he was prevented by the sentry. He now sent his orderly to call the officer of the guard, who politely answered, that he could not consistently with the orders he had received, speak with the Count, pronouncing the last word with considerable emphasis. A great number of people began to assemble in the square before the palace, at six o'clock, when a royal salute was fired, and the military music, stationed on the esplanade in front of the palace, continued playing some national airs till nine o'clock. At this time the members of the new executive government met, the Marquis of Selva Alegre, president, the vocal members, the Marquis of Orellana, Marquis of Solanda, Count of Casa Guerrero, Marquis of Miraflores, Don Manuel Zambrano, Don Manuel Mateus, and Don Pedro Montufar, the two ministers. Morales and Quiroga: the declaration of the installation was published, and the form of the oath to be administered to all persons employed under the new government was drawn up. The Bishop of Quito was elected vice-president, but he refused to assist at this or any subsequent meeting.

The whole of the revolutionary change was effected in the night of the ninth. Morales came to Quito, and, with Quiroga, convened a meeting; he informed the members of the risk in which the country at large stood, set forth the intention of the government to acknowledge Napoleon as their sovereign, because the Kings of Spain had ceded their sovereignty to him, and exhorted them at the same time to preserve themselves and this part of the Spanish dominions from the fate that awaited the rest; and this he told them could only be done by establishing a provincial government in the name of Fernando, and of removing all suspicious persons from their offices. This harangue was nothing but a matter of form, because all the preliminaries had been agreed on beforehand. Salinas, being present, was deputed to bring over the soldiers, which he immediately did; he went to the barracks, and having formed the infantry in the square or patio—he informed them that their beloved King was a prisoner in France; expatiated on his sufferings; told them that the existing governments in America were determined to deliver up the country to the common enemy, and concluded by asking them, whether they would defend their beloved Ferdinand, or become the slaves of Bonaparte? The deluded soldiers immediately shouted Viva Fernando Septimo! Viva Quito! The commandant of the cavalry, Don Joaquin Saldumbide, received orders for the same purpose, and executed them in the same manner. On the return of these two individuals to the junta, they were commanded to give the necessary orders to the different guards, and to administer to the troops the following oath:

"I swear by God and on the cross of my sword, to defend my legitimate King, Ferdinand VII.; to maintain and protect his rights; to support the purity of the holy Roman Catholic Church; and to obey the constituted authorities."

After the conclusion of this ceremony, the necessary orders were given to the officer of the guard at the president's palace, barracks, and prisons: a guard was placed at the door of each suspected person, particularly at those of the Regent and Oidores; and the members of the government retired to their houses.

An express was immediately sent to Chillo, an estate belonging to the Marquis of Selva Alegre, with the news of what had taken place, and a request that his lordship would immediately come to Quito, and take possession of the supreme command of the government of the kingdom. Thus, in one night, without bloodshed or even without any popular commotion, a government which had been established for more than three centuries was displaced, and a new one erected on its basis.

The Marquis of Selva Alegre arrived on the morning of the tenth, and was visited by the members of the new government, while the two ministers proceeded on their duty to place new officers and clerks in the secretary's office, and to take charge of the archives belonging to the royal audience.

The character of Selva Alegre is almost indefinable. As a private man he was extremely kind and polite, having more of the polished courtier about him than might be supposed to exist in an individual born in what may be termed a sequestered country. Both in his town and country house a great deal of taste and splendour were exhibited, in a manner somewhat uncommon at Quito; yet neither his income nor his popularity could in any way be compared to those of Miraflores nor Solanda. As a public character Selva Alegre was extremely unfit; wavering and timid, wishing rather to reconcile the two parties than to support either; fond of show and parade, but frightened at his own shadow, as if it mocked him. At the gaze of the people he would, like a peacock, have allowed his gaudy plumage to fall to the ground; he would have endeavoured to hide himself, or, as the most enthusiastic Quiteños expressed themselves, "his shoes did not fit him."

On the thirteenth the new government visited the church of the Carmen Alto, the different members dressed in their robes of ceremony; His Serene Highness in the full costume of the Order of Charles III., of which he was a knight; the members of the junta in scarlet and black; the two ministers were distinguished by large plumes in their hats; the corporation, officers of the treasury, and other tribunals, in their old Spanish uniforms, and the military in blue, faced with white instead of red, as heretofore.

After the thirteenth of August, anarchy began to preside at all the meetings of the junta. Morales insisted on a reform in the regulations of the tribunals; Quiroga, that preparations offensive and defensive against the neighbouring provinces which did not follow the example of Quito should be made; Selva Alegre and the members wished that every thing might remain as it was. However the army was increased, and detachments sent to Guallabamba against the Pastusos, and to Huaranda, to prevent an invasion by the Guayaquileños. The people began to shew marks of discontent, particularly dreading a scarcity of salt, which article was procured from Guayaquil. The governor of Guayaquil first threatened to invade the provinces, next the Viceroy of Santa Fé, and lastly the Viceroy of Peru. Advices arrived that troops from these different quarters were absolutely on their march, and to complete the consternation of the people, the Count Ruis retired from his palace into the country, to a small quinta, or country seat, two leagues from the city, where he remained, till on the night of the eighth of November a deputation from the sovereign junta waited on him with proposals for his reinstatement in the presidency, to which he acceded. On the part of the president the condition was, that the members of the junta should retire to their respective homes, and become quiet citizens, as before the tenth of August; and on the part of the junta, that what had passed should be referred to the central junta in Spain, and that no prosecution should take place against them until the resolution of the representative authority of Spain should be known. These simple preliminaries being agreed to, his excellency the Count Ruis entered Quito on the following morning, and was received with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of joy; the inhabitants and the members of the ex-junta presented themselves, and made a tender of their several titles, which were accepted by the president, and with all the acts and other papers belonging to the intrusive government, as it was stiled, were ordered to be burnt; but Arrechaga, instead of obeying the order given to him, kept them with the most depraved intention for the most execrable purposes.

On the second of December the auxiliary troops arrived from Lima and Guayaquil, composed of five hundred infantry, and fifty artillery men, under the command of Colonel Arredonda. The inhabitants of Quito, relying on the fulfilment of the conditions agreed to by the Count Ruis, erected triumphal arches to receive them, and strewed flowers along the streets as they passed; but scarcely had they taken quiet possession of the city, and disbanded the native troops, than Arrechaga, who had been appointed fiscal on the death of Yriarte, advised Arredonda to solicit of the president an order for the apprehension of all persons who had taken an active part in the late revolt, grounding his solicitude on the law of power, that good faith ought not to be kept with traitors. The count had the weakness to accede to the request of Arredonda, and an order was immediately issued commanding Don Manuel Arredonda, Colonel of Infantry, and Commandant of the Pacifying Troops, tropas pacificadoras, to arrest all the persons who had been concerned in the late rebellion, the names of whom were subministered by Arrechaga, and on the twelfth of December upwards of fifty of the most respectable inhabitants of Quito were dragged from their homes, and immured in cells in the barracks. Judge Fuertes Amar was again appointed to form the proceso criminal. Every succeeding day brought new victims to the prison, for not only those who had taken an active part in the affair were apprehended, but many individuals also to whom letters had been written by the insurgents; and some because they had not declared themselves hostile to the revolutionary government; however the Regent, Oidores, Fiscals, and other persons who had remained neuter, and some Spaniards in office who had kept their places during the administration of the junta, were not included in the number; but the Bishop, who, being an American, was included in the list of insurgents, and accused of having connived at the treason of his flock, because he did not anathematize them, interdict the places of public worship, and sentence to everlasting torments all schismatics to royalty and passive obedience.

Two hundred more soldiers arrived from Santa Fé de Bogotá, and brought with them a greater security to the ministers of despotism, and the whole of the provinces of Quito groaned under their tyranny. Many of the most wealthy inhabitants fled to their estates in the country, and many, although totally unconnected with the affairs of the junta, were afraid of being swept away by the torrent of persecution. Among those who fortunately absconded, and eluded the vigilance of the government, was the Marquis of Selva Alegre: the Marquis of Miraflores died of grief in his own house, and a guard of soldiers was placed over him even till he was interred.

Not content with imprisoning those persons who might be termed the ringleaders, the soldiers were taken into custody, and placed in a separate prison, called the presidio. This alarmed the lower classes, who began to steal into the country, and seek in the mountains and woods an asylum against the systematic persecution that now pervaded the miserable hut of the labourer as well as the residence of his employer—the cabin of the indigent as well as the mansion of the wealthy. Provisions became daily more scarce in the city, the soldiery in the same ratio became more insolent, when, to crown the state of desperation among all classes of the inhabitants, except the natives of Spain who resided here, the examination of the prisoners was concluded, and the vista fiscal was drawn up. This horrible production, worthy of its author, Arrechaga, divided the prisoners into three classes, but sentenced them all to death: their number was eighty-four, including the prisoners and the absent, who were outlawed; even the Bishop was not excluded, although, according to the laws of Spain, he could only be tried by the council of Castile. Distress, affliction, and grief now reigned triumphant: mothers, wives, and daughters filled the air with their cries for mercy on their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, who had been torn from them and immured in dungeons, where they were not allowed to visit them; and who lay under sentence of an ignominious death, no hopes being left, except that the president would not confirm the sentence, and in this hope they were not deceived.

When the proceso was concluded, and required no more than the veto of the president, it was presented to him; but instead of concurring in the opinion of the fiscal, and giving way to the entreaties of Colonel Arredonda, he ordered the papers to remain in his cabinet. The agitation of the old count was now truly distressing, and he frequently said to me, that he would prefer signing his own death-warrant to the sacrificing of so many deluded victims, the greater part of whom had only committed an error of judgment, founded, perhaps, on a mistaken sense of loyalty; at last he determined to refer the case for revision to the Viceroy of Santa Fé, to the inconceivable chagrin of Fuertes, Arrechaga, and Arredonda, who all founded their hopes of preferment in Spain on the execution of the prisoners, who had been denominated traitors.

The Count Ruis was at this time eighty-four years of age; he had resided in America upwards of forty; first in the capacity of Corregidor of Oruro, then of Governor Intendent of Huancavilica, afterwards as President of Cusco, and lastly of Quito. When at Huancavilica he commanded the troops, in 1780, against the unfortunate Tupac Umaru, who was taken prisoner, and quartered alive in the plasa mayor at Cusco, by being tied to four wild colts, which were driven to the four opposite angles of the square.

When President of Cusco, the unhappy victims of Spanish jealousy and cruelty, Ubalde and Ugarte, in 1796, were executed on an ex-parte evidence. This proceso was conducted by the Oidor Berriosabal, afterwards Count of San Juan and Marquis of Casa Palma, and who was afterwards, in 1821, proscribed in Lima by San Martin. The Count Ruis as a private individual was remarkably kind and familiar, and excessively charitable: in his public capacity he was too easily overruled, especially by persons in authority under him, and when he could be induced to believe them to be actuated by motives of justice; but he was obstinate in the greatest degree if he once suspected their integrity. The court of Spain was so well convinced of the virtuous character of this nobleman, that in 1795 a royal order was issued inhibiting him from a residenciary investigation at the expiration of his first government of Cusco: an honour which I believe was never conferred on any other governor in the Spanish colonies.

The Oidor Don Felipe Fuertes Amar was remarkably timid, in fact he was a complete coward, and this weakness brought him to the gallows, during a commotion of the indians in 1810.

The Fiscal Don Tomas Arrechaga was a native of Oruro, said to be the offspring of a friar of San Juan de Dios and a mestisa of Oruro. The Count Ruis took him when a boy under his protection, educated him, and brought him to Quito to establish him in the profession of the law, which he had studied. Arrechaga was brutal in his looks, his manners, and his actions; he was possessed of all the subtle cruelty peculiar to the caste of chinos, which is a mixture of African and indian blood: his mother was of the latter race, and his father was not entirely exempt from the former. Arrechaga would have waded through the blood of his countrymen to secure promotion; and from the first discovery of the country this had been too often the means of obtaining it.

Don Manuel Arredonda was the son of the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, and nephew to the Regent of the Royal Audience of Lima; he was in search of reputation, fame, and promotion—not in the cannon's mouth—no, for indeed he was the original fop described by Hotspur, he was effeminate, proud and cruel, the general qualifications of a coward soldier; an imperious tyrant when in prosperity, but the most abject of all wretches when in adversity.

The person chosen to convey to Santa Fé the whole of the proceso was Dr. San Miguel, a young advocate who had become the constant companion to Arrechaga. Not less than six reams of written paper formed the important charge, for the safety of which a piquet of horse was ordered to escort San Miguel as far as Pasto, lest some of the outlaws might surprize him on the road. The prisoners expected no favour at the hands of the Viceroy, because he was the uncle of the Oidor Fuertes who had tried them. It was natural to suppose that he would not extend his mercy against what he would consider the justice of the law as expounded by his nephew; for, although it may appear very strange in England, that the inclinations of persons in such elevated situations should be biassed by personal interest, this was too frequently the case in South America.

CHAPTER II.

Second Revolution at Quito....Massacre of the Prisoners....General Meeting held....Spanish Troops leave Quito....Revolution at Santa Fé....Arrival of Don Carlos Montufar at Quito....Arredonda invades Quito....Arrives at Huaranda....Flies from....Montufar marches towards Cuenca....Desists from attacking the City....Returns to Quito....My Appointment to Esmeraldas....Capture and Escape....General Montes enters Quito....Death of Montufar....Quito taken by General Sucre.

After the departure of San Miguel for Santa Fé many of the soldiers who had belonged to the insurgent army returned to the city, supposing that the prosecution had closed; but they were apprehended, and sent to the presidio. Several individuals also who came from different parts of the country were apprehended on suspicion, and, although they were liberated after examination, the alarm flew from one place to another, so that none would bring their produce to market, and a consequent dearth of provisions began to be experienced in the city. This, instead of producing conciliatory measures for procuring them, enraged the Spanish soldiers, who committed several depredations, and the injured individuals through fear abstained from complaining to the officers, or if they ventured to do it, they were insulted with the epithets of rebels, insurgents, and traitors. Thus the evil increased daily till the second of August, 1810, when some of the soldiers confined in the presidio surprized the guard, and depriving them of their arms, and putting on their uniforms, ran to the barracks at one o'clock in the afternoon; the disguise prevented all suspicion on their approach, and they succeeded in driving the sentry from his post at the door, and securing the officer of the guard: at this moment a bell was rung in the steeple of the cathedral, as an alarm: the officers who had just sat down to dinner in the palace rushed into the plasa mayor, and observing a considerable degree of commotion at the door of the barracks not fifty yards from that of the palace, the guard was ordered to fire on those at the barracks, which firing was returned by the opposite party. This lasted about ten minutes, when, all being silent, an officer ran to the barracks to inquire into the cause of the disturbance: on being informed of what had taken place, as well as that all was then safe, he returned with the report to his commandant, Arredonda. Another officer was immediately sent to inquire into the state of the prisoners, and he as briefly returned with the news, that they were all dead. Some had been shot during the uproar by the sentries placed over them, and many had been murdered by a zambo boy, one of the cooks to the soldiers, who had entered their cells, and despatched them with an axe. Terror and consternation for a moment were visible in the countenances of the president and officers, when, on a sudden, the Spanish soldiers rushed from the barracks into the streets, shouting revenge! revenge! our captain is murdered. Scarcely was the alarm given, when the infuriated soldiers abandoned their posts, and running up and down the streets, murdered every individual they met with, without distinction either of age or sex: the drums in different parts of the city beat an advance, and murder and pillage raged in this horrid manner till three o'clock, all the officers standing on the esplanade of the palace, without making any effort to check the massacre: at length, the soldiers having expended their stock of cartridges began to return to the barracks, some of them so laden with plunder, that they had left their arms they knew not where.

The number of prisoners confined in the cells, many of whom were secured with irons, and who fell a sacrifice to the insubordination of the soldiery, and the imbecility of the officers, was seventy-two; a clergyman of the name of Castelo, and an individual of the name of Romero, were the only prisoners that escaped, and they saved their lives by feigning to be dead. Morales, Quiroga, Riofrio, and Salinas perished; but to the memory of these, and their fellow sufferers, the government of Venezuela ordered a day of mourning to be kept annually; thus paying to them the greatest possible respect; they also afterwards determined to call them the martyrs of Quito. In the streets of Quito about three hundred individuals perished, including seven of the Spanish soldiers, who were killed by some indian butchers, whom they had repeatedly insulted. Such was the fury displayed by the pacifying troops, that a party of them having met a captain in his uniform, who belonged to the Guayaquil cavalry, a soldier seized the sword of his captain, and ran him through the body with it, laying him weltering in his gore not fifty yards from the door of the barracks.

No powers of language can describe the anxiety which this dreadful affair excited in the minds of the inhabitants, who, ignorant of the origin, considered it as an unprovoked slaughter of their countrymen, and consequently dreaded that it might be again repeated in the same manner. Only five of the soldiers who left the presidio entered the barracks—had twenty entered, they would doubtlessly have succeeded in liberating the prisoners; but these were murdered while those were engaged with the guard at the door.

The streets of the city were entirely deserted; groups of people were scattered about on the neighbouring hills, looking wistfully at their apparently desolated town; dead bodies were strewed about the streets and squares, and all was horror and dismay. During the night the bodies of the prisoners were conveyed to the church of San Augstin, and those that were murdered in the streets, to the nearest churches. The two succeeding days, the third and the fourth of August, the inhabitants kept within their houses, and, except the soldiers, not an individual ventured into the streets. The government now began to fear that the whole of the provinces would rise en masse; and as the news of the revolution at Caracas, which took place on the nineteenth of April, 1810, had reached their ears, this, with their ignorance of what was passing in the mother country, except that Bonaparte had taken possession of Madrid, suggested to them an effort at reconciliation, but without in the least reflecting on their own baseness and treachery, in having violated the conditions which had replaced the president in his authority, and thus branded themselves with the name which they most justly deserved, that of infames traidores, INFAMOUS TRAITORS.

On the fifth an order was published for the heads of all the corporate bodies, officers, and principal inhabitants to meet at the palace, and resolve on such means as were most likely to restore peace, tranquillity, and confidence to the country. Accordingly the persons who were summoned met; the president took the chair, having the Bishop on his right, and Colonel Arredonda on his left, the Regent, oidores, fiscals, attorney-general, and other officers and persons of distinction took their seats. The president rose, and in very few words expressed his sorrow for what had happened, and his sincere wish to restore peace and unanimity among the people. The Bishop in a short speech answered, that he was afraid such wishes would never be fulfilled, until those persons who had advised his Excellency to forget his promises made to the people were removed from that part of the country. Arrechaga rose and observed, that his lordship recriminated on his conduct; to which the prelate replied, that years and dignity precluded any recrimination on Don Arrechaga from him. This debate induced the president to request, that Arrechaga would leave the hall, which request was reluctantly complied with; although such a rebuff from the Bishop would only four days before that of the meeting have shewn him the way to a dungeon.

Dr. Rodrigues, a secular priest, greatly revered for his wisdom and his virtue by all who knew him, rose from his seat, and, advancing to the centre of the hall, delivered a most eloquent and animated speech, which lasted for more than an hour. He portrayed the character of the Quiteños in general, explained the causes of the late revolution with evangelical charity, and dwelt on the fatal results with the truest symptoms of grief, in such a manner, that, not through sympathy but sensibility, conviction, shame, and remorse, the big tear flowed down the cheeks of his hearers. He concluded by repeating what his prelate had said, and added further, that the people of Quito could no longer consider their lives and property secure, unless those individuals who had so lately forfeited their title of pacificators were removed from the country. "I allude," said he, "to the officers and troops; they have already made upwards of three hundred unoffending fellow-creatures, as faithful Christians and as loyal subjects as themselves, the peaceful tenants of the grave, and, if not stopped in their career of slaughter, they will soon convert one of the most fruitful regions of the Spanish monarchy into a desert; and future travellers, while execrating their memory, will exclaim, 'here once stood Quito!'"

Don Manuel Arredonda, trembling for his personal safety, now rose. He observed, that he was fully convinced the government of Quito ought to rely on the loyalty of the Quiteños, and allow him to retire with the troops under his command. This was immediately agreed to, and the act of the meeting having been drawn up, was signed by the President, the Bishop, the Commander of the troops, and several other members. Preparations for the evacuation of the city immediately commenced, and the troops under the command of Arredonda began their march on the following morning, leaving the two hundred soldiers from Santa Fé and the government to the mercy of a populace driven almost to despair by their cruel and murderous conduct.

A few days after the departure of Arredonda and the soldiers, Dr. San Miguel returned from Santa Fé, bringing tidings of an insurrection having taken place in that city. It commenced on the twenty-third of July, 1810, the day before the arrival of San Miguel with his cargo of papers. When he presented himself before the new authorities at Santa Fé, he was commanded to repair to the plasa mayor with his papers, and here he was ordered to deliver them into the hands of the hangman, who immediately committed them to the flames. Thus a trial was concluded, which, perhaps, in point of infamous intrigue was unparalleled in any age or nation; and had the conductors of it suffered a similar fate at the same time, numbers of Americans would have had just cause to have been satisfied. The return of San Miguel only served to throw the government of Quito into greater consternation, and the citizens who had lost their relatives or their friends on the second of August into deeper sorrow.

The insurrection of Santa Fé was conducted, like that of Quito, without any bloodshed; the news of the commission conferred on Villaviencio by the central junta of Spain, to visit his native place, and to make any such alterations in the form of the government as might appear necessary for the preservation of the country, had arrived at Santa Fé. The friends of this American wished to prepare a house for his reception; one of them begged the loan of a chandelier of a European Spaniard, who, chagrined at the idea of a royal commission having been conferred on a colonist, insulted the borrower; this conduct produced an altercation between the parties, a mob collected at the door, the Spaniard attempted to drive the people away with threats and insults, which at last produced a cry of Cabildo Abierto! an open meeting at the City Hall. Scarcely had the shout been re-echoed by the mob, when it was extended to every part of the city, and Cabildo Abierto became the watchword. Crowds of people flocked to the plasa mayor, the doors of the town hall were thrown open, and several individuals, all natives, ranged themselves round the table. At this juncture some one advanced to the door, and asked the populace why they had collected in that manner, at this particular time? Some one answered, queremos gobierno nuevo, fuera Españoles! We want a new government—out with the Spaniards! Nariño was then sent to request the presence of the Viceroy Amar, as president of the meeting. His excellency refused; a second message was sent, and met with the same refusal: this conduct exasperated the people, and the cry of fuera Españoles! fuera chapetones! again resounded from every quarter. A third messenger was shortly after sent to inform Don Antonio Amar, that his functions, with those of all European Spaniards in the government, had ceased. Amar now volunteered to go and preside at the meeting; but he was told, that only his baston of command was requested; this, after a little altercation, he delivered up. The new government took possession of the barracks, the park of artillery, and the government stores. The ex-viceroy and some of the ex-oidores were sent to Carthagena to be embarked for Spain. In one day the change in the government was completed, and on the following the people retired to their several homes and occupations in the most perfect order, after witnessing the public burning of the papers brought by San Miguel.

In the month of September of the same year, Don Carlos Montufar, son to the outlawed Marquis of Selva Alegre, who with several others had again presented himself publicly in Quito, arrived, bringing with him powers from the central junta of Spain, to establish such a government, or make such changes in the one existing, as might ensure the allegiance of the country to Ferdinand on his restoration. The joy which this arrival would have occasioned a short time before it took place was considerably damped by the recollection of the second of August. However, to support, and as it were to exculpate the conduct of the government with respect to the treatment of the unfortunate victims who had perished on that day, Montufar and his friends determined on re-establishing the junta. A meeting was convened at the hall of the university, at which the Count Ruis presided; the commission conferred on Montufar was read, and the formation of a junta proposed, which was immediately agreed to. The Count Ruis was nominated president, and the Marquis of Selva Alegre vice-president; the members for the city were elected by the five parishes, and those for the country by the parishes of the heads of the provinces.

Don Carlos Montufar, desirous of preserving tranquillity, and maintaining a good understanding with the Viceroy of Peru in particular, immediately forwarded to his Excellency Don Jose de Abascal his original commission; but the innovation was so great, and the decrease of Spanish authority so alarming to the Viceroy, that he returned the papers with an assurance, that he "should exert himself in the support of his own authority, and that of all the faithful subjects of the crown of Spain." This imprudent and ill-timed answer, accompanied by a knowledge of the present state of affairs in Santa Fé and Venezuela; of the revolt of San Miguel and el Valle de los Dolores in Mexico, which took place on the nineteenth of August; of that of Buenos Ayres on the twenty-sixth of May, 1819; together with the condition of the mother country—distracted the attention of the Spaniards, and first disseminated the whisper of Independence: a whisper which was confined to private conversations, and was heard only among the higher classes.

Colonel Arredonda and his troops were at first ordered to remain at Guayaquil; but on the arrival of the news communicated by the newly-established government of Quito, he was commanded to invade the territory belonging to that jurisdiction, and to declare war against the newly-established authorities, as being traitors to the Crown of Spain. At the same time that Arredonda began his march, Montufar collected the armed force of Quito, began to discipline new troops, and proceeded with them to Riobamba. Popayan and Pasto, under the influence of Samano the governor of the former place, declared their adherence to the old government, and avowed their intention of invading Quito to the northward, while Arredonda should attempt the same to the southward. A few troops placed by Montufar at Guaitara precluded all fear with regard to Samano, and Montufar waited at Riobamba the advance of Arredonda.

A sentinel placed at an advanced post at the Ensillada was alarmed early one morning by a sudden report, caused by the ice on Chimboraso, which, when the rising sun first illumes it, sometimes cracks with a tremendous report. Alarmed at what he heard, he abandoned his post, and communicated intelligence of the approach of Montufar with a train of artillery. Arredonda was now filled with the greatest possible consternation, and without waiting to inquire into the cause of the alarm, or to investigate the report, he mounted his horse, and fled: the officers and soldiers followed the example of their chief, and, leaving every thing behind them, placed their safety in their heels. Montufar, being immediately apprised of what had passed at Huaranda, Arredonda's late head quarters, went and took possession of the abandoned stores, consisting of eight hundred muskets, six field-pieces, a quantity of ammunition, the military chest, and all the public as well as private property belonging to the tropas pacificadoras.

The city of Cuenca declared its attachment to the royal cause, as it now began to be called, in opposition to the insurgents, and Montufar, flushed with his good fortune at Huaranda, marched towards that city; the Bishop, Quintian Aponte, who with a crucifix in one hand and a sword in the other had marshalled the natives, and exhorted them with more than pastoral eloquence, fled on receiving advices that the insurgents were within ten leagues of the city, and left his flock at the mercy of the very man whom he had described the day before as a ravenous wolf.

In this state of affairs, when every thing seemed to promise success to the insurgents, a post arrived from Spain, bringing the news of the dissolution of the junta central, and the formation of a Regency and Cortes, and commanding all his Majesty's faithful subjects to abjure the traitorous junta, and to take the oath of allegiance to the newly-constituted authorities. An order of the Regency commanded that every thing in the colonies should remain in the same state in which it might then be, until the Regency and the Cortes should decide. Carlos Montufar, on the receipt of this intelligence, communicated to him by the Viceroy of Peru, answered his excellency, that as a loyal subject, and trusting that the conduct of his excellency would evince equal loyalty and deference to the supreme order received, he should immediately retire to Quito with the troops under his command.

A small detachment of soldiers continued on the heights of Guaitara, and every thing in Quito remained tranquil until the middle of November, when General Molina arrived at Cuenca, and, by the order of the Viceroy Abascal, peremptorily insisted on the dissolution of the junta, which was objected to. Captain Villavicencio arrived from Guayaquil to treat with the government on the proposals made by General Molina, and such was the spirit of party, and the dread of again being oppressed by pacifying troops, that on the arrival of Villavicencio, a woman, named Salinas, a servant to Captain Salinas, who was murdered on the second of August, collected a body of females, who armed themselves with lances, and escorted Villavicencio to the house prepared for him, where they remained on guard till he quitted the city. Nothing could be more ridiculous than the appearance of this naval hero when he had to attend the meeting of the junta, marching along the street with an Amazonian guard, composed of twenty-five females with lances, who conducted him to and from the hall.

During the time that Montufar was absent from the city with the troops, several popular commotions took place, particularly of the indians; these were principally excited by a native of the name of Peña, who had had a son slain in the massacre of the second of August. During this time, the Oidor Fuertes and the postmaster-general attempted to escape, with an intention of proceeding down the Marañon, but they were seized by the indians, brought back to Quito, and before the respectable part of the inhabitants could relieve them from the danger in which they were placed, the indians erected a temporary gibbet in the plasa mayor, and hanged them: being in the street myself, the indians seized me also, and were hurrying me along towards the place of execution, but I was providentially rescued by the interference of an old clergyman, to whom I was known, and to whom I undoubtedly owe the preservation of my existence.

The adherence of Popayan and Pasto to the Spanish governors precluded all communication between Quito and Santa Fé, Venezuela, and other places. The junta determined to open a communication by the coast with Cali and Buga, and also with those parts of the country which had established the same form of government as themselves. Owing to the knowledge which I had acquired of the coast, the title of governor of Esmeraldas, and military commander of the coast, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel of artillery was conferred on me; and on the fifth of December I left Quito with fifty soldiers, took possession of my command, opened the communication, and secured the depôt of arms belonging to the Spaniards at Tumaco.

During my residence on the coast of Esmeraldas, nothing particular occurred in the capital, except preparations for defence: General Molina died at Cuenca, and the Bishop of Cuenca at Guayaquil. Aymerich, the governor of Popayan, solicited a brig of war, which was sent by the governor of Guayaquil; with this assistance Esmeraldas was invaded, and I was taken prisoner in May, 1811; but with the permission of Captain Ramires I made my escape from the brig. Don Toribio Montes was appointed by the Regency president of Quito, and immediately took the command of the troops stationed at Guayaquil and Cuenca, and began his march on Quito. The president, Count Ruis, retired to a small convent in the suburbs of Quito; but a popular commotion of the indians in the city occurred, a party of them went to the convent and dragged the venerable good old man into the street, where they murdered him. Montes had a few skirmishes with the Quiteños; but he entered the city, and caused several of the principal individuals who had been concerned in the late transactions to be put to death. Among these was Don Carlos Montufar, who, being sentenced as a traitor, was shot through the back, his heart taken out and burnt. Some of the indians who had been the ringleaders in the death of the Count Ruis were hanged, and their heads placed in iron cages in different parts of the city, where they remained until taken down by order of General Sucre.

From the year 1811 Quito continued to be governed by the Spanish authorities, till May, 1822, when General Sucre entered by force of arms, and at that time it became a part of the republic of Colombia.

CHAPTER III.

State of Lima in 1811....Constitution proclaimed....Some Effects of....Wishes of the Inhabitants of Lima....Manifest of Venezuela.

On my arrival in Lima I found the same spirit of revolutionary principles disseminated among all ranks of creoles, excepting some few individuals who possessed lucrative employments under the government. The Viceroy Abascal endeavoured to check the spirit of rebellion by the mildest measures possible, avoiding all acts of persecution; he established a regiment, called de la Concordia, of concord, from the respectable inhabitants of the city, constituted himself the colonel of it, and nominated the officers from among the more leading individuals, whether Spaniards or creoles: this for a short time lulled the spirit of insurrection. The victory of Guaqui, gained by General Goyoneche over the army of Buenos Ayres, was welcomed with feasts and rejoicings; but the scarcity of wheat, the ports of Chile being closed, began to be very apparent.

In 1812 the constitutional government was proclaimed, and copies of the constitution of the Spanish monarchy were the only books that were read, consulted, and studied by all classes. The formation of a constitutional corporation, cabildo, and the election of constitutional alcaldes, caused some uproar in the city; but the measures became alarming to the Spaniards when the election of deputies for the cortes took place. The Spaniards, accustomed to consider the natives as inferiors, and almost as intruders in their own country, had now to brook their contempt in return, to bear with their opposition, and sometimes with their reproaches. The poll was conducted in the patio, or principal cloister of the convent of La Merced; several collegians of San Carlos placed themselves on the hustings, and, according to the Ley de Partido, no native of Spain is permitted to reside in the colonies without a special license of the Casa de Contratacion of Seville, or in the employ of the government, and the latter were declared by the constitution, tit. 2, cap. IV. art. 24, to have no vote. Thus as no Spaniards in Lima could produce a license, or passport, they were not allowed to vote; and this excited in them the most frantic rage and chagrin. One Spaniard presented himself with his passport, and insultingly advanced towards the hustings to vote; but one of the collegians, looking over the paper, found that the voter was a native of the Canary Islands, which being African islands, and all Africans, or descendants of Africans, being declared by art. 22, tit. 2, cap. IV. of the constitution, as not having an elective vote, unless they had obtained a letter of denizenship from the cortes, he was obliged to retire amid the shouts of the creoles, and the curses against the cortes of the Spaniards.

Nothing could possibly be more favourable to the colonies than the publication of a constitutional form of government, and the liberty of the press, as it was sanctioned by the cortes. The restrictions were such as would have produced a clamour in England, but to a slave an hour of rest is an hour of perfect freedom, and to men whose pens had been chained by political trammels and inquisitorial anathemas, a relief from such restrictions was hailed as an absolute immunity. Those colonies that still remained faithful to the mother country had an opportunity of reading the periodical papers, a thing unknown at this time, unless we except the government gazette; and although such news as was unfavourable to the Spanish system did not appear in print, yet the barefaced falsehoods of the old ministerial paper were checked in their exaggerations, by the appearance of authentic intelligence in the new papers, and the public were informed of such facts as had taken place: they were apprised of the establishment of republican governments in Mexico, Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chile—facts that would have been disguised by the old established authorities, and the people would have been stigmatized by the name of banditti, of discontented indians, a gang of traitors, or a horde of highwaymen and freebooters.

The inhabitants of Lima wished for a change in their form of government as ardently perhaps as those of any other part of America; and for not having established one, they have been considered by many as a race of effeminate listless cowards, and have been reported as such—but most undeservedly. Although in a cause adverse to their own interest, for many years they sustained the brunt of the war against all the forces that could be brought to the field by those whom they were taught to consider as enemies. Soldiers are instructed by the precepts and the examples of their commanders, and rarely reflect on what is right or wrong; otherwise history would not present us with such numberless instances of armed forces acting in open hostility against their very homes, their friends, and their parents; wherever a city is garrisoned by a military force, the inhabitants as well as the soldiers must submit to the will of the commanders. Such was the state of Lima: many of the soldiers it is true were Limeños, but many were from different parts of Peru, and nearly the whole of the officers were Spaniards, and those who were not were under the suspicious eye of jealous masters.

At first, the several provinces that revolted, and which had established new governments, most solemnly declared, that it was not their intention to separate from the crown of Spain, but to govern themselves in such a manner as would secure to that crown the possession of America. The Regency of Spain, however, invested with the authority to govern the peninsula, insisted on the prerogative of governing the American colonies, forgetting that the famous grant of America made by Pope Alexander VI. annexed America to the crowns of Castile and Arragon, and not to the nation nor to any representative body belonging to that nation. Every individual that was apprehended during the first years of commotion was treated as a traitor. At Quito the words "constituted authorities" contained in the oath which was administered were converted into high treason, and there is no doubt but Arrechaga would have solicited the sentence of capital punishment on all those who had taken it, had not their number included many of his friends.

Declarations of independence, and manifestos containing the motives for at once separating from the mother country, now began to circulate among the natives of Peru; and although some of them contained exaggerations, and the government of Lima became possessed of copies of them, yet such was the apathy or the timidity of the chiefs, that no attempt at refutation was ever made. The following are translations of papers from Venezuela, which fully express all the grievances of which the Hispano-Americans complained. They were drawn up for the purpose of instilling into the minds of their countrymen a determination to shake off those grievances, and to convince the world at large that the insurrection of the Spanish colonies had become a matter of necessity and not of choice:

"Manifesto made to the world by the confederation of Venezuela in South America, of the reasons on which it founds its absolute independence of Spain, and of every other foreign power. Done by the general Congress of the United States, and ordered to be published.

"Spanish America, condemned for more than three centuries to exist only for the purpose of increasing the political preponderance of Spain, without the least influence in, or participation of her greatness, would, according to the order of events in which she had no other part than that of sufferance, have been the victim and the sacrifice of the disorder, corruption, and conquest, which have disorganized the nation her conqueror, if the instinct of self-preservation had not dictated to the Americans, that the moment of action had arrived, and that it was time to reap the fruits of three centuries of patience and forbearance.

"If the discovery of the new world was to the human race an occurrence highly interesting, the regeneration of this same world, degraded from that period by oppression and servitude, will not be less so. America, raising herself from the dust, and throwing off her chains without passing through the political gradations of other countries, will in her turn triumph over the world, without deluging it in blood, without enslaving it, without brutifying it. A revolution most useful to mankind will be that of America, when she shall constitute her own authorities and govern herself, opening her arms to receive those people of Europe who may be trampled on by policy, wish to fly from the evils of war, or escape the persecution and the fury of party. The inhabitants of one hemisphere will then cross the ocean to the other in search of peace and tranquillity; not with the lust nor perfidy of conquest, like the heroes of the sixteenth century—as friends, not as tyrants: as men willing to obey, not as lords to command—not to destroy, but to save—not as ravenous tigers, but as human beings, who, horror-struck at the account of our past misfortunes, were taught to estimate them by their own—who will not convert their reason into a spirit of blind persecution, nor wish to stain our annals with blood and misery. Then shall navigation, geography, astronomy, industry, and trade perfected by the discovery of America, though until now the source of her debasement, be converted into the means of accelerating, consolidating, and making more perfect the happiness of the two worlds.

"This is not a flattering dream, but the homage of reason to prudence, whose ineffable wisdom designed that one part of the human race should not groan under the tyranny of another; consequently, the great fiat of what should precede the dissolution of the world could not take place before one part of its inhabitants had enjoyed their inherent rights. Every thing has long been preparing for this epoch of felicity and consolation. In Europe the shock and the fermentation of opinions, the contempt and the inversion of the laws; the profanation of those bonds which ought to have held states together; the luxury of courts, the cessation of industry, the consequent unproductiveness of lands, the oppression of virtue, and the triumph of vice accelerated the progress of evil in one world, while the increase of population in America, of the wants of foreign countries dependent on her, the development of agriculture in a new and fertile soil, the germ of industry under a beneficent climate, the elements of science under a privileged organization, the means of a rich and prosperous trade, and the strength of a political adolescence, all, all contributed to accelerate the progress of good in the other.

"Such was the advantageous alternative that enslaved America presented to her mistress, Spain, on the other side of the ocean, when oppressed by the weight of every evil, and undermined by every principle destructive to society, America called upon her to ease her of her chains that she might fly to her succour. Fortunately prejudice triumphed, the genius of evil and disorder seized on the government, goaded pride usurped the seat of prudence; ambition triumphed over liberality, and substituting deceit and perfidy for generosity and integrity, those very arms were turned against us which we ourselves used when impelled by fidelity and good faith; we taught Spain herself the way to resist her enemies, under the banners of a presuming king, unfit to reign, and void of all title except the generous compassion of the people and his own misfortunes.

"Venezuela was the first in the new world to pledge to Spain that generous aid which she considered as a necessary homage; Venezuela was the first to pour the consoling balm of friendship and fraternity into her wounds when afflicted; Venezuela was the first that knew the disorders which threatened the destruction of Spain; she was the first to provide for her own safety, without severing the bonds that linked her to the mother country; the first to feel the effects of her ambitious ingratitude; she was the first on whom war was declared by her brethren; and she is now the first to recover and declare her independence and civil dignity in the new world. In order to justify this measure of necessity and of justice, she considers it an incumbent duty to present to the universe the reasons which have urged her to the same, that her honour and principles may not be doubted, nor endangered when she comes to fill the high rank which Providence restores her to.

"All those persons who are aware of our determinations know what was our fate previous to the late inversion of things, which alone dissolved our engagements with Spain, even granting that these were legal and equitable. It would be superfluous to present again to impartial Europe the misfortunes and vexations she has so often had cause to lament, at a time when we were not allowed to do so; neither is it necessary to assert the injustice of our dependence and degradation, when every nation has viewed as an insult to political equity, that Spain unpeopled, corrupted, and plunged into a state of sloth and indolence by the measures of a despotic government, should have exclusively usurped from the industry and activity of the rest of the continent, the precious and incalculable resources of a world constituted in the fief and monopoly of a small portion of the other.

"The interest of Europe cannot oppose the liberty of one quarter of the globe, which now discovers itself to the interest of the other three; yet a mere peninsula is found to oppose the interests of its government to those of its nation, in order to raise the old hemisphere against the new one, since the impossibility of oppressing it alone for any longer period is now visible. In opposition to these endeavours, more fatal to our tranquillity than to our prosperity, we will disclose to the world the causes which operated on our conduct on the fifteenth of July, 1808, and the acts that have wrested from us the resolutions of the nineteenth of April, 1810, and of the fifth of July, 1811. These three epochs will form the first period of the glories of regenerated Venezuela, when the impartial pen of history shall record the first lines of the political existence of South America.

"Our manifests and public papers testified almost all the reasons that influenced our resolutions, as well as our designs, and all the just and decorous means that were employed to realize them; it might be supposed that an exact and impartial comparison of our conduct with that of the late governments of Spain would of itself suffice to justify not only our moderation, not only our measures of security, not only our independence, but also even the declaration of an irreconcilable enmity to those who directly or indirectly have contributed to the unnatural system now adopted against us. Nothing in truth should we have to do if good faith had been the spring of action, used by the partisans of oppression against liberty; but, as the last analysis of our misfortunes, we cannot extricate ourselves from the condition of slaves without being branded with the disgraceful epithets of ungrateful rebels. Let those therefore listen and judge us who have no part in our misfortunes, and who are now desirous of having none in our disputes, in order not to augment the prejudices of our enemies, and let them not lose sight of the solemn act of our just, necessary, and modest emancipation.

"Caracas was apprised of the scandalous scenes which took place at the Escurial and Aranjues at a time when she was already convinced of what were her rights, and the state in which they were placed by those extraordinary occurrences; but the habit of obedience on the one hand, the apathy that despotism had produced on the other, and in fine our fidelity and good faith, were at that moment paramount to every other feeling. After the communication of Murat, the kingly substitute of Joseph Bonaparte, had reached the capital of the monarchy, the authorities did not even hesitate respecting the reception of it, the people only thought of being faithful, consistent, and generous, without premeditating on the evils to which this noble and gallant conduct would expose them. Without any other view than that of honour, Venezuela refused to follow the opinions of the leading characters in Madrid, some of whom, in support of the orders of the French Regent of the kingdom, exacted of us the oath of allegiance to the new king; others declared and published that Spain had received a new existence since her old authorities abandoned her, since the cession made by the Bourbons and the entrance of the new dynasty; that they had recovered their absolute independence and liberty, and that they offered the same alluring terms to the Americans, who by the same means might procure the same rights. But the first step we took for our own security convinced the junta central that there was something in us besides habits and prejudices, and they began to change their tune respecting liberality and sincerity; they perfidiously adopted the talisman Ferdinand at first practised in good faith; they suppressed, but with cunning and suavity, the plain and legal project of Caracas in 1808 to form a junta, and to imitate the representative system of the governments of Spain; and they began to set up a new species of despotism under the factitious name of a king, acknowledged only from a principle of generosity, and destined to oppress and tyrannise us by those who had usurped the sovereignty.

"New governors and judges initiated in the new system projected by Spain against America, decided in the support of it at our expense, and provided with instructions for even the last political change which might occur in the other hemisphere, were the consequences resulting from the surprize that our unparalleled and unexpected generosity caused to the central junta. Ambiguity, artifice, and disorder were the springs employed to keep in motion this short-lived administration: as they saw their empire exposed and tottering, they wished to gain in one day what had enriched their ancestors for many years; and as their authority was backed by that of their parasites, all their endeavours were directed to the support of each other under the shadow of our illusion and good faith. No statute or law against these plans was effective; and every measure that favoured the new system of political freemasonry was to have the force of law, however opposed it might be to the principle of equity and justice. After the declaration of the Captain-general Emparan made to the audiencia, that in Caracas there was no other law nor will but his own, and this fully demonstrated in several arbitrary acts and excesses, such as placing on the bench of the judge the King's accuser-general; intercepting and opening the papers sent by Don Pedro Gonsales Ortega to the central junta; expulsing from the provinces this same public functionary, as well as the captain, Don Francisco Rodrigues, and the assessor of the consulate, Don Miguel Jose Sanz, who were all embarked for Cadiz or Porto Rico, as well as sentencing to labour in the public works without any previous form of trial a considerable number of men, who were dragged from their homes under the epithet of vagrants; revoking and suspending the resolutions of the royal audience, when they were according to his caprice and absolute will, after naming a recorder without the consent of the corporation; creating and causing the assessor to be received without either title or authority for the same, after he had supported his pride and his ignorance in every excess; after many scandalous disputes between the audience and the corporation, and after all the law characters had been reconciled to the plan of these despots, in order that these might be more inexpugnable to us, it was agreed to organize and carry into effect the project of espionage and duplicity.

"Of all this there remains authentic testimony in our archives, notwithstanding the vigilance with which these were examined by the friends of the late authorities: there exists in Cuenca an order of the Spanish government to excite discord among the nobles and among the different branches of American families. There are besides many written and well-known documents of corruption, gambling, and libertinism promoted by Guevara, for the purpose of demoralizing the country; and no one can ever forget the collusions and subornings publicly used by the judges, and proved in the act of their residencia.

"Under these auspices the defeats and misfortunes of the Spanish armies were concealed. Pompous and imaginary triumphs over the French on the peninsula were forged and announced; the streets were ordered to be illuminated, gunpowder was wasted in salutes, the bells announced the rejoicings, and religion was prostituted by the chanting Te Deums and other public acts, as if to insult Providence, and invoke a perpetuity of the evils we groaned under. In order to allow us no time to analyze our own fate, or discover the snares laid for us, conspiracies were invented, parties and factions were forged in the imagination of our oppressors, every one was calumniated who did not consent to be initiated in the mysteries of perfidy; fleets and emissaries from France were figured as being on our seas, and residing among us; our correspondence with the neighbouring colonies was circumscribed and restricted; our trade received new fetters, and the whole was for the purpose of keeping us in a state of continual agitation, that we might not fix our attention on our own situation and interests.

"When our forbearance was once alarmed, and our vigilance awakened, we began to lose all confidence in the governments of Spain and their agents; through the veil of their intrigues and machinations we perceived the horrid futurity that awaited us; the genius of truth, elevated above the dense atmosphere of oppression and calumny, pointed out to us with the finger of impartiality the true fate of Spain, the disorders of her governments, the unavailing energy of her inhabitants, the formidable power of her enemies, and the groundless hopes of her salvation. Shut up in our own houses, surrounded by spies, threatened with infamy and banishment, scarcely daring to bewail our own situation, or even secretly to complain against our vigilant and cunning enemies; the consonance of our blinded sighs exhaled in the moments of the most galling oppression, at length gave uniformity to our sentiments and united our opinions. Shut up within the walls of our own houses, and debarred from all communication with our fellow-citizens, there was scarcely an individual in Caracas who did not think that the moment of being for ever free, or of sanctioning irrevocably a new and horrid slavery, had arrived.

"Every day discovered more and more the nullity of the acts of Bayonne, the invalidity of the rights of Ferdinand, and of all the Bourbons who were privy to the arrangements; the ignominy with which they delivered up as slaves those who had placed them on the throne in opposition to the house of Austria; the connivance of the head functionaries in Spain to the plans of the new dynasty; the fate that these same plans prepared for America, and the necessity of forming some resolution that might shield the new world from the calamities which from its relations with the old were about to visit it. All saw their treasures buried in the unfathomable disorders of the peninsula; they wept for the blood of Americans spilt in defence of the enemies of America, in order to support the slavery of their own country. Notwithstanding the vigilance of the tyrants, all saw the very interior of Spain, where they beheld nothing but disorder, corruption, factions, misfortunes, defeats, treacheries, dispersed armies, whole provinces in the hands of the enemy and their disciplined troops, and at the head of all a weak and tumultuary government formed out of such rare elements.

"Dismay was the general and uniform impression observed in the countenances of the people of Venezuela by the agents of oppression sent from Spain to support at any hazard the infamous cause of their constituents; a word might cause proscription, or a discourse banishment to the author; and every attempt to do in America what was done in Spain, if it did not shed the blood of the Americans, it was at least sufficient to occasion the ruin, infamy, and desolation of many families, as may be seen by the act of proscription of several officers and citizens of rank and probity, decreed on the twentieth of March, 1810, by Emparan.[1] Such a miscalculation could not fail to produce or multiply the convulsions, to augment the popular reaction, to prepare the combustible, and dispose it in such a manner that the least spark would kindle it, and create a blaze that would consume, and even efface every vestige of so hard and melancholy a condition. Spain needy and almost desolate, her fate dependent on the generosity of America, and almost in the act of being blotted out from the list of nations, appeared as if transported back to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, she again began to conquer America with arms more destructive than iron or lead; every day gave birth to some new proof of the fate that awaited us, a fate that would place us in the sad alternative of being sold to a foreign power, or obliged to groan for ever under a fresh and irrevocable bondage, whilst we alone were expectant on the happy moment that might bring our opinions into action, and join us in such a manner that we could express them, and support them.

"Amidst the sighs and imprecations of general despair, the entrance of the French in Andalusia, the dissolution of the central junta brought about by the effects of public execration, and the abortive institution of another protean government, under the name of regency, reached our ears. This was announced under ideas more liberal, and on perceiving the efforts of the Americans to avail themselves of the opportunity which the vices and nullities of so strange a government presented to them, they endeavoured to strengthen the illusion by brilliant promises, by theories barren of reform, and by announcing to us that our fate was no longer in the hands of viceroys, ministers, or governors; at the same time that all their agents received the strictest orders to watch over our conduct, and even over our opinions, and not to suffer these to exceed the limits traced by the eloquence that gilded the chains forged in the captious and cunning promise of emancipation.

"At any other period this would have sufficed to deceive the Americans, but the junta of Seville, as well as the central junta, had already gone too far in order to remove the bandage from our eyes, and what was then combined, meditated, and polished to subject us again with phrases and hyperboles, only served to redouble our vigilance, to collect our opinions, and to establish a firm and unshaken resolution to perish rather than remain any longer the victims of cabal and perfidy. The eve of that day on which our religion celebrates the most august mystery of the redemption of the human race, was that designated by Providence to be the commencement of the political redemption of America. On Holy Thursday, April nineteenth, 1810, the colossus of despotism was thrown down in Venezuela, the empire of law proclaimed, and the tyrants expelled with all the suavity, moderation, and tranquillity that they themselves have confessed, so much so in fact, as to have filled with admiration of, and friendship for us the rest of the impartial world.

"All sensible persons would have supposed that a nation recovering its rights, and freeing itself from its oppressors, would in its blind fury have broken down every barrier that might place it directly or indirectly within the reach of the influence of those very governments that had hitherto caused its misfortunes, and its oppression. Venezuela, faithful to her promises, did no more than ensure her own security in order to comply with them, and if with one strong and generous hand she deposed the authors of her misery and her slavery, with the other she placed the name of Ferdinand VII. at the head of her new government, swore to maintain his rights, promised to acknowledge the unity and integrity of the Spanish nation, opened her arms to her European brethren, offered them an asylum in their misfortunes and calamities, equally hated the enemies of the Spanish name, solicited the generous alliance of England, and prepared to take her share of the success or misfortunes of the nation from whom she could and ought to be separated.

"But it was not this that the regency exacted of us, when it declared us free in its theories, it subjected us in practice to a small and insignificant representation, believing that those to whom it considered nothing was due, would be content to receive whatever was granted to them by their masters. Under so liberal a calculation the regency was desirous of keeping up the illusion, to pay us with words, promises, and inscriptions for our long slavery, and for the blood and treasure we had expended in Spain. We were fully aware how little we had to expect from the policy and intrusive agents of Ferdinand, we were not ignorant that if we were not to be dependent on viceroys, ministers, and governors, with greater reason we could not be subject to a king, a captive and without the rights of authority; nor to a government null and illegitimate, nor to a nation incapable of holding sway over another, nor to a peninsular corner of Europe, almost wholly occupied by a foreign force. Nevertheless, desirous of effecting our own freedom by the means of generosity, moderation, and civic virtues, we acknowledged the imaginary rights of the son of Maria Louisa, we respected the misfortunes of the nation, and officially announced to the regency that we disowned, that we promised not to separate from Spain so long as she maintained a legal government, established according to the will of the nation, and in which America had that part given to her, required by justice, necessity, and the political importance of her territory.

"If three hundred years of former servitude do not suffice to authorize our emancipation, there has been sufficient cause in the conduct of the governments which arrogated to themselves the sovereignty of a conquered nation, which never could have any property in America declared an integral part of the same, whilst they attempted to involve it in conquest. If the governors of Spain had been paid by her enemies, they could not have done more against the felicity of the nation, bound in its close union and correspondence with America. With the greatest contempt of our importance, and of the justice of our claims when they could not deny us the appearance of a representation, they subjected it to the despotic influence of their agents, over our municipalities, to whom the election was committed; and whilst Spain allowed even for the provinces in possession of the French, the Canaries and Balearic islands, one representative for each 50,000 souls, freely elected by these, in America a 1,000,000 scarcely sufficed to have the right of one representative, named by the Viceroy or captain-general, under the signature of the municipality.

"At the same time that we, strong in the right of our own justice and the moderation of our proceedings, hoped that if the reasons we alleged to the regency to convince them of the necessity of our resolution did not triumph, at least that the generous disposition with which we promised not to become the enemy of our oppressed and unfortunate brethren would be successful, dispositions which the new government of Caracas was desirous should not be limited to barren promises; and the unprejudiced and impartial world will know, that Venezuela has passed the time which intervened between April 19th, 1810, to July 5th, 1811, in a bitter and painful alternative of acts of ingratitude, insults, and hostilities on the part of Spain; and of generosity, modesty, and forbearance on ours. This period is the most interesting of the history of our revolution, so much so, that its events present a contrast so favourable to our cause, that it cannot have failed to gain over for us the impartial decision of those nations that have no interest in disparaging our efforts.

"Previous to the result of our political transformation, we received daily new motives sufficiently strong for each to have caused us to do what we have now done, after three centuries of misery and degradation. In every vessel that arrived from Spain new agents with fresh instructions came to strengthen those who supported the cause of ambition and perfidy. For the very same ends, those Europeans who wished to return to Spain, and assist in the war against the French, received a refusal to their request. On the tenth of April, 1810, the schools were ordered to be closed, to the end, that under the pretence of attending solely to the war, both Spain and America might be sunk deeper into a state of ignorance. It was also ordained, that rights and rewards should be forgotten, and that we should do nothing but send to Spain our money, our men, provisions, productions, submissions, and obedience.

"The public press teemed with nothing but triumphs and victories, with donations and acknowledgments wrested from the people, as yet uninformed of our resolution; and under the most severe threats of punishment, a political inquisition with all its horrors was established against those who should read, possess, or receive papers, not only foreign but even Spanish that were not issued at the manufactory of the regency. Contrary to the very orders of the self-constituted sovereignty, previously issued to deceive us, every bound was over-leaped in the re-election of ultramarine functionaries, whose only merit consisted in swearing to maintain the system contrived by the regency. In the most scandalous and barefaced manner, that order which favoured our trade and encouraged our agriculture was annulled, condemned to the flames, and its authors and promoters proscribed. Every kind of aid was expected of us; but we were never informed of its destination, inversion, and expenditure. In contempt of even a shadow of public faith, and without any exception whatever, all epistolary correspondence from these countries was ordered to be opened, an excess unheard of even under the despotism of Godoy, and only adopted to make the espionage over America more tyrannical. In fine, the plans laid for the purpose of perpetuating our bondage now began to be practically realized.

"In the mean time, Venezuela, free, and mistress of herself, thought of nothing less than imitating the detestable conduct of the regency and its agents: content with having secured her fate against the ambition of an intrusive and illegitimate authority, and shielded it against the blackest and most complicated plans, was satisfied with shewing by positive acts her desire for peace, friendship, correspondence, and co-operation with her European brethren. All those of this class who were among us, as such were considered, and two-thirds of the political, civil, and military employments, both of the high and middle classes, remained or were placed in the hands of Europeans without any precaution, but with a sincerity and good faith that nearly proved fatal to our own interests.

"Our treasures were generously opened to our enemies, that they might enjoy every convenience and profusion in their passage from our country: the captains of the packets, Carmen, Fortuna, and Araucana were received into our ports, and assisted with money to enable them to proceed on their voyage, and fulfil their respective commissions, and even the insolence and crimes of the captain of the Fortuna were referred to the judgment of the Spanish government. Notwithstanding the junta of government of Caracas made manifest the motives of precaution which obliged them not to expose the public funds which were destined to recover the nation, to the veracity of government they allowed and exhorted the people to be generous, and use their fortunes according to the impulse of their own sensibility, by publishing in the public papers the mournful statement of the regency, in which was portrayed the agonizing state of the nation, with the view to solicit our aid, and the same time that they represented it, through the medium of their public prints, as vigorous, organized, and triumphant; but these were destined to deceive us. The commissioners of the regency sent to Quito,[2] Santa Fé, and Peru were hospitably received, treated as friends, and their pecuniary wants supplied to their own satisfaction. But we lose time in thus analyzing the dark and cunning conduct of our enemies, as all their endeavours have not sufficed to warp the imperious and triumphing impression of ours.

"The arrogant mandataries of our country were not, however, the only persons authorized to support the horrid plans of their constituents; the same uniform and universal mission was brought out by all those who inundated America from the sad and ominous reigns of the junta of Seville, the central junta, and the regency, and under the system of political freemasonry, founded on the Machiavelic pact; they all accorded in mutually substituting, replacing, and assisting each other in the combined plans against the felicity and political existence of the new world. The island of Puerto Rico was immediately made the haunt of all the agents of the regency; the place of equipment for all the expeditions; the head quarters of all the anti-American forces; the workshop of all the impostors, calumnies, triumphs and threats of the regents; the refuge of all the wicked; the rendezvous of a new gang of bucaniers, in order that there might not be wanting any of the calamities of the sixteenth century in the new conquest of America in the nineteenth. The Americans of Puerto Rico, oppressed by the bayonets, cannons, fetters, and gibbets which surrounded the bashaw Melendes and his satellites, had to add to their own misfortunes the painful necessity of contributing to ours. Such was the fate of the Americans; condemned not only to be galley-slaves, but to be the drivers of each other.

"The conduct observed by Spain to America is harder and more insulting than that which she appears to exercise towards France. It is well known that part of the dynasty, still resisted by part of the nation, has had decided partizans in many of those who considered themselves the first national dignitaries, for their rank, offices, talents, and knowledge; among these may be counted Morla, Azanza, Ofarrill, Urquijo, Masarredo, and many others of every class and profession; but still there has not appeared one of those who so much desire the liberty of independence and regeneration of the peninsula, that has raised his voice in favour of the American provinces. These, therefore, adopting the same principles of fidelity and national integrity, have of their own accord been ambitious of preserving themselves independent of such intrusive, illegitimate, weak, and tumultuary governments, as have been all those that have hitherto called themselves the agents of the king, or representatives of the nation. It is vexing to see so much liberality, so much civism, and so much disinterest in the cortes with regard to disorganized, exhausted, and nearly conquered Spain, and full of so much meanness, suspicion, prejudice and pride, towards America; tranquil, faithful, generous, decided to assist her brethren, when she alone can give reality, at least in the most essential point, to the theoretical and brilliant plans which make the Spanish Congress so arrogant. How many treasons, murders, assassinations, perfidies and convulsions have appeared in Spain; these have passed by as the inseparable misfortunes of circumstances, yet not one of the provinces that surrendered, or was attached to the French domination, has been treated like Venezuela; their conduct must however have been analyzed, and characterised according to reasons, motives, and circumstances that dictated it; this must have been judged in conformity to the rights of war, and the sentiments of the nation must have been pronounced according to the statements laid before it, but not one of them has yet been declared traitorous, in open rebellion, and unnaturalized as was Venezuela; for none of them has been created a public commission of diplomatic mutineers, to arm Spaniard against Spaniard, to fan the flame of civil war, and to burn and annihilate all that cannot be held in the name of Ferdinand VII. America alone is condemned to endure the until now unheard of condition of being warred upon, destroyed, or enslaved with the very means of assistance which she destined for the liberty and common felicity of the nation of which she was led to believe for a few moments that she constituted a part.

"It appears that the independence of America creates more irritation to Spain, than the foreign oppression that threatens her, for against her are in preference employed measures that have not even been adopted against the very provinces that have proclaimed the new king. The incendiary and turbulent talent of a minister of the council of Indies could not have a more dignified employment than that of again conquering Venezuela with the same arms as those of the Alfingers and the Welzers, those first tyrants of Venezuela, authorized by Charles V., and the promoters of civil war amongst her primitive inhabitants, now re-assumed in the name of a king placed on the throne against the pretensions of the family of him who let out these provinces to the German factors. Under this name of Ferdinand all the sluices of iniquity are opened upon us, and the horrors of conquest are renewed, the remembrance of which we had generously endeavoured to blot out from the memory of our posterity; under this name we are treated with more severity than those who abandoned it before we did; and under this name it is attempted to continue the system of Spanish domination in America, which has been looked upon as a political phenomenon even in the times of the reality, energy and vigour of the Spanish monarchy. And can there be found any law that obliges us to preserve it, and to suffer in its name the torrent of distresses heaped upon us by those who call themselves the agents of the peninsula? By their means this very name obtained the treasures, the obedience, and acknowledgments of America, and by means of their flagitious conduct afterwards, in the exercise of their powers, the name of Ferdinand has lost every consideration amongst us, and consequently we ought to abandon it for ever. Ex qua persona quis lucrum capit, ejus factum præstare tenetur.

"The tyrant of Borrigum (primitive name of Puerto Rico) not content with constituting himself a sovereign, to declare war against us, and with insulting and calumniating us in his flimsy, mean, and self-flattering papers; not satisfied with creating himself the gratuitous gaol-keeper of the emissaries of peace, and confederation sent to him by his comrade Migares from the castle of Zapáras de Maracaibo; because they overturned the plans he had received, and accepted from the regency and the new king of Spain, in exchange for the captain-generalship of Venezuela, purchased at a cheap rate of the regents; not considering such superior merit sufficiently rewarded with the honour of faithfully serving his king; in the most barefaced manner plundered upwards of a hundred thousand dollars from the public funds belonging to Caracas, that had been embarked in the ship Ferdinand VII. in order to purchase stores and military clothing in London, where the insurance was effected; and in order that his insult might be the more complete, he alleged that the Spanish government might waste and misapply them, that England might appropriate them to herself, disowning our resolution, so that in no place they could, or ought to be more secure than in his hands, negociated by means of his partners in trade, as in fact they were in Philadelphia, adding that an account should be given in when Puerto Rico had conquered Venezuela, when the latter should deliver herself up to the regency, or when Ferdinand VII. should return to reign in Spain. Such it appears were the periods that the governor of Puerto Rico imposed upon himself to render an account of so atrocious and scandalous a depredation; but this is not all that this worthy agent of the regency has done in favour of the designs of his constituents.

"Notwithstanding so much insult, robbery, and ingratitude, Venezuela maintained her resolution, not to vary the principles she had traced out for her conduct; the sublime act of her national representation was proclaimed in the name of Ferdinand VII.; under his phantasmagorical authority all the acts of our government and administration were maintained, though they required no other origin than the people who had constituted them. By the laws and regulations of Spain a horrible and sanguinary gang of European conspirators were tried, and these laws were mercifully infringed to save their lives, in order that the philanthropic memory of our revolution might not be stained with the blood of our brethren, although they were perfidious. Under the name of Ferdinand, and through the interposition of the bonds of fraternity and patriotism, endeavours were used to inform and reduce the imperious mandataries of Coro and Maracaibo, who kept separated from our interests our brethren of the west; under the auspices of reciprocal interests, we triumphed over the oppressive acts of Barcelona, and under the same we will conquer Guayana, twice snatched from our confederation, as was Maracaibo, against the general wishes of its inhabitants.

"It would appear as if nothing now remained to be done to secure a reconciliation with Spain, or the entire and absolute separation of America, equally as ruinous and calamitous to the one, as it was ungratefully despised by the other party; but Venezuela was desirous of draining every means left within her reach, in order that justice and necessity should leave her no other alternative than that of total independence, which ought to have been declared on the fifteenth of July, 1808, or on the nineteenth of April, 1810. After appealing to sensibility and not to vengeance, in the horrid scenes that took place at Quito, Pose, and La Pas; after beholding our own cause supported by the uniformity of opinions in Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, the Floridas, Mexico, Guatemala, and Chile; after obtaining an indirect guarantee on the part of England; after having our conduct applauded by impartial individuals in Europe; after seeing the same principles triumph from the Orinoco to the Magdalena, and from Cape Codero to the Andes; we have still to endure fresh insults, before we fly to the extreme of breaking with our brethren for ever.

"Caracas, without having done more than imitate the conduct of many of the provinces of Spain, and practised the rights that the regency declared to appertain to America; without having had in this conduct other designs than those inspired by the necessity of not being involved in an unknown fate, and to relieve the regents from attending to the government of countries as remote as they are extensive, at the same time they protested to attend to nothing but the expulsion of the French from Spain; without having rent her unity and political integrity with Spain; without having disowned as was possible and proper the lame rights of Ferdinand; the regency, far from applauding on the right of convenience, if not of generosity, so just, modest and necessary a resolution, and without even answering or submitting to the judgment of the nation our complaints and our claims: Caracas is declared in a state of war, her inhabitants are proclaimed rebels and unnaturalized, every communication with her brethren is cut off, England is deprived of her trade, the excesses of Melendes are approved of, and he is authorized to commit whatever the malignity of his heart may suggest to him, however opposed to reason and to justice; all this is proved by the order of the fourth of September, 1810, unparalleled for its enormity even among the despots of Constantinople or Indostan; and not to deviate in the least from the plots of the conquest, a new encomendero is sent out, under the title of a pacificator, (pacificador) who with more prerogatives than conquerors and settlers themselves, was to fix his residence in Puerto Rico, and thence to threaten, rob, pirate, promise, deceive, excite civil disturbances, and all in the name of the beloved Ferdinand VII.

"Till then the progress of the system of subversion, anarchy, and depredation, which the regency proposed to itself on hearing of the movements of Caracas, had been but slow; now the principal fears of civil war being transferred nearer to us, the subaltern agents acquired more strength, the flames of passion were increased, as well as the efforts of the parties guided by the directions of Cortavarria and Melendes. Hence originated the incendiary energy acquired by the ephemeral sedition of the west; hence the flame of discord, newly formed by Myares, rendered vain and arrogant by the imaginary and promised captain-general-ship of Venezuela; hence the American blood spilled in spite of ourselves on the plains of Coro; hence the robberies and assassinations committed on our coasts by the commissioned pirates of the regency; hence that miserable blockade, intended to reduce and disaffect our settlements on the coast; hence the insults committed on the English flag; hence the falling off of our trade; hence the conspiracies of the valleys of Aragua and Cumaná; hence the horrid perfidy in Guayana; and the insulting transportation of its leading characters to the Moorish dungeons of Puerto Rico—dungeons constructed like those of Tunis and Algiers; hence the generous and impartial offices of reconciliation sincerely interposed by a representative[3] of the British government in the Antilles, and rejected by the pseudo pacificator; hence, in fine, all the evils, all the atrocities, and all the crimes which are and ever will be attached to the names of Cortavarria and Melendes in Venezuela, and which have impelled her government to exceed what was proposed when it took upon itself the fate of those who honored it with their confidence.

"The mission of Cortavarria in the nineteenth century, and the state of Spain which decreed it, compared with America, against whom it is directed, evinces to what an extent the illusion of ambition blinds those who found all the origin of their authority on the depravity of the people. This act alone sufficed to authorize our conduct. The spirit of Charles V., the memory of Cortes and Pizarro, and the names of Montesuma and Atahualpa, are involuntarily reproduced in our imagination, when we see the adelantados, the pesquisadores, and the encomenderos, officers peculiar to the first settlement of America, renewed in a country which, having suffered three centuries of sacrifice and debasement, had promised to continue faithful on the only condition of being free, in order that accidents of slavery might not tarnish the merit of fidelity. The scandalous plenitude of power conferred on a man who is authorised by an intrusive and illegitimate government, under the insulting name of pacificator, to tyrannize and plunder, and to crown the vexation, that he might pardon a noble, generous, tranquil, innocent people, who were masters of their own rights, could only be credited in the impotent delirium of a government that tyrannizes over a disorganized nation, stunned by the fury of the tempest that reaches her; but as the evils of this disorder, and the abuses of such an usurpation might be considered as not derived from Ferdinand, already acknowledged in Venezuela, at the time that he was unable to prevent such accumulated insults, such excesses, and so much violence, committed in his name, we consider it necessary to retrace the origin of these rights, that we may descant on the nullity and invalidity of our generous oath, by which we acknowledged him conditionally; notwithstanding, we have in spite of ourselves to violate the spontaneous silence we had imposed upon ourselves respecting every thing that occurred prior to the affairs at the Escurial and Aranjues.

"The fact, that America does not belong to the territory of Spain is self-evident, and it is equally evident that the right which the Bourbons justly or unjustly exercised over it, and notwithstanding this was hereditary, yet it could not be disposed of without the consent of the people, and particularly of those of America, who, on the election between the French and Austrian dynasties, might have acted in the seventeenth century as they now have done in the nineteenth. The bull of Alexander VI., and the titles which the house of Austria alleged in the American code had no other origin than the right of power and conquest, partially ceded to the conquerors and to the settlers for their assistance rendered to the crown in extending its dominion in America. Without taking into consideration the scanty population of the country, the extermination of the natives, and the emigration which the self-called mother country sustained; it appears that when the fury of conquest had ceased—when the thirst for gold was satisfied—when the continued equilibrium was declared in favour of Spain, by the advantageous acquisition of America—the feudal government destroyed and rooted out from the time of the Bourbons in Spain, and every right extinct that did not originate in the new concessions or commands of the prince, the conquerors and the settlers then became absolved of theirs. As soon as the faultiness and invalidity of the rights which the Bourbons have arrogated to themselves are demonstrated, the titles by which the American descendants of the conquerors possessed these countries revive—not to the detriment of the natives and primitive proprietors, but to equalize them in the enjoyment of liberty, property, and independence, which they always held by a right stronger than that of the Bourbons or any other person or persons to whom they may have ceded America, without the consent of its natural owners, the Americans.

"That America does not belong to the territory of Spain is a principle of natural, and a law of positive right. No title just or unjust which exists of American slavery can belong to the Spaniards of Europe, and all the liberality of Alexander VI. could only declare the Austrian kings promoters of the faith, in order to find out for them a preternatural right by which to make them lords of America. Neither the pre-eminence of the parent state, nor the prerogative of the mother country, could at any time constitute the origin of lordship on the part of Spain. The first was lost the moment the monarch who was acknowledged by the Americans left his country and renounced his rights; and the second never was more than a scandalous abuse of words, as great as that of calling our slavery felicity; that of calling the fiscals protectors of the indians; and that of saying that the sons of Americans were divested of every right and civil dignity. By the mere act of even passing from one country to another to settle in it, those who do not leave their homes acquire no property, nor do they expose themselves to the hardships of emigration. Those who conquer and obtain possession of a country by means of their labour, industry, cultivation, and connection with the natives thereof, are the individuals who have a right of preference in preserving it, which right they transmit to their posterity born therein; for if the country where one is born possessed the origin of sovereignty, or gave the right of acquisition, the general will of nations, and the fate of the human race, would then be riveted to the soil, as are the trees, mountains, rivers, and lakes.

"Neither could it ever be considered as a title of property to one part of a nation, the other having gone to another country to settle in it; for by such a right Spain would belong to the Phœnicians, or their descendants, or to the Carthagenians, wherever these may be found; even the whole of the nations of Europe would have to change their abodes to make room for and re-establish so singular a territorial right; home would then become as precarious as are the wants and caprices of men. The moral abuse of the maternity of Spain, with regard to America is still more insignificant, for it is well known that in the natural order of things, it is the duty of the father to emancipate the son, so soon as his minority expire, and he is able to use his strength and reason in providing for his subsistence; and also that it is the duty of the son to emancipate himself, whenever the cruelty or extravagance of the father or tutor endanger his welfare, or expose his patrimony to become the prey of a miser, or an usurper. Under these principles let a comparison be made of the three hundred years of our filiation to Spain; and even when it is proved, that she was our mother, it still remains to be proved that we are yet her minors or pupils.

"At any period when Spain has entertained any doubt of the rights of the Bourbons, or of any other dynasty, the only source, and that not a very clear one, of the Spanish dominion in America, it would appear that the Americans were excluded from alleging any reasons that might destroy such claims, though doubtful from their very origin; but as Venezuela may hereafter be reproached for the conditional oath by which the representative body that now declares its absolute independence of any foreign power previously acknowledged Ferdinand VII., the same august body feels anxious that no room should be left for scruples of conscience, for the illusions of ignorance, and for the malice of wounded ambition, whereby to discredit, calumniate, and weaken a resolution, taken with such maturity and deliberation as best suited its magnitude and importance.

"It is well known, that the promissory oath in question is no more than an accessory bond, which always pre-supposes the validity and legitimacy of the contract ratified by the same. When in the contract there is no defect that may render it null and illegitimate, it is then that we invoke God by an oath, believing that he will not refuse to witness it, and guarantee the fulfilment of our promises, because the obligation to comply with them is founded on an evident maxim of the natural law instituted by the divine author. God can at no time guarantee any contract that is not binding in the natural order of things, nor can it be supposed that he will accept any contract opposed to those very laws which he himself has established for the felicity of the human race. It would be insulting his wisdom to believe that he would listen to our vows when we implore his divine concurrence to a contract that is opposed to our own liberty, the only origin of the right of our actions—such a supposition would inculcate an idea that God had an interest in multiplying our duties by means of such agreements, to the prejudice of our national liberty. Even in case the oath could add any new obligation to that of the contract thereby confirmed, the nullity of the one would consequently be inseparable from the nullity of the other; and if he who violates a sworn contract be criminal, and worthy of punishment, it is because he has violated good faith, the only bond of society, without the perjury being more concerned than to increase the crime, and to aggravate the punishment. That national law which binds us to fulfil our promises, and that divine one which forbids us to invoke the name of God in vain, do not in any manner alter the obligation contracted under the simultaneous and inseparable effects of both laws, so that the infraction of the one supposes the infraction of the other. For our good we call on God to witness our promises, and when we believe that he can guarantee them, and avenge their violation, it is only because the contract has nothing in itself that can render it invalid, illicit, unworthy of or contrary to the eternal justice of the Supreme Arbiter to whom we submit it. It is according to these principles that we are to analyze the conditional oath by which the congress of Venezuela has promised to preserve the rights legally held by Ferdinand VII., without attributing to it any other which, being contrary to the liberty of the people, would consequently invalidate the contract, and annul the oath.

"We have seen that the people of Venezuela, impelled by the government of Spain, became insensible of the circumstances that rendered the tolerated rights of Ferdinand void, in consequence of the transactions of the Escurial and Aranjues, as well as those of all his house, by the cessions and abdications made at Bayonne; and from the demonstration of this truth, follows, as a corollary, the invalidity of an oath, which, besides being conditional, could not subsist beyond the contract to which it was added as an accessory bond. To preserve the right of Ferdinand was all that Caracas promised on the nineteenth of April, at a time when she was ignorant that he had lost them—Judicio caret juramentum, incantum Div. tom. 22, p. 80, art. 3. Si vero sit quidem posibile fieri; sed fieri non debeat, vel quid est per se malum, vel quia est boni impeditivum, tunc juramento deest justitia, et ideo non est servandum. Quest, cit. art. 7. Even if Ferdinand retained them with regard to Spain, it remains to be proved, whether by virtue of the same he was authorized to cede America to another dynasty, without the concurrence of her own consent. The accounts which Venezuela, in spite of the oppression and cunning of the intrusive government, was enabled to obtain of the conduct of the Bourbons, and the fatal effects that it was likely to entail on America, have constituted a body of irrefragable proofs, evincing that as Ferdinand no longer retained any rights, the preservation of which Venezuela promised, as well as the oath by which she confirmed this promise, consequently are, and ought to be cancelled—Jurabis in veritate, et in judicio, et in justicia. From the first part of the position, the nullity of the second becomes a legitimate consequence.

"But neither the Escurial, Aranjues, nor Bayonne were the first theatres of the transactions which deprived the Bourbons of their rights to America. By the treaty of Basil, made July fifteenth, 1795, (by which Godoy obtained the title of Prince of the Peace), and in the court of Spain the fundamental laws of the Spanish dominion were broken. Charles IV., contrary to one of them (Recopil. de Indias, law 1. tit. 1.) ceded the island of Santa Domingo to France, and disposed of Louisiana to the same foreign power, which unequalled and scandalous infractions authorised the Americans, against whom they were committed, as well as the whole of the Colombian people, to separate from the obedience, and lay aside the oath by which they had bound themselves to the crown of Castile, in like manner as they were entitled to protest against the imminent danger which threatened the integrity of the monarchy in both worlds, by the introduction of French troops into Spain previous to the transactions at Bayonne, invited no doubt by one of the Bourbon factions, in order to usurp the national sovereignty in favour of an intruder, a foreigner, or a traitor; but as these events are prior to the period that we have fixed on for our discussion, we will return to those which have authorised our conduct since the year 1808.

"Every one is aware of the occurrences that took place at the Escurial in 1807, but perhaps all are not acquainted with the natural results of those events. It is not our intention to enter here into the discovery of the origin of the discord that existed in the family of Charles IV.; let England and France attribute it to themselves, both governments have their accusers and their defenders; neither is it to our purpose to notice the marriage agreed on between Ferdinand and the daughter-in-law of Napoleon, the peace of Tilsit, the conference at Erfuhrt, the secret treaty at St. Cloud, and the emigration of the house of Bragansa to the Brasils. What most materially concerns us is, that by the transactions of the Escurial, Ferdinand VII. was declared a traitor to his father Charles IV. A hundred pens and a hundred presses published at the same time in both worlds his perfidy, and the pardon which at his prayer was granted to him by his father; but this pardon, as an attribute of the sovereignty and of paternal authority, only absolved the son from corporal punishment; the king his father had no power to free him from the infamy and inability which the constitutional laws of Spain impose on the traitor, not only to prevent him from obtaining the royal dignity, but even the lowest office of civil employment; Ferdinand therefore never could be a lawful king of Spain, or of the Indies.

"To this condition the heir of the crown remained reduced till the month of March, 1808, when while the court was at Aranjues, the project that was frustrated at the Escurial was converted into insurrection, and open mutiny, by the friends of Ferdinand. The public exasperation against the ministry of Godoy served as a pretext to the faction of Ferdinand, and as an indirect plea to convert to the good of the nation what was perhaps allotted to other designs. The fact of using force against his father, instead of supplication and convincing arguments; his having excited the people to mutiny; his having assembled the mob in front of the palace, in order to take it by surprise, to insult the minister, and force the king to abdicate his crown, which, far from giving Ferdinand any title to it, tended to increase his crime, to aggravate his treachery, and to complete his inability to ascend the throne, vacated by violence, perfidy, and faction. Charles IV., outraged, disobeyed, and threatened, had no other alternative suitable to his decorum, and favourable to his vengeance, than to emigrate to France to implore the protection of Bonaparte, in favour his offended royal dignity. Under the nullity of the abdication of Aranjues, and contrary to the will of the people of Spain, all the Bourbons assembled at Bayonne, preferring their personal resentments to the safety of the nation. The emperor of the French availed himself of this opportunity, and having under his controul, and within his influence the whole family of Ferdinand, and several of the first Spanish dignitaries, as well as many substitutes for deputies in the cortes, he obliged Ferdinand to restore the crown to his father, and then the latter to cede it to him, the emperor, in order that he might afterwards confer it on his brother Joseph.

"When the emissaries of the new King reached Caracas, Venezuela was ignorant or knew but partially what had happened. The innocence of Ferdinand, compared to the insolence and despotism of the favourite, Godoy, directed the conduct of Venezuela when the local authorities wavered on the fifteenth of July, 1808; and being left to choose between the alternative of delivering himself up to a foreign power, or of remaining faithful to a king who appeared to be unfortunate and persecuted—the ignorance of what had occurred—triumphed over the interests of the country, and Ferdinand was acknowledged, under the belief, that by this means, the unity of the nation being maintained, she would be saved from the oppression that threatened her, and the king ransomed, of whose virtues, wisdom, and rights we were falsely prepossessed. But less was requisite on the part of those who relied on our good faith to oppress us. Ferdinand, disqualified, and unable legally to obtain the crown—previously announced by the leaders of Spain as dispossessed of his right of succession—incapable of governing in America, and held in bondage by a foreign power—from that time became by illusion a legitimate but unfortunate prince. As many as had the audacity to call themselves his self-created heirs and representatives became as such, and taking advantage of the innate fidelity of the Spaniards of both worlds, and forming themselves into intrusive governments, they appropriated to themselves the sovereignty of the people, under the name of a chimerical king, began to exercise new tyrannies, and, in a word, the commercial junta of Cadiz sought to extend her controul over the whole of Spanish America.

"Such have been the antecedents and consequences of an oath, which, dictated by candour and generosity, and conditionally maintained by good faith, is now arrayed against us, in order to perpetuate those evils which the dear-bought experience of three years has proved to be inseparable to so fatal and ruinous an engagement. Taught as we are by a series of evils, insults, hardships, and ingratitude, during the interval of from the fifteenth of July, 1808, to the fifth of July, 1811, and such as we have already manifested, it became full time that we should abandon it, as a talisman invented by ignorance, and adopted by a misguided fidelity, as from its first existence it has constantly heaped upon us all the evils that accompany an ambiguous state of suspicion and discord. The rights of Ferdinand, and the legitimate representation of them on the part of the intrusive governments of Spain on the one side, demonstrations of compassion and gratitude on the other, have been the two favourite springs alternately played on to support our illusion, to decrease our substance, to prolong our degradation, to multiply our evils, and ignominiously to prepare us to receive that passive fate prepared for us by those who have dealt with us so kindly for three centuries. Ferdinand VII. is the universal watch-word for tyranny, as well in Spain as in America.

"No sooner was that vigilant and suspicious fear, produced among us by the contradictory acts and artificious falsehoods of the strange and short-lived governments which have succeeded one another since the junta of Seville, made known to these governments, than they recurred to a system of apparent liberality towards us, in order to cover with flowers the very snare we had not perceived while covered by the veil of candour, which was at length rent asunder by mistrust. For this purpose of deceit were accelerated, and tumultuously assembled, the cortes, so wished for by the nation, and opposed by the commercial government of Cadiz, but which were at length considered as necessary to restrain the torrent of liberty and justice, which on every side burst the wounds of oppression and iniquity in the new world; it was even still supposed that the habit of obedience, submission, and dependence, would be in us superior to the conviction which at so high a price we had just obtained.

"It is most strange by what kind of deception, fatal to Spain, it has been believed, that the one part of a nation which crosses the ocean, or is born under the tropics, acquires a habit united to servitude, and incapable of bending to the habits of liberty. The effects of this strong-rooted prejudice, as notorious to the world as they are fatal, were at length converted into the welfare of America. Without it Spain would perhaps not have lost the rank she held as a nation, and America in obtaining this blessing would have had to pass through the bitter ordeal of a civil war, more ominous to its promoters than to ourselves.

"Our public papers have already sufficiently demonstrated the defects under which the cortes laboured respecting America, and the measures as illegal as insulting adopted by that body to give us a representation which we could not but object to, even though we were, as the regency had loudly boasted us to be, integral parts of the nation, and had no other complaints to allege against their government than the scandalous usurpation of our rights at a moment when they most required our aid. They have, no doubt, been informed of the reasonings we used with their perfidious envoy, Montenegro, at a time that the former missions being frustrated, the great shipments of newspapers filled with triumphs, reforms, heroic acts, and lamentations, being rendered useless; and the inefficacy of blockades, pacificators, squadrons and expeditions, made known; it was thought convenient to dazzle the self-love of the Americans, by seating near to the throne of the cortes deputies whom we had never named, and who could not be chosen our substitutes by those who created them such, in the same manner as they did others for the provinces in possession of the French, submitting to, and alleging themselves content under their domination. In case this puerile measure of the prolific genius of Spain should not produce a due effect, the envoy (and for this purpose an American, a native of Caracas, was selected) was ordered, that in case the energy of the country, now called rebellion, should prevail against fraternity, (the name given to perfidy), he was to add fuel to the flame already kindled in Coro and Maracaibo, and that discord, again raising her serpent head, might lead the herald of the cortes by the hand under the banner of rebellion through those deceived districts of Venezuela that had not been able to-triumph over their oppressing tyrants.

"Stratagems and artifices were repeatedly forged, in order that duplicity and cunning might prepare the road for the sanguinary armies of the chiefs of Coro, Maracaibo, and Puerto Rico; and when the cortes were convinced that the conduct of Ferdinand, his bonds of affinity with the emperor of the French, and his influence over all the Bourbons already placed under his tutelage, began to weaken the insidious impressions, which fidelity, sustained by illusion, had produced in the Americans; preventatives were employed to stop the flame already kindled, and limit it to what was yet necessary for their vast complicated and dark designs. For this purpose was written the eloquent manifest which the cortes on the ninth of January directed against America, worded in a stile worthy of a better object; but under the brilliancy of diction the dark side of the argument, designed to deceive, was discovered. Fearing that we should be the first to protest against the whole of these nullities, they began to calculate on what was already known, not to risk what was yet hidden. The misfortunes of Ferdinand were the pretexts that had obtained for his pseudo-representatives the treasures, submission, and slavery of America; and Ferdinand seduced, deceived, and prostituted to the designs of the emperor of the French, is now the last resource to which they fly to extinguish the flames of liberty which Venezuela had kindled in the south continent. We have discovered and published the true spirit of the manifest in question, reduced to the following reasoning, which may be considered as an exact commentary:—'America is threatened with becoming the victim of a foreign power, or of continuing to be our slave; but in order to recover her rights, and to throw off all dependency whatever, she has considered it necessary not violently to break the bonds that held her to this country. Ferdinand has been the signal of reunion which the new world had adopted, and we have followed; he is suspected of connivance with the emperor of the French, and if we give ourselves up blindly to him, we afford the Americans a pretext for believing us still his representatives; and as these designs already begin to be understood in some parts of America, let us previously manifest our intention not to acknowledge Ferdinand, except under certain conditions; these will never be carried into effect, and whilst Ferdinand neither in fact nor right is our king, we shall reign over America, the country we so much covet, which although so difficult to preserve in slavery, will not then so easily slip through our fingers.' Such are the expressions illustrative of the opinions of Spaniards, agitated in the cortes, respecting the allegiance to Ferdinand.

"The above brilliant appearance of liberality is now the real and visible spring of the complicated machine destined to excite and stir up commotions in America; at the same time that within the walls of the cortes justice towards us is overlooked, our efforts are eluded, our resolutions are contemned, our enemies are supported, the voices of our imaginary representatives are suppressed, the inquisition is renewed against them, when the liberty of the press is proclaimed, and it is controversially discussed whether the regency could or could not declare us free, and one integral part of the nation. When an American, worthy of that name, speaks against the abuses of the regency in Puerto Rico, endeavours are made to silence his just, energetic, and imperious claims, that distinguish him from the slaves of despotism, and by means of a short, cunning, and insignificant decree, they strive to avoid the conflict of justice against iniquity. Melendés, named by the regency king of Puerto Rico, is by a decree of the cortes left with the equivalent investiture of a governor, names synonymous in America, because it now appeared too monstrous to have two kings in a small island of the Spanish Antilles. Cortavarria only was capable of eluding the effects of a decree dictated merely by a momentary fit of decency. It happened that when the investiture, granted by the regency to Melendes was declared iniquitous, arbitrary, and tyrannical, and a revocation was extended to all the countries of America, then situated as was Puerto Rico, nothing was said of the plenipotentiary Cortavarria, authorized by the same regency against Venezuela, with powers the most uncommon and scandalous ever registered in the annals of organized despotism.

"After this decree of the cortes the effects of discord promoted, sustained, and denied at the fatal observatory of Puerto Rico were more severely felt; it was after this decree that the fishermen and coasters were inhumanly assassinated in Ocumare, by the pirates of Cortavarria, after the report of which Cumana and Barcelona were blockaded, threatened, and summoned. A new and sanguinary conspiracy against Venezuela was formed, and organized by a vile emissary, who perfidiously entered the peaceable bosom of his country, in order to destroy it; deceptions were successively practised on the most innocent and laborious classes of the imported colonists of Venezuela, principally emigrants from the Canary Islands, and in spite of our endeavours the chief instigators were led to the block as a sacrifice to justice and to tranquillity. By the suggestions of the pacificator of the cortes, and posterior to their said decree, the political union of our constitution was lacerated in Valencia; attempts were made in vain to reduce other cities of the interior; a false summons was sent to Carora, by the factious leaders of the west, to the end that Venezuela might on the same day be deluged in blood, and sunk in affliction and desolation, and be hostilely assaulted from every point within the reach of the conspirators, who were scattered amongst us by the same government that issued the decree in favour of Puerto Rico and of all America. The name of Ferdinand VII. is the pretext under which the new world is about to be laid waste, if the example of Venezuela does not henceforward cause the standard of our unshaken and established liberty to be distinguished from the banners of a seditious and dissembled fidelity.

"The bitter duty of vindicating ourselves would carry us still further, if we did not dread splitting on the same rocks as have the governments of Spain, by substituting resentment for justice; at the same time that we can charge her with three centuries of acts of injustice, we have opposed three years of lawful, generous, and philanthropic efforts to obtain what it was never in our power to dispose of, although by nature ours. Had gall and poison been the chief agents of this our solemn, true, and candid manifest, we should have begun by destroying the rights of Ferdinand, in consequence of the illegitimacy of his origin, declared by his mother at Bayonne, and published in the French and Spanish papers; we should have proved the personal defects of Ferdinand, his ineptitude to reign, his weak and degrading conduct in the court at Bayonne; his inefficient education, and the futile securities that offered for the realization of the gigantic hopes of the governments of Spain; hopes founded in the illusion of America, nor any other support than the political interests of England, much opposed to the rights of the Bourbons. The public opinion of Spain, and the experience of the revolution of the kingdom, furnish us with sufficient proofs of the conduct of the mother, and the qualifications of the son, without recurring to the manifest of the minister Azanza, published after the transactions of Bayonne, and the secret memoirs of Maria Luisa; but decency is the guide of our conduct, to which we are ready to sacrifice even our reason. Sufficient has already been alleged to prove the justice, necessity, and utility of our resolution, for the support of which, nothing is wanting but the examples by which we will strive to justify our independence.

"It were necessary for the partizans of slavery in the new world either to destroy, or to falsify history, that unchangeable monument of the rights and of the usurpations of the human race, before they could maintain that America was not liable to the same changes that all other nations have experienced. Even when the rights of the Bourbons had been incontestible and indelible, the oath that we have proved never did exist, the injustice, force, and deceit with which the same was exacted of us would suffice to render it null and void, so soon as it was found to be opposed to our liberty, grievous to our rights, prejudicial to our interests, and fatal to our tranquillity. Such is the nature of an oath made to the conquerors and to their heirs, at the same time that the crown holds them in oppression by means of the same additional strength that it obtained by means of the result of their conquest. It was in this manner that Spain herself recovered her rights, after she had sworn allegiance to the Carthagenians, Romans, Goths, Arabs, and almost to the French; nevertheless she yet disowns the rights of America, no longer to depend on any nation when she is capable of throwing off the yoke, and following the example of Spain and of other nations.

"It would be superfluous to remind our enemies of what they already knew, and in what they have themselves founded the sacred right of their own liberty and independence; epochs so memorable, that they ought not to have been tarnished with the slavery of the greater part of a country situated on the other side of the ocean. But unfortunately it is not they alone whom it is necessary to convince by palpable examples of the justice and common resemblance that our independence bears to that of all other nations which had lost and again recovered it. The illusions of slavery, kept alive by the candour of the Americans, and supported by the most criminal abuse that superstition can form of the established belief and religion, which one would suppose were only dictated for the happiness, liberty, and salvation of the people, namely, by the excommunications denounced against the people of Caracas for changing their government, render it necessary to tranquillize the deceived piety of some, to instruct their unwary ignorance, and stimulate their apathy, that had slumbered since the unusual tranquillity of the new order of things: in short, it is time to inculcate, that governments never had nor ever can have any other duration than the utility and happiness of the human race may require; that kings are not of any privileged nature, nor of an order superior to other men; that their authority emanates from the people, directed and supported by the providence of God, who leaves our actions to our own free-will; that his omnipotence does not interfere in favour of any peculiar form of government; and that neither religion nor its ministers can anathematize the efforts of a nation struggling to be free and independent in the political order of things, and resolved to depend only on God and his ministers in a moral and religious sense.

"The very people of God, governed by himself, and guided by such miracles, portentous signs and favors as will perhaps never again be repeated, offer a proof of the rights of insurrection on the part of the people sufficiently satisfactory to the orthodox piety of the friends of public order. The subjects of Pharaoh, and bound by force to obey him, collect round Moses, and under his guidance triumph over their enemies, and recover their independence without being blamed by God or his prophet and legislator, Moses, for their conduct, or being subjected by them to the least malediction or anathema. This same people being afterwards subjected by the forces of Nebuchadnezzar; first—under the direction of Holofernes, Judith was sent by God to procure their independence by the death of the Babylonian general. Under Antiochus, Epiphanes, Mattathias and his sons raised the standard of independence, and God blessed and aided their efforts till he obtained the entire liberty of his people against the oppression of that impious king and his successors. Not only against the foreign kings who oppressed them did the Israelites resort to the right of insurrection by breaking through the obedience to force; but even against those whom God had given them in their own country and of their own nation do we behold them claim this imprescriptable right wherever their liberty and their advantage required it, or when the sacred character of those facts by which God himself bound them to those he chose as their governors, had been profaned. David obtained the allegiance of the Israelites in favour of his dynasty, and his son Solomon ratified it in favour of his posterity; but at the death of this king, who had oppressed his subjects by exactions and contributions to support the splendour of his court and the luxury and sumptuousness of his pleasures, then the tribes of Judah and Benjamin alone acknowledged his son, and the other ten, availing themselves of their rights, recovered their political independence, and in excuse thereof deposited their sovereignty in Jereboam, the son of Nabath. The momentary and passing hardships of the reign of Solomon were sufficient for the Israelites to annul their obedience sworn to his line, and to place another on the throne without waiting for an order from the Deity, informing them, that their fate no longer depended on the kings of Judah, nor on the ministers, chiefs, or priests of Solomon. And shall the Christian people of Venezuela and of all Spanish America be still in a worse plight, and after being declared free by the government of Spain after three hundred years of captivity, exactions, hardships, and injustice, shall they not be allowed to do what the God of Israel, whom they equally adore, formerly permitted to his people without being spurned, and without vengeance being hurled upon their heads? It is his divine hand that guides our conduct, and to his eternal judgments our resolution shall be submitted.

"If the independence of the Hebrew people was not a sin against the written law, that of a Christian people cannot be such against the law of grace. At no time has the apostolical see excommunicated any nation that has risen against the tyranny of those kings or governments which had violated the social compact. The Swiss, Dutch, French, and North Americans proclaimed their independence, overturned their constitution, and varied their forms of government without having incurred any other spiritual censures than those which the church might have fulminated for the infringements on the belief, discipline, or piety, but without their being connected with political measures or alluding to the civil transactions of the people. The Swiss were bound by oath to Germany, as were also the Dutch to Spain, the French to Louis XVI., and the North Americans to George III.; yet neither they nor the princes that favoured their independence were excommunicated by the Pope. The grandfather of Ferdinand VII., one of the most pious and catholic kings that ever filled the throne of Spain, together with his nephew, Louis XVI., protected the independence of North America, without dreading ecclesiastical censures or the anger of heaven; and now that the order and succession of events more justly place it within the reach of South America, those who call themselves the authorized agents of the grandson wish to abuse that same religion so much respected by Charles III., in order to prolong the most atrocious and unparalleled usurpations. Just, omnipotent, and most merciful God! Till when will fanaticism dispute the empire of that sacred religion which thou sent to the uncorrupted regions of America for thy glory and her felicity.

"The events which have accumulated in Europe to terminate the bondage of America, beyond doubt entered into the high designs of Providence. Placed at a transatlantic distance of two thousand leagues, we have done nothing in the three years which have elapsed since we ought to be free and independent, till the period when we resolved to be so, than pass through the bitter trials of stratagems, conspiracies, insults, hostilities, and depredations on the part of that same nation whom we invite to partake of the good of our regeneration, and for whose welfare we wished to open the gates of the new world, heretofore closed to all communication with the old one, now wasted and inflamed by war, hunger, and desolation. Three distinct oligarchies have declared war against us, have despised our claims, have excited civil dissensions amongst us, have sown the seeds of discord and mistrust in our great family, have planned three horrible conspiracies against our liberty, have interrupted our trade, have suppressed our agriculture, have traduced our conduct, and have sought to raise against us an European power, by vainly imploring its aid to oppress us. The same flag, the same language, the same religion, the same laws, have till now confounded the party of liberty with that of tyranny: Ferdinand VII. as liberator, has been opposed to Ferdinand VII. as oppressor; and if we had not resolved to abandon a name at the same time synonymous with crime and virtue, America would in the end be enslaved by the same power that is exercised for the independence of Spain.

"Such has been the nature of the imperious impulse of conviction, tending to open our eyes, and to impel Venezuela to separate eternally from a name so ominous and so fatal. Placed by it in the irrevocable alternative of being the slave or the enemy of her brethren, she has preferred the purchase of her own freedom at the expense of friendship, without destroying the means of that reconciliation she desired. The most powerful reasons, the most serious meditations, the most profound considerations, long discussions, contested debates, well analyzed combinations, imperious events, imminent dangers, and the public opinion clearly pronounced and firmly sustained, have been the precursors of that solemn declaration made on the fifth of July, by the general congress of Venezuela, of the absolute independence of this part of South America; an act sighed for and applauded by the people of the capital, sanctioned by the powers of the confederation, acknowledged by the representatives of the provinces, sworn to and hailed by the chief of the church of Venezuela, and to be maintained with the lives, fortunes, and honour of all the citizens.

"Freemen, companions of our fate! Ye who have known how to divest your hearts of fear, or of hope; give from the elevation on which your virtues have placed you an impartial and disinterested look on the portrait that Venezuela has just traced out to you. She constitutes you the arbitrators of her differences with Spain, and the judges of her new destinies. If you have been affected by our evils, and are interested in our felicity, unite your efforts with ours, that the artifices of ambition may not any longer triumph over liberality and justice.

"To you it belongs to convince Spain of what an unfortunate rivalship places beyond the reach of America. Refrain the giddiness that has seized on her new governments; point out to them the reciprocal advantages of our regeneration; unfold to them the soothing prospect that they are prevented from beholding in America by that monopoly which has hardened their hearts; tell them what threatens them in Europe, and point out to them what they may expect in America, tranquil, uncorrupted, and already covered with all the blessings of liberty; nay swear to them in our name, that Venezuela awaits her brethren with open arms to share with them her happiness without asking any other sacrifice than that of prejudice, pride, and ambition, which for three centuries have produced the united misery of both countries."

"Juan Antonio Rodriguez Dominguez, President."

"Francisco Isnardy, Secretary."

"Federal Palace of Caracas, July 30th, 1811."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The occurrences at Quito also bear testimony to this.

[2] Montufar, Villavicencio, Goyoneche.

[3] Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane.

CHAPTER IV.

State of Lima....Expedition to Chile, under Colonel Gainsa....Exit of....Regiment of Talavera arrives from Spain....Part of sent to Huamanga....Revolution of Cusco and Arequipa....Death of Pumacagua, and the Patriot Melgar....Arrival of Flags taken by Osoria in Chile....Viceroy Abascal superseded by Pesuela....Character of the former....Beginning of Pesuela's Administration....Arrival of La Serna....State of Lima to 1817....Battle of Chacabuco in Chile....Extract of a Journal....New Expedition to Chile under Osoria....News of Battle of Maypu....Loss of the Spanish Frigate Maria Isabel, and part of Convoy....Arrival of Lord Cochrane off Callao.

The preceding manifest from Venezuela, shewing the principal grievances of the Americans in that particular part of the country, was equally applicable to the colonists in general; but many of the provinces laboured under peculiar disadvantages and oppressions, particularly those situated on the western side of the continent; nor were the creoles the first nor the loudest in their clamours. The Spanish merchants felt very severely the decrease of their monopoly, by the non-arrival of vessels from Cadiz, as well as by the arrival of several vessels, under Hamburgh colours, with British cargoes and masters, under the protection of passports from the constituted sovereignties of Spain; the large planters also felt the want of new importations of slaves, and although the Creoles suffered equally with the Spaniards, yet accustomed to suppress their feelings, they remained silent, while the former were loud in their deprecations. The sugar planters began, under the sanction of the new laws of the constitution and the cortes to manufacture rum, to the detriment of the owners of vineyards at Pisco and Cañete, many of whom were Spaniards. Secret meetings were held in every part of the city; those of the Spaniards were permitted by the government under the pretence that they were innocent or virtuous, while those of the natives were called seditious and unwarrantable. Every opportunity was taken to lull the people with stories of victories obtained against the insurgents in Upper Peru, and the most tyrannical espionage was set on foot by the government, for the purpose of thwarting any communication of the true state of affairs in America, when the government of Peru could only expect support from the native troops. Every thing seemed to augur to the government in Lima the fate of those of the other capitals of South America; indeed Mexico and Lima were the only two capitals that preserved their ancient authorities; the other two viceroyalties, Buenos Ayres and Santa Fé, and the captain-generalships and presidencies of Chile, Chuquisaca, Quito and Caracas, with the greater part of the governments of South America, were under the protection of their own constituted authorities, and declared by the Spanish Viceroys in open war with the mother country.

Colonel Gainsa was sent with an expedition against the revolted Chileans in 1812, and having landed at Talcahuano, he marched towards the capital: his successes were the continued boast of the Spaniards in Lima, who insulted with taunts the creoles respecting their inferiority, forgetting that the army of Gainsa was almost exclusively formed of natives; however, in 1813 it was found that the career of Gainsa was at an end, and that he had come to terms with the insurgents, the principal import of which was, that things should remain as they then were, until the decision of the cortes in Spain; for the purpose of obtaining which the Chileans should send their deputies. This treaty was guaranteed by Captain Hillyer, and sent to Lima for the ratification of the Viceroy, who, expecting troops from Spain, deferred its signature. In April, 1813, the regiment of Talavera arrived, and Abascal followed the example of the Count Ruis; he declared that Gainsa had no powers to capitulate, and prepared another expedition against Chile.

The arrival of Spanish troops made the resident Spaniards more imperious and insolent than ever; but they had soon cause to regret having solicited the assistance of an armed force from Spain, for all the expenses incurred in the equipment of the expedition at Cadiz were ordered to be defrayed by the merchants of Lima. The officers and soldiers were also of the worst character, the former having been expelled from different corps in the mother country for crimes which they had there committed, and the latter were taken from the common gaols, places of exile, and the galleys. The insolence of these protectors was not limited to any class of people in Lima: they had been informed in Spain, that the booty or plunder of the insurgents in America would make them as rich in the nineteenth century as that of the indians had rendered their forefathers in the sixteenth; thus robberies and even murders were committed under the sanction of rich promises; and it was dreaded by the government, that the very force sent to protect them would cause a revolution, or perhaps head one in Lima; however an opportunity presented itself to dispose of two hundred of the nine that had arrived. The Cacique Pucatoro revolted at Huamanga, deposed the Spanish authorities, and declared himself in favour of the Buenos Ayres army: this blow so near to Lima called for an immediate remedy. Two hundred soldiers of Talavera were sent to quell the rebel Indian, who led them into a narrow ravine, and ascended the mountains on each side, where large piles of stones had been so artfully placed, that by removing one, placed as a key-stone, the whole mass rolled down the sides of the mountains, and not one of the Spaniards escaped. The victorious indians then continued throwing and rolling down pieces of rock till they had completely buried their enemies. This patriotic Cacique was afterwards taken prisoner by a party of troops sent from Cusco, and was hanged and quartered at Huamanga.

This disgraceful expedition only tended to render the Spanish soldiers more insolent; and it became a difficult matter to prevent an open revolt.

Early in July, 1813, the transports for a new expedition to Chile were ready, and, on the thirteenth, Colonel Maroto and the troops of Talavera embarked for Talcahuano. Lima resumed her tranquillity, with what she considered her safety, and the departure of the protecting force was hailed as that of an insolent and oppressive enemy. But the calm was not of long duration. The news from the north, of the conquests in Quito by General Montes was accompanied by that of the revolution of Cusco in the south, and the possession of Arequipa by the Cacique Pumacagua; this threatened the most fatal consequences to Lima; however, General Ramires was sent from Upper Peru with a division of the army, then under the command of General Pesuela, and retook Cusco and Arequipa, where he put the old Cacique and upwards of a hundred of his followers to death, among whom was my particular friend, Jose Maria Melgar.

Friendship and admiration demand of me a short account of this virtuous youth. He was a native of Arequipa, and educated for the bar at Lima: he had retired to his native city, and was on the eve of marriage with a female whom he loved. Pumacagua arrived at Arequipa, and took it; Melgar was a patriot, he offered his services to the Cacique-general, they were accepted, and he was appointed judge advocate to the army. On the capture by Ramires, Melgar was apprehended, tried, and sentenced to be shot. His parents, his relations, and his friends solicited his pardon, which was promised, on condition that he would publicly recant: to this he objected, and he was led to the place of execution.

The assisting priest seated himself on the stool, and Melgar knelt to confess his sins, invoke a pardon, and receive absolution; but he suddenly rose from his knees, and, in a state of agitation, said to his confessor, "Is it possible that you should here speak to me of things of this world! It was your duty to speak to me of those in the next, which I am on the verge of witnessing: this world must soon cease to exist for me, and I had hoped to have left it in peace; but your request and promises have unsettled my mind, and agitated my soul. I took a part in the cause of my country; I believed it to be my duty, I did it, I considered it just; I embraced it, and I die for having done my duty, and only regret at this moment that I shall not die so calmly as I expected. You, father, who ought to have endeavoured to create tranquillity in my soul in my last moments, have destroyed my peace!"—He then asked the adjutant if he might be allowed to smoke a segar, which being granted, he turned round and said, "will any one for the love of God give me a segar?" A soldier handed him one; he sat down on the stool, and smoked about half the segar, knocked off the ashes, and threw it aside; he then thanked the adjutant and the soldier, and said "thank heaven I am again calm and resigned; now, Sir, do your duty." The bandage was ordered to be tied over his eyes, but he begged that this ceremony might be omitted: "I am not afraid to die," said he, and clasping his hands over his eyes, he exclaimed, "this will do!" The fatal signal was then given—the soldiers fired, and the virtuous patriot Melgar fell! The executioners muttered, "so may the enemies of Spain perish;" but the genii of American liberty sang for joy, and the response was—so may the sons of America evince to posterity, that no sacrifice is too great for a true Patriot!

The arrival of new troops from Spain in 1814, the defeat of the Chileans, and the occupation of Santiago by General Osorio; the victory of Vilcapugio in Upper Peru by Pesuela, all seemed to threaten American independence, and the Spaniards grew more insolent and haughty. The colours taken by Osorio in Chile were brought to Lima and carried in procession to the church of Santo Domingo, where they were presented at the altar of the Rosary, and there deposited. The new president and captain-general of Chile, Don Casimiro Marcó arrived, and proceeded to his presidency. The finances began to be insufficient for the payment of the troops, and those from Spain marched from their barracks in la Recoleta, and took possession of the citadel, Santa Catalina, where they declared, that unless the government paid them their arrears, they would pay themselves; assuring the natives at the same time, that no hostilities should be committed against them. The alarm was so great, that the Viceroy Abascal sent a message to the soldiers, declaring, that their request should be complied with; but he received for answer, that they would not alter their determination until the money due was actually paid to them. The Viceroy then went in person, and harangued the troops; but he received only a repetition of the former answer; nor did they desist until their arrears were paid.

In 1815 the Viceroy Abascal was superseded by General Don Joaquin de la Pesuela, when he immediately retired to Spain. On the arrival of the new Viceroy, the city was entertained with the entrada publica, public entry, balls, feasts, and bull-fights, with all of which his predecessor Abascal, had dispensed on his arrival, not wishing to oppress the city with such unnecessary expenses.

It is due to the Viceroy Abascal to say, that his prudence preserved the capital to the crown of Spain; and although no Viceroy of Peru had ever more accidental duties to attend to, or more critical affairs to manage, yet Lima is indebted to him for the foundation of the college of San Fernando, instituted for medicine and surgery; the pantheon or general cemetery, and the absolute prohibition of burying within the walls of the city; the rebuilding of the college del Principe, for the study of Latin; the thorough repair of the city walls; as well as several excellent police establishments; and notwithstanding the public feeling at this time in Lima, he was accompanied to Callao by all the respectable inhabitants, and his departure was a day of mourning in the city: such are generally the sentiments, even towards an enemy, when moderation has presided at his councils, and justice has guided his actions.

Pesuela, the hero of Huiluma and Vilcapugio, on taking cognizance of the treasury, discovered what was too well known to his predecessor—the low state of the funds: many plans were proposed for replenishing them; donations were at first solicited, and afterwards contributions were exacted; but these were incompetent to support the expenses of the government and the army, which, during the first years of warfare, levied large sums of money, as well on friends as on enemies, and derived some support from the different royal treasuries at Arequipa, at Cusco, Charcas, and other cities in Upper Peru; but, notwithstanding these temporary resources, the means continued to fail, and the exigences continued to increase. The equipment of expeditions to Quito, Upper Peru, and Chile; the demand of arrears by the troops that arrived from Spain, and the necessary remittances for the support of the royal armies, preyed heavily on the national funds, so much so, that the treasury dreaded a bankruptcy. The pay of all civil officers was reduced one-third, and at last a viceregal decree was issued, augmenting the tithes from ten to fifteen per cent.: this impost caused the greatest consternation throughout the country, and met with strong opposition from the inhabitants; many of the provinces refused to pay, and the governors were unable to exact it for want of an armed force to protect them against the fury of the people.

General Ramires was left by Pesuela in the command of the army of Upper Peru; but he was soon superseded by General Don Jose de la Serna, who landed at Arica, and proceeded direct to head quarters. This general was sent by the king to command the army, and with power to act independently of the Viceroy, at a time when any change in the established order of things was likely to be most productive of injury to the Spanish cause, and to this may be attributed the inactivity of the army under La Serna.

The tranquillity experienced in Lima till the beginning of 1817 induced the Spaniards to believe that all was well: Chile was quiet, the enemy made no advances in Upper Peru, Quito was under the dominion of Spain, Morillo victorious in Venezuela and Santa Fé; the Mexican insurgent chief, Morelos, had ceased to exist; Ferdinand was restored to his throne; the constitution was abolished; the inquisition was re-established, and monarchical despotism had resumed its seat; new auxiliary troops were preparing in Spain to give the last blow to the patriots in America, and the most sanguine American began to droop for the cause of his country. But a change, unexpected by the Spaniards, and unhoped for by the Americans, took place in Chile on the twelfth of February, 1817, the news of which reached Lima on the ninth of March. This was no less than the entire defeat of the Spanish army at Chacabuco by General O'Higgins: the victory has generally been attributed, but most unjustly, to General San Martin, who was not even present in the action. The following is an extract from the journal of a Spaniard with whom I was acquainted in Lima.

"February 4th, Don Miguel Atero, chief of the staff, informed the government of Santiago, that the enemy had surprised the guards of the Andes, placed about twelve leagues in advance of Santa Rosa, (twenty-five leagues from the capital) and that of seventy-five men, thirteen only had escaped, bringing with them the news, that the enemy was advancing; at the same time Major Vila reported to the government, that the advanced guard at the paso de los Patos had reconnoitred the enemy, and requested a reinforcement. Atero immediately sent a company of Talavera infantry, and then retreated with the division of the army stationed at Santa Rosa, to Chacabuco, leaving behind him two pieces of artillery, ammunition, baggage, and warlike stores: the force stationed at Santa Rosa amounted to about four hundred men.

"February 5th, the Captain-general Marcó ordered Colonel Quintanilla to join the army at Chacabuco, with the battalion of carabiniers; they arrived on the 6th, when Quintanilla immediately advanced to the convent of Curimon to reconnoitre the enemy in Villa Vieja, and having reported to Atero that their number did not exceed six hundred, an attack was immediately ordered, which took place on the morning of the seventh.

"The cavalry engaged that of the enemy in a place called de las Comas; the crafty enemy retired towards the Cordillera, and halted at Putendo, where they were joined by an ambuscade of a hundred horse. Our infantry did not advance with the cavalry, so that as soon as they were overpowered by the enemy they fled in the greatest disorder towards our infantry for support; on their return, to their great surprise they found that the infantry also was in a disordered retreat, without having taken part in the action, and also that the commander in chief, Atero, had fled. Colonel Quintanilla now took the command, and collected the dispersed soldiers; he placed the infantry in the centre, and flanked it with the cavalry, although harrassed in the rear by the enemy in his retreat. Having at length reached Villa Vieja, a council of war was held by the officers, and it was resolved to continue their march to Curimon; on their arrival they learnt that the enemy was about to renew the attack; on hearing which, Colonel Marqueli, to whom Atero had given the command, continued his march to Chacabuco. The victorious army took up its quarters in Villa Vieja: our loss was about thirty carabiniers. There is no doubt that the whole of our loss is to be attributed to Atero, who, observing a party of the enemy's cavalry on an eminence to the right, exclaimed, "we are cut off!" when he immediately mounted his horse and fled. At ten o'clock at night the news arrived at Santiago, and the greatest confusion began to prevail.

"On the morning of February 8th, the two judges, Pereyra and Caspi, and the general of brigade, Olaguer Feliu, fled to Valparaiso.

"On the 9th, Colonel Barañao arrived at Santiago with Colonel Eloriga, and 360 hussars.

"On the 10th, Lieutenant-colonel Morgado arrived with 450 dragoons; at ten o'clock at night Brigadier-general Maroto was appointed by Marcó to take the chief command: our whole force consisted of 1000 cavalry and 1100 infantry.

"On the 12th, at six o'clock in the afternoon, an officer arrived at Santiago with a verbal communication from General Maroto, declaring, that he had suffered a total defeat. This was confirmed on the 13th by the arrival of Maroto and Quintanilla; Marcó had left the city with about 1500 men, and resolved on renewing the attack; but after more private conversation with Maroto, he returned to the capital, and summoned a council of war. After a long conference nothing was determined on, and the sub-inspector-general Bernedo, the judge advocate Lescano, and the commandant of artillery, Cacho, fled to Valparaiso. From the 13th at noon to the evening of the 14th, officers, soldiers and civilians continued to arrive at Valparaiso, where they embarked on board several vessels then at anchor in the bay, and fled to Lima; but it was not known till our arrival at Callao, that the president Marcó was left behind at the mercy of Bernardo O'Higgins, to whom the insurgents owe their victory, and we our disgrace."

The most astonishing difference in the behaviour of the Spaniards was now observable. The haughty Maroto, who, when in Lima with his regiment of Talavera, despised and insulted every one, now that he had neither an officer nor a soldier left, was humbled, and the bow of a negro or an indian was most courteously answered by this vaunting coward.

New insurrections in the provinces of Upper Peru began to break out; the victories of General Bolivar in Colombia became known, and although reports from the mother country were flattering, yet the repeated requisitions for money were distressing.

Notwithstanding this state of affairs, the Viceroy Pesuela determined on another expedition to Chile, the command of which was again given to General Osorio. The Spanish troops consisted of a battalion of hussars and the regiment of Burgos, the best troops that had arrived from Europe. Their destination was to Talcahuano, which place, as it had been fortified by the Spaniards, was still held by them, with the auxiliary troops of Chile. For the equipment of this expedition, the Viceroy took possession of the treasury belonging to the commissariat of the crusades, money, which in the opinion of all the lower classes, could only be appropriated to the support of war against Turks, Moors and Infidels, and the greatest clamour was raised when it was applied to the purpose of waging civil war with Christians. This treasure being insufficient, that called of the holy places, santos lugares, at Jerusalem, was also added to that of the bulls.

After many difficulties had been surmounted, the expedition left Callao in October, 1817; and calculating on its success, the Spaniards again resumed their arrogance, which in some was carried to such an extreme as to enter into a bond with one another of two thousand dollars never again to employ a creole. A Spaniard said to me one evening, that he had six children, but if he thought that they would ever be insurgents, he would go to their beds and smother them.

This chivalrous fanaticism had risen to such a height, that a Peruvian officer, Landasuri, said, in the presence of Pesuela, that he hated his father and mother, because he was born in America, and that if he knew in what part of his body the American blood circulated, he would let it out; however Pesuela reprimanded him severely for such unnatural expressions.

Nothing but reports of victories arrived from Chile, the bells scarcely ever ceased ringing in Lima, and the choristers were hoarse with chanting Te Deums; the haughtiness of the Spaniards became insupportable; they paraded the streets in triumph, and, forming themselves into groups, insulted every creole who chanced to pass them. But their insolence was at its highest pitch in April, 1818, when the news of the victory over San Martin and O'Higgins at Cancha-rayada arrived; they considered Osorio more than a human being; his wisdom and valour were the theme of the pulpit, the palace, the coffee-house, and the brothel. The hero Osorio was at Santiago; he would soon cross the Andes, and release his virtuous and brave countrymen from their dungeons at San Luis and las Bruscas, and with the reinforcements expected from Spain, in a convoy under the protection of the Spanish frigate Maria Isabel, he would conquer the Buenos Ayreans, and return to Lima with the heads of San Martin, O'Higgins, and those of all the other chiefs of the banditties.

This ferment of insolence and insults continually increased till the evening of the fourth of May, when about ten o'clock at night a valancin, post chaise, drove up to the gates of the viceregal palace, bringing the hero Osorio, and the news of his total defeat at Maypu. On the morning of the fifth a creole was allowed to pass the streets unmolested, and might even presume to seat himself in a coffee-house at the same table with a Spaniard. Confusion and dismay were visible in the countenances of the royalists, the great Osorio suddenly became an ignorant coward, who had sacrificed his countrymen, and indecently fled to save his own life; even the Americans were now courted to join the Spaniards in declamations against the late demi-god Osorio, and no hope was left but that the arrival of the expedition from Spain would retrieve the losses occasioned by the dastardly conduct of this chief.

The first news, however, which they obtained of the issue of the boasted expedition was, that the soldiers of La Trinidad, one of the transports, had murdered their officers, taken possession of the vessel, and carried her to Buenos Ayres; this was seconded in November, 1818, with the news, that the Maria Isabel and part of her convoy had been taken at Talcahuano and the island of Santa Maria by the insurgents of Chile; and this blow was aggravated with the abandonment of Talcahuano, the strong hold of the Spaniards in Chile, by General Sanches, who took the command after Osorio fled. Still there was gall in reserve for the humbled Spaniards. The Chilean squadron, commanded by the Right Honourable Lord Cochrane, made its appearance off Callao on the twenty-eighth of February, 1819, his lordship's flag waving at the main of the ex-Spanish frigate Maria Isabel, now the Chilean flag ship O'Higgins.

It became impossible for me to remain longer in Lima, so I left that city for the Barranca, where I arrived on the first of March.

CHAPTER V.

State of Lima on the Arrival of the Chilean Squadron....Arrival of at Huacho....At Supe....Chilean Naval Force, how composed....Capture of the Maria Isabel by Commodore Blanco....Arrival of Lord Cochrane....Appointed Admiral....Leaves Valparaiso....Arrives at Callao, Huacho, Barranca, Huambacho....Proclamation of Cochrane, San Martin, and O'Higgins....Description of Huambacho....Paita taken....Proceed to Valparaiso....Arrival....Description of....Road from Valparaiso to Santiago.

The arrival of the Chilean squadron on the coast of Peru produced at once a dread that this part of South America would become the theatre of war, and that retaliating fate would inflict on this part of the colonies all the distresses which had been so universally spread among the others: it was feared, that the calamities produced by invasion would now be wreaked on it in return for those that had been experienced in the provinces of Upper Peru, Quito and Chile. War was at the very door, and the system of offence had almost rendered that of defence nugatory. It was believed that an army accompanied the squadron; and the patriots of Lima busied themselves in surmising which would be the point of debarkation. On Wednesday, the third of March, a rumour arrived at the capital, that the land forces would debark at Ancon, five leagues to the northward of Lima; at midnight the report of rockets was heard in the large street in the suburbs of San Lasaro, called Malambo; this was supposed by the patriots to be a signal for reunion; and by the royalists, of the landing of the army: upwards of a thousand of the former immediately repaired to Malambo, and so completely filled the street, that the cavalry sent by the government could not pass the mob, and they retired to the bridge: both parties were anxiously inquiring the cause of the reports, and both retired without obtaining any satisfactory information: had the squadron landed five hundred more, and marched to the city, there is not the least doubt but that with the assistance of the native inhabitants, they would have entered and taken possession of Santa Catalina and the different barracks, as the number of Spanish troops at that time did not exceed three hundred.

On the 29th of March, part of the squadron anchored in the bay of Huacho, for the purpose of obtaining news from the patriots on shore, and also of landing two spies, sent down by the Chilean government, as well as for the distribution of proclamations and other papers. Lord Cochrane here received the intelligence, that a quantity of money, belonging to the Phillipine company, had been sent down to Huarmey to be embarked in the North American schooner Macedonia, and that another considerable sum was on the road to the same destination; and as the port of the Barranca was better calculated for the purpose of intercepting the treasure than that of Huacho, the O'Higgins and the brig Galvarino dropped down to it, and a party of marines were sent ashore, and took the money in the river of the Barranca before the muleteers could cross it. This was effected without any opposition from the Spanish soldiers that were sent to protect it as a guard. Mr. Eliphalet Smith, of the United States, at first claimed the money; but he afterwards signed a document which specified the names of its true owners; this was also corroborated by several documents which Mr. Smith delivered to his lordship.

During the few days that the Chilean vessels of war remained at Huacho, the indians were at first allowed by the governor to take down to the beach their fruit and vegetables, and sell to them; but the commandant of the county militia having collected about two hundred of his troops, ordered the Indians to desist, and in the most insolent manner commanded Lord Cochrane to depart, unless he wished to be driven out of the port. On receiving this message his lordship immediately ordered the marines to land and march to Huaura, which was done, and the town taken: indeed the troops never attempted to defend it, but fled with their chief at their head: the property belonging to the government at the custom house and the estanco of tobacco were taken on board: no private property was touched. After this the trade with the indians was resumed; however, on the departure of the squadron, five young indians were apprehended, tried by a court martial, without their even having been soldiers; and, contrary to the laws of the country, they were sentenced to death and shot, without any other reason being assigned to their protector-general, Manco Yupanqui, in Lima, than that it was necessary to set such an example, because it might deter others from having any communication with the insurgents.

Such were the feelings of the people in this part of Peru, that the inhabitants of the village, called Supe, deposed the alcalde, who was a Spaniard, and declared themselves independent; but after the departure of the squadron, the principal ringleaders, Villanueva and Aranda, retired to a farm in the interior, where they bade defiance to the Viceroy and his powers. These two, with Reyes, a respectable farmer, Franco, Requena, a priest, and myself, were summoned to a court martial; but having embarked in the flag ship, we could not appear, in consequence of which we were sentenced to death, declared contumacious, and all justices were authorized to apprehend any or all of us, and put the sentence into immediate execution.

Before I proceed with the operations of the Chilean squadron, I shall give some account of its origin, and the arrival of Lord Cochrane to take the command.

The brig Pueyrredon of fourteen guns was the first vessel of war that the state possessed: the brig Araucana of sixteen, and the sloop Chacabuco of twenty-two, were afterwards purchased. Captain Guise brought out the brig Galvarino of eighteen guns, formerly in the British service, and sold it to the government; the San Martin of sixty-four guns, and the Lantaro of forty-four, were two East Indiamen, purchased by the state, and converted into vessels of war. When Chile was possessed of this force, the news arrived of the sailing of the expedition from Cadiz, under the convoy of the Maria Isabel, and having obtained possession of the orders given to the captains of the transports from the Trinidad that entered Buenos Ayres, and of their rendezvous in the Pacific, Don Manuel Blanco was appointed to command the Chilean vessels of war, San Martin, flag ship, Captain Wilkinson, commander; Lantaro, Captain Worster; and the Araucana: they had the good luck to take the frigate, Maria Isabel in the bay of Talcahuano on the twenty-eighth of October, 1818, and four of the transports off the bay and at the island of Santa Maria. On the seventeenth of November the victorious Blanco entered Valparaiso with his prizes, amid manifestations of joy in this port. The government of Chile, to commemorate the action, ordered a badge of honour to be presented to Commodore Blanco and each of his officers: this was a scutcheon of a pale green colour, having a trident in the centre, with the motto, "this first essay gave to Chile the dominion of the Pacific"—este primer ensayo dió a Chile el dominio del Pacifico.

The naval force of Chile having a native as commander in chief, and the captains, officers, and crews composed principally of foreigners, must of course have been conducted in a very irregular manner; and as Don Manuel Blanco had never served in a situation higher than that of an ensign, alferes, in the Spanish navy, it could not be expected that he was competent to fill that of a commander in chief, and to conduct with either honour to himself or profit to his country the operations of a body composed of such discordant materials as the squadron of Chile then was. It must be recollected, notwithstanding, that he added a page of glory to the annals of South American naval triumphs by the capture of the Maria Isabel of forty-eight guns, and part of her convoy.

For the future success of the Chilean navy, the welfare of the state, the progress of independence, and the consummation of South American emancipation, Lord Cochrane arrived at Valparaiso, on the twenty-eighth of November, 1818. The known valour of this chief, his love of rational liberty, and the voluntary sacrifice which he had made by accepting a command in the new world, had reached Chile before the hero himself, and his arrival was hailed with every demonstration of jubilee by the natives. Before his arrival, however, Captain Spry, an Englishman, and Captain Worster, a North American, both in the Chilean service, had been very loud in declaiming against him; without alleging any other reason, than that it was quite contrary to all republican principles to allow a "nobleman" to retain his title in the service; but the true motive was too visible to escape the most blunted apprehension. Commodore Blanco had then the command of the squadron, and these gentlemen had assured themselves that they could controul him just as they chose, on account of his indifferent knowledge of his duties as commander in chief, and especially as he had to manage British seamen. This with all possible delicacy had been mentioned to Blanco, together with many whispers detrimental to the character of Lord Cochrane. On the arrival of his lordship, Commodore Blanco was one of the first to hail him as the preserver of the liberties of his country, and to offer his services under the command of his lordship; and thus the patriotic Chilean smothered dissention in the bud, and left its cultivators to feel the rankling of those thorns which they themselves had planted.

A few days after the arrival of Lord Cochrane he received from the government of Chile his commission as Vice-admiral of Chile, Admiral and Commander in Chief of the naval forces of the Republic; and on the twenty-second of December he hoisted his flag at the main of the ex-Maria Isabel, now the O'Higgins, which flag Chile can exultingly say, was never hauled down until the last Spanish flag in the Pacific had acknowledged its empire, and either directly or indirectly struck to it. At the close, when the fleet had finished its career of glory, it was lowered by the same individual who hoisted it; it dropped like the sun in the west, while the descendants of the Incas blessed it, for the benefits they had received, with songs of heartfelt gratitude.

On the sixteenth of January, 1819, Lord Cochrane left the port of Valparaiso on board the O'Higgins, Captain Forster, with the San Martin bearing the flag of Rear-admiral Blanco, Captain Wilkinson, the Lantaro, Captain Guise, and the Galvarino, Captain Spry; the Chacabuco, Captain Carter, followed, but a mutiny taking place on board, he entered Coquimbo, where the principal mutineers were landed, sentenced by a drum head court martial, and shot.

Lord Cochrane chose the first day of the carnival for his first entrance into the bay of Callao, suspecting that the whole of the inhabitants would be engaged in the follies of the season—but he was deceived. The Viceroy Pesuela had chosen that day for one of his visits to Callao, and was sailing about the bay in the brig of war Pesuela; when the Chilean squadron appeared off the headland of San Lorenzo, the captain at first mistook the Chilean vessels for Spanish merchantmen expected from Europe; however, fortunately for himself and the party, he immediately came to an anchor under the batteries. The circumstance of the visit of the Viceroy had caused the whole of the military force to be under arms, and the whole of the batteries were manned. A thick fog coming on, the San Martin, Lantaro, and Galvarino, lost sight of the flag ship; however, without waiting for them, the admiral stood close in under the forts, and dropped his anchor; a very brisk cannonading immediately commenced, and the dead calm that followed obliged his lordship to remain alone nearly two hours, under the continued cannonading from ashore, besides a brisk fire from the two Spanish frigates Esmeralda and Vengansa, brigs Pesuela and Maypu, and seven gun-boats. As soon as the breeze sprang up, the O'Higgins stood out, having sustained very little damage either in her hull or rigging, and without a single person on board having been killed. The north corner of the Real Felipe was considerably shattered by the shot from the O'Higgins, and thirteen persons were killed on shore.

His lordship next entered into a correspondence with the Viceroy, concerning the treatment which the prisoners of war (Chileans and Buenos Ayreans) had received, and were actually receiving in the Casas Matas of Callao; the Viceroy denied that they had received any ill treatment, asserted that they were considered as prisoners of war, although rebels, and traitors to their king, and concluded by expressing his surprise, that a nobleman of Great Britain should so far have forgotten his dignity, as to head a gang of traitors against their legitimate sovereign, and his lawfully constituted authorities. To this his lordship replied by saying, that the glory of every Englishman was his freedom, and that this had entitled him to choose to command the vessels of war of a free country, in preference to that of a nation of slaves—a command which had been offered to him by the Duke de San Carlos in the name of his master, Ferdinand VII.

The following proclamations were distributed along the coasts of Peru, and sent also to the Viceroy.

Lord Cochrane to the inhabitants of Lima, and other towns of Peru:

Compatriots! I flatter myself, that ere long I shall address you more cordially with this epithet. The repeated echoes of liberty in South America have been heard with pleasure in every part of enlightened Europe, and more particularly in Great Britain; I, not being able to resist the desire of joining in the defence of a cause that was interesting to all mankind, the felicity of half the new world to thousands of generations, have determined to take an active part in it. The republic of Chile has confided to me the command of her naval forces. To these the dominion of the Pacific must be consigned; by their co-operation your chains of oppression must be broken. Doubt not but that the day is at hand, on which, with the annihilation of despotism, and the infamous condition of colonists which now degrades you, you will rise to fill the rank of a free nation; that august title to which your population, your riches, your geographical position in the world, and the course of events naturally call you. But it is your duty to co-operate in preparing for this success, to remove obstacles, and to pursue the path to glory: under the assurance that you will receive the most efficacious assistance from the government of Chile, and your true friend,

Cochrane.

Don Jose de San Martin, to the soldiers of the army of Lima:

Soldiers of the army of Lima!—The object of my march towards the capital of Peru is to establish an eternal reconciliation for the happiness of all. Nine years of horror have inundated America with blood and tears. You have been oppressed and fatigued with the evils of war, undertaken by the proud agents of Spain, to satisfy their own passions, and not for the good of the nation. The opinions and the arms of this part of the world will soon be presented before Lima, to put an end to so many misfortunes. You will only prolong the sterile sacrifice, if, blind to the irresistible force of the general will, you attempt to support so rash an enterprize. Each of you has belonged to the cause of the people; each of you belongs to the cause of humanity; the duties of a soldier cannot alter those of nature. The soldiers of the Patria, as faithful in the path of honour as in that of victory, are terrible only to the enemies of liberty. They set a higher price on the value of a victory, more from the injustice which it prevents, than for the glory they acquire. Fly then from the ignominy of perishing with your detestable tyrants. In the ranks of your brother patriots you will find the path to honour, to felicity and peace. A general who has never asserted a falsehood ensures this to you.—Head quarters, Santiago de Chile, 30th December, 1818.

Jose de San Martin.

The Supreme Director of Chile, to the inhabitants of Peru:

Liberty, the daughter of Heaven, is about to descend on your fertile regions; under her shade you will occupy among the nations of the globe that high rank which awaits your opulence. The Chilean squadron, now in sight on your coasts, is the precursor of the great expedition destined to establish your independence. The moment desired by all generous hearts approaches. The territory of Chile, and her adjacent islands are free from the yoke of the oppressor. Our naval forces may compete with those of Spain, and destroy her commerce; in them you will find a firm support.

It will be an inexplicable enigma to posterity, that enlightened Lima, far from aiding the progress of Columbian liberty, shall endeavour to paralyze the generous efforts of her brothers, and deprive them of the enjoyment of their imprescriptible rights. The time is arrived for you to wash out the stain, and in which to revenge the innumerable insults you have received from the hand of despotism, as the reward of your blindness. Fix your eyes on the havoc occasioned by the tyrants in your delightful country; at the sight of them engraved in its depopulation, want of industry, monopoly and oppression; observe the insignificancy under which you have so long groaned; fly to arms, and destroy in your just indignation the standard of that despotism which oppresses you, and you will then soon arrive at the summit of prosperity.

Believe not that we wish to treat you as a conquered country; such an idea never had existence except in the heads of our enemies—of your common oppressors; we only aspire to see you free and happy. You[4] shall establish your own government, selecting that which is most analagous to your customs, situation, and inclination; you shall be your own legislators, and of course you will constitute a nation as free and independent as we are.

Peruvians! why do you hesitate? Hasten to break your chains; come and sign on the tombs of Tupac Amaru and Pumacachua, the illustrious martyrs of liberty, the contract that must ensure your independence, and our everlasting friendship.

Bernardo O'Higgins.

On the twenty-sixth a Spanish merchant ship, called la Victoria, laden with cedar planks and horses, from Chiloe, was taken by the San Martin, and on the twenty-eighth the attack was made on Callao, and two of the gun-boats were taken, after which his lordship dropped down to Huacho, and ordered rear admiral Blanco to continue in the blockade of Callao with the San Martin and Lantaro, and any other vessels that might arrive from Chile; but Blanco, after remaining a few days, raised the blockade, and sailed to Valparaiso, where he was immediately placed under an arrest by the government until the arrival of the admiral, when he was tried by a court martial for a dereliction of duty, but acquitted. Lord Cochrane proceeded from Huacho to Barranca, and thence to Huarmey and Huambacho, where he found a French brig that had received on board part of the money belonging to the Phillipine company, and which the captain immediately delivered up.

The bay of Huambacho, about fifteen miles to the southward of Santa, is one of the most convenient on the western shores of America: it is completely land-locked: the anchorage is capital, and the landing is very good: a small river of excellent water enters the bay, and in the valley abundance of fire-wood may be procured. This valley formerly belonged to the ex-Jesuits; but on account of the decrease of water in the river at certain periods of the year, there not being sufficient for the ordinary purposes of irrigation, the government has never yet found a purchaser for it.

The soil is sandy, with a mixture of vegetable mould; but like the generality of the lands cultivated in Peru it is extremely productive when irrigated. This is evinced at the small indian hamlet of Huambacho, about two leagues from the sea, and it would doubtlessly be a very fit situation for a cotton plantation, which does not require so much water as the sugar-cane or lucern. The hills that surround the valley are covered with the remains of houses belonging to the indians before the conquest; great numbers of huacas are found here, and probably much treasure is buried in them.

Lord Cochrane, after the O'Higgins and Galvarino had wooded and watered, proceeded down the coast to Paita, where having anchored, he sent a flag of truce on shore, by Don Andres de los Reyes, a Peruvian, who embarked at la Barranca, stating that the town and inhabitants should receive no injury, and that nothing but the treasures belonging to the government should be taken, as had already happened at Huaura. He requested that no resistance should be made, as it would be unavailing, and only subject the town to the destructive effects of war. The answer was, that the town and the lives and property of the inhabitants belonged to the king, and that all should be sacrificed in defence of the Spanish flag. The same individual was sent a second time, to request that the military force would not expose the town and its inhabitants; but instead of receiving the message they fired on the flag, and opened their battery on the Galvarino. This insult was immediately resented; the marines were landed, and soon drove the Spaniards from the battery and the town, which was then pillaged; the artillery was embarked, and the fort blown up. The O'Higgins and Galvarino went to the port of Barranca, and took some cattle, sugar, and rum from the farm of San Nicholas, belonging to Don Manuel Garcia, a Spaniard. It was the constant practice of Lord Cochrane to quarter on the common enemy, and nothing was ever taken from a native by force, or without paying for it. Hence we proceeded to Callao, and thence to Valparaiso, where we arrived on the fifteenth of June.

Valparaiso, situate in latitude 33° 1´ 45´´ S., and longitude 71° 30´ 56´´ west of Greenwich, is the principal port in Chile. The natives flatter themselves, that this name was given to the port by the first Spaniards who visited it, and that it is a syncope of Valle del Paraiso, valley of Paradise; but it is equally possible, that the Spaniards, who had received exaggerated accounts of the country, comparing it to Paradise, on their first approaching this part of the coast, might have exclaimed, valde Paraiso! vain Paradise! which designation its appearance at present would better justify. The bay is of a semicircular form, surrounded by very steep hills, which rise abruptly almost from the edge of the water, particularly to the southward and about half of the range to the eastward; the other half forms a kind of recess, and the hills are not so perpendicular. During the winter season they are covered with grass, with some stunted trees and bushes, such as molles, myrtles, espino, and maytenes; but the soil being a red clay, the verdure soon disappears when the summer sun begins to shine on them and the rain ceases to fall.

The principal part of the town is built between the cliffs and the sea, forming a row of houses, or rather shops; a few good houses stand also in a narrow street, but they cannot be seen from the bay, because a row of low houses with their backs to the sea prevent the prospect. The greater number of the inhabitants of this part of the town, called the port, to distinguish it from the suburbs, called the Almendral, reside in the ravines of San Francisco, San Augustin and San Antonio, where the houses rise one above another, forming a species of amphitheatre; in many of them a person may sit in his parlour, and look over the roof of his neighbour's house; at night the appearance of this part of the town is pleasing, the lights being scattered about the hills in every direction. The Almendral, or suburbs, stands in a kind of recess in the hills, on a sandy plain, and most probably was in times past a part of the bay of Valparaiso; indeed it is now often inundated by the spring tides. Some regularity begins to be adopted here in the formation of streets, and some of the houses are neat. At the bottom of the Almendral there is a small rivulet.

Valparaiso is defended by a fort on the south side of the harbour, one at the residence of the governor, and one on the north side of the bay: a citadel on the hill behind the governor's palace on an extensive scale is and will perhaps remain unfinished. The places of worship are the parish church, the conventuals of San Francisco, San Augstin, La Merced (in the Almendral) Santo Domingo, and the hospital chapel of San Juan de Dios. Some of the principal houses are built of stone, but the greater part are of adoves; all of them are covered with tiles, and those that have an upper story have a balcony in front.

Since the revolution many English conveniences and luxuries in dress and furniture, as well as improvements in the manners and customs of the inhabitants, have been adopted, and almost any thing a la Inglesa meets with approbation.

The market of Valparaiso is well supplied with meat, poultry, fish, bread, fruit, and vegetables at very moderate prices and of good quality. The climate is agreeable except when the strong winds prevail. In the months of June and July the winds from the northward are at times very heavy; on this account the anchorage is insecure, because the bay is not sheltered in that quarter.

From the time of the discovery to the year 1810 this port was only visited by vessels from Lima, bringing sugar, salt, tobacco, a small quantity of European manufactured goods, and some other articles of minor importance; shipping in return wheat, charqui, dried fruits, and other produce of Chile and Peru. The population amounted to about five thousand souls; the commerce was in the hands of four or five merchants, Spaniards, and the annual duties at the custom-house amounted to about twenty-five thousand dollars. After the victory obtained by the Chileans at Chacabuco almost two-thirds of the population of Valparaiso abandoned their homes, or were forced on board Spanish vessels and taken to Peru, and the town was nearly depopulated; but since the revolution it has been constantly increasing in size, population, and riches. In 1822 it contained about fifteen thousand souls, three thousand of whom were foreigners. From 1817 to 1822 upwards of two hundred houses were built; at the latter date there were thirty-one established wholesale merchants, besides an incalculable increase of retail dealers: there were also twenty-six inns, coffee-houses, &c. Besides the vessels of war belonging to the state, forty-one traders bear the national flag; and the bay, formerly empty more than half the year, contains on an average fifty foreign vessels either of war or commerce during the whole year.

The hospital of San Juan de Dios has been transferred from the centre of the town to the suburbs, and a Lancasterian school is established in the old building.

A general cemetery for catholics is building by subscription, and upwards of two thousand dollars have been collected for another for the dissenters. As a proof of the increase of trade and speculation, a daily post is established between the port and the capital.

It is quite unnecessary to dwell on the advantages of commerce to any nation; but here the result is peculiarly apparent, not only among the higher and middle classes, but among the lowest: the peasant who at the time of my residence in Chile, 1803, if possessed of a dollar, would bore a hole through it, and hang it to his rosary—the same peasant can now jingle his doubloons in his pocket. Those who in 1803 wore only the coarsest clothing, of their own manufacture, are now dressed in European linens, cottons, and woollens; those who were ashamed to present themselves to a stranger or who dared not even speak to a master, now present themselves with confidence, as if conscious of the importance of their civil liberty; they boast too of Christian patriotism, generosity, and valour. The monopolizing Spanish merchants who purchased the wheat and other produce before it was ready for market at almost any price, especially if the owner were necessitated, or who lent the farmer money, to be paid in produce at his own price—such merchants have disappeared, and a regular market is substituted, where the natives of every class enjoy an opportunity of speculating and of reaping the advantages of experience. Labourers of every class have a choice of work and of masters, and this secures to them a just remuneration for their labour. The higher and middling classes now know their importance as citizens of a free and independent country, in the prosperity of which they are interested, because they are aware, that with it their personal prosperity is connected; they can express and discuss their political opinions, and in short, from the lowest order of colonial vassals they have become the subjects of an elective government and citizens of the world.

The road from Valparaiso to the capital, Santiago, crosses the first range of mountains at the northern extremity of the Almendral, and after passing over very uneven ground for about five leagues, a dismal looking plain presents itself; the grass is entirely parched in summer, and in winter the water forms itself into several small lakes or swamps; and scarcely a tree is to be seen in the vicinity. A small number of horned cattle is fed, but the prospect is cold and dreary. After crossing this plain more uneven ground presents itself, but being covered with grass, brushwood, and trees, forming several small ravines, quebradas, with a few cottages straggling in different directions, the country appears beautifully romantic.

The plain of Casa Blanca next presents itself, having the town of the same name nearly in the centre.[5] The plain is perfectly level, about two leagues broad, and two and a half long; it has the appearance of having been at some remote period a large lake, but as the race of Promaucian indians, who inhabited this part of the country before the conquest, has become extinct, all oral traditions have been extinguished with them. The soil is a hard clay, scantily covered with grass, and the only trees are a considerable number of espinos. The town contains about two thousand inhabitants, who are generally employed in the cultivation of the surrounding farms. Having slept here I proceeded on the following day to Bustamante, passing the cuesta de Prado, and the small town and river of Curucavé. Some parts of the road are remarkably picturesque; in the ravines or valleys the view of the mountain scenery is grand; from the mountains the prospect of the ravines and valleys, as well as the distant view of the snow-topped Andes, is magnificent. The myrtle, of three or four varieties, the different species of cactus, the arrayan, the peumos, the boldos, and the beautifully drooping mayten adorn the sides of the ravines, offering a shade and rich pasture, on which a considerable number of horned cattle, horses, and mules, are seen feeding.

Bustamante is a post house, where travellers often pass a night when on their journey to or from the capital; the accommodations are indifferent, but a few years ago nothing of the kind existed: it must therefore be considered an improvement. After leaving Bustamante the road gradually ascends, and at the distance of about a league from the house the cuesta de Zapata commences. From the top of this eminence the view of the Andes is most enchanting; the snow-covered mountains rise majestically, one range behind another, until their summits are lost in the clouds, or, when the sky is clear, till they are most exactly defined in the azure vault of heaven. When nearly at the foot of the cuesta, the city of Santiago, the capital of Chile, makes its appearance; it is situated in a large plain, having a small rocky mountain, called Santa Lucia, almost in the centre of which is a small battery.

The excellent road from Valparaiso to Santiago was made by the order and under the direction of Don Ambrose Higgins, when president of Chile. Before the formation of this road all goods were carried to and from the capital or the port on the backs of mules, but the greater part is now conveyed in heavy carts, carretas, drawn by two or three yokes of oxen. A coach was established in 1820 by Mr. Moss, a North American; it went from Valparaiso to Santiago, and returned twice a week. The distance is thirty leagues.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] From the very first proclamation this promise was made to the Peruvians; but we shall soon see how it was fulfilled by San Martin.

[5] This town was completely destroyed by the earthquake in 1823.

CHAPTER VI.

Santiago....Foundation....Description of the City....Contrast between the Society here and at Lima....State of Chile....Manners and Customs....Revolution....Carreras....O'Higgins....Defeat at Rancagua....Chileans cross the Cordillera....Action of Chacabuco....Of Maypu....Death of Don Juan Jose, and Don Luis Carrera....Murder of Colonel Rodrigues....Formation of a Naval Force....Death of Spanish Prisoners at San Luis....Naval Expedition under Lord Cochrane....Failure of the Attack on Callao....Attack at Pisco....Death of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles....Capture of Vessels at Guayaquil....Squadron returns to Chile.

Santiago, the capital of Chile, was founded on the 24th February, 1541, by the Spanish conqueror Pedro de Valdivia. Its situation is in an extensive valley called de Mapocho, bounded on the east by the Cordillera, on the west by the hills or mountains de Prado and Poanque, on the north by the small river of Colina, and on the south by the river Mapocho, or Topocalma, which passes the city on one side, and feeds many asequias, small canals for irrigation; it also supplies the city with water.

About the year 1450 Chile was invaded by the prince afterwards the Inca Sinchiroca, who, more by persuasion than by force, possessed himself of this valley; it was called at that time, Promocaces, the place of dancing, or merriment. The Peruvian government was not established here on the first arrival of the Spaniards, owing perhaps to the opposition made by the Promaucians, who resided between the rivers Rapel and Maule, and whom they never subdued; thus, although Garcilaso de la Vega Inca places the boundary of the territory governed by the Incas on the river Maule, it is more probable that it was on the Rapel, for near the union of the Cachapoal with the Tinguiririca, taking the name of Rapel, there are some ruins of a Peruvian fortress, built in the same manner as those of Callo and Asuay, in the province of Quito; these apparently mark the frontier, and especially as none are found more to the southward.

Santiago is divided into squares or quadras, containing in the whole, if we include the suburbs, about a hundred and fifty, which are marked out by the streets; but many are incomplete, wanting houses to finish the boundaries. The principal public buildings are the mint, the palace of the supreme director, and the cathedral, which, like that of Conception, is in an unfinished state. The mint is a very handsome edifice, vieing in elegance with any other in South America, and equal to many of considerable note in Europe. It was built by Don Francisco Huidobro, at the expense of nearly a million of dollars: he presented it to the king, and in return received the title of Marquis of Casa Real; but this and all other titles are declared extinct by the independent government. The palace of the supreme director is incomplete; the right wing, which should correspond with the left, is entirely wanting. In it are the different offices belonging to the government, and also the public gaol. The unfinished state of the cathedral is likely to continue; for large funds are wanting to finish so extensive a building.

The bridge across the Mapocho is a handsome structure of brick and stone. The tajamar, breakwater, serves to preserve the city from being inundated by the river when the waters increase, either by heavy rains in the Cordillera, or the melting of the snows in the summer, at which time this stream, though at other times insignificant, becomes a rapid torrent. Here is a public promenade, like the Alamedas at Lima, having a double row of Lombard poplars on each side, forming a shady walk for foot passengers, while the middle one serves for carriages and horses. The tajamar is formed of two walls of brick-work, and the interior is filled with earth; a very agreeable promenade is made on the top, having several flights of steps to ascend it; some seats are also placed in the parapet which fronts the river; the whole being two miles long. The snow-covered Andes are about twenty leagues from the city, yet they seem to overhang it, and the view of them from the tajamar is very majestic.

Santiago is divided into four parishes; San Pablo, Santa Ana, San Isidro, and San Francisco de Borja. It has three Franciscan convents, two of the Dominicans, one of San Augustin, and two of La Merced: those belonging to the Jesuits were five. Here are seven nunneries, two of Santa Clara, two of Carmelites, one of Capuchins, one of Dominicans, and one of Augustinians; a house for recluse women called el Beaterio, and a foundling hospital.

Santiago was made a city by the king of Spain in 1552, with the title of very noble and very loyal; its arms are a shield in a white ground, in the centre a lion rampant holding a sword in his paw, and orle eight scallops, Or. It was erected into a bishopric by Paul IV. in 1561. It was the residence of the President, and Captain-General of the kingdom of Chile, and counts fifty governors from Pedro de Valdivia, the first, to Don Casimiro Marcó del Pont, the last; also twenty-three bishops, from Don Rodrigo Gonsales Marmolijo to the present Don Manuel Rodriguez. Here was also a tribunal of royal audience, one of accompts, a consulate, or board of trade, treasury, and commissariate of bulls. The whole of the territory extends from the desert of Atacama to the confines of Arauco, and was subject to the above-mentioned authorities from the foundation of the government in 1541 to the beginning of the fortunate revolution in 1810.

The contrast between the society which I had just quitted in the capital of Peru and that which I here found in the capital of Chile was of the most striking kind. The former, oppressed by proud mandataries, imperious chiefs, and insolent soldiers, had been long labouring under all the distressing effects of espionage, the greatest enemy to the charms of every society: the overbearing haughty Spaniards, either with taunts or sneers, harrowing the very souls of the Americans, who suspected their oldest friends and even their nearest relations. In this manner they were forced to drain the cup of bitterness to the last dregs, without daring by participation or condolence to render it less unpalatable; except indeed they could find an Englishman, and to him they would unbosom their inmost thoughts, believing that every Briton feels as much interest in forwarding the liberty of his neighbour, as he does in preserving his own. In Lima the tertulias, or chit-chat parties, and even the gaity of the public promenades, had almost disappeared, and quando se acabará esto? when will this end? was the constantly repeated ejaculation. In Santiago every scene was reversed; mirth and gaity presided at the paseos, confidence and frankness at the daily tertulias; Englishmen here had evinced their love of universal liberty, and were highly esteemed; friendship and conviviality seemed to reign triumphant, and the security of the country, being the fruits of the labour of its children, was considered by each separate individual as appertaining to himself; his sentiments on its past efforts, present safety, and future prosperity were delivered with uncontrolled freedom, while the supreme magistrate, the military chief, the soldier, and the peasant hailed each other as countrymen, and only acknowledged a master in their duty, or the law.

Another prominent feature in Chile is the state of her commerce, entirely formed since the revolution; it has rendered her not only independent of Spain, but of Peru also. Formerly the fruits and produce of this fertile region of the new world were entirely indebted to Peru for a market; but with the spirit of freedom that of speculation arose, and markets and returns were found in countries, of whose existence ten years ago (1819) even the speculators themselves were ignorant. Several of these provinces were conceived to be so situated, that no one attempted to visit them, judging that such a journey would be attended with almost insurmountable difficulties; dangers as great as the majority of the inhabitants of Europe supposed were to be encountered by a visit to the coasts of Peru.

The manners and customs of the inhabitants of Santiago are now very different from those of Conception in 1803, which was at that time nearly as affluent as the capital; the estrado is almost exploded; the ladies are accustomed to sit on chairs; the low tables are superseded by those of a regular height, those on which the family, who at that period crossed their legs like turks or tailors, sat on a piece of carpet, are now abolished; formerly all ate out of the same dish, but now they sit at table in the same manner as the English, and their meals are served up with regularity and neatness. The discordant jarring of the old half strung guitar has given place to the piano, and the tasteless dance of the country to the tasteful country-dance. In many respects, indeed, the Chileans here appear half converted into English, as well in their dress as in their diversions and manners.

The following brief statement of the revolution in Chile, extracted from official documents, and faithful reports, will I flatter myself be found interesting to all classes—its details, however, must necessarily be confined within short limits.

One of the peculiar features in all the South American revolutions was the accomplishment of the principal object, which consisted in deposing the constituted authorities without bloodshed. This was the case at Caracas, Santa Fé de Bogotá, Quito, Buenos Ayres and Chile; and at a later period at Guayaquil, Truxillo, Tarma, and even at Lima; for the Spanish forces quitted the city, and the Chilean entered without the occurrence of a skirmish either in the capital or its vicinity.

The same causes which operated in Venezuela and Quito, and have been already stated, were felt in Chile, and produced similar effects. On the 18th July, 1810, the president Carrasco was deposed by the native inhabitants, under the plea of his incapacity of preserving this part of the Spanish dominions for Ferdinand, when he should be freed from his captivity, and a junta which was formed of the Cabildo took upon itself to govern according to the old system, but with the secret intention of following the course and example of Buenos Ayres in declaring her independence. In 1811 Don Juan Jose Carrera, the son of Don Ignacio Carrera of Chile (who had been sent to Europe, and in the continental war had attained the rank of a lieutenant-colonel and commandant of a regiment of hussars) crossed the Atlantic to succour his native country, which he was considered by his friends as the only person capable of saving from the impending ruin which threatened it from the result of the steps taken; and he was in consequence nominated by the junta supreme president of the congress which was convened, besides which he was appointed general in chief of the army about to be formed. The first step which Carrera took was to establish a defensive army, which he immediately began to recruit and discipline, choosing his officers from among the most zealous friends of liberty. He constituted himself colonel of the national guards, appointed his elder brother, Don Jose Miguel, colonel of grenadiers, and his younger, Don Luis, colonel and commandant of artillery. At this time the principal military force of Chile was at Conception; indeed the whole of the force, excepting two companies, which had always been on duty in the capital, and about fifty stationed as a garrison at Valparaiso, was employed on the frontiers of Arauco. On hearing of what had taken place in the capital, the troops at Conception declared themselves in favour of the cause of liberty. The inhabitants of Conception pretended that their city was better calculated to be the seat of government than Santiago; and as the troops were principally composed of Pencones, natives of the place, they were persuaded to join in the request, which occasioned some difficulties to Carrera, and it was feared that this untimely pretension would be the cause of a civil war; but it was finally adjusted that, for a specified time, the troops of Conception should remain to the southward of the river Maule, and those of Santiago to the northward. This gave Carrera an opportunity to gain over the troops, which he did by sending emissaries to Conception, when a general reconciliation took place, and the whole of the troops were placed under the command of Don Juan Jose Carrera.

The Spanish troops from Lima, Coquimbo and Chiloe, under the command of Colonel Gainsa, began hostilities in the south of Chile; various actions and skirmishes occurred between them and the undisciplined Chileans, the result being favourable to the latter. In 1812, Don Bernardo O'Higgins (then a captain of militia) joined Carrera, who bestowed on him the rank of lieutenant-colonel of the line, and shortly afterwards raised him to that of brigadier general, for the important services he rendered with the Guerilla parties.

In 1813, the three Carreras, with a considerable number of their officers, were retaken prisoners by the Spaniards, and confined at Talca. The command of the army devolved on O'Higgins, he being the senior officer. He availed himself of this opportunity, assumed the civil power, caused himself to be proclaimed president, and appointed a substitute in the capital to govern during his absence. The Carreras being possessed of money bribed the soldiers at Talca and made their escape. O'Higgins instantly offered a reward for their apprehension. The three Carreras immediately set off to Santiago, disguised as peasants, and made themselves known to some friends; Don Luis was apprehended and imprisoned; Don Juan Jose went in his disguise to the artillery barracks, and having entered, discovered himself to the officers and soldiers, who welcomed his arrival, and promised to support him; in consequence of which he marched with the soldiers to the plasa, and liberated his brother Luis. The citizens promptly reinstated the Carreras, and the news being conveyed to O'Higgins, he marched his army towards the capital, leaving the enemy to avail himself of the civil discords of the Chileans. Carrera proposed to unite their respective forces, proceed against the common enemy, and leave their private quarrels to be decided by the fortune of war, or by the suffrages of the people. To these proposals O'Higgins objected, and the two generals prepared for action. Carrera chose the plain of Maypu, when O'Higgins soon began the attack, and was repulsed; the peasantry, under the command of Carrera, although victorious, called on their countrymen to desist, not to fly, but to surrender to their first and best chief; this they did, were generously received, and forgiven. O'Higgins and his principal officers were made prisoners. They all expected that their offended general would bring them to judgment as traitors; but they were pardoned, restored to their former situations in the army, and O'Higgins was reinstated in the command of the van-guard, and received orders to march towards Rancagua, where Carrera soon afterwards repaired with the remainder of the army. The Spaniards profited by the dissentions of the patriot chiefs, recruited and disciplined more troops, and invested the town of Rancagua on the first of October, 1814. Carrera and his troops defended themselves here forty-eight hours, and when their ammunition was expended and they were obliged to evacuate the place, they cut their way through the ranks of the Spanish soldiery sword in hand. General Carrera and his two brothers, O'Higgins, Benevente, the unfortunate Rodrigues, and several of the more wealthy citizens, crossed the Cordillera, leaving General Osorio in possession of the whole of Chile.

The Spanish regime being thus re-established in Chile, the different functionaries who had been deposed resumed their offices, and a new tribunal called de la purification was established, through which ordeal all those natives who wished to be considered as loyal subjects to Spain had to pass. It was composed of Spaniards, principally officers, having the celebrated Major San Bruno as president. Nothing can be imagined more arbitrary than the conduct of this tribunal; its assumed duties were to examine the proceedings of the inhabitants, and, independently of any established laws or set forms, to sentence or acquit. The prisons were filled with the objects of persecution, the places of exile were crowded with the victims of this political inquisition, and Chile groaned under the unwise administration of Osorio. This tyrannical general and Marcó, instead of pursuing conciliatory measures, which would have attached the mal-contents to their party, adopted every kind of persecution, and cultivated distrust; until enmity, which ripened in secret, at the first favourable opportunity produced conspiracies and all the fatal effects of revenge.

General Carrera pursued his route to Buenos Ayres, where he embarked for the United States to solicit assistance; while O'Higgins, Rodrigues, McKenny, and Calderon began to recruit and discipline a new army for the re-occupation of Chile: the command of the army was given to San Martin; it crossed the Cordillera, and the battle of Chacabuco was fought on the twelfth of February, 1817, the result of which has already been stated. On the arrival of the patriot troops in Santiago an elective government was formed, of which General San Martin was nominated the supreme director; but he declined the offer, and recommended his friend, General O'Higgins, to fill the place.

The refusal of San Martin to accept the first and highest post of honour in Chile was misunderstood at the time; it was construed into a deference to the superior abilities of O'Higgins, and to modesty on the part of the hero of Chacabuco; whereas some who knew him better were persuaded, that he intended to govern the government, and to make it subservient to his own purposes. Besides, a wider field for the ambition of San Martin now presented itself. He began to look forward to Peru, which afterwards became the theatre of his warlike virtues.

The Spaniards kept possession of Talcahuano, as well as the southern provinces, and received supplies from Peru, principally composed of the regiment of Burgos, one of the finest bodies of troops ever sent from Spain. General Osorio again took the command of the army, and marched towards the capital, while the patriots mustered all their forces to oppose him. The Spanish force was composed of about five thousand regulars, and it gained several advantages, particularly one at Cancharayada, where they surprised the Chilean army in the night, and completely dispersed it; and had Osorio continued his march, he might have entered the capital without any opposition; but he remained at Talca, and allowed the patriots to collect their scattered forces. This they were not slow in performing, for on the fifth of April they presented themselves on the plain of Maypu about seven thousand strong, including the militia; indeed very few of them could be called veterans, except in their fidelity to the cause of their country. O'Higgins having been severely wounded in his right arm at Cancha-rayada, could not take the field, but remained in his palace at Santiago. San Martin and Las Heras commanded the patriots, and Osorio the royalists on this memorable day, which sealed the fate of Chile. The conflict was obstinate and sanguinary during the greater part of the day; in the afternoon fortune appeared to favour the Chileans, when lieutenant-colonel O'Brian observed, that the regiment of Burgos were endeavouring to form themselves into a solid square; he immediately rode up to General San Martin; and begged him to charge at the head of the cavalry and prevent the completion of this manœuvre, stating, that if it were effected nothing could prevent their marching to the capital. San Martin, instead of charging at the head of the cavalry, ordered O'Brian to charge, which he did, and completely routed the Spaniards, and gave the victory to the patriots. Osorio on observing the fate of the regiment of Burgos fled with a few officers and part of his body-guard. When O'Brian returned to the commander in chief and reported to him the news of the victory, he was answered by a bottle of rum being offered to him by the hero of Maypu, accompanied with this familiar expression, toma! take hold!

Of the five thousand men commanded by Osorio two thousand fell on the field, and two thousand five hundred were made prisoners, with one hundred and ninety-three officers, who were immediately sent across the Cordillera to the Punta de San Luis and Las Bruscas; General Osorio, with about two hundred followers, escaped from the field of action and fled to Conception.

This victory over the Spaniards gave to the Chileans that complete independence for which they had been struggling ever since 1810; but the glory of the achievement was tarnished by what took place as well at Mendosa on the east side of the Cordillera as at Quillota on the west. On the return of General Carrera from the United States, bringing with him several officers and some supplies of arms, for the purpose of equipping an expedition for the liberation of his country, he found, on his arrival at Buenos Ayres, that his two brothers were on their parole of honour in this city, and were not allowed to return home nor to join the army. This proceeding astounded Carrera, but he had scarcely time to inquire into what had taken place, when he was himself arrested and placed on board a gun brig belonging to Buenos Ayres; at which time his two brothers, fearing the same fate, fled, Don Luis on the nineteenth of July, 1817, and Don Jose Miguel on the eighth of August: on the seventeenth they were apprehended near Mendosa, and thrown into prison, when they were in hopes of having been able to cross the Cordillera and again to serve their country.

It appears that Don Jose Miguel Carrera when at Rio Janeiro had obtained a copy of the negociation which had been carried on in France by Don Antonio Alvares Jonte, the agent of the supreme director of Buenos Ayres, Pueyrredon, for the purpose of establishing a monarchy in this place, and of giving the throne to Charles Louis Prince of Lucca, the son of Don Louis of Bourbon, heir apparent to the Dukedom of Parma, and Dona Maria Louisa of Bourbon, daughter to Charles IV. of Spain, afterwards called the king and queen of Etruria. The possession of these documents, and a knowledge of all that had transpired, rendered Carrera an unwelcome visitor at Buenos Ayres, and a suspicious character to Pueyrredon, who, to provide for his own safety, determined on the destruction of this individual, but he escaped from the brig and fled to Monte Video.

Don Jose Miguel and Don Luis were equally dangerous opponents to the vices of San Martin, who on hearing of their being arrested sent over his arch-secretary Don Bernardo Monteagudo to bring them to their trial; and as it was necessary to forge some ostensible motive for their execution, as that of having disobeyed the orders of a government to which they had never promised fealty could not be accounted sufficient, Don Juan Jose was accused of having murdered the son of the postmaster of San Jose in the year 1814, of which act, however, Monteagudo himself says, in his Extracto de la Causa seguida contra los Carreras, p. 7, "although from the nature of the circumstances the murder could not be proved by evidence, yet the whole of the procured evidence was such, that the probability of the aggression was in the last degree approaching to a certainty." As this accusation did not include Don Luis another plan was laid that should inculpate the two brothers. Some of the soldiers then on duty at Mendosa were directed to propose to the prisoners the means of escaping, to which they acceded, and on the 25th of February, 1818, Pedro Antonio Olmos informed the governor of Mendosa that Don Juan Jose and Don Luis Carrera had formed a plan to escape from prison on the following night, and brought in Manuel Solis to support the information. This put the machine in motion, and five other soldiers were adduced as evidence against the unfortunate brothers. On the 10th of March the examinations closed, on the 11th they were requested to appoint their counsel, and on the 4th of April the Fiscal solicited the sentence of death; on the 8th the solicitation was approved of, as being according to law, by Miguel Jose Galigniana and Bernardo Monteagudo, to which was subjoined the following order: "let the sentence be executed—Don Juan Jose and Don Luis Carrera are to be shot this afternoon at five o'clock." (Signed) Toribio de Lusuriaga. The two unhappy brothers heard their sentence at three o'clock in the afternoon, and they were slaughtered at six. They left the dungeon arm in arm, walked to the place of execution, and having embraced each other, sat themselves down on a bench, and ordering the soldiers to fire, they again embraced each other in death. The conduct of General San Martin in this affair may perhaps be defended by his friends and partisans; but the prevalent belief is, that on finding a considerable party in Chile in favour of the Carreras, he was determined on their destruction, and that the order for the execution of Don Juan Jose and Don Luis was sent by him to Lusuriaga the governor. Nothing however can be conceived more brutal than what occurred at Santiago after the execution of the two brothers. San Martin sent to their unhappy father an account of the expenses incurred on their trial and execution, with an order for immediate payment, or that the father should be committed to prison. The venerable old man defrayed the bloody charge, and two days afterwards he expired, the victim of malice and of persecution. I was at Santiago at the period, and followed the corpse to the grave.

At the same time that this tragedy was performed on the eastern side of the Cordillera, another, which for its midnight atrocity exceeds even the fabulous legends of cold-blooded cruelty, was performed by the same manager on the western side: an act that would curdle the milk of sympathy into a clotted mass of hatred. Don Manuel Rodrigues obtained the rank of colonel in the service of his country; he crossed the Cordillera after the defeat of the patriots at Rancagua, remained with O'Higgins, and assisted to discipline the army commanded by San Martin; the battle of Chacabuco added honour and glory to his name, and the field of Maypu crowned him with laurels. His conduct as a soldier and his manners as a gentleman had endeared him to all who knew him; but the record of his virtues was the instrument of his destruction; the jealousy of San Martin could not brook a rival in those glories which he considered exclusively his own, and that the popularity of Rodrigues might withdraw for one moment the attention of a single individual from contemplating the greatness of the hero of Maypu. Rodrigues was apprehended, and sent to Quillota, where after he had remained a few days, San Martin sent a corporal and two soldiers, with an order for Rodrigues to be delivered up to them; he was conducted along the road leading to the capital, and not permitted to stop at night at a house which they passed, and where he requested they would allow him to rest. The morning dawned on the everlasting resting place of this gallant Chilean—he was murdered at midnight by his ruffian guard, and buried at a short distance from the high road. Inquiries were afterwards made by the relatives of Rodrigues, but no satisfactory accounts could be obtained at head-quarters; the soldiers who were the only persons capable of giving information were not to be found; this was easily accounted for; General San Martin had sent them to the Punta de San Luis, to be taken care of by his confidant Dupuy, who was at this time under training for another scene of bloodshed, more horrible, if possible, than the past.

After the expulsion of the Spaniards, the supreme director, O'Higgins, knowing the importance of a naval force, which might protect the shores of Chile and its commercial interests against the Spanish vessels of war, applied himself seriously to the acquisition not only of vessels but of officers and crews. The two East-indiamen, the Cumberland and the Windham, afterwards the San Martin and the Lautero, were purchased; the Chacabuco and the Pueyerredon were equipped; the Galvarino was purchased, and the Maria Isabel was taken. But after all this the possession of vessels would have been attended only with expense, had not the good fortune of South America been supported by the devoted services of Lord Cochrane, to whom the western shores of the new world owe their emancipation, and England the commerce of this quarter of the globe.

O'Higgins being desirous of lightening the burden of the administration which had been confided to him, nominated five individuals as consulting senators; but he unwarily granted to them such powers as made them independent of his own authority, and consequently rendered himself subservient to their determinations. This caused innumerable delays in the despatch of business, and prevented that secresy which is often indispensably necessary in the affairs of state; indeed these two defects of tardiness and publicity were often visible in Chile, for by such delays the enemy was informed of the designs of the government, and prepared to thwart their execution.

After the squadron had sailed from Valparaiso on the fifteenth of January, 1819, under the command of Lord Cochrane, the whole attention of the Chileans was engrossed with the expectation of decisive victories which were to be obtained over the Spaniards in Peru; they felt themselves secure under the protection of the fleet, and congratulated each other on having now transferred the theatre of war from their own country to that of their enemy; but a new scene of horror presented itself, sufficient not only to astonish the inhabitants of this part of the new world, but to call down on the head of its author universal execration. The following extract is from the ministerial gazette of Santiago of the fifth of March, 1819:—

"On the eighth of February last, between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, my orderly informed me that some of the Spanish officers confined here wished to see me. I ordered him to allow them to enter; I was at this time conversing with the surgeon Don Jose Maria Gomes and my secretary Don Jose Manuel Riveros. Colonel Morgado, Lieutenant-Colonel Morla, and Captain Carretero entered; Carretero sat himself down on my left hand, and after a few compliments, he drew from his breast a poignard, and struck at me with it, but I fortunately parried the blow. Carretero exclaimed at the same time, "these are your last moments, you villain, America is lost, but you shall not escape!" I drew back to defend myself against Colonel Morgado, who attempted a second blow, at which time General Ordoñes, Colonel Primo, and Lieutenant Burguillo entered; Gomes, the surgeon, immediately left the room, calling for assistance, and my secretary Riveros endeavoured to do the same, but was prevented by Burguillo. For a considerable time I had to defend myself against the six assassins, who began to desist on hearing the shouts of the people that surrounded the house, and were using every effort to enter it; I requested they would allow me to go out and quiet the populace, to which they consented; but the moment I opened the door leading from the patio to the plasa, the people rushed in, and put the whole of them to death, except Colonel Morgado, whom I killed, and thus the attack on my person was revenged.

"I immediately discovered that a plot had been formed by the whole of the officers confined here, to liberate themselves, and to pass over to the Guerilla parties under the command of Carrera and Alvear; however, the populace and the soldiery took the alarm, and several of the prisoners have paid with their lives the temerity of the plan they had laid. I immediately ordered Don Bernardo Monteagudo to form a summary process, which on the fourth day after receiving the order he informed me was finished, and I agreeing with his opinion, ordered the following individuals to be shot: captains Gonsales, Sierra and Arriola; ensigns Riesco, Vidaurazaga and Caballo; privates, Moya and Peres. The number of enemies who have ceased to exist is, one general, three colonels, two lieutenant-colonels, nine captains, five lieutenants, seven ensigns, one intendent of the army, one commissary, one sergeant and two privates." This was signed by Vicente Dupuy, lieutenant-governor of San Luis.

Many other statements of the transaction were circulated by the friends of each party. I received the following from a person entirely independent of both, and who had no motive for furnishing me with an exaggerated account:

"On the night of the seventh of February, 1818, when the Spanish field officers confined at San Luis were playing at cards with Don Vicente Dupuy, this lieutenant-governor happened to lose some money, and immediately seized what was lying before Colonel Ribero; Ribero expostulated, and notwithstanding the entreaties of his friends, at length struck Dupuy on the face, whose friends immediately seized some arms, which had been placed in the room, and the Spaniards also availed themselves of part of them. The uproar that was formed alarmed the guard, and the Spanish prisoners, fearful of the result, laid down their arms and begged Dupuy's pardon; it was granted, and he pledged his word and honour, that if they would allow him to go out, he would pacify the tumult made by the guard and populace; the Spaniards believed him; he went out; but instead of quieting the disturbance he spread the alarm, and called upon the people to revenge the insults he had received from the Godos (Goths, the name by which the Spaniards were known); Dupuy re-entered the house with some soldiers and other armed individuals, and General Ordoñes, Colonel Morgado, with six other officers were immediately butchered by them; Colonel Primo seeing that he could not escape, took up a pistol and shot himself; every Spaniard found in the streets was also massacred at the same time, and many were murdered in their houses; in all fifty Spanish officers were massacred, and only two escaped of the whole number, which at that time were at San Luis. For this memorable action Dupuy was created a colonel-major, and a member of the Legion of Merit of Chile.

"Dupuy was afterwards tried, by order of the government of Buenos Ayres, for several acts of assassination and cruelty which he had committed, and he defended himself by producing written orders from San Martin for the assassination of Raposo and Conde, as also for the murder of the unfortunate Rodrigues—these orders were very laconic—pasará por San Luis, tiene mi pasaporte, recibale bien, pero que no pase el monte al atro lado de San Luis. Prontitud, y silencio, asi, conviene para el bien de la Patria: will pass through San Luis, he has my passport, receive him politely, but allow him not to pass the wood on the other side of San Luis.—Promptitude and silence, this is necessary for the good of the country. However, Dupuy was exiled to La Rioja, whence he escaped, and followed San Martin to Peru. He also proved, that the order for the execution of the Carreras was a verbal one given by San Martin before he left Mendosa."

With respect to General San Martin, it may be observed, that as his character and actions have been so grossly mis-stated by other writers, it becomes necessary that some traits which have hitherto been withheld should be published, as well for the purpose of historical truth, as for that of dissipating the cloud which envelopes the conduct of several individuals who have lent their assistance to the cause of American liberty. The presence of Monteagudo at Mendoza for the execution of the Carreras, and of his being employed on a similar mission at San Luis, are rather strange coincidences; with the additional circumstance, that he was arrested in the house of an English merchant residing at Santiago, and in the supposed character of a prisoner, was sent by the order of San Martin to San Luis, where he was considered a prisoner until called upon to form the process, and draw up the sentence of death against the Spanish officers, which sentence appears to have decreed his own liberation, for he immediately recrossed the Cordillera, and remained with his patron.

In 1819 the Spaniards under the command of General Sanches evacuated Conception and Talcahuano, crossed the Biobio, and proceeded through the Araucanian territory to Valdivia. Sanches plundered the city of Conception of every valuable which he could take with him; the church plate and ornaments, and even many of the iron windows belonging to the houses; he also persuaded the nuns to leave their cloisters and to follow the fortunes of the army: they did, and were abandoned at Tucapel, and left among the indians.

A native of Chile named Benavides was left by Sanches at the town of Arauco, for the purpose of harassing the patriots at Conception, and several Spaniards of the most licentious characters chose to remain with him. Benavides was a native of the province of Conception, and served some time in the army of his country, but deserted to the royalists: at the battle of Maypu he was taken prisoner, and, among other delinquents, was ordered to be shot, in the dusk of the evening. However, Benavides was not killed, although his face was stained with the gunpowder, and having fallen, he made some motion, which the officer observing, cut him across the neck with his sword, and left him for dead; but even after this he recovered sufficient strength to crawl to a small house, where he was received and cured of his wounds. It is said that after his recovery he held a private conference with San Martin; I have been perfectly satisfied on this head, and I am certain that no such interview ever took place; indeed San Martin is not the man for such actions, nor would it have been prudent for any chief to have risked his existence with a desperado like Benavides. This monster fled from Santiago, joined General Sanches at Conception, and was left by him in the command of the small town of Arauco, where the most atrocious hostilities commenced that have ever disgraced even the war in America.

The attention of the government was employed in fitting out a second naval expedition to the coast of Peru, for the latest advices from Europe confirmed the former, which stated, that a naval force preparing in Cadiz, and composed of the two line of battle ships Alexander and San Telmo, the frigate Prueba, and some smaller vessels, was destined to the Pacific. The Chilean squadron was by no means competent to cope with such a force; besides which, two frigates, the Esmeralda and Vengansa, three brigs of war, and some small craft, as well as armed merchantmen at Callao, being added to what was expected from Spain, the force would have been overwhelming. It was therefore determined, that the squadron should attempt the destruction of the vessels in Callao, by burning them. Mr. Goldsack, who had come to Chile, was employed in making Congreve's rockets, of which an experiment was made at Valparaiso, and which answered the expectations of Lord Cochrane.

Every necessary arrangement being completed, the squadron, consisting of the O'Higgins, San Martin, Lautaro, Independencia, (which arrived on the 23rd May, 1819, having been built in the United States for the government of Chile) the Galvarino, Araucano, the Victoria, and Xeresana, two merchant vessels which were to be converted into fire-ships if necessary, left the port of Valparaiso on the twelfth of September, and having first touched at Coquimbo, arrived in the bay of Callao on the twenty-eighth. Lord Cochrane announced to the Viceroy Pesuela his intention of destroying the shipping in the bay, if possible; but he proposed to him terms on which he would desist; namely, that he would diminish the number of his vessels by sending part of them to leeward, and fight the Spanish force man to man, and gun to gun, if they would leave their anchorage, and this, said he, might be the means of preserving the property of individuals then in the bay. His excellency, however, declined the challenge, observing, that it was of a nature which had never been before heard of. The preparations for throwing rockets among the shipping immediately commenced, and on the night of the first of October several were thrown, but without effect: the firing from the batteries and shipping began at the moment the first rocket was thrown, which appeared as a signal to the enemy. From our anchorage we could distinguish the heated shot that flew through the air like meteors in miniature; however, little injury was sustained on either side: our loss consisted in Lieutenant Bayley of the Galvarino and one seaman. One of the rafts under the direction of Lieutenant-colonel Charles was protected by the Independencia; the second by two mortars under that of Major Miller, now (1824) General Miller, was protected by the Galvarino; and the third under Captain Hinde was defended by the Pueyrredon. By accident Captain Hinde lost his lighted match rope, and sent on board the brig for another, which the soldier dropped on stepping from the boat to the raft; it fell among the rockets, and an explosion took place, but no serious injury was experienced.

In the nights of the second, third, and fourth several more rockets were thrown, without particular success: some damage was done to the enemy's vessels, but on the fourth they were completely unrigged, which was undoubtedly a wise precaution. Several of the rockets exploded almost immediately after they were lighted, others at about half their range, others took a contrary direction to that in which they were projected, and it became evident that some mismanagement had occurred in their construction. On examining them, some were found to contain rags, sand, sawdust, manure, and similar materials, mixed with the composition. Colonel Charles, who had been commissioned to superintend the making of the rockets, was at first incapable of accounting for this insertion, but at length he recollected, that the government of Chile, with a view of saving the wages of hired persons, had employed the Spanish prisoners to fill the rockets, to which mistaken policy the whole squadron might have fallen a sacrifice; for had the vessels which were expected from Spain arrived, the Chilean forces would never have been able to cope with the Spanish, especially when joined by what was in the bay of Callao.

On the fifth a large vessel was observed to windward. It proved to be the Spanish frigate la Prueba, part of the expected squadron: advices which we received from shore informed us, that the Alejandro had returned to Spain, and the general belief was, that the San Telmo had been lost off Cape Horn, which was afterwards proved to be the case.

The fire-ship being ready was sent into the bay under the direction of Lieutenant Morgel; an unceasing cannonade was kept up both from the batteries and the shipping; the wind died away, and such was the state of the fire-ship, that Lieutenant Morgel was obliged to abandon her, and she exploded before she came to a position where she could injure the enemy. Owing to the news which we received the following day, the admiral determined not to send in the second fire-ship, but to proceed to the northward, to procure fresh provisions and water, as well as to obtain news respecting the Spanish frigate. The crew of the San Martin being unhealthy, his lordship ordered her, the Independencia and Araucano to Santa, and the Lautaro and Galvarino to Pisco, to procure spirits and wine, the royal stores being full at this place. A military force being stationed at Pisco, part of the marines were sent from the O'Higgins and Independencia, and the whole were placed under the orders of Colonel Charles. On the 14th of October we anchored in the harbour of Santa, and immediately began to drive the cattle from the farms belonging to the Spaniards down to the beach; but whatsoever was received at any time from the natives was always punctually paid for; this so enraged a Spaniard, Don Benito del Real, that he headed some of his own slaves and dependents, and came from Nepeña to Santa, where he surprised one of our sailors, and took him prisoner; he immediately returned, and reported by an express to the Viceroy Pesuela, that he had secured Lord Cochrane's brother in disguise. This news made its appearance in the Lima Gazette, and nothing could exceed the disappointment of the royalists in Lima, when they discovered that their noble prisoner was only a common sailor.