The Emancipation of South America/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
THE WAR IN THE NORTH.
1814.
The Army of the North when reinforced, barely numbered 2,000 men, mostly recruits, among whom desertion was frequent. Disorganized, short of officers, and badly clothed, it was quite incapable of making head against the enemy. Jujui and Salta were held by the victorious Spaniards, who threatened the whole of the northern frontier. San Martin was more especially troubled by the lack of officers and the general want of discipline in the troops.
Pezuela, the Spanish general who had defeated Belgrano at Vilcapugio and Ayohuma, had established his headquarters at Tupiza on the frontier of Upper Peru, and ordered a levy of two to three thousand men in the Highlands of Lower Peru. He also formed two battalions out of contingents from the nearer valleys of Chichas and Ciuti, raising his army to about four thousand regulars. His vanguard under Ramirez, one thousand five hundred to two thousand strong, with eight guns, occupied Jujui, and his cavalry scoured the country as far as Salta. San Martin's outposts also reached almost to this city, and at this time the men of the city and of the country round about, rose en masse and formed a sort of vanguard to the Army of the North.
San Martin had at that time no regular plan, he neither knew his own resources nor the designs of the enemy, and confined his efforts to the reorganization of the army. After consultation with Colonel Dorrego, who commanded the advanced posts, he determined to confide these positions to the district militia and to concentrate his Regular forces in Tucuman. In carrying out this plan he received most valuable assistance from the devotion of the country people, who masked all his movements and prevented the enemy from discovering anything either of his intentions, or of his strength.
His first step was the construction of an entrenched camp to the north of the city, which put a stop to desertion, and he increased the number of his troops by recruiting. Here he stood on the defensive and limited his efforts to aiding the popular movements in Salta, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
In this entrenched camp, which is known to history as the citadel of Tucuman, he established a school of instruction, holding up the mounted grenadiers as a model for the rest of his force. Belgrano was a most docile pupil, but Dorrego, though his talents were highly esteemed by San Martin, was sent off to Santiago del Estero for insubordinate conduct. Belgrano soon afterwards left the army, giving as his last advice to his friends the maxim, "that war must be waged not with arms alone but with the force of public opinion," which maxim was at that time exemplified by facts, for the Royalist armies held only the ground on which they stood, and their movements were paralyzed by the popular insurrections all around them.
In the Province of Salta the revolutionary movement was most pronounced. The first popular manifestation in the city produced the organization of the civic militia. In 1810 the urban guard was raised by the voluntary enlistment of youths of respectable families. Then arose spontaneously among the peasants of the campaña, a corps of cavalry, with the instincts of the Cossacks, and the qualities of the Mamelukes, headed by a chieftain who made his name famous for deeds of prowess.Martin Guemes had first borne arms against the English in the reconquest of Buenos Ayres in 1806 and in the memorable defence of 1807. He with his men, formed the vanguard of the first Patriot army which invaded Upper Peru. His horsemen penetrated as far as Potosi, and covered every movement of the Patriots. At Suipacha he did good service. In 1811 he escorted the prisoners of the campaign to Buenos Ayres, where he was appointed to the general staff with the rank of captain. In 1813 he took part in the second siege of Monte Video, and was absent from his native province at the time of Belgrano's expedition, but when San Martin took command of the army he was at Santiago del Estero on his way back.
The insurrection of Salta in the face of the victorious enemy, was carried out with equal deliberation and courage. The population emigrated en masse, the peasants abandoned their huts and the towns were left desolate. In the capital even the tongues were taken from the church bells, lest the enemy should use them to celebrate their victories. Two old friars alone remained in each convent to administer the sacraments to the sick and aged who could not go away.
When the Royalist vanguard occupied the city of Salta a lieutenant, named Ezenarro, was detached with thirty men to occupy a district thirty-two miles to the south in the valley of Lerma. The first Sunday after his arrival, one of the men of the place after morning mass, said:—
- "We must rise against this canalla."
- "With what arms?" asked another.
- "With those we take from them," said yet another.
A proprietor, named Luis Burela, put himself at their head, surprised the guard, disarmed Ezenarro and his men, and sent them prisoners to Tucuman. Then, with the arms they had captured, they marched to within ten miles of Salta, where they were met by a company of Spanish troops, whom they charged at once, and completely routed, taking most of the men with their leader prisoners, and sending them also to Tucuman. Another proprietor, named Pedro Zabala, followed the example of Burela, armed his peons and some volunteers and took the field.
So began the resistance to the enemy, in which the whole people speedily joined, so that Salta became a bulwark to the United Provinces impregnable to Royalist arms, solely by the force of public opinion roused to action.
The Province of Salta, which at that time formed a part of the jurisdiction of Jujui, enters within the first spurs of the Andes which branch from the second of the two ranges which enclose Upper Peru, and has the same physical characteristics, plains, mountains, and an intermediate tropical zone. Its possession was thus of great importance to the invaders, as it was the gate to Argentine territory. The occupation of Jujui opened the road to the plains and valleys of Salta, but even the occupation of Salta itself did not secure their position. The agricultural lands, from which alone supplies could be drawn, lay in valleys to the south of the capital, and it was this part of the Province the guerillas undertook to defend. The nature of the country eminently adapted it to guerilla warfare. The inhabitants were a hard-working race of men, strong, active, and inured to hardships, individually brave, and with a natural instinct for the class of warfare they waged. They were horsemen, accustomed to go either up or down hill at full speed, whose ordinary equipment enabled them to gallop unharmed through thorny brushwood. They were good marksmen, either from the tree-tops or from horseback, or on foot from behind their horses if need were. San Martin made no mistake when he entrusted to them the task of keeping the Royalists at bay while he was engaged in the reorganization of the regular army at Tucuman. He had seen in Spain what might be accomplished by this class of irregular troops.
Pezuela, deceived by false despatches which San Martin caused to fall into his hands, believed that these raw levies were the vanguard of the Patriot army advancing on Salta, and in consequence lost much valuable time waiting for reinforcements.
In March the Royalist vanguard advanced from Salta into the valley of Lerma, in search of supplies, under the command of Colonel Saturnino Castro, a native of Salta, who had the repute of being the first cavalry officer of the Royalist army of Peru, and whose valour had decided the day at Vilcapugio. The guerillas, who became known to history as the Gauchos of Salta, greatly harassed the progress of the expedition, swarming in the woods along the line of march, cutting off stragglers, driving in small detachments, and firing upon the main body from any convenient shelter.
On the 24th, videttes on the Guachipas River at the end of the valley, descried fifty-six of the enemy, under Captain Fajardo, approaching them. Captain Saravia collected thirty men armed with short muskets, and a group of peasantry with clubs and pikes, charged upon them and completely routed them, killing eleven including the captain, and making twenty-seven prisoners, while he had only three men killed and one wounded.
Meantime Güemes had entered the Sierra to the east of Salta, and on the 9th and 18th, two parties of his Gauchos surprised two detachments of the enemy. On the 29th he came so close to the city that Castro sallied out against him for about a league with eighty men, but was completely routed, with the loss of half his force.
For this feat Güemes was named Commandant-General of the Vanguard, and on the recommendation of San Martin, was raised to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
Güemes then occupied the approaches to the city and harassed the garrison by daily attacks upon the suburbs. Being reinforced from Jujui, the Royalists then organised two expeditions of 500 men each. One, composed of a battalion of infantry and a squadron of light horse under Colonel Alvarez, marched early in June into the valley of Lerma. At the town of Sumalao, Alvarez found the vanguard of the Guachipas awaiting him. The Patriot outposts were driven in, but the main body sheltered by trees and broken ground, poured so heavy a fire upon him that he was forced to return to the city, with many killed and wounded, and with the loss of all the supplies he had seized.
The other column, also composed of infantry and cavalry, was under the command of Colonel Marquiegui, who like Castro was a native of Salta, and of great repute for skill and knowledge of the country. This column marched to the east and was met by Güemes in person, who made so stubborn a resistance that it was also forced back to the city, and the siege was re-established.
Pezuela had drawn in his reserves and advanced to Jujui. Thence he sent orders to Colonel Marquiegui to march with one hundred infantry and one hundred and fifty horse, by the north-eastern frontiers of Tucuman and Santiago del Estero, to the rear of the advanced guard of the Patriots on the river Pasaje. Marquiegui carried out his instructions with great skill, captured several forts, and learned from prisoners that the army of San Martin consisted only of three thousand recruits, and that the vanguard which gave them so much trouble, was nothing but a swarm of undisciplined Gauchos; but he also learned that the object of the campaign, which was the relief of Monte Video, was now impossible, that city having already fallen.
When news of this expedition reached Tucuman, Güemes was immediately reinforced by one hundred infantry and one hundred mounted grenadiers, and Marquiegui retreated, marching one hundred leagues in a semicircle, but was prevented from carrying off either horses or cattle.
This was the last attempt at invasion; five thousand men were not enough to capture Tucuman, much less to conquer the country. Pezuela withdrew his troops beyond the frontier, and sent off a strong detachment to Cuzco to crush an insurrection which had broken out in that city.The object of the Royalist invasion was, by a powerful diversion, to compel the Argentine Government to withdraw their army from the Banda Oriental for the protection of the northern provinces, but meantime that government had armed and equipped a small naval force, which, under the command of an Irishman named Brown, had, on the 16th May, defeated and almost destroyed the Spanish squadron stationed at Monte Video, which city soon after surrendered to the Argentine army then besieging it under the command of Alvear.
Before the conclusion of these events, the General of the Army of the North had disappeared from the theatre of war. San Martin, after careful study of the question, had clearly discerned that the road by Upper Peru was not the true strategical line of the South American revolution. His idea was to carry the war to the West, to pass the Andes, to occupy Chile, to secure the dominion of the Pacific, and to attack Lower Peru on the flank, continuing military operations to the North merely as a subordinate detail of the main design.
This plan, the merits of which were not appreciated by his contemporaries until it was crowned with victory, is looked upon by posterity as not merely the most simple, but as the only possible plan which could give the desired result. It was then held to be folly, whilst in reality the folly lay in persevering in the attempt to reach Lima with insufficient means and by an impracticable route. Knowing that it would be looked upon as folly, San Martin kept his idea to himself, as his secret, as he himself styled it in confidential intercourse, waiting to disclose it for the day when he should hold in his hand the thunderbolt which was to shatter the power of Spain in America. Three months after taking command of the Army of the North, he wrote to his friend, Don Nicolas Rodriguez Peña:—
"Don't flatter yourself with thinking of what I can do here. I shall do nothing, and nothing here pleases me. Our country can do nothing more here than act on the defensive, for which war the brave Gauchos of Salta suffice, if aided by two squadrons of regular troops. To think otherwise is to throw men and money into an abyss. I have already told you my secret. A small, well-disciplined army in Mendoza, to cross to Chile and finish off the Goths there, aiding a government of trusty friends to put an end to the anarchy which reigns. Allying our forces, we shall then go by sea to Lima. This is our course, and no other."
This idea, which was a secret in 1814, and which would, if divulged, have caused its author to be looked upon as a lunatic, is the idea which has given San Martin his place in the history of the world, and which finally changed the destinies of South America.
With such plans in his head, San Martin could not rest content with the command of the Army of the North. Further, his rival, Alvear, after crowning himself with the laurels of victory at Monte Video, aspired also to those of Peru. Doubtless, with his enterprising character and sparks of genius, he would have broken the routine of the previous campaigns, and San Martin was willing to yield his post to him, asking for himself, as for a resting-place, the government of the obscure province of Mendoza, by which he threw dust in the eyes, not only of the enemies of America but also in those of his own friends, imitating the tactics of William the Silent, to whose character his own bears some analogy.
In addition he was, towards the end of April, attacked by an affection of the lungs, which obliged him to leave Don Francisco Fernandez de la Cruz in command of the army, and to retire, by the advice of his physician, to the Sierra of Cordoba, in search of a drier climate.
On the 10th August, 1814, the ex-General of the Army of the North was appointed Governor of Cuyo. From that moment he lived only for his idea. Mendoza was the starting-point in the realization of his plans; it was the soil whence sprang the legions which were to liberate America.