Battle of Boyacá

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Battle of Boyacá
Martin Tovar y Tovar 11.JPG
date August 7, 1819
place Boyacá , Colombia
output decisive victory of the patriots
Parties to the conflict

Flag of Venezuela (1811) .svg Flag of New Granada (1814-1816) .svg Patriots

Flag of Spain (1785–1873, 1875–1931) .svg Royalists

Commander

Simón Bolívar
Francisco de Paula Santander
José Antonio Anzoátegui

José María Barreiro

Troop strength
2,500 infantry
700 cavalry 		2,500 infantry
almost 500 cavalry
3 cannons
losses

at least 70 killed or wounded

about 200 killed or wounded

The Battle of Boyacá marks a decisive struggle to become a nation in the history of Colombia between Spain's troops under José María Barreiro and the separatists under Simón Bolívar .

The Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819

From the Spanish point of view, no battle actually took place that day, because reports to King Ferdinand VII speak of a surprise after which the colonial troops gave up without major resistance. Indeed, the battle is the culmination of Bolívar's strategy, which left the Spaniards no chance of winning the fight, regardless of the moral deficits that kept it short and reasonably low-loss.

prehistory

With the end of the first Republic of Colombia brought about by the expeditionary army of Pablo Morillos in 1816 , only a few separatists remained alive and even fewer remained in freedom. Most of the patriots who had become guerrillas were found in the vast plains of Casanare (which, however, was larger than today's province of the same name), east of the Andes , which are a continuation of the Venezuelan Llanos . After internal disputes, Francisco de Paula Santander went to Venezuela and asked Simón Bolívar, who at the end of 1817 had created an independent state at the mouth of the Orinoco , in Angostura (today Ciudad Bolívar ), for help. Bolívar had fought for the new-renadine patriots before and was therefore willing to support his like-minded people. But he still first insisted on the liberation of his homeland. However, when the center campaign, which was carried out with many European mercenaries, failed in 1818, he first set his sights on conquering New Granada.

The Spaniards had a division in the east of Venezuela, two on the passages that led into the highlands of Caracas and one in the Mérida-Andes , on the western border of Venezuela. In New Granada, which had been subdued quite brutally and therefore had little to fear (except in Casanare), a single division was sufficient for home defense and to keep the Creoles away from the idea of ​​independence. In this way, Santander, with the support of the European officers, was able to make the resulting advantage for the separatists palatable to the liberator. In the second half of 1818 Bolívar sent the neo-renadine lawyer to the rebels in Casanare to unite them. Equipped with war equipment for the guerrillas and a proclamation promising to expel the Spaniards within a year, Santander set out, not without having been appointed Brigadier General by Bolívar. By the time the Bolívar campaign arrived in 1819, he had arranged two thousand men in a division, of which only around 1200 were adequately armed.

Bolívar let his deputy in the province of Apure, José Antonio Páez , lead a diversionary campaign against Pablo Morillo from the turn of the year 1818/19, which should make him believe that Bolívar would remain fixated on Venezuela. When the campaign season came to an end because of the rainy season (wet gunpowder requires too much hand-to-hand combat), Bolívar, with over two thousand men, came to Casanare in extremely difficult conditions, since the rivers had overflowed, noticed too late by the Spaniards there to unite with the troops raised by Santander. Páez held the western front of Venezuela against Morillo and led an insufficiently short diversionary campaign at the foot of the Mérida Andes, while various officers employed the Spanish in eastern Venezuela, as Bolívar had planned.

While Páez was leading the diversionary campaign at the beginning of the year, Bolívar convened the Angostura Congress, consisting of elected representatives , at which he obtained legitimacy for his campaign and confirmed himself as Commander-in-Chief and President of his still small republic, to which he intended to annex the viceroyalty of New Granada .

The New Granada Campaign

With the Colombians from Santander, who took over the vanguard, the main division of José Antonio Anzoátegui with Venezuelans, Europeans and blacks from Haiti (who came from Bolívar's petitions to President Alexandre Pétion in 1815 and 1816), Bolívar set off around the main ridge of the To cross the Eastern Cordillera , behind which the Morillo Third Division, stationed in New Granada, was under the command of Colonel José María Barreiro. There were several ways to do this, but they were all controlled by the Spanish. So he decided to march over the almost four thousand meter high páramo de Pisba , which was unguarded, but was a deadly ordeal. Bolívar knew beforehand that he would not be able to march across the icy plateau without losses, but also that fighting at the positions of the Spaniards on the main roads would also cost the lives of his soldiers. On such a path, however, he could not have counted on the moment of surprise, because Barreiro had no idea where Bolívar would attempt his promotion. And when he found out, it was too late, although on June 27th, Santander's vanguard had already dug a three hundred man strong outpost in Paya, in the first third of the ascent.

The unbelievable hardships of the ascent, combined with completely inadequate clothing, ensured that Bolívar about a third of his men, around a thousand soldiers, died of exhaustion and cold. But Bolívar had taken precautions and prepared the insurgents in New Granada for his arrival with a proclamation . As a result, the Spaniards suffered obstructions from their soldiers and local uprisings, which helped to distract Barreiro. His appeal also brought him men with whom he could almost make up for the losses of the terrible march over the páramo . However, these reinforcements were mostly not experienced in combat. The transition lasted a good two weeks for the whole army, until mid-July, but the Spaniards did not give Bolívar the time to rest and reorganize his army.

Preparatory battles

Bolívar entrusted his chief of staff, Carlos Soublette, with the task of bringing together and nurturing the dispersed army in Socha, in the valley of the Río Chicamocha . A Spanish guards stationed nearby had fled and informed Barreiro. He responded promptly with the occupation of Corrales and Gameza on July 9, where the river changes its roughly north-south to east-west flow direction, each with eight hundred soldiers. With only one company each, because much more was not operational at the time, Bolívar tested the Spaniards on both sides of the river on July 10th. On the west side, at Corrales, his advance party won a victory against the vanguard, but on the east side, at Gameza, the colonial army drove the new-gnadine infantry back from Santander. Bolívar had to react, on the one hand to keep the initiative and on the other hand not to be constricted in the valley of the Chicamocha. The Spaniards were surprised by his advance, with perhaps half of his army, on the following day, July 11th, and took up a defensive position at the bridge over the Gameza brook, which flows into the Chicamocha near the place. The hunters of Santander's vanguard finally managed to break the resistance and the rest of the force advanced with the bayonet to drive the Spaniards away. This opened the way a bit, but Bolívar's army had still not come completely over the mountains, so he preferred to retreat a little north again, towards the assembly point.

The liberator knew how incomplete the success at the Gameza Bridge had been, because the Spaniards were still sitting on the mountains south of Chicamocha and prevented the desired march south to the provincial capital Tunja (the province is now called Boyacá) and further, towards Bogotá. He therefore ordered a movement to the west on the 15th, still a good distance from his nominal strength, in the hope that he could lure Barreiro's troops into terrain that was less unfavorable for his patriots for an uphill field battle.

José María Barreiro, although he actually had more and more rested troops, waited for further reinforcements and followed the liberation army on the south side of the river. At Duitama the Río Chicomocha changes its direction again to about north-south. At the mills of Bonza, a few kilometers west of Duitama, Bolívar tried to provoke the Spaniards to battle on the 20th, but Barreiro preferred to set up his army a little south on the west side of the river near Paipa , as he again had advantages in terms of terrain.

The Separatists followed suit, hoping to lure Barreiro to more favorable terrain, but the Spaniards were not fooled. In his bypass movements, Bolívar finally came across the pantono de Vargas , the Vargas swamp. Here on July 26th, despite the obvious disadvantages of the terrain, he had the nearly two and a half thousand fighters attacked. The tough uphill attack finally stalled and the Spaniards counterattacked. Pushed back into the swamp, not only was the campaign on the knife edge, but the entire liberation in the north and west of the continent would have been in defeat, since Bolívar was the necessary integrator to unite the various military leaders with their men. Now here are the moral differences between the two troops. In Barreiro's army served mainly South Americans who, due to the Spanish punitive actions of recent years, were no longer completely convinced of the correctness of the cause for which they were fighting. The separatist fighters had to endure a lot for their ideal of freedom for years and now had their backs to the wall. With the shout: "Save the fatherland!" Bolívar sent the lancers from the highlands of Caracas under Juan José Rondón to meet the advancing Spaniards and let the infantry follow. With that he managed to get away with a black eye, because the Spaniards had nothing to counter the attitude of the patriots gained from the years of privation. To speak of a victory, however, is only possible under the aspect of morality and psychology, because Bolívar's attack had been repulsed and in the end nothing had changed in terms of circumstances. Bolívar was still in the valley and the Spaniards in the mountains. So it is not surprising that Barreiro has so far presented all battles in his reports to Viceroy Juan Sámano as victories of the Spaniards. He had not decisively defeated Bolívar, but even the separatists had not yet reported a decisive breakthrough.

After Soublette finally joined Bolívar the night after the battle with the last units of the Andes crossing, Bolívar tried again to provoke the enemy, but Barreiro, who was now increasingly fighting with local guerrillas in the hinterland, did not leave his Line off. So Bolívar began the maneuver that ultimately made the campaign legendary. He faked a retreat to the east on the afternoon of August 4th, and after dark he turned around, first back to the west and then to the south, east of the Río Chicamocha, towards Tunja . By the time Barreiro realized the next day that Bolívar had deceived him, he was already standing in front of the provincial capital, which he easily took with the cavalry on the morning of August 5th.

The Boyacá Bridge

Battle of Boyacá on August 7, 1819

Barreiro had not only lost the provincial capital, Tunja , but, what was worse, the connection with Viceroy Sámano was broken. Well, when it was too late, he showed initiative and rushed his soldiers on the west side of the Chicamocha towards Tunja. Now Bolívar had the choice of the battle site, as he knew exactly how important the connection to Bogotá was. Bareiro reached Tunja on the 6th, but did not allow it to be captured and instead tried to get south, behind the separatists. A river flowing in an east-west direction, the Río Teatrinos, made the use of a bridge inevitable because of the rainy season. There was also a main road here, which made it easier to march. That was the place where Bolívar hid his soldiers and waited for the Spaniards. While the vanguard of Santander took up position at the bridge, the main Anzoáteguis division remained behind the hills on the roadside, with Bolívar, who reserved the leadership of the reserve.

When the Spaniards arrived on August 7th around 2 p.m., they only saw a few riders, but they paid no further attention because they wanted to cross the bridge as quickly as possible. Due to the fast march, the vanguard of Barreiros was about a kilometer from the main Spanish power, which made the task much easier for the patriots. Santander's vanguard by the bridge opened the battle, but the Spaniards still did not believe that the decisive battle would come here. When Anzoátegui's division emerged from hiding, it was too late to go into formation to adequately face the attack. A disgruntled judge at the now former Royal Court of Justice in Bogotá wrote to King Ferdinand VII on October 19th: “He tired your Royal Division so they could catch up with him, [and] when they did it the enemy was waiting for them at one craggy place where they could neither deploy nor let the cavalry operate; he took an advantageous position on the heights that dominated the terrain, and perhaps she went timidly into the defense of the point, dispersed in her confusion, and, in less, sir, than twenty minutes did it dissolve, Commandant General Barreiro and his deputy Jiménez were taken prisoner without there having been any mass deaths, one can say there was no battle. "(Quote from García Vallecillos)

Including the chase, the Republicans give the battle two hours. Victory was certainly not achieved with the boldness that José Antonio Páez had shown at the memorable meeting at the Queseras del Medio (Medium Cheese Dairies) during the diversion campaign at the beginning of the year. Rather, it was a victory for Simón Bolívar's vastly superior strategic capabilities, which were unique in South America at the time. With a single movement, a nocturnal express march, he had duped New Granada’s home defense and transformed his initial inferiority into an irresistible superiority. Even if the Spaniards had only been able to muster highly motivated elite soldiers at that moment, the freedom fighters would not have been able to lose their victory. But since the ranks of the colonial army were almost exclusively South Americans except for the officers, the Republicans were able to crush the third division. They took 1,600 prisoners, who, along with the 200 dead and wounded, did not comprise the entire armed force, but the fugitives who did not surrender later or defected were relentlessly pursued by the local patriots, who were now morally and personally strengthened.

When the viceroy heard of the devastating defeat, he preferred to flee so as not to be held responsible for the atrocities committed against civilians in recent years. Bolívar and some of the other officers entered Bogotá two and three days later (independently of one another). The war was far from over, you were just where you had left off before the Spanish expeditionary army landed in 1815. The war between monarchists and republicans flared up again and lasted only a few months for large parts of the country. In the strongholds of the royalists, however, fighting continued for years. For the liberation of the north and west of the continent, however, the victory was of decisive importance, since (almost) an entire viceroyalty was now available to support the republicans and their fight. The campaigns for the liberation of Venezuela and Ecuador could now be prepared.

At the point where the battle took place there is now a monument that commemorates the decisive victory over colonialism and monarchy in Colombia.

swell

Web links