CHAPTER XVII.
CANCHA-RAYADA.
1817—1818.
The year 1817 had commenced with a victory and ended with a defeat, the year 1818 was to commence with a defeat to be followed by a victory which would decide the fate of Chile. From that moment all the forces of the revolution in South America would converge from the extremities towards the centre, shutting up the colonial power of Spain in its last stronghold, Peru, where the two great liberators of the South and the North, San Martin and Bolívar, would join hands.
In the epoch at which we have now arrived, Chile had as yet no definite form, but possessed all the elements of a vigorous nationality, patriotism, energy, and a pronounced tendency to independence; a democracy yet in embryo, combined with an aristocracy at once territorial and political. The instincts of the masses decided them for the cause of independence, while their political organization assumed the most elemental form, that of a people become an army, under the direction of a class and under a military dictatorship to which all were subject. The revolution and the leveling pressure of despotic rule, had destroyed provincialism and the social inequalities which stood in the way of national unity; common misfortunes and common efforts had created public spirit. Independence thus became a fact, and the establishment of a
