The Emancipation of South America/Epilogue
EPILOGUE.
Posterity has pronounced judgment upon the two liberators of South America, upon San Martin and upon Bolivar.
They were both great men, the greatest after Washington that America has produced. Both fulfilled their mission. The one gave the first signal for a continental war, the other carried it to a glorious termination. Without San Martin at the South and Bolivar at the North it is impossible to conceive how the forces of the revolution could have worked together towards one end; neither is it possible to conceive how one could have completed his task without the other. Nevertheless, as politicians both went astray; neither reached the level of the public opinion of their day, and both failed to comprehend the instincts of the masses they led. They were military leaders only, and knew not how to direct the organic evolution of the peoples.
Time, which dissipates false and enhances true glory, has thrown much light upon matters which during their lifetime seemed obscure. Their outlines are now seen clearly against the horizon of history; they stand forth as symbols of the epoch which gave birth to a new republican world, the greatest political phenomenon of the nineteenth century.
The Argentine Republic and Chile, led by San Martin, were victorious in the South, and carried their arms from sea to sea, and from the temperate zone to the equator. There the entire forces of the revolution of South America joined hands; there the two liberators embraced, and separated for ever.
Columbia, led by Bolívar, gave victory to the revolution in the North; secured the independence of Peru and Bolivia, and guaranteed that of the other Republics of the Southern Continent. San Martin yielded the completion of the task to Bolívar, and by his abdication gave a high example of civic virtue. Bolívar crowned the work; the triumph belongs to both. Their fate was equal, both died in exile.
The fate of the emancipators of South America is tragical. The first revolutionists of La Paz and of Quito died on the scaffold. Miranda, the apostle of liberty, betrayed by his own people to his enemies, died alone and naked in a dungeon. Moreno, the priest of the Argentine revolution, and the teacher of the democratic idea, died at sea and found a grave in the ocean. Hidalgo, the first popular leader of Mexico, was executed as a criminal. Belgrano, the first champion of Argentine independence, who saved the revolution at Tucuman and Salta, died obscurely, while civil war raged round him. O'Higgins, the hero of Chile, died in exile, as Carrera his rival had done before him. Iturbide, the real liberator of Mexico, fell a victim to his own ambition. Montufar, the leader of the revolution in Quito, and his comrade Villavicencio, promoter of that of Cartagena, were strangled. The first Presidents of New Granada, Lozano and Torres, fell sacrifices to the restoration of colonial terrorism. Piar, who found the true base for the insurrection in Columbia, was shot by Bolívar, to whom he had shown the way to victory. Rivadavia, the civil genius of South America, who gave form to her representative institutions, died in exile. Sucre, the conqueror of Ayacucho, was murdered by his own men on a lonely road. Bolívar and San Martin died in banishment.
San Martin when he saw that his life's work was accomplished, left Mendoza for Buenos Ayres, where he was received with indifference and contempt. Neither country wife, nor home, was left to him, there was not even a place in the Argentine Army for the man who had led the armies of three Republics to victory. At the close of the year 1823 he took his orphan daughter in his arms and retired into exile. In Europe he found himself penniless. Five years later he returned to Buenos Ayres, seeking to end his days in his native country; the war with Brazil had just concluded.
On the 12th February, 1829, the anniversary of his triumphs at San Lorenzo and at Chacabuco, the ship which carried him anchored in the roadstead, and he was greeted with this contemptuous denunciation in the city press:—
"General San Martin has returned to his native country after five years' absence, but after knowing that peace was concluded with the Emperor of Brazil."
His answer had been given two thousand years before, by the mouth of Scipio, when he was insulted by his fellow countrymen on the anniversary of one of his great battles:—
"On such a day as this I saved Rome."
San Martin did not repeat this answer, he returned in silence into exile. His reply was given from the tomb many years later:—
"I desire that my heart may rest in Buenos Ayres."
Bolívar, after his last resignation was accepted, retired to the neighbourhood of Cartagena, and there heard of the death of Sucre, who had written to him two years previously, that unless they withdrew in time they would lose their heads. He was dying, but still indulged ambitious designs. He had prophesied anarchy and it came. He looked on complacently, and even encouraged it, but was greatly mortified by a notification from his friend Mosquera, that Venezuela demanded his banishment as a condition of peace.
"No, no, I will not go dishonoured," he exclaimed.
His partisans said that he alone could restore quietude, and they seemed right. Part of Venezuela and New Granada rose in arms to demand the re-establishment of his dictatorship. Quito and Guayaquil separated from Columbia, and in May, 1830, formed themselves into an independent State, under the name of The Republic of Ecuador.
At Bogotá the Government of Mosquera was upset, and civil war broke out. The friends of Bolívar, triumphant in the capital under Urdaneta, called upon him to put himself at their head, and to re-establish the Union of Columbia. He was weak enough to accept the invitation. Death saved him from the disgrace of becoming a leader in an internecine war between States to which he had given independence.
His sickness increasing, he retired to Santa Marta to breathe the fresh sea air. At the Quinta of San Pedro, seven miles from that city, he breathed his last. Seated in an arm-chair to receive extreme unction, his last words addressed to the Columbian people, which had been written down to his dictation, were read over to him:—
"My wishes are for the happiness of my country. If my death weaken the divisions, and help to consolidate union, I shall go to the tomb content."
He added in a hoarse voice:—
"Yes, to the tomb, to which I am sent by my fellow-citizens, but I forgive them. Oh! that I could take with me the consolation of knowing that they will keep united."
These were the last sensible words that he was heard to speak. Delirium supervened, and he died on the 17th December, 1831, at the age of forty-seven years four months and twenty-three days.
In October, 1832, San Martin, then resident in France, was attacked by cholera. He was living in great poverty on the proceeds of the sale of the house given him by the Argentine Congress after the victory of Maipó. He thought he was to die in a hospital. The Spanish banker Aguada, who had been a comrade of his in the Peninsular War, came to his assistance, saved his life, and relieved his distress. He gave him the small country-house of Grand Bourg, on the banks of the Seine, close to that old elm which, according to tradition, was planted by the soldiers of Henry IV., when besieging Paris. There, surrounded by trees and flowers which he tended himself, he passed many quiet years, complaining sometimes of the ingratitude of men, deploring the sad state of the peoples for whom he had done so much, but never despairing of their destiny. Once only did his old enthusiasm blaze out. He thought the independence and honour of his country were threatened by France and England in the questions of 1845— 1849, and came from his seclusion to show that America could not be conquered by Europe. Subsequently, in his will, he left his sword to the Argentine Dictator:—
"As a proof of the satisfaction with which I, as an Argentine, have seen the firmness of General Rozas in defending the honour of the Republic against the unjust pretensions of the foreigners who sought her humiliation."
As the end approached, his eyes were obscured by cataract. Reading, which was with him a passion, was forbidden him. He went to Boulogne to breathe the sea air, as Bolivar had done. On the 13th August, 1850, as he was standing on the beach, gazing with dim eyes over the Channel, he felt the first mortal symptom. He pressed his hand to his heart, and with a feeble smile said to his faithful daughter:—"C'est l'orage qui mene au port." On the 17th of the same month he died in her arms, at the age of seventy-two years and six months.
Chile and the Argentine Republic have raised statues to him. Peru owes him one, which she has decreed. The Argentine people, now united and consolidated as he desired, brought back his mortal remains to his own country, and in May, 1 880, laid them to rest in the Cathedral of Buenos Ayres, as those of the greatest man among them.
In San Martin and Bolivar were combined, in unequal proportions, the two elements which make history: the active element which produces immediate effect in deeds, and the passive element from which springs the future. The effect of their combination marks the present and influences posterity. The political work of Bolivar died with him; that of San Martin lives after him; South America has organized itself as foreshadowed by his genius, within the geographical lines he drew out with his sword.
The Argentine Republic instructed her General:-
"That no idea of oppression or conquest carried her arms beyond her territory; that the independence of the United Provinces was the purpose of the campaign."
Thus, when Chile was free, alliance was made with her on the basis of their mutual independence. Nations were emancipated and left to work out their destinies themselves. This was the work of San Martin as a liberator, and has produced an international equilibrium in South America, to which Europe has not yet attained,
A very different plan was followed by Bolívar. Under his leadership frontiers disappeared; Venezuela, New Granada, and Quito, became one giant nation, powerful for, war, but intrinsically weak from lack of geographical and social cohesion. Bolívar freed Peru from Spain, only to make her a parasite of Columbia, and of Upper Peru he made a feudal territory dependent upon himself. He tried to establish a monocratic empire in opposition to natural laws and to the tendencies of the Revolution; to bring back the colonial system in defiance of the democratic instincts of the people.
In Bolivia the two systems met face to face. The Argentine Republic, true to her principles, yielded her historic rights over that territory and recognised the independence of Upper Peru, but she barred the further progress of Bolívar, who sought to impose his own system on Paraguay. The ephemeral structure of the monocracy fell to pieces by its own weight, and the whole of the Continent became definitely organized on the geographical system represented by San Martin.
The glory of Bolívar is imperishable, and his action as a liberator was more decisive in his day, but none of his designs or of his ideals survived him. The work of San Martin remains an enduring monument to his memory.
The chief characteristic of Han Martin was his disinterestedness. He struggles, destroys, and rebuilds as he can; he commands, obeys, abdicates, and condemns himself to eternal silence and eternal exile. Seldom has the influence of one man had more decisive effect on the destinies of a people. The greatness of those who attain to immortality is not measured by their talents, but by the effect exercised by their memory upon the conscience of humanity, making it vibrate from generation to generation with a passion or with an idea. Of such was San Martin, whose influence still lives, not by reason of any genius he possessed, but by reason of his character.
San Martin conceived great plans, political and military, which appeared at first to be folly, but when believed in became facts. He organized disciplined armies, and infused into them his own spirit. He founded republics, not for his own aggrandisement, but that men might live in freedom. He made himself powerful, only that by this power he might accomplish his destined task; he abdicated and went into exile, not from egoism or from cowardice, but in homage to his own principles and for the sake of his cause. He is the first captain in the New World, the only one who has given lessons in modern strategy on a new theatre of war. With all his intellectual deficiencies and his political errors the Revolution of South America has produced no other who was his equal.
Faithful to the maxims of his life, he was that much which he ought to be, and rather than be that which he ought not to be he preferred to be nothing. For this his name shall be immortal.