congress of Peru became the sovereign power of the state.
After a short period of government by a committee of three,
the congress elected Don José de la Riva Aguero to be first
president of Peru on the 28th of February 1823. He displayed
great energy in facing the difficulties of a turbulent situation,
but was unsuccessful. The aid of the Colombians under Simon
Bolivar was sought, and Aguero was deposed.
Bolivar arrived at Lima on the 1st of September 1823, and began to organize an army to attack the Spanish viceroy in the interior On the 6th of August 1824 the cavalry action of Junin was fought with the Spanish forces under the command of a French adventurer, General Canterac, near the shores of the lake of Chinchay-cocha. It was won by a gallant charge of the Peruvians under Captain Suarez at the critical moment. Soon afterwards Bolivar left the army to proceed to the coast, and the final battle of Ayacucho (Dec. 9, 1824) was fought by his second in command, General Sucre. The viceroy and all his officers were taken prisoners, and the Spanish power in Peru came to an end.
General Bolivar ruled Peru with dictatorial powers for more than a year, and though there were cabals against him there can be little doubt of his popularity. He was summoned back to Colombia when he had been absent for five years and, in spite of protests left the country on the 3rd of September 1826, followed by all the Colombian troops in March 1827.
General José de Lamar, who commanded the Peruvians at Ayacucho, was elected president of Peru on the 24th of August 1827, but was deposed, after waging a brief but disastrous war with Colombia on the 7th of June 1829. General Agustin Gamarra, who had been in the Spanish service, and was chief of the staff in the patriot Early Presidents. army at Ayacucho, was elected third president on the 31st of August 1829.
For fifteen years, from 1829 to 1844, Peru was painfully feeling her way to a right use of independence. The officers who fought at Ayacucho, and to whom the country felt natural gratitude, were all-powerful, and they had not learned to settle political differences in any other way than by the sword. Three men. during that penod of probation, won a prominent place in their country's history, Generals Agustin Gamarra, Felipe Santiago Salaverry, and Andres Santa Cruz. Gamarra, born at Cuzco in 1785, never accommodated himself to constitutional usages; but he attached to himself many loyal and devoted friends, and, with all his faults he loved his country and sought its welfare according to his lights. Salaverry was a very different character. Born at Lima in 1806, of pure Basque descent, he joined the patriot army before he was fifteen and displayed his audacious valour in many a. hard-fought battle. Feeling strongly the necessity that Peru had for repose, and the guilt of civil dissension, he wrote patriotic poems which became very popular. Yet he too seized the supreme power, and perished by an iniquitous sentence on the 18th of February 1836.[1] Andres Santa Cruz was an Indian statesman. His mother was a lady of high rank, of the family of the Incas, and he was very proud of his descent. Unsuccessful as a general in the field, he nevertheless possessed remarkable administrative ability and for nearly three years (1836–1839) realized his lifelong dream of a Peru-Bolivian confederation.[2] But the strong-handed intervention of Chile on the ground of assistance rendered to rebels, but really through jealousy of the confederation, ended in the defeat and overthrow of Santa Cruz, and the separation of Bolivia from Peru. But Peruvian history is not confined to the hostilities of these military rulers. Three constitutions were framed-in 1828, 1833 and 1839. Lawyers and orators are never wanting in Spanish-American states, and revolution succeeded revolution in one continuous struggle for the spoils of office. An exception must be made of the administration of General Ramon Castilla, who restored peace to Peru, and showed himself to be an honest and very capable ruler. He was elected constitutional president on the 20th of April 1845. Ten years of peace and increasing prosperity followed. In 1849 the regular payment of the interest of the public debt was commenced, steam communication was established along the Pacific coast, and a railroad was made from Lima to Callao. After a regular term of off1ce of six years of peace and moral and material progress Castilla resigned, and General José Echenique was elected president. But the proceedings of Echenique's government in connexion with the consolidation of the internal debt were disapproved by the nation, and, after hostilities which lasted for six months, Castilla returned to power in January 1855. From December 1856 to March 1858 he had to contend with and subdue a local insurrection headed by General Agostino Vivanco, but, with these two exceptions, there was peace in Peru from 1844 to 1879, a period of thirty-five years. Castilla retired at the end of his term of office in 1862, and died in 1868. On the 2nd of August 1868 Colonel Juan Balta was elected president. With the vast sum raised froni guano and nitrate deposits President Balta commenced the execution of public works, principally railroads on a gigantic scale. His period of office was signalized by the opening of an international exhibition at Lima. He was succeeded (Aug. 2, 1872) by Don Manuel Pardo (d. 1878), an honest and enlightened statesman, who did all in his power to retrieve the country from the financial difficulty into which it had been brought by the reckless policy of his predecessor, but the conditions were not capable of solution. He regulated the Chinese immigration to the coast-valleys, which from 1860 to 1872 had amounted to 58,606. He promoted education, and encouraged literature. On the 2nd of August 1876 General Mariano-Ignacio Prado was elected. (C. R. M.; X.)
On the 5th of April 1879 the republic of Chile declared war upon Peru, the alleged pretext being that Peru had made an offensive treaty, directed against Chile, with Bolivia, a country with which Chile had a dispute, but the publication of the text of this treaty made known the fact that it was strictly defensive and contained no just War with Chile, 1879–1882. cause of war. The true object of Chile was the conquest of the rich Peruvian province of Tarapaca, the appropriation of its valuable guano and nitrate deposits, and the spoliation of the rest of the Peruvian coast. The military events of the war, calamitous for Peru, are dealt with in the article Chile-Peruvian War. Suffice it here to note that, after the crushing defeat of the Peruvian forces at Arica (June 7, 1880) Senor Nicolas de Pierola assumed dictatorial powers, with General Andres Caceres as commander-in-chief, but the defeats at Chorrillos (Jan. 13, 1881) and Miraflores (Jan. 15) proved the Chilean superiority, and put Lima at their mercy though desultory fighting was maintained by the remnants of the Peruvian army in the interior, under direction of General Caceres. An attempt was made to constitute a government with Senor Calderon as president of the republic and General Caceres as first vice-president. The negotiations between this nominal administration and the Chilean authorities for a treaty of peace proved futile, the Chilean occupation of Lima and the Peruvian seaboard continuing uninterruptedly until 1883. In that year Admiral Lynch, who had replaced General Baquedano in command of the Chilean forces after the taking of Lima, sent an expedition against the Peruvians under General Caceres, and defeated the latter in the month of August. The Chilean authorities now began preparations for the evacuation of Lima, and to enable this measure to be effected a Peruvian administration was organized with the support of the Chileans. General Iglesias was nominated to the office of president of the republic, and in October 1883 a treaty of peace, known as the treaty of Ancon, between Peru and Chile was signed. The Chilean army of occupation was withdrawn from Lima on the 22nd of October 1883, but a strong force was maintained at Chorrillos until July 1884, when the terms of the treaty were finally approved. The
- ↑ The romance of his life has been admirably written by Manuel Bilbao (1st ed., Lima, 1853; 2nd ed., Buenos Aires, 1867).
- ↑ The succession of presidents and supreme chiefs of Peru from 1829 to 1844 was as follows: 1829–1833, Agustin Gamarra; 1834–1835, Luis José Orbegoso; 1835–1836, Felipe Santiago Salaverry, 1836–1839, Andres Santa Cruz; 1839–1841, Agustin Gamarra; 1841–1844, Manuel Menendez.
