Bolivar: American Liberator (41 page)

Bolívar was hardly living the sovereign’s life. His
routine was Spartan, his meals frugal. In the mornings, he rose at dawn, tended to his
horse, Palomo, and read for several hours before breakfast (largely philosophers, especially Voltaire and Montesquieu). He took his first repast of the day with his war minister, his chief of staff, and his secretary, after which he managed the army’s affairs, issued edicts, wrote articles for the
Gaceta
, handled diplomatic questions, and fretted over a whirlwind of correspondence. He managed all of this in brisk tempo, dictating to several secretaries, erupting with aggravation if they slowed him in any way or made errors. In the evenings, immediately after dinner, he rode to clear his mind. At night, he conferred with his officers until nine o’clock, when he retired to his hammock and read for another two hours.

Military efficiency was his obsession. He insisted that citizens of New Granada show their patriotism by supporting the army with cold cash—by raising, at the minimum,
30,000 pesos a month to pay salaries and commission uniforms. He instructed Santander to
“squeeze” the provinces for the money. Along with his determination to build an invincible fighting force, the possibilities of a favorable armistice were growing daily. The uprising in Spain and the restoration of the constitution of Cádiz had effectively halted Morillo’s ability to prosecute the war. In
an excited letter to Soublette on June 19, 1820, Bolívar reported having intercepted an official communiqué from Madrid that confirmed King Ferdinand’s historic reversal: Spain would send no further expeditions to South America. The soldiers in the port of Cádiz, by their very rebelliousness, had rescued American independence. In yet another letter, Bolívar wrote an English friend exultantly,
“Ten thousand enemies were being shipped out against us, and now those ten thousand are our best friends!!!”

Indeed, a little more than two weeks later, on July 6, Bolívar received a message from Morillo’s right hand, General Miguel de La Torre, requesting a cessation of hostilities. Morillo had not known where to find Bolívar, La Torre said, and had
written to him at numerous addresses. In the process, the captain-general had sent an envoy to Páez and another to the congress of Angostura, proposing that the barbaric war had gone on too long. His earnest efforts to reach Bolívar made an impression on the Liberator: this was either an elaborate trap or the beginning of the end of the revolution. Bolívar responded to La Torre the next day.
“If the object of your mission is anything less than the recognition of the Republic of Colombia, don’t expect me to listen.” But “if Spain intends to treat Colombia as an independent, free, and sovereign state, we can go forward in peace and friendship.”

A period of negotiation followed, in which Bolívar made it readily understood that Greater Colombia—the new amalgamation of northern Latin America—would never again bow to a king. The colonial era was emphatically over. Morillo, seeking nothing so much as a well-defined door and a graceful way to pass through it, was all too accommodating. He had reasons to be. When he had arrived in Venezuela in 1815,
Morillo had married a Cádiz woman, with whom he was deeply in love. But she had remained in Spain; the wedding had been by proxy. In all his five years as a married man, he had yet to join her and consummate the marriage. But Morillo had also been seriously injured in the Battle of La Puerta two years before and
had never recovered completely from the lance wound that had almost killed him. Certainly, Morillo could see that there was no future for him in the king’s pacification campaign, but there were other reasons to go home.

After an exchange of letters between the two leaders in August and September, Bolívar suggested that the most appropriate site for a conference would be in San Fernando de Apure, where he intended to establish headquarters. Morillo wasted no time in giving Bolívar his consent. Cautious about giving away his movements, wary of allowing the enemy to see how weak his army had become, Bolívar delayed the meeting several times. In October, he made a number of quick raids on the border provinces, if only to show Morillo that Greater Colombia needed an armistice less than Spain did, but all the while he maintained
a remarkably cordial correspondence with Morillo, in which both generals carefully explained every move. The conference to negotiate an armistice finally came to pass in November in the picturesque mountain town of Trujillo, where Bolívar had decreed war to the death seven years before. General Sucre and two colonels were delegated to meet with the royalist commissioners and work out the details of the armistice. On November 21, the patriots and Spaniards met for the first time.

By November 25, two treaties were ratified. The first called for a six-month armistice; the second recognized Bolívar as president of the
republic and set out the terms for an exchange of prisoners. Peace was the ultimate objective. The meetings were cordial, though formal, and Sucre distinguished himself as a coolheaded negotiator. He managed to achieve everything Bolívar wanted. Once the work was complete, Morillo expressed his eagerness to meet the Liberator.
A conference was arranged for the morning of November 27 in the scruffy little village of Santa Ana, which lay on a mist-bound limestone ridge between two valleys, some 250 miles southwest of Caracas. Since Santa Ana was well inside Spanish territory, Bolívar took every precaution to put General Urdaneta in command of the army before he, Sucre, and a handful of others set out to see Morillo face-to-face.

So it was that the archenemies of one of the bloodiest episodes of South American history met on a muddy road, far from the medullas of political power. They approached one another from opposite directions, their paths as contrary as their essential natures: Bolívar had come from a long line of aristocrats and wore his pedigree lightly; Morillo, born into a family of peasants, had become Count of Cartagena in the course of an illustrious career. Bolívar was confident, spontaneous, as only the wellborn can be; Morillo was shrewd and deliberate, having scrapped for every honor he had been awarded. Into that historic moment,
Bolívar rode a strong mule, was accompanied by a handful of men, and was dressed in the garb of a humble soldier. Morillo, on the other hand, set out on a magnificent horse, was clad in a uniform bespangled with decorations, and accompanied by fifty of his best officers and a full regiment of hussars. As they rode over the bare hills in the damp chill of a November morning, they might have glimpsed the sparkling expanse of Lake Maracaibo in the distance. If they had glanced south, they would have seen the splendid peaks of the cordillera. Weary of war, anxious about their own capacities to execute it, they came to that crossroad with high and not dissimilar hopes.

Morillo was first to arrive, and when he appeared at the appointed place he was soon met by Bolívar’s aide Daniel O’Leary, who announced that the Liberator was on his way. As they perched on their horses, peering expectantly down the road, the general asked what kind of escort would accompany the president of the republic. O’Leary replied that Bolívar’s retinue amounted to no more than twelve patriot officers
and the three Spanish commissioners who had negotiated the armistice in Trujillo. Morillo was taken aback. “Well,” he finally managed,
“I thought my escort too small for this venture, but I see that my old enemy has outdone me in chivalry. I’ll order my hussars to withdraw.” He did so immediately. The Liberator’s modest party soon appeared on the crest of the hill that overlooked Santa Ana, and Morillo moved forward to meet it. As the two neared one another, General Morillo wanted to know which of the horsemen was Bolívar. When O’Leary pointed him out, the Spaniard exclaimed,
“What? That little man in the blue jacket and sergeant’s cap; the one riding the mule?” But no sooner had he said it than Bolívar was before him. The generals dismounted and embraced each other heartily. Their words were cordial, warm—filled with the kind of respect and admiration only the most serious rivals can have for one another. They headed to the private house Morillo had commandeered for the occasion, and sat down with their officers for a celebratory lunch.

For all the enmity that had passed between them, the two leaders were instantly companionable, with much to discuss. Morillo had fought in the Battle of Trafalgar only days after Bolívar had trekked to Rome as a young man and made his spirited vow on the heights of Monte Sacro. Morillo had served under the Duke of Wellington, the brother of Richard Wellesley, whose help Bolívar had solicited when the revolution was but an idea, with much blood yet to be shed. There were innumerable toasts made to the end of hostilities and the future of Spanish American understanding.
“To the victories of Boyacá!” one Spanish colonel sang out. “To Colombians and Spaniards,” General La Torre added, “may they march side by side all the way to hell against the despots and the tyrants!” The men spoke of sacrifices, of heroism, of the past ten years of their lives, which had been steeped in the dark business of war. That very afternoon, Morillo proposed the building of a pyramid to commemorate their meeting, and Bolívar readily agreed to it. Together, they proceeded to the spot of their first embrace and called upon their officers to roll out a first stone. More toasts were had; more libations consumed. “I drink,” said Bolívar, “to the heroism of the warriors of both armies . . . to their loyalty, sacrifice, and courage. . . . Eternal hatred upon those who lust for blood and who shed it unjustly!”

The lateness of the hour finally put an end to the exchange, but the generals decided that even nightfall would not separate them. They hung their hammocks in the same room, said their good nights, and slept soundly, compensating perhaps—as one chronicler put it—for the many sleepless nights they had caused one another. The following morning, Morillo accompanied Bolívar to the large rock that marked their peace, whereupon they repeated their promises, embraced once more, and parted, never to see each other again. On December 17, less than a month later, General Morillo boarded a ship in La Guaira and set sail for Spain. General La Torre was left in command of the king’s army with a single recommendation from Morillo:
“Defend the fortress of Puerto Cabello at all costs!” It turned out to be good advice, as the Spaniards would need that port in the harried evacuation of its expeditionary forces.

Much later, after Bolívar’s enemies criticized him severely for being so conciliatory with Morillo, a general whom
even Spain had had to censure for his bloodcurdling cruelties, Bolívar had this to say:

During the entire course of my public life, I have never shown more political acuity or diplomatic cunning than in that crucial hour; and I can say without an ounce of vanity that I think I bested General Morillo then as I bested him in almost every one of my military operations. . . . The armistice of six months fooled Morillo into returning to Spain and handing over his command to General La Torre, who was less skilled, less energetic, and less a consummate soldier than the Count of Cartagena. Let the dolts and my enemies say what they will. . . . Never was a diplomatic game played more successfully than that of the day and night of November 27 in the village of Santa Ana.

AS THE WAR LIMPED INTO
its tenth year and rumors of an armistice began to spread throughout the English-speaking world, the eyes of foreign governments turned once again to the struggle for Latin American independence. By now, the English were well acquainted with Bolívar’s revolution.
Thousands of mercenaries had been recruited to serve the Liberator’s cause; some, who had been promised gifts of land in return for their services, had gone so far as to bring their families. Young brigadiers
with high hopes had marched through the tropical wilds
singing “Ye Gentlemen of England”; few of them would make it home.

Bolívar had been a keen advocate of British recruitment. Three of his aides-de-camp were British. Foreign veterans had become as valuable as gold to republican generals, representing the kind of rigor and training that raw, untested soldiers could emulate. Bolívar’s claim that
the true Liberator had been Luis López Méndez, his recruiting agent in London, was a blatant exaggeration, to be sure—a generous, diplomatic flourish—but not without a germ of truth.

More accurately, the British mercenary experience in Spanish America, despite its triumphs, was marred with bitter disappointment. As
one young English colonel put it succinctly: there had been much to regret. Young men were lured by promises that Venezuela was a richly hung garden, that its partisans of liberty were steadfast and united. What they joined instead was poverty, starvation, and a race war
“as black and barbarous as the slave trade.” Weakened by typhus, which they had brought with them from Britain, they were especially vulnerable; most died of heat exhaustion, rampant infection, or simply too much rum. Stories began to filter home that the few who had survived were now as barefoot as the locals; that Bolívar was little more than a swindler and bombast; that the only way to survive his revolution had been to sack churches, rob reliquaries. In London’s halls of power, however, the view was very different: with Spain in retreat and Bolívar’s star rising, a lucrative trade loomed on the horizon. There was money to be made.

In the rapidly expanding United States, a similar awareness was growing. Champions of commerce advocated the recognition of the fledgling South American republics if only because they knew profits were bound to follow. Men of ideals believed that the American nation, itself born of rebellion, should stand behind any impulse to freedom. Some, like Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, however, were slow to see what, if any, advantages diplomatic recognition might bring. Not long before, he had stated with all candor:

Venezuela, though it has emancipated all its slaves, has been constantly alternating between an absolute military government, a capitulation to Spanish authority, and guerrillas black and white, of
which every petty chief has acted for purposes of war and rapine as an independent sovereign. There is finally in South America neither unity of cause nor unity of effort, as there was in our Revolution.