CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CONVENTION OF RANCAGUA.
1820
The army of Cadiz, decimated by yellow fever, was for sanitary reasons dispersed. On the 1st January, 1820, Don Rafael del Riego, Colonel of the regiment of Asturias, then in quarters at the village Cabezas de San Juan, proclaimed in front of his regiment the constitution of the year XII., opening an era of liberty for his own country, and putting an end to an era of war in America. The revolution triumphed, the King was forced to swear the constitution, and, by common accord between the people and the government, a new policy was inaugurated in regard to the insurgent colonies, one that sought to solve peacefully the question which the appeal to arms had only made more complicated.
It was at this juncture that San Martin by his disobedience saved from destruction in the vortex of civil war the one army which could secure the emancipation of America. San Martin crossed the Andes carried in a litter, but it was not in mineral baths that he sought the cure for his rheumatism and neuralgia; that cure he sought and found in the active prosecution of the plan which lay at his heart.
Immediately on his arrival in Chile, he proceeded to concert measures with O'Higgins for the despatch of the expedition. He offered to bring over from Mendoza 2,000
