and a squadron of cavalry, in all 2,000 men, with orders to seek supplies of arms and ammunition at Cartagena. Colonel Castillo, who was Governor of this Province, prompted by his old jealousy of Bolívar, and listening to the counsels of Mariño and Montillo, who had taken refuge at Cartagena, refused these supplies. Bolívar established his head-quarters at the beautiful city of Mompox and remained inactive, passing his time in feasts and parades, and in intrigues against the local government, till his money was spent and he had lost half his troops by sickness and desertion.
Then, with only one gun, he laid siege to Cartagena, the strongest fortress in South America, till a powerful Spanish expedition landed on the coast and brought him to his senses. On the 8th May, 1815, he handed over the relics of his army to Castillo, and took leave of his men in a sentimental address, in which he expressed his sorrow at not being able to share in the triumphs which awaited them. He then withdrew to Jamaica, but ere he went fired a parting shot, declaring:—
"Cartagena prefers her own destruction to the duty of obedience to the Federal Government."
A shot which recoiled upon himself, for he also had preferred his own destruction to obedience, and had inoculated the Granadian Republic with a new germ of dissolution.
In Jamaica he published a memorial in his own defence, which rather strengthens the case against him. Soon after that, under the signature of "A South American," he published another memorial upon the Revolution in South America, and upon the future organization of the new republics, which is a refutation of the chimerical plan of a Continental monocracy which he attempted to establish later on. In this memorial he advocated the absolute independence of each separate colony, "but New Granada shall unite with Venezuela, and this nation shall be called Columbia." A prophetic vision!
The reinforcements applied for by Montalvo reached
