Bolivar: American Liberator (83 page)

over the course of four days:
Palacios to SB, quoted in Gil Fortoul,
Historia
, I, 225.

mark him as a brutal man:
The killing of bound prisoners was certainly not unique in 1813–14; the Legions of Hell had already done a fair amount of it. Archer (29, 36) comments that there was simply more of an official record on SB’s order in La Guaira and, therefore, more of an opportunity to point an accusing finger.

visible as far as thirty miles away:
Wood, 691.

pocketed a few knickknacks:
William Seale,
The President’s House
(Washington, DC, White House Historical Association, 1986), 133.

supped on the president’s wine:
Wood, 691.

sporting squirming babies:
Flinter,
History of the Revolution
, 140.

asking him to cease unnecessary cruelty:
Ibid., 141.

Boves’s response to Cajigal:
Ibid., 142.

Gunfire set the tall grasses:
Ibid., 153.

four thousand of the enemy’s horses:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 312.

at the head of his roaring horde:
Restrepo,
Historia
, I, 758.

Boves signed a treaty:
Austria, 311–13.

stunned and deeply grateful:
Flinter,
History of the Revolution
, 169.

A Spanish general later recounted:
Heredia, 203; also Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 319.

he beheaded them all:
Flinter,
History of the Revolution
, 171.

sweep of all the precious silver and gold:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 325–28.

as an unrelieved rain fell:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 295.

almost the entire population:
Lila Mago de Chópite, “La población de Caracas (1754–1820),
Anuario de estudios americanos
, LIV-2, July–Dec., Sevilla, 1997, 516. Between 1809 and 1815, Caracas lost one third of its inhabitants to the earthquake or the wars, reducing the population from about 30,000 to 20,000. Mago de Chópite cites parochial church figures, and says they are far more accurate than Humboldt’s or Depons’s.

dwindled to a force of twelve hundred:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 295.

trudge through swamps, etc.:
A. Guinassi Morán,
Estudios históricos
(Caracas: Ministerio de la Defensa, 1954), 36.

Soldiers took the incapacitated, etc.:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 295, 302.

For twenty-three days, etc.:
Ibid.

drowned in floods, etc.:
Guinassi, 36.

cholera and yellow fever:
O’LB, 68. Also Guinassi, 36.

Bolívar told of a starving mother:
O’LB, 68.

His hair was long, etc.:
This portrait is informed by the famous painting of the evacuation,
Emigración a Oriente
, by Tito Salas. It was painted in 1913 and benefited from Salas’s consultations with Lecuna, who commissioned the artist to paint pivotal scenes of SB’s life.

plagued by hemorrhoids:
Lynch,
Simón Bolívar
, 229. Also Slatta and Grummond, 268; and a paper presented by Paul G. Auwaerter, M.D., M.B.A., associate professor and clinical director in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
www.physorg.com/news191680201.html
.

Bolívar never let on:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 214.

He would not allow his sisters:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 294–95.

like the Marquis de Casa León:
Madariaga, 231.

the pyramids of skulls:
Lecuna,
La guerra a muerte
, XVIII, 161, 379, in Masur.

María Antonia, Juana, etc.:
Guinassi, 36.

following Bolívar from battle to battle:
Ramón Urdaneta,
Los amores de Simón Bolívar
, 16.

to the island of St. Thomas:
Lynch,
Simón Bolívar
, 86.

sent on to Curaçao:
Polanco Alcántara, 407.

a force of eight thousand, etc.:
Baralt and Díaz, I, 261.

only hope for equipping a renewed republican offense:
Ibid., 282.

Mariño had placed the treasure:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 488.

Bolívar sent Colonel Mariano Montilla, etc.:
Parra-Pérez,
Mariño y la independencia
, I, 440.

the command to open fire:
Ibid., 441.

cowardice, desertion, and conspiring to steal, etc.:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 494.

began to have misgivings, too:
Parra-Pérez,
Mariño y la independencia
, 454.

forced to turn over the trunks:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 329.

He set sail from the turbulent coast:
Ibid.

intending to shoot them both:
Parra-Pérez,
Mariño y la independencia
, 456.

white flags and a nervous archbishop:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 318.

On the road, he had made it clear:
Austria, 316.

red-faced and speechless:
Ibid., 317.

sulked and sent off bitter complaints:
Gil Fortoul,
Historia
, I, 229.

Boves issued a proclamation:
Austria, 311–13.

archbishop of Venezuela:
Arístides Rojas,
Obras escojidas
, 692.

beggars were sent off, etc.:
Langley, 52.

Pardos rose to high positions, etc.:
McKinley, 172; also Heredia, 160.

whites were treated as dangerous foes:
Gil Fortoul, I, 232.

more than ten thousand:
Ibid.

General Piar ignored Field Marshal Ribas’s:
DOC, VI, 103.

Boves had killed eighty thousand:
SB to the editor of
The Royal Gazette
, Kingston, Aug. 15, 1815, SBC, 1799–1822, 29; Blanco-Fombona, Introduction, SBC, I, 95. The Spaniard Díaz additionally writes in his
Recuerdos
that the Creole population was virtually wiped out (193).

war to the death, too, had executed thousands:
McKinley points out that there were only 7,000–8,000 European-born Spaniards in the province of Caracas (171). SB’s “war to the death” policies were strictly in place during the period from June 15 to August 6, 1813, as he marched to the capital, but there is no number for Spanish and royalist deaths directly attributable to the edict.

“all Europeans” he encountered:
McKinley, 171; also Madariaga, 210.

calculated result of strategies:
McKinley, 171.

killing in cold blood sickened him:
Heredia, 157.

unborn child struggling for life:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 222.

took pleasure in watching a boy:
Miller, I, 42–43.

hospitals were overrun with invalids:
Baralt and Díaz, II, 268–69.

“There are no more provinces left”:
Trend, 109.

certainly like no revolution since:
Lecuna,
Crónica
, I, 107.

no uniform group of like-minded whites:
D. Armitage, “The Americas on the Eve of Independence Movements,” paper presented at the LOC, Friday, Nov. 19, 2010 (Conference on Creating Freedom in the Americas).

“They must be for, or against us,” etc.:
Andrew Jackson, in Robert Remini,
Andrew Jackson
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 93.

“Destiny elected me to break your chains”:
SB, Manifiesto de Carúpano, Sept. 7, 1814,
Derecho constitucional colombiano
(Universidad de Medellín, 2007), 431–32.

in the palace of the Spanish bishop:
Ducoudray, I, 77.

sharing that grand manse with a family:
Ibid. The sisters were Soledad and Isabel. Soledad, who was a little girl at the time, would grow up to marry SB’s most loyal aide-de-camp, Daniel F. O’Leary. Eventually, Isabel married Juan Bautista, an Italian immigrant. The world of these revolutionaries was so small that Isabel later married Miranda’s son, Leandro, and she and her child, Teresa, lived with Leandro in Miranda’s house on Grafton Street, in London. Ramón Urdaneta,
Los amores
, 61.

irresistibly flirtatious, etc.:
Ducoudray, I, 77; also Lynch,
Simón Bolívar
, 97; Angell, 97; C. Hispano,
Historia secreta de Bolívar
(Medellín: Bedout, 1977), 134.

insinuated herself into his political affairs:
Ducoudray, I, 49.

the gift of a house:
Jesús Rosas Marcano, column in
El Nacional
, Caracas, July 24, 1983; quoted in Ramón Urdaneta,
Los amores
, 61.

nest of intrigue:
Ducoudray, I, 77–88.

“General, as long as your sword lives on”:
Código militar de los Estados Unidos de Colombia (Bogotá: Zapata, 1883), 315.

“I give you my word of honor,” etc.:
SB to Juan Jurado, Campo de Techo, Dec. 8, 1814, SBC, I, 99–102.

a glorious Mass in his honor:
F. Rivas Vicuña,
Las guerras de Bolívar
, Vol. 51 (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1934), 147.

set out to blacken Bolívar’s reputation:
SB to Torres, Cuartel general de Santafé [Bogotá], Jan. 22, 1815, SBO, I, 119–20; also O’L, XIV, 43–44.

a mad course toward civil war, etc.:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 356.

as smallpox and cholera tore:
Ibid., 357.

poisoned its water supply:
O’LN, I, 259.

began to sweep down the Magdalena:
Ibid., 362.

raising arms against a fellow republican:
Ibid., 360.

“I have offered to withdraw”:
Mosquera, 161.

On April 24, he sent Bolívar:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, 361; also Mosquera, 162.

sixty ships, etc.:
Parra-Pérez,
Historia
, 30; also Mosquera, 162.

mortal impatience with the tenets of democracy, etc.:
Mijares,
Liberator
, 231.

“Death to the Constitution!”:
Quoted ibid.

resign his commission and separate himself:
SB to Torres, Cuartel general de la Popa, May 8, 1815, SBO, I, 132–33.

his cousin Florencio Palacios:
Ducoudray, I, 100.

“I treated them all with respect,” etc.:
Pablo Morillo,
Mémoires du général Morillo
(Paris: Dufart, 1826); also DOC, VII, 356.

as Bolívar’s ship lost sight:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 367.

“Some day . . . God will punish”:
Morillo, broadside, Pampatar, April 15, 1815, JCBL.

“The army of King Ferdinand VII has entered”:
Ibid.

five thousand of Boves’s finest:
Flinter,
History of the Revolution
, 186.

once beautiful, prosperous city, etc.:
G. J. Rodríguez y Carrillo, “Carta Pastoral,” sermon by the bishop-elect, Madrid, July 14, 1816, JCBL.

Every donkey, etc.:
Pablo Morillo, quoted in
Gaceta de Caracas
, Dec. 6, 1815. Also Jesús María Henao and Genardo Urrubula,
History of Colombia
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1938), 272.

Every day, three hundred corpses:
Ducoudray, I, 117.

pale light of a new moon:
NASA, Phases of the Moon: 1801–1900,
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phases1801.html
.

two thousand patriots, etc.:
Gil Fortoul,
Historia
, I, 242.

honored with a lavish Mass, etc.:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 322.

sat in its iron cage for a thousand days:
Eduardo Blanco,
Las noches del panteon: Homenaje a Antonio José de Sucre
(Caracas: El Cojo, 1895), 22.

His widow, Josefa Palacios:
Blanco-Fombona,
Mocedades
, 36; also Larrazábal,
Vida
, II, 63.

the oil had consumed the flame:
Larrazábal,
Vida
, I, 389.

“I have seen the ravening fire” etc.:
SB to Wellesley, Kingston, May 27, 1815, SBO, I, 138–40.

“What could I think of revolutions”:
Adams to James Lloyd, Quincy, March 30, 1815,
The Works of John Adams
, X (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), 150.

proclamation that prohibited United States citizens:
Madison, Proclamation No. 17, Sept. 1, 1815, Respecting an Apprehended Invasion of the Spanish Dominions; also Robertson,
Hispanic-American Relations
, 28.