Expeditions for the liberation of Upper Peru

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Due to the failure of the attempts of the Upper Peruvians (today Bolivia ) to become independent from Spain on their own , the patriots of La Plata helped them with three expeditions to liberate Upper Peru between 1810 and 1816 . However, despite their initial success, none of them were able to achieve their goal in the long term.

foreplay

Bolivia, called "Upper Peru" (Alto Peru) during the Spanish colonial period, was ruled first from Peru and from 1773 from the viceroyalty of La Plata ( Argentina ), but had its own Royal Court of Justice ( Real Audiencia ) in Chacras (also Chuquisaca, today Sucre ). Due to the distance to Buenos Aires , the connection to the Spanish motherland and its laws were less strict than in the other colonies of Spanish America. This formed the breeding ground for a liberal and emancipated way of thinking, which already drove José Gabriel Condorcanqui in 1780/81 as Túpac Amaru II to revolt against a flawed and unjust colonial administrative system.

In January 1809, the attempt in Buenos Aires to achieve self-government through an uprising failed when the uprising broke out in Chuquisaca in May. At the university there, teachers and students had discussed the possibility of autonomy and were locked up for it. On the 25th the population rose and the governor of Chacras province had to resign. However, his counterpart from Potosí sent troops to crush the uprising.

In July of the same year, a Junta Tuitiva (such as the Guardian Council) replaced the colonial government in La Paz and, after the uprising of the 16th, removed all Spaniards from the administration. In addition to reforms that also included legal equality for the indigenous people (who still make up the majority of the population today), the new government set up militias under Pedro Domingo Murillo to maintain order and prevent possible Spanish counter-reactions.

José Manuel de Goyenche, a general sent to Peru by the Regency Council in Cadiz , was provided with troops in Cusco by the Peruvian Viceroy José Fernando Abascal y Sousa in September and marched on behalf of the two Viceroys of Peru and La Plata at the request of the court president from Chacras to La Paz. In October the fighting for La Paz began, in which the separatists were initially successful. Soon after, however, they had to give up the city and fled to the eastern slopes of the Andes behind La Paz's local mountain, the Ilimani, into the Yungas . Goyenche pursued the independence fighters and made short work of them in November.

The increased military presence of the Spaniards prevented further rebellions, and the patriots had to rely on outside help. After the separatists in Buenos Aires had successfully seized power in late May 1810, they dispatched three military expeditions to Upper Peru by 1816 to support those who shared their views there in their quest for self-determination. Upper Peru was now again subordinated to the administration in Lima, as there were hardly any tendencies towards separatism.

First expedition 1810/11

The success of the separatists in La Plata prompted Abascal to offer his Argentine counterpart support in his efforts to restore colonial conditions. For this purpose, Goyenche's armed forces were increased and moved further south. The government junta in Buenos Aires realized that La Plata's independence was also in jeopardy and decided to campaign in Upper Peru, on the one hand to keep the Spaniards out of Argentina, and on the other to support the independence of the Upper Peruvians. On July 9, the soldiers of the Northern Army left Buenos Aires.

On the way to Upper Peru, Antonio Gonzáles Balcarce, who was originally deputy head of the Northern Army in La Plata, replaced his boss, as he had reacted with exaggerated harshness to a counter-uprising on the way. In the south of Upper Peru, the army met the approval of the population more than resistance from the colonial troops. In some places there were uprisings in view of the advancing Argentines, which, if successful, ended with the proclamation of independence. In order to promote this development, which was favorable for the patriots, Balcarce decided to attack the Spaniards, who had moved against them under José Cordoba y Roxas, at Cotagaita at their headquarters. This meeting, often referred to as the first battle of the Wars of Independence, on October 27, 1810, does not take into account the battle of the tarabita near Funes in southern Colombia , which was fought a year earlier because of the Quito uprising (see First independence from Ecuador ). Balcarce's attack failed because of the numerical superiority of the royal troops, and the Argentines began an orderly retreat. At Suipacha, around 70 kilometers south, he attacked Roxas again on November 7th, and this time Balcarce defeated his opponent. Stimulated by the defeat of the Spaniards, there were now surveys across the country with the aim of disempowering the Spaniards.

The tough crackdown by political commissioner Juan José Castelli, who was sent by the La Plata junta, and the lack of sensitivity in dealing with the views of the Upper Peruvian patriots cost the Argentines much of the sympathies they had won while they moved north and the important ones in the following months Occupied cities. The Spaniards in Peru meanwhile prepared to counterstrike. Balcarce and Goyenche negotiators had agreed on a ceasefire, but neither side was seriously willing to uphold it. In June 1811, the two massively enlarged armies were south of Lake Titicaca . On the 20th, Goyenche surprised around 5000 patriots with around 6000 soldiers, with whom there were still a few thousand Indians, near Huaqui (today Guaqui in the La Paz department , about 65 kilometers west of La Paz). Although the outcome of the battle near the Río Desaguadero was long open, the separatists suffered a devastating defeat and Goyenche pursued the remnants as far as Argentina.

On the way south, the Spaniards smashed all structures of self-government and persecuted those responsible. In places, guerrillas managed to hold out for a few more months, the indigenous indigenous population rose in La Paz, but ultimately the royalists brought the judicial district of Chacras back completely under their control and took action mercilessly.

Spanish counterattack in northern Argentina

After the failure of the first campaign, the La Plata Junta sent Manuel Belgrano, who from mid-May 1812 dealt with the reorganization of the Northern Army in San Salvador de Jujuy . In August he received an order from Buenos Aires to withdraw with the troops. At the same time, Goyenche commissioned Juan Pío Tristán y Moscoso with a foray into Argentina in order to prevent the patriots there from further incursions into Upper Peru. On the way back, Belgrano learned of the colonial troops advancing to La Plata in San Miguel de Tucumán . Since the population of the place asked him to defend them against Tristan, he stayed against his orders and secured the region by repelling the attack of the royalists on the city on September 24th. Since Tristan lost a third of his army, which originally numbered over three thousand men, he gave up the campaign in Argentina and retreated north. Belgrano decided not to pursue the still outnumbered Spaniards, but stayed in Tucumán and expanded his army.

Second expedition in 1813

At the beginning of 1813 Belgrano had expanded his army to such an extent that he wanted to finally drive out the Spaniards who had remained in northern Argentina with 3,000 soldiers and had also strengthened themselves. Against the numerically only marginally superior colonial troops this time, he achieved an overwhelming victory on the chestnut field near Salta on February 20th . Since this triumph drove Goyenche from Potosí to Oruro , the Argentines left the south of Upper Peru open, and Belgrano advanced. On a way to Potosí, where he arrived in June, he set up the self-government again and thus gained the sympathy of the population.

With his army reinforced by Upper Peruvians to 3500 men, he began a campaign in September to conquer the northern part of the country. Joaquín de la Pezuela , the military chief of Upper Peru, had 4,000 soldiers under one command with Goyenches' troops, whom he had replaced in the fight against the la Plata patriots, and thus moved against the separatists. Belgrano expected reinforcements near Vilcapujio (also Vilcapugio, 110 kilometers south-southeast of Oruro in the department of the same name) when de la Pezuela and his troops reached the battlefield on October 1. Since the Spaniards arrived in a column formation that was unfavorable for the fight due to the march, Belgrano only had to order the attack to win the battle. But since he had laboriously formed combat formations, de la Pezuela was also able to organize his soldiers. He sent his cavalry forward, which not only prevented the patriots from forming formation, but also created confusion, which the advancing infantry skillfully used to defeat the second Argentine expeditionary army and put it to flight.

Belgrano had barely ten percent losses, but the psychological effect of the victory of the Spaniards, who did not pursue it, was so great that Belgrano, who had reorganized his army and received reinforcements just a few days after the battle, initially decided to undertake minor guerrilla actions Postponed the weakening of the colonial army. Because de la Pezuela was running out of food for a soldier, he decided in November to leave the position he had taken after a victory and to approach Belgrano's troops. In addition, the rainy season announced itself, which significantly impaired exchanges of fire because of the use of muzzle-loaders . While Belgrano's officers favored retreating to Argentina, the latter apparently did not want to return with defeat and insisted on confrontation.

On November 14th, after both armies had prepared for a day, battle broke out on Mount Ayohuma, some 20 kilometers northwest of Potosí. Both sides had about three and a half thousand men, with the Spaniards having more infantry and the Patriots more cavalry. At dawn de la Pezuela attacked and again Belgrano let them go into formation instead of using his advantage at the crossing of a stream. With his superior artillery, de la Pezuela forced the Argentines to advance. Since he now posted a detachment on a hill on Belgrano's right flank, the attackers were taken under fire from two sides and the artillery. The resulting 1000 man losses forced Belgrano to retreat quickly, which the reserve covered. As de la Pezuela had the defeated persecuted, only 1,800 soldiers arrived in Tucumán in January 1814. In Upper Peru, colonial conditions returned after the Argentines withdrew. Even individual guerrilla gangs, which occasionally won victories against the colonial power, and local uprisings in the course of 1814 could not really change anything.

intermezzo

In the spring of 1814, José de San Martín took over the Argentine Northern Army for a few months and rebuilt it. His job was only to secure the border, so that he had the opportunity to think about the continent-wide liberation. He had recognized that the Peruvians could thwart any attempt to penetrate from northern Argentina to Upper Peru, and so he came up with the plan to liberate Chile in order to bring Peru to independence with landing operations along the coast. The chances of survival of an isolated Upper Peru still controlled by Spain would have decreased considerably. It was not until 1820, however, that the expedition from San Martín came about , which, however, failed to achieve final success. Simón Bolívar and Antonio José de Sucre fell into the hands of Upper Peru without a fight after they had defeated the Spaniards in Peru in 1825, according to plan (see the Battle of Ayacucho ).

While the Upper Peruvians fought on a local level in their hopeless but not completely unsuccessful struggle against the colonial motherland in 1814, José Rondeau led the Argentine northern army to prepare it for the campaign that began in early 1815. San Martín was meanwhile engaged in the defense of part of the Spanish expeditionary army on the Argentine coast. In some regions of Upper Peru, some stalwart people who did not cease to resist the Spaniards. In La Plata they wanted to support the patriots there, so that at the beginning of 1815 a third expedition was ready to leave. Just as she was about to move, the Buenos Aires junta ordered that Rondeau be replaced as commander by José Antonio Álvarez de Arenales. Rondeau's officers persuaded him to disregard the order and lead the campaign himself. Rondeau's decision to mutiny and take over the leadership was to have devastating consequences for his campaign.

Third expedition 1815

In January 1815, the Argentines set out for Upper Peru for the third time. Since the Spaniards practiced area coverage this time, that is, their army had split up into individual garrisons because of the guerrillas, Rondeau was also able to fight the Spaniards with more or less large detachments. Mostly victorious, the Argentines advanced, also because de la Pezuela gave up the southern part of the royal judicial district after the only major battle in April. Rondeau was able to move into Potosí in the middle of the year.

In March he had already quarreled with Martín Miguel de Güemes, who, as the intendant (equivalent to a governor) of Salta with his 1000 gauchos, had made a significant contribution to the success at the beginning of the campaign, and he had returned to Argentina. In the second half of the year, the indiscipline of Rondeau's army increased in Potosí, and a number of officers followed their chief's example and refused to give orders. This creeping process led to defeats in the field, such as that of Martin Rodriguez on October 20 against Pedro Antonio Olañeta , who was later the last viceroy in Upper Peru (see The Battle of Ayacucho ), when the Argentine failed with a surprise attack.

Joaquín de la Pezuela saw his chance, gathered an army and began to pursue the retreating Rondeau. On the pampas of Sipe Sipe near Cochabamba , the Spaniards formed the third expeditionary army on November 28th. The Argentinians escaped the numerically far superior royalists only by fleeing. Rondeau's army was severely decimated, only the retreat to Argentina, pursued by de la Pezuela's troops. This defeat was seen internationally as the end of the independence struggle of Upper Peru, but even without Argentine support, a number of Upper Peruvians continued the struggle. So-called republiquetas emerged in the self-governing areas . In these small-scale states with a republican government, the idea of ​​independence lived on for at least a while.

Aftermath

When the defeated army of the third expedition came to the province of Salta in early 1816, the dispute between Rondeau and Güemes flared up again, because the former demanded weapons and support for national defense and the latter pursued a different concept. A La Plata junta envoy brokered a deal in March after the two troops narrowly missed civil war. In June Rondeau withdrew with his soldiers to Tucumán and was replaced by Belgrano as commander.

Belgrano supported the republiquetas as much as he could, but de la Pezuela, whom the concentration of troops on the Argentine northern border had prevented from invading, left border security behind and turned to the patriots inland. After he had broken the resistance of the patriots in the course of 1816, those responsible, as far as they had survived the fighting, were severely tried by the President of the Royal Court of Justice of Cusco, Mariano Ricafort Palacín y Abarca , in La Paz. De la Pezuela was appointed Viceroy of Peru for a service, where he replaced Abascal on a rotating basis. On the southern border, José de la Serna y Hinojosa was promoted to command. At the beginning of 1817 he and his troops invaded northern Argentina, but could be repulsed; the Argentines consider this a fourth expedition. Another reason for de la Serna's withdrawal was the failed Peruvian operation to retake Chile.

In Upper Peru only a few of the active patriots survived and continued their hopeless struggle while the Spaniards sat steadfastly at the levers of power. As the fighting with the royalists dragged on in Chile, the expedition from San Martín did not start until 1820, and because Greater Colombia had to intervene, Upper Peru only gained independence in 1825.

literature

  • Manuel José Cortés: Ensayos sobre la Historia de Bolivia . ( PDF, 26.2 MB [accessed March 7, 2010]).

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