CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE RECONQUEST OF VENEZUELA.
1813.
By the surrender of Miranda Monteverde was left unopposed in Venezuela, and was made Captain-General, with the title of "Pacificator." He commenced his work of pacification by deeds from which the warmest partisans of Spain now turn away their eyes in horror. He violated the capitulation by imprisoning so many citizens that the gaols could not hold them; many died of hunger and suffocation in filthy dungeons. In the provinces his reign of terror assumed forms still more barbarous; the whole country seemed given up to hordes of banditti.
Colonel Cervéris, pro-consul of Cumaná, acted with such inhumanity as even disgusted the hard hearts of his superiors, who replaced him by Antoñanzas, and the Audiencia complained of his misconduct to the Home Government. All this was but the prelude to a war of extermination, which was provoked by the Royalists by murders, by mutilations and by torture.
The people, cowed in spirit by their sufferings, by their political calamities, and by the natural catastrophes which had befallen them, were only too anxious for rest on any terms under the domination of the colonial system. Clemency would have kept them peaceful, but the reign of terror drove superstitious fears from their minds, and changed weakness into strength. They fled from their persecutors into the woods and mountains; the leaders emigrated. Misery and despair created a desire for vengeance in the breasts of the most timid.
