affiliated with the "Gran Reunion Americana" established in London by Miranda. This society had in Cadiz alone in the year 1808 more than forty members, some of them grandees of Spain. Those of the first grade were pledged to work for the independence of America; those of the second swore "to recognise no government in America as legitimate unless it was elected by the free and spontaneous will of the people, and to work for the foundation of the republican system." Of this society San Martin became a member. An American by birth, a revolutionist by instinct, and a republican by conviction, he was, perchance, without knowing it, an adept of Miranda, and was destined to make the dream of the master a reality, when the bones of that master lay rotting on the mud banks upon which his eye might at this time often rest.
At the same time with San Martin three other members joined the lodge; Alvear, who was his confidant till he became jealous of his fame; José Miguel Carrera, who was to die cursing him; and, most modest of all, the naval lieutenant Matias Zapiola, who was afterwards his right arm on many a hard-fought field. San Martin was the least brilliant and the poorest of them all; his comrades recognised the superiority of his talents as a soldier, and said that he did the thinking for them all, but in the great revolutionary drama that all foresaw they assigned to him only the place of a stern warrior; Alvear and Carrera, the most arrogant and the most ambitious, were to be the heroes.
The general rising in Spain found San Martin in his place as an officer of light infantry under the command of Colonel Menacho. He was soon promoted, and his regiment joined the second division of the army of Andalucia, commanded by the Marquis of Coupigni. When the French under Dupont crossed the Sierra Morena, he was placed in charge of the line of the Guadalquivir. On the 28th June, 1808, he led a mixed column against the
