Bolivar: American Liberator (42 page)

He was quite right, of course; even Bolívar had warned the congress of Angostura that the world would never recognize the new republic until it spoke with one voice.
“Unity, unity, unity,” he had urged. But by 1820, when two large republics—with all their attendant differences—had joined Greater Colombia to stand united behind Bolívar, John Quincy Adams still had not changed his mind.
He admitted that he distrusted everything the South Americans said.
“There is no community of interests or of principles between North and South America,” he stated flatly. And that was where diplomatic relations would remain for three years to come.

Indeed, there were reasons for Adams’s reticence. There were the ongoing delicate negotiations between Washington and Madrid about Florida, which Spain owned and the United States wanted. There was the thorny fact that
the slave trade was booming in the United States and few legislators in Washington wanted to hear about black revolutionaries or unbridled race mixing. There was also the fact that much of the information Adams was getting about Bolívar was downright negative. In 1818 and 1819, the U.S. government had sent two delegations to Venezuela to meet Bolívar and negotiate the return of American ships that had been seized by privateers in service of Bolívar’s revolution. The Baltimore journalist Baptis Irvine had gone in 1818; the naval hero Captain Oliver Hazard Perry followed in 1819. Neither of their experiences had boded well for diplomatic relations. Commodore
Perry had made the harsh three-hundred-mile voyage up the Orinoco at the height of the mosquito season only to find that President Bolívar was not in Angostura, but out on a military maneuver. As it happened,
Perry had landed on the very day Bolívar had triumphed in Pantano de Vargas in New Granada, following his harrowing march over the Andes. After a fruitless exchange with the long-winded Zea, Perry had had no option but to return, whereupon he began to display
sure signs of yellow fever: By mid-voyage to British Trinidad, he was producing a terrifying black vomit. Before he could board his own ship, he was dead.

By then, Baptis Irvine had delivered blistering reports about Bolívar to John Quincy Adams. The South American Liberator, Irvine wrote, was
“a charlatan general and mountebank statesman.” In numerous discussions with Bolívar, the irascible Irvine had lost his temper, provoking stern responses from the Liberator. It was no surprise that his accounts would be disapproving.
“He affects the language of Napoleon,” the journalist wrote huffily, which was to say that Bolívar was mimicking a leader any upstanding American should despise.
“Without a ray of true political knowledge or a hint of morality, he apes the style and claims the character of Washington. However . . . he can surpass his present competitors by his knack of composition and fluency of speech.”

That penchant for oratorical flourish would be on rich display one evening at
a dinner given in Irvine’s honor. The Liberator, carried away by his own eloquence, reached such heights of exhilaration that he leapt onto the table, and, with no regard to the shivering flowers and crystal, strode up and down the wooden length to make his point.
“Thus,” he cried, “as I cross this table from one end to the other, I shall march from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Panama to Cape Horn, until every last Spaniard is expelled!”

There was no question that Irvine’s portrait of Bolívar was unrelievedly negative. But there was strong support for Bolívar’s revolution from a fervently egalitarian American public at large, as well as from a certain
Samuel D. Forsyth, who, hoping to be appointed official agent to South America, had visited with President Monroe and Adams, expressed his high opinion of Greater Colombia, and called the Liberator a great man. Forsyth, who had served as interpreter for Perry in his travels, had not always thought so well of Bolívar, and so his change of heart made for a good impression. Certainly the most ardent supporter of the Spanish American rebels, however, was Henry Clay, the flamboyant congressman from Kentucky, who electrified his fellow members of the House of Representatives by crying out that the revolution’s potential beneficiaries were no less than
“eighteen million, struggling to be free!”
Clay argued passionately for more commercial involvement, claiming that South America—with its rich metal resources and hunger
for North American goods—represented a vast market with endless opportunities. Clay’s exhortations were resonant tributes to capitalism and the democratic spirit, but they were also expressions of pique against Adams, for, as everyone knew, President Monroe had passed over Clay to make Adams secretary of state. But no one could deny it: the golden-tongued orator from Kentucky was a tireless enthusiast for South American liberty. On February 10, 1821,
Clay moved that the House of Representatives join the American people in their support for the distant revolution. When the Adams-Onís Treaty was proclaimed twelve days later and the United States purchased Florida for $5 million, the congressman finally had his way. The delicate negotiations with Spain were over; official Washington could turn its attention to its southern neighbors. With a firm foot in Florida, the United States was now only a small sea away from Bolívar’s war.

THE ARMISTICE WITH SPAIN LASTED
a scant five months. But it was time enough for republican forces to strengthen their numbers, discipline the troops, acquire munitions. Well fed, reasonably well clothed, and supremely confident in Bolívar, they had a marked advantage over the Spaniards now. The royalists, in contrast, were exhausted. With no relief from Spain in sight, they seemed to pass into perpetual limbo. Soldiers who had been told they would
fight for a maximum of three years had seen three years come and go. Their pay was late; their food was scarce; many were beset with fevers. Mainly, they wondered why they were fighting a war that Spain itself had rejected. A corrosive ill-humor invaded every rank. Even the generals in charge—La Torre and Morales—were in constant disagreement.

In early 1821, even as Bolívar sent two envoys to Madrid to discuss terms of peace with the Spaniards, he began to prepare for the next stage of the revolution.
He was haunted by the fear that his negotiators would lose their nerve and capitulate to Spanish demands. He had given them permission to trade Quito or even the Isthmus of Panama—lesser colonies—in return for Colombia’s independence, but under no circumstances were they to agree to any constitutional agreements with Spain, or to subjugation under a prince or potentate from any reigning family
in Europe.
“Colombia will be independent, sovereign, and free from all foreign domination, or it will cease to exist,” he insisted. Clearly, he had little faith that the dialogue in Madrid would amount to anything, and he was right. Although his correspondence shows that he dearly desired peace, among the first documents he dictated after his friendly meeting with General Morillo was
an agenda for renewed war.

It was at about this time that Bolívar learned that the coveted port city of Guayaquil—in what is now Ecuador—had declared independence. The people of Guayaquil, hearing that San Martín’s army had landed in Pisco, just south of Lima, expected the Argentine general to sweep north now to liberate them, and they stormed the royalist halls of government in anticipation. Bolívar longed to go to Guayaquil himself to secure the region for Greater Colombia. It was a strategic port, potentially vital to the republic, and he did not want to see it go to San Martín so easily. But Bolívar was also aware that his priority needed to be Caracas, which still languished under Spanish rule. He sent General Sucre to Guayaquil instead.

It was a good decision. By April, the armistice was over. A rebellion had erupted in the Spanish stronghold of Maracaibo, fomented by one of Bolívar’s generals, Rafael Urdaneta. It was a clear provocation, and Bolívar had neither sanctioned nor anticipated it. He rushed now to explain to the Spaniards that an unexpected rebellion could hardly count as the willful rupture of a military treaty, but General La Torre was adamant. He demanded the city’s return. He informed Bolívar that—failing Maracaibo’s restoration to the Spanish crown—the armistice would end on April 28.

Although Bolívar had
written to Morillo, to La Torre, even to King Ferdinand himself, in hopes of reaching independence peacefully, he could see that it was no use: he was back at war. Bolívar moved quickly to unite the three armies of the west: his own, Páez’s, and Urdaneta’s. He knew that his only recourse now was to present the full force of the republic’s military power—all at once, and in one great battle. But before he did, he directed General Bermúdez, commander of the army of the east, to prepare to attack Caracas, distract the Spaniards, and force them to split their forces. Bolívar was leaving nothing to chance.
He
planned every detail of the engagement with utmost precision. Well aware that General
Morales, La Torre’s second in command, had been passed over for La Torre’s job, he was going to use that resentment to his advantage.

On the morning of April 28, 1821, the mobilization of the three armies began: Páez and his horsemen, accompanied by the British Legion, started the long journey across the rain-whipped Apure to the appointed meeting place in San Carlos, a Venezuelan town on the plains of Carabobo where La Torre’s army was garrisoned. Urdaneta undertook the grueling passage along a rough coast and over the mountains from Maracaibo. By early May—as Napoleon lay in St. Helena, surrendering his soul to the hereafter—Bolívar set up camp in the rubble of Barinas, having wended his way down the Magdalena River and recrossed the Andes to Venezuela. One week later, Bermúdez’s eastern army invaded and occupied Caracas. Just as Bolívar had hoped, La Torre directed Morales to march on the capital and eject Bermúdez. It was an easy commission. The fierce Morales, commander of Boves’s former Legions of Hell, was glad to go off on his own and, with his superior force of two thousand, handily shooed off the patriot soldiers. But all went exactly as Bolívar planned: his diversionary tactic had worked. La Torre, in San Carlos, was left with a weakened defense, and the patriot generals were now able to march overland toward him, unhampered.

On June 11—more than a month later—Páez’s horsemen and the British battalion reached the outskirts of San Carlos, where Bolívar awaited them. General Urdaneta and his corps of infantrymen arrived within days, having successfully taken the port city of Coró.
The royalist army, aware now of this impressive patriot advance, had withdrawn to the north, as Bolívar had predicted. Five thousand strong, they camped outside the village of Carabobo, fifty miles away. Once informed of their position, Bolívar didn’t need to know more:
La Torre’s forces were clearly in shambles; the Spanish general was doing little more than blocking the road to Caracas and Puerto Cabello, his two strongholds; he was not going to attempt an offensive move. In any case, the patriot army now greatly outnumbered the royalists. By the time Bolívar reviewed his troops on the open fields of Tinaquillo, he had 6,500 soldiers
under his command, including some of his most skilled officers. This was the republican army Bolívar had worked so diligently to build—
“the largest and most superb ever to bear arms on any battlefield in Colombia,” in his own estimation. To have brought them together from such distances, in such an advanced state of readiness, was a true testament to his military acuity.

On the night before the battle,
the heavens opened with torrential rains, drenching the open ground and all the warriors who camped on it. The British who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars took it as a good omen; the same had happened before Waterloo. So it was that on June 24, 1821, the morning dawned bright and clear, presenting a cloudless sky. The patriots moved swiftly to carry out Bolívar’s orders.
Páez’s cavalry was dispatched to the west, with instructions to attack the enemy’s left flank. Undertaking a forced march for two and a half hours, they rode up and down steep terrain, hacking past tropical undergrowth, fording streams, until they were two miles from the valley where La Torre had taken position. By the time they reached Carabobo, they were
laboring under a broiling sun.

The Spanish general had been confident that no cavalry could possibly negotiate the precipitous landscape to his west, and so he expected the republicans to flood into the valley from the south, where a gap in the hills beckoned. But Bolívar’s vanguard did not take the bait. Instead, they moved stealthily along a narrow ravine on the western side. Hacking their way up a tangle of green,
they scaled the heights and there, past trees and uneven ground, were able to spy the royalists in the valley, preparing for a frontal attack. The patriots spilled over the ridge, assaulting the Spaniards where they least expected it. Initially, La Torre’s soldiers shrank back, but rallied with such a murderous volley of gunfire that Páez’s men, who had chased them to within a pistol shot, broke and fled in disorder. The British Legion then took up the fight. Wielding their bayonets in their famous
“hollow square” formation, they held off the royalists, allowing Páez’s forces to regroup. When the horsemen rushed back into the fray, they came at the enemy from the rear, brandishing twelve-foot lances. The Spaniards were helpless in the face of that double onslaught.

Stunned by heavy losses and the abiding fear that they might be taken prisoner, the royalists fled the battlefield even as La Torre was issuing commands. When the smoke of war lifted from that sun-baked sepulcher, the stench of blood was pungent:
more than a thousand royalists lay dead; 1,500 more had been taken prisoner; the rest had fled to the hills. The patriots had suffered fewer losses, and yet their dead were never recorded. Eventually, it was reported that
six hundred British soldiers lost their lives at Carabobo, along with their commanding colonels, Manuel Cedeño and young Ambrosio Plaza, who had only recently been married to the lovely and highly coveted Bernardina Ibañez. As Bolívar approached to console the dying Plaza, the young man told him,
“My general, I die happy here on this battlefield, in a position so far forward that even Páez could not reach it.” Indeed, Páez lay in the dirt, not far away. Exhausted, the battle done, he was writhing, foaming at the mouth, being convulsed—as he so often was after a fray—by
one of his violent fits of epilepsy.
Nearby lay the towering First Negro, who had always protected him in battle—dead now, with a hole in his heart. As soon as Páez regained consciousness, his soldiers erupted in shouts of joy. There was no doubt that Páez’s horsemen and the soldiers of the British Legion had won the afternoon, the battle, the war. Bolívar wasted no time in honoring them. There on the field, before the end of day, he promoted Páez to general in chief of the army. Then, as the Irish and English marched off—a bedraggled third of the number that had marched in—Bolívar was overcome with emotion.
“Saviors of my country!” he cried after them in gratitude. They returned the praise with a crisp salute.