Expedition to Liberate Peru
The Expedition for the Liberation of Peru (Spanish Expedición Libertadora del Perú ) was an Argentine-Chilean conquest between 1820 and 1822, financed by the new Chilean government to liberate the Viceroyalty of Peru from Spanish colonial rule during the South American Wars of Independence .
A further goal was to finally break the power of the colonial motherland Spain in the south and west of South America. This attempt failed after initial successes, including the conquest of Lima , due to the strength of the Spanish colonial troops and internal disputes between the allies, which stemmed from the fact that José de San Martín failed to use his cleverly developed strategic advantages and passed it on to the Spanish in negotiations came far.
prehistory
Due to the prudent and decisive policies of the viceroy in Peru José Fernando Abascal y Sousa , Duke of la Concordia, there were few separatist uprisings until the end of his term in 1816. He was succeeded by Joaquín de la Pezuela . He had previously been able to successfully defend Upper Peru , in what is now Bolivia, against an Argentine expedition and led a campaign in the northern Argentine province of Salta .
The viceroy-designate used the relative stability in Peru to launch a campaign to recapture Chile. But both incursions into the republics of Chile and Argentina were repulsed by the patriots in 1816 and 1817. Since the rulers in Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile were aware of the danger posed by a Spanish-controlled viceroyalty of Peru, both governments decided to try again to conquer the viceroyalty of Peru.
For this purpose, the governments resorted to the plan drawn up by José de San Martín at the end of 1814 for a landing operation on the Peruvian coast. Together with the Chilean "Director Supremo" Bernardo O'Higgins , with whom San Martín had liberated Chile, he worked out a campaign plan in 1818 that was signed by both governments in February 1819, but was not ratified by Argentina due to the anarchy.
Since mid-January 1819, the English captain Thomas Alexander Lord Cochrane patrolled in the function of a Chilean admiral with a small Chilean fleet along the west coast of South America to fight the Spaniards and prepare for the liberation of Peru. He fulfilled his mission in two patrols, even if he did not achieve the capture of Callao , the port of Lima , which the Chileans described as the main objective .
Landing in Peru
The expedition began on August 21, 1820, when 2,300 Argentine and 2,100 Chilean soldiers embarked in Valparaíso on the Chilean Pacific coast, plus their artillery : 31 cannons , 2 howitzers and 2 mortars . It was a binational army that had already fought for Chile's independence , divided into the "Ejercito de los Andes" ( Spanish Andean Army ) and a Chilean division.
| The ships of the expedition for the liberation of Peru | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ship type Ship name | Displacement tons | Commander of the ship | Armament (cannons) |
| Frigate "O'Higgins" | 1,220 | Tomas Sackville Crosbie | 50 |
| Ship "San Martín" | 1,350 | Guillermo Wilkinson | 64 |
| Freggate "Lautaro" | 850 | Martín Jorge Guise | 50 |
| Corvette "Independencia" | 830 | Robert Forster | 28 |
| Brig "Galvarino" | 398 | Juan Tooker Spry | 18th |
| Brig "Araucano" | 270 | Tomás Carter | 16 |
| Brig "Pueyrredón" | 220 | Casey | 16 |
| Schooner "Moctezuma" | 200 | Casey | 8th |
The expedition fleet, commanded by Lord Cochrane, consisted of 24 ships, six of which were warships. After arriving on the Peruvian coast, San Martín, who was in command of the land forces and the entire expedition, landed three battalions on September 8 to explore the Bay of Paracas . Given the numerical superiority of the Republicans, the Spaniards did not defend the port of Pisco , a good 200 kilometers southeast of Lima. San Martín, to which the Chilean Congress had imposed strict conditions for his expedition, issued strict rules of conduct for his troops for dealing with the Peruvian population. According to the plans, the Peruvians should help with the liberation of Peru. During the next few days, both sides limited themselves to reconnaissance, so that San Martín could put his remaining soldiers ashore.
Two days after the landing of the expeditionary army, Joaquín de la Pezuela , viceroy in Peru, received news of the events. The viceroy, who was bound by the Constitution of Cadiz , began negotiations with the Republicans in Miraflores , a current district of Lima , at the end of September . Due to the differing points of view, the negotiations were broken off after a few days.
Campaign in the Peruvian highlands
After the failed negotiations, San Martín sent Juan Antonio Álvarez de Arenales with two battalions, some hunters and mounted grenadiers and two mountain guns, a total of almost 1250 soldiers, to the Peruvian highlands on October 5th. His job was to drive out the colonial troops there, to motivate the local population to resist and, if necessary, to equip them with weapons. His path was chosen to be semicircular to cut off Lima from the highlands and the king's soldiers stationed there.
The approximately 800 strong Spanish troops on the coast withdrew from the advancing Republicans. Nevertheless, the advance guard was able to catch the Spaniards at Nazca on October 15 and put them to flight. The next day the patriots managed to catch up with the train and steal the equipment that the Spaniards had carried with them.
The liberation army quickly moved via Ica to Huamanga (now Ayacucho ). On the way, another vanguard was successful in a battle a few dozen kilometers south of the city, which resulted in the departure of the officials. On the 29th, the Chileans and Argentines entered the city, which declared its independence on November 8th at the urging of Álvarez de Arenales. Everywhere along his way he armed volunteers, later called montoneros ( skirmishers ), for guerrilla warfare, as the Spaniards would not remain inactive.
The Viceroy commissioned Mariano Ricafort Palacín y Abarca , who came with Pablo Morillo in 1815 and who was staying in Arequipa , with a counter-campaign that was supposed to bring the liberated areas back under Spanish control. To do this, Ricafort had a force equal to that of the Republicans. While Álvarez de Arenales turned north and followed the valley of the Río Mantaro , skilfully bypassing the soldiers of the governor of Huancavelica , whom de la Pezuela had instructed. While this withdrew to the north, the separatists advanced and occupied Jauja on November 20th , and an advance guard finally defeated the Spaniards on the 23rd at Tarma . In the following days, some of the liberated places declared their independence, but on the 29th, Ricafort was in Huamanga, where he defeated the Peruvian patriots and then held a bloody criminal court. He defeated the montoneros in the surrounding area on December 2nd and this time even had the place that had put up the most violent resistance burn down as an example.
Álvarez de Arenales had meanwhile marched further north to meet the viceroy's third obstacle. In Cerro de Pasco , at over 4,300 meters, he defeated a numerically slightly superior Spanish troop on December 6th and thus considered his job to be done, since he had led an unbeaten campaign through the highlands and liberated the places along his way and incited resistance . Even if San Martín himself gave the order to turn back too late, in view of the successes of Ricafort, Álvarez de Arenales would have had to turn back to face the Spaniard, as he ruined large parts of his success.
San Martín's landing on the north coast
San Martín had meanwhile left the south coast with the army and landed just under a hundred kilometers north of Lima as planned, after Lord Cochrane had captured the best of the Spanish frigates in a nightly coup in the port of Callao and several smaller landings in November on the north coast were successful were. On November 19th, San Martín set up its headquarters a little off the coast and was waiting for Álvarez de Arenales.
Meanwhile, envoys from San Martín had succeeded in persuading the best Spanish battalion, Numancia , which consisted of Venezuelans and Colombians, to defend, since Simón Bolívar had liberated New Granada and Venezuela was on the verge of becoming independent as well. In view of these successes for San Martín and the fact that the Ecuadorians had also started the war against the Spaniards from Guayaquil (see the Battle of Pichincha ), the north began local uprisings in December, which in early 1821 led to the Northern Peru was largely under the control of the Republicans. Two campaigns by the loyal king of Ecuador in the Amazon lowlands and on the eastern slopes of the Andes were repulsed. In the south, however, the Spaniards were still firmly in the saddle, and in the central highlands, Ricafort raged among montoneros and civilians to restore colonial order. He conquered the Mantaro valley between Huancayo, where he later set up his headquarters, and recaptured Tama. Because of the continued resistance of the patriotic guerrillas in the highlands, which drove him south to Huancavelica in February, Ricafort received support from Lima at the end of March. Jerónimo Valdés came with two thousand soldiers, defeated the montoneros in open field battles, but suffered losses in ambushes, and at the beginning of April united his troops with those of Ricafort. Together they secured the central highlands for the Spanish crown.
Change of power among the Spaniards and negotiations
San Martín had marched a few kilometers south in early January 1821, but the Spaniards in Lima sent an army under José Canterac to meet him , from which he withdrew a little in order to get into a better position of defense. Thereupon the Spaniards also suspended their march. So they could deal with themselves unmolested by San Martín, but not by the montoneros : The officers de la Pezuelas, above all José de la Serna , Valdés and Canterac, conspired on the 21st against the viceroy in Aznapuquio, about 20 kilometers north of the center of Lima, with an indictment accusing him of failure in relation to the San Martín expedition and lack of loyalty to the king. De la Serna did not appear openly, but with this indictment convinced de la Pezuela to resign. As a result, Serna, confirmed by Ferdinand VII in Spain, was Pezuela's successor as viceroy.
Both sides negotiated again in February, but without result. Negotiations were scheduled again at the end of May, this time in Punchauca, just under 50 kilometers northeast of Lima, where de la Serna and San Martín also met in person. But both the new viceroy and the newly appointed regional representative from Spain could not bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion, as the positions remained incompatible. San Martín was very accommodating to the Spanish in suggesting that a king be imported from Spain for independent Peru, but de la Serna opposed any kind of independence. So the negotiations ended in early June and the war continued.
New campaigns by the patriots
After the first unsuccessful negotiations in February, San Martín decided to launch new campaigns designed to weaken the Spanish position. The first was led by William Miller of Kent on Lord Cochrane's ships on the south coast, and Álvarez de Arenales made a second push into the highlands. The montoneros never suspended their activities, even during the agreed ceasefire times during the negotiations.
Lord Cochrane had repeatedly pushed for landing operations during his blockade of Callao. San Martín gave in to the pressure in March and had William Miller land on the south coast with five hundred infantry and one hundred horsemen. The Spaniards had regained control of Pisco, but had to flee from Miller's soldiers. Because Tertiana malaria broke out in both troops , there was no further fighting, although the Spanish had brought in reinforcements. At the beginning of May, after the end of the armistice, the patriots embarked again and landed in what is now the border area between Chile and Peru. Miller took Arica and Tacna and moved his soldiers northwest towards Arequipa . The Spanish responded with the garrisons of La Paz , Puno and Arequipa. Miller succeeded in the last third of May, just in time for the negotiated armistice, to separate and defeat the three departments. The south coast was thus under the control of the separatists, even if the ceasefire for the Punchauca negotiations intervened. Miller later returned to Pisco, leaving the montoneros who pursued the defeated Spaniards with the unsolvable task of holding the south coast. When the Spaniards advanced from the central highlands on Lima in August, Miller left this section of the front to the montoneros .
At the end of March, Álvarez de Arenales also left the San Martín expeditionary army to return to the highlands. En route with montoneros reinforced to two thousand men, he came to the highlands in April, which José Carratalá was defending, as Ricafort and Valdés marched back to Lima at about the same time, besieged by montoneros . With not inconsiderable losses, but never really in danger of not reaching their goal, the two Spaniards arrived with their army in Lima at the beginning of May. Ricafort was so badly wounded that he fled to Spain. Valdés returned to the highlands with José Canterac after receiving new orders and troops in June. Álvarez de Arenales meanwhile led his department to Cerro de Pasco, the Carratalá gave up because numerically inferior. The persecution that left Álvarez de Arenales to a vanguard failed, but the Mataro valley was recaptured in May. Carratalá withdrew far south into the province of Huancavelica and awaited reinforcements from Canterac and Valdés. When Álvarez de Arenales wanted to prevent the union of Carratalás with Canterac and Valdés after the armistice in mid-June, he received the order to withdraw from San Martín. Little pleased to have to leave an unfinished work behind, he returned to the coast. He was not allowed to hunt the viceroy, who was leaving Lima, any more than the montoneros .
The capture of Lima
Due to the naval blockade of Lord Cochrane and the campaigns of Álvarez de Arenales and Millers, Lima became increasingly isolated from the Spanish forces in the central and southern highlands and from the forces in the unpolluted Upper Peru. There were also supply bottlenecks. To prevent the Spaniards from being finally trapped, the Viceroy Canterac and Valdés sent to the central highlands in June and left the city himself in July to continue his official duties in Cusco after he had secured the central highlands for the duration of Canterac's absence would have. Since Lima itself could not be defended, but the important port of Callao had the Real Felipe fortress, which was almost impregnable (as the expansion of which had been decisive for Alexander von Humboldt eighteen years earlier), José de la Mar entrenched himself here with the remaining one Rest of the Spanish soldiers. The first montoneros reached the city on the day the Spaniards left . Only one day later, on July 7th, did an advance guard of the expeditionary army arrive in the capital. San Martín, who arrived barely a week later, sent the montoneros out of the city, forbade the viceroy to be persecuted and almost completely took over the colonial administration and its officials. On August 14, he proclaimed independence, and two weeks later began the then widespread public oath of the new order.
Spanish counter-offensives
While San Martín took over the administration, drafted new state symbols, reformed trade and finance and ordered the Peruvian army, the Spanish in the central highlands prepared the reconquest of Lima on the orders of the viceroy. At the end of August Canterac and Valdés left their secured positions in the Mantaro Valley and marched towards Lima. With four thousand soldiers, Canterac presented itself for battle near the capital on September 7, but San Martín was unwilling to accept the offer. In the days that followed, first an advance guard and finally the entire army took advantage of the calm to contact the enclosed De la Mar in Real Felipe at the port. The besieged of the fortress did not threaten to run out of food supplies, but the supply of two hundred percent more troops than were stationed in the fortress exceeded De la Mars' means. There were differences of opinion and after barely a week Canterac withdrew with an army that was constantly shrinking due to desertion. San Martín was well informed about the situation with his opponents - also from defectors - but he did not allow himself to be carried away. It would easily have been possible to attack and destroy the retreating Spaniards. San Martín's own troops would have been enough, with the support of the montoneros that had gathered in the surrounding area, it would have been even easier to disband the Spanish Northern Division, but the Argentine preferred William Miller with a vanguard to hunt down the colonial troops and the montoneros to make the way for the Spaniards lossy. So a good chance was lost to drive the Spaniards out of the central highlands for good.
Canterac returned to the Mantaro Valley with his battered army and rebuilt it in such a way that it could no longer be driven out easily and with little loss. José de la Mar in Real Felipe surrendered on September 21, in view of the seemingly hopeless situation for him, and ran over to the camp of the patriots. In the central highlands, the montoneros harassed Canterac's steadily growing division in the months that followed, but without the help of the expeditionary army they would be denied lasting success.
San Martín in Lima
Since many of his officers accused San Martín of his hesitant attitude towards the Spaniards, in both military and political terms, a coup attempt was made against him at the end of 1821. San Martín learned of it through betrayal and was able to break the plot. However, because of their lodge affiliation, he could not have those involved tried so easily. Some of the rebels went to Ecuador or back to their home countries, but the reputation of San Martín was permanently damaged. So he gave the political leadership of the rump state in the hands of José Bernardo de Tagle Portocarrero , the Duke of Torre Tagle, who defected as governor of Trujillo and took over the administration of the liberated northern Peru. In the first half of 1822, San Martín was preparing a parliament that was elected in May. His claim to military leadership also slowly crumbled, and in the same month Lord Cochrane left the army with motivation similar to that of the coup plotters and resigned his command in Chile. Increasingly Álvarez de Arenales took over the supreme leadership, also in the dispute with Antonio Sucre, the San Martín had provided troops for the Pichincha campaign with which this liberated Ecuador (see the Battle of Pichincha ).
In this difficult situation for him, San Martín sought support from Simón Bolívar . However, since he had not been involved in the liberation of Ecuador, because he arrived there for the annexation of Guayaquil to Bolívar, which the Peruvians wanted - and thus too late - and because his authority was controversial within his own ranks, Bolívar declined at the meetings of the both in the most important port city of Ecuador complied with its request and instead prepared the liberation of Peru itself. This meeting with Bolívar on the night of July 26th to 27th induced San Martín to finally withdraw from the war of liberation and to go into exile in France.
The south coast
At the beginning of 1822 there were some Spanish troops for observation in the region of Ica and the south coast was again under Spanish control. Because of a stronger force that Canterac sent from the highlands, the patriots were also forced to show more presence in this area. The army they sent called upon Canterac himself, who ambushed the Republic forces on April 7 at Hacienda Macacona, north of Ica. After securing the region for the Spaniards, they hunted the montoneros and were able to record considerable success. In the second half of the year the Spaniards had a strong garrison in the Ica area, which could not be displaced by the minor skirmishes that the patriots fought them. At the end of the year there was an expedition by the republic in what is now the border area between Peru and Chile, which ended in a catastrophe for the separatists in January 1823.
After leaving San Martín
Since San Martín left for Chile in August only with a small escort, his troops were still in Peru. Álvarez de Arenales now led the army and Parliament began its work in September. The government took over a triumvirate with De la Mar at its head. The failure of the expedition to southern Peru led to a coup at the beginning of 1823, which further weakened the balance of power in the part of the country controlled by the patriots. The arrival of Antonio José de Sucre in April brought only a temporary improvement in the situation, as a second expedition to the south coast also failed. It was only with the arrival of Bolívar in September that progress began, which became visible with the beginning of his campaign in the Battle of Junín in 1824 (where further events in prehistory are examined in more detail) and in the final defeat of the Spaniards in South America with the Battle of Ayacucho culminated.
See also
literature
- John Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. Vol. I.
- John Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. Vol. II.
- Andrés García Camba: Memorias for the historia de las armas españolas en el Perú. Vol. I.
- Andrés García Camba: Memorias for the historia de las armas españolas en el Perú. Vol. II.
- The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald ... Project Gutenberg.
- wikisource
- Expedición Libertadora a Perú. Argentine Armed Forces.
- Cruze de los Andes: Independencia de Peru. (Table of contents)
- Jorge G. Paredes M .: San Martín, la Expedición Libertadora del Sur y la Independencia de los pueblos del Perú (1819-1821).
- Manuel de Mendiburu: Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú
Individual evidence
- ↑ Immediately after independence, Argentina, at that time still the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, fell into the anarquia and despite a treaty to share the war costs, Chile had to bear this alone. See Robert L. Scheina: Latin America's wars. Brassey's, 2003, ISBN 1-57488-450-6 , p. 64: O'Higgins decided that Chile would assume the costs of the expedition.
- ↑ See Armada de Chile ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , retrieved May 20, 2009.
- ↑ ejercito.mil.ar This page lists 8 warships. According to this page, the strength of the fleet was 1,600 men. 1100 Chileans and the rest English, the majority officers
- ↑ ejercito.mil.ar . The battalions Nº 11 de los Andes and the Chilean battalion Nº 2. The total strength is given on this website with 1240 men
