Bolivar: American Liberator (34 page)

BOLÍVAR AND PÁEZ SPENT A
few days together, discussing the campaign to take the revolution west. The most immediate problem was getting Bolívar’s army across the Apure River. He had come to San Juan de Payara with three thousand men, a third of them on horseback. They had no boats, no wood to build them, no admiral to ferry them across this tributary of the Orinoco, which, as far as they could see, was closely guarded by four Spanish ships. On February 6, when Bolívar and Páez were surveying the river, contemplating their stalemate, Páez suddenly turned to Bolívar and told him not to worry.
Start the march, he said animatedly.
He
would provide the boats. “But, hombre!” Bolívar cried in amazement, “Where from?” Páez replied that they were down on the river, right there, in full sight—the enemy ships lined up before them.

“And how do you propose to do that?” Bolívar asked.

“With my cavalry.”

Bolívar was irritated. “With a sea cavalry, you mean? Because one that operates on land can’t possibly perform such a miracle.”

Páez called down a company of fifty men, who rode nimbly to the riverbank, their saddles uncinched. When he yelled, “Bring me those boats!”
the men slid their saddles to the ground, clenched their lances between their teeth, then, with loud whoops, charged bareback into the river. The Spanish sentinels, brought to life, responded with a volley or two. But they were so panicked at the sight of that fierce horde plowing the water, startling the crocodiles, clambering onto their boats willy-nilly, that they dove into the river and made for the other shore. To Bolívar’s amazement—for he had
thought his men would be blown to bits—Páez’s riders succeeded in taking all four craft. After that, their armies had no trouble sweeping into the encampment. By the time they were through,
they had captured fourteen boats and a store of munitions.
“It may appear inconceivable,” a witness later reported, “that a body of cavalry with no other arms than their lances, and no other mode of conveyance across a rapid river than their horses, should attack and take a fleet of gun-boats amidst shoals of alligators; but there are many officers now in England who can testify to the truth of it.”

Bolívar eventually won the respect and affection of these lawless roughriders, although
one can easily imagine their initial suspicions. He was a gentleman from the city, a man who wore spotless white shirts
and European cologne, even when he was out on maneuvers. He was a product of precisely the social class they most detested. But he was also a product of Simón Rodríguez’s unconventional outdoor education, with all of its glorifications of the natural man. It didn’t take long for Páez’s horsemen to discover that their new leader was an excellent swimmer, skilled rider, tireless hiker, capable of competing with them in all the rough games they enjoyed.
On a dare, he had leapt into a lake with his hands tied behind his back, swearing that even with that liability he could outswim any challenger. Seeing his aide-de-camp spring out of his saddle over his horse’s head and land, incredibly, on two firm feet, he wanted to do the same, and actually managed it, although it took him several tries and a few painful misses.
“I confess it was crazy of me,” he later told a friend, “but in those days I didn’t want anyone to say they were more agile or able than I, or that there was anything I couldn’t do. . . . Don’t think that sort of thing isn’t useful in a leader.”

Eventually, Bolívar decided to waste no more time in San Fernando, and so
left Páez and his horsemen behind to lay siege and win what booty they could from the Spaniards. With four thousand men, he marched north to Calabozo, where General Morillo had just arrived with an army of 2,500. Bolívar’s opening strategy was masterful. On February 12, the Liberator gave Morillo the surprise of his life,
descending on his post at six in the morning and inflicting punishing losses. Once he saw he was at disadvantage, Morillo shut himself off in his headquarters, prompting Bolívar to send him a high-handed communiqué, inviting him to surrender. But this was no Admirable Campaign in which the mere mention of Bolívar’s name struck fear into Spanish hearts, and Morillo was no tin-hat general. The Spaniard managed to dodge Bolívar’s troops and flee into the night, on foot, with a tiny remnant of his army. Bolívar captured his arms and supplies, but he failed to pursue Morillo and force him to engage in battle. As a result, the patriot advantage was quickly lost. Frustrated and weary, Bolívar waited for Páez to bring fresh troops. His own were exhausted after the 550-mile march that had started in Angostura and lasted almost two months over that merciless terrain.
“Fly, fly, join me now!” Bolívar wrote to the Lion of the Apure, “so we can seize the day.”

But though the union of Páez and Bolívar was a military rock on
which the republic eventually would stand, Páez was still unused to taking orders. There followed
a string of loud arguments, miscommunications, and misunderstandings. Páez dragged his feet, insisted on making his own decisions. He complained that Bolívar didn’t understand the plains, didn’t rely enough on the wisdom of the locals. He knew, too, that his plainsmen and Indians were not keen to wander too far from their natural habitat; the big cities of Venezuela did not lure them in the least. Bolívar, on the other hand, had his own ideas. He had gone as far north as Calabozo and wanted to go farther still, toward the irresistible chimera of Caracas. It was here that his mistakes began.

In Calabozo, he had had Morillo in the palm of his hand, and might have taken him there and then; he hadn’t known that Morillo had limped to Calabozo in tatters. The army of pacification had suffered great
losses on the patriot island of Margarita, where Morillo—distracted from more urgent matters—had tried to square a long, bitter animosity with its governor, General Arismendi. Morillo’s monthlong struggle to recapture that fevered terrain had been fruitless and damaging, costing him the lives of too many. His army, which had started out as a robust force of three thousand,
had been reduced to seven hundred pathetic, diseased men. Hobbled by typhoid and yellow fever, the survivors had dragged themselves back to Caracas, where Morillo
asked to be relieved of his post. When Madrid refused the request, Morillo begged abjectly for reserves. The news of Bolívar’s and Páez’s alliance was a further blow to the Spanish general, but when he heard that the two had attacked and laid siege to Spain’s strategic river garrison at San Fernando, he hurried south to help. Had Bolívar been more assertive at Calabozo—had he prevented Morillo from slipping away, had he chased him while he was vulnerable—he might have secured his surrender. As it was, Morillo’s army had been given a chance to recover.

Bolívar and Páez spent much of the next two weeks bickering:
Páez wanted to continue to pressure the town of San Fernando, drive the Spaniards from Apure once and for all, and capture enough booty to remunerate his men. Bolívar wanted to
keep pushing toward the capital. On March 3, the day before San Fernando finally collapsed under the weight of Páez’s siege, Bolívar began a march toward Caracas. His approach caused great consternation in the city, which was
now largely royalist.
“In a few hours,” a witness recalled, “and like a bolt of electricity, the entire population of Caracas rushed to the shores of La Guaira, and men and women of every age clamored to escape.” But Bolívar never did make it to Caracas. Generals Morillo and Morales, with fortified battalions, set out to stop him. Bolívar and Morillo met at last on March 16 on the rolling plains of La Puerta, where the valleys of the Guarico River join the prairies, and where the patriots had fought Boves’s legions twice and lost. The battle began at dawn between Bolívar and Morales, and Bolívar might have won, for Morales’s army was half the size. But General Morillo brought fresh troops to the fray, leading the charge himself in order to animate his soldiers. Although Morillo was seriously wounded and had to be carried away in a stretcher, the royalists crushed Bolívar, pounding the patriots into retreat. The army of the Liberator was seriously crippled now: He had lost
more than a thousand infantrymen, a great deal of armaments, and all his papers.

One month later, on April 17, as Bolívar was trying to rebuild his cavalry in the farmlands of the Rincón de Toros,
a band of eight royalists came upon a lowly servant on Bolívar’s staff who happened to be wandering the fields alone. From that hapless captive, they extracted the password of the republican camp and the exact location where Bolívar slept. That night,
by the light of a waxing moon, they entered the camp, passing themselves off as patriot soldiers. Claiming to have important information, they asked to see the supreme chief. The acting chief of staff, Colonel Francisco de Paula Santander, quizzed the men until he was satisfied, then pointed to Bolívar’s hammock. “General!” Santander called out, and Bolívar spun around just as the assassins’ shots rang over his head. Bolívar was unhurt, but in the dark of night, and with so much confusion, the royalists managed to dart away, killing patriots as they went. The Spanish generals did not tarry in their next attack: they stormed the encampment before sunrise and sent the republicans running, undoing what little progress Bolívar had made.

Fortune itself seemed to have abandoned the army of the republic. Its greatest patron, Alexandre Pétion, had died of a raging case of typhoid fever in Port-au-Prince on March 29. In May, Páez was defeated on the plains of Cojedes. Bolívar was forced to retire from the front
lines, suffering from
a painful case of anthrax pustules he had probably contracted from infected horses or mules.
“My lesions are getting better,” he wrote one of his generals wistfully. “One has already burst and soon I’ll be able to get on my horse again, although I doubt I’ll be rid of these wounds in three, even four days. That said, if there’s the slightest need, I’m ready to march, even if they have to carry me in a litter.”

June brought news from the north that Bermúdez and Mariño had lost Cumaná and Cumanaco to the Spaniards. The two former comrades were blaming each other for their ruin. In the west, Henry C. Wilson,
an unruly English colonel attached to Páez’s cavalry, was mounting a campaign to persuade Páez to separate from Bolívar. No one at the time knew it, but
he had been cleverly planted—along with his unwitting British soldiers—by the Spanish ambassador in London. It seemed the only region Bolívar could truly claim was the heartland of Guayana. When he finally reached its capital, Angostura, the patriot outlook seemed to change, if only by virtue of his optimism. Despite his losses and afflictions, he was stimulated by his surroundings—filled with a newfound energy. Reestablishing himself in his headquarters, he began a flurry of correspondence, ranging from matters of state to matters of the heart.

He set about finding his mistress, Pepita Machado.
“They say the Machados have gone to Caracas,” he wrote his nephew Leandro Palacios. “If that is true, there’s nothing more to say; but if it’s not, I want to ask a favor of you. Mr. José Méndez Monsanto is holding 400 pesos for that family’s voyage, and I’ll pay whatever it costs to bring them. . . . Try to persuade the family to travel, and tell Pepita that if she wants me to be true to her, she’d better come here.”

Ensconced in the relative safety of Angostura, he devoted himself to the much neglected business of government. If the revolution was stalling, it was because Venezuelans needed to be rallied, allies won, soldiers recruited. Whenever Bolívar’s revolution seemed to be going badly, it generally heralded a great leap forward. He worked furiously now to gather more intelligence, produce propaganda, establish diplomacy, outfit his army: a larger plan was forming in his head. As Morillo would write one day,
Bolívar
was
the revolution. And he was far more dangerous in defeat than in victory.

THE CITY OF ANGOSTURA, WHOSE
name means “narrows,” sits on a slender strait of the Orinoco River, three hundred nautical miles from the sea. Situated between hills and a rolling current, it is an
outpost Humboldt had visited and described as a calm redoubt on a mighty river, flanked by a profusion of natural resources. It had been built fifty years before by the enterprising Spanish crown, which understood the economic importance of moving large shipments of goods from the bountiful interior. Farmlands fanned out along the river; ranchlands flourished immediately behind.
Orange, lemon, and fig trees perfumed the balmy air. It had once been a beautiful city. The glistening white houses were
ample, low, made of adobe, capped with red tile, handsomely elaborated with wooden windows.
Splendid mansions overlooked the river, some with capacious verandas; it was said that Bolívar had given the most splendid of all to his former lover Isabel Soublette as a wedding present. Anyone could see that Angostura had once been a jewel in its riverine setting, but it had fallen to ruin during Piar’s long siege and ensuing occupation.

Angostura’s houses had been vandalized to such an extent that on Bolívar’s return in early June he was moved to write,
“It pains me to see that all the houses on the perimeter of town have been ruined or destroyed in order to get at the wood; even those on the main plaza have suffered, particularly the windows and doors.” It seemed every city in Venezuela had borne similar depredations. Resources were scant, and whatever was needed was simply ripped from the structures at hand. The armies had come to rely on improvisation: clothes could be made from curtains, carts from doors, spear tips from iron grilles. On the plains, Páez had
amassed all the silver his men had captured and melted it down to make money. On the coast, patriot soldiers
sold coffee and cocoa in order to buy guns from the Antilles.

Bolívar threw himself into organizing this new capital of the republic. He wanted to establish an effective press, a working congress, diplomatic relations, a foreign legion. By June 27, he had begun publishing a newspaper. He called it
El Correo del Orinoco
, and it was to be the official voice of his future government: an organ in which he could
publish laws, decrees, dispatches from the war, news highlights from Europe and North America. Taking an intense personal interest in its publication, he set out a mission from the start:
“We are free, we write in a free country, and we seek to deceive no one.” It was meant to be a direct counterpoint to the
Gaceta de Caracas
, the mouthpiece of the Spanish crown, which had been publishing pro-royalist propaganda (on Miranda’s old printing machine) for almost a decade. Bolívar was passionate about the press, and rightly so. If Spanish kings had been adamant about
keeping Americans ignorant, he would be adamant about keeping them informed.
“The printing press is the infantry of the Army of Liberation!” his newspaper crowed.