Battle of Carabobo

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Battle of Carabobo
Detail of La Batalla de Carabobo by Martín Tovar y Tovar. Oil on canvas
Detail of La Batalla de Carabobo by Martín Tovar y Tovar . Oil on canvas
date June 24, 1821
place Carabobo , Venezuela
Exit decisive victory of Bolívar's armies
Parties to the conflict

Flag of Venezuela, Republic Independence fighter

Spanish war flag Royalists

Commander

Simón Bolívar

Miguel de la Torre

Troop strength
4,000 infantry
2,500 cavalry 		2,566 infantry
1,651 cavalry
losses

about 200 fallen (according to Bolívar, probably a lot more)

2,908 killed or wounded

The Battle of Carabobo is a decisive battle in Venezuela's war of independence between Spanish troops under Miguel de la Torre and the separatists under Simón Bolívar .

The second battle of Carabobo on June 24, 1821

prehistory

After his legitimation as Commander in Chief and Head of State by the Congress of Angostura (today: Ciudad Bolívar ) in 1817 and the brilliant victory at the Bridge of Boyacá on August 7, 1819 for the liberation of New Granada (today Colombia ), Simón Bolívar was able to fight in his home country Venezuela turn to. After the unsuccessful attempts of previous years to take Caracas and the armistice that expired at the end of April (concluded in Santa Ana ( Trujillo state ) on November 27, 1820 between Pablo Morillo and Bolívar), Bolívar had begun to prepare for the campaign, which Venezuela finally took off should free the Spanish colonial rule.

Both sides used the ceasefire to negotiate a lasting peace through ambassadors. Ultimately, the talks failed because the Spaniards were not prepared to recognize the republics that already existed and thus to negotiate on an equal footing. Because the Spaniards considered the armistice to be valid for New Granada as well, which Bolívar denied, and because it covered an uprising in Maracaibo in favor of the republic at the end of January 1821, serious tensions arose in February and March that endangered the armistice. The successor of Morillo, who returned to Spain at the turn of the year, as head of the Spanish expeditionary army, Miguel de la Torre , threatened to resume hostilities, but since, thanks to the prudence of Rafael Urdaneta, no shot had been fired in Maracaibo and the Spaniard would have broken the armistice himself , he waited another month for the agreement to end as agreed.

Starting position

The Spaniards had between 11,000 and 13,500 soldiers nationwide. The 1st division was in the north-west in Barquisimeto , the second was the vanguard in the south at Calabozo , the fourth secured the only remaining place in the east, Cumaná , and the 5th division was in the west on the northern border of the (then) province of Barinas stationed in Araure . In addition, there were individual garrisons in important places, such as Caracas. (The 3rd Division of the Spanish Expeditionary Army was lost in the Battle of Boyacá in New Granada in 1819.) De la Torre had set up his headquarters in San Carlos .

The patriots had distributed their 10,000 soldiers among seven divisions. Bolívar himself led his guards division from Barinas to Apure in order to stock them up there; then he returned to Barinas, where Manuel Cedeño met him with riders and slaughter cattle from the Colombian Casanare. In Apure there was the division of José Antonio Páez , who supported the troops of Bolívar with the herds of cattle from the Llanos . For the campaign he brought a few thousand cattle with him to feed the army. Rafael Urdaneta had organized his division in the Maracaibo. Pedro Zaraza was north between Bolívar's Guard and Páez in what is now the state of Guárico . In the northeast, José Francisco Bermúdez's division was in Barcelona ( Anzoátegui state ) to threaten Cumaná. For this he had the support of Juan Bautista Arismendi's division on Margarita Island . About a hundred kilometers south of Bermudez, in Aragua (de Barcelona), José Tadeo Monagas and his division secured the hinterland.

The carabobo campaign

As early as mid-1820, Bolívar and his General Staff had drafted the plan for a campaign to liberate Venezuela, for which preparations began in the spring of 1821. The plan provided for a concentration of both armies in Araure or San Carlos, with Bolívar de la Torre intending to arrange for detachments before the decisive battle in order to be numerically superior on the day of the decision.

To get the Spaniards to concentrate their troops, Urdaneta began his march from the east side of Lake Maracaibo and entered Coro on May 11th after a few skirmishes on the way . Páez had already started his march from Apure the day before. Zaraza's division employed the 2nd division of the Spanish expeditionary army around Calabozo on the way to the northwest to the agreed meeting point.

De la Torre also took the initiative, concentrating the first two divisions in San Carlos and sending his 5th division south-west to Barinas, but this was taken by the two departments under Juan Gómez and Ambrosio Plaza, which Bolívar had dispatched, in mid-May expelled from Guanare , which is halfway between Araure and Barinas. While the Spaniards withdrew, Páez's division marched behind Bolívar's troops to the foot of the Andes and finally caught up with them. De la Torre had meanwhile left San Carlos and reached Araure on May 19. In view of the pushed back 5th Division of the Expeditionary Army, he too retreated the following day, especially since the Bermudez campaign from the east had resulted in the loss of Caracas (see below). He had his troops take up position in the field of Carabobo south of Valencia while he was in the city. With that, Bolívar had achieved its first objective: the Spanish had concentrated their troops in the west at one point.

The Bermudez Campaign

The unhindered march from Páez to Bolívar was possible because, since the end of the armistice, the Bermudez division, coming from Barcelona, ​​had successfully made its way to Caracas. He had left a third of his 1,800 soldiers off Cumaná and advanced along the coast. On May 12th, after several victories against some companies of the Hostalrich battalion, which actually belonged to the 1st Division, he had almost reached Caracas. The remaining companies, together with a battalion of the colonial army, defeated Bermudez brilliantly in the battle of El Rodeo near Guatire, just west of today's city limits of Caracas. Because the Spanish military commander Ramón Correa y Guevarra saw the defense of the capital too weakened, he gave it up. De la Torre sent parts of Francisco Tomás Morales' 2nd Division north in Calabozo to stop Bermudez. This ensured that the Llaneros of Paez could march unhindered to the northwest to meet Bolívar. Bermudez occupied Caracas on the 14th, while Correa fled to the valleys of Aragua , where Bermudez pursued him and defeated him again. Morales, numerically superior, routed Bermudez on May 24th. The patriots had to give up Caracas, but with reinforcements, especially from Arismendi from Margarita Island, they were able to entrench themselves in El Rodeo. The commander of the pursuing 2nd Battalion Valencey , José Pereira, who was later decisively absent from the Battle of Carabobo ( Hostalrich returned to the 1st Division), shrank from a skirmish. After a few minor skirmishes southwest of Guatire, he offered Bermudez in mid-June to wait for the outcome of the principled meeting between Bolívar and de la Tore. Bermudez refused, pursued Pereira to Caracas and suffered a loss-making defeat on June 23 on the extremely steep Calvary west of the city center.

Cruz Carrillo's distraction

Bolívar's troops continued to advance northeast in the second half of May, and the Liberator entered San Carlos with the vanguard on June 2nd. His guard did not arrive until days later. In the days that followed, the divisions assembled in San Carlos as planned by Bolívar. For the second part of his campaign plan, de la Torre was to assign further detachments to weaken his main body. To this end, Bolívar had instructed the governor and military chief of Trujillo , José Cruz Carrillo, with his troops to advance towards the northeast. First he had to deal with the royalist guerrillas in the area before he could devote himself to his real task. Cruz Carrillo had occupied El Tocuyo on May 19, about halfway from Trujillo to Barquisimeto, when de la Torre began to gather his troops. In May, Cruz Carrillo had sent the defector Juan de los Reyes Vargas further northeast, to today's capital of the state of Yaracuy , San Felipe , where he was expelled in mid-June. The now open Barquisimeto occupied Urdaneta, coming from Coro, on June 13th. Cruz Carrillo moved up and secured the way from Urdaneta's division to San Carlos. Bolívar then raised a new department, which he sent to San Felipe to reinforce Cruz Carillo. De la Torre, who did not know that most of the troops were convalescents and recruits, ordered Juan Tello with two battalions (1st Navarra and Barinas ) and a cavalry squadron in support of the threat in the northwest on June 22nd . There were almost eight hundred soldiers in all. Satisfied with the further weakening of the Spaniards, Bolívar moved his troops to the northeast on the following day, where his advance detachments had displaced Spanish outposts in the previous days.

Decision day

While still in San Carlos, Bolívar had integrated the troops of Páez on June 7th and Urdaneta's division into his army on June 16th. Zaraza's riders had also joined, but Bolívar had to replace the last two commanders due to illness. On June 15 he organized the troops into three divisions headed by Páez, Cedeño and Plaza. The Spaniards also had three divisions. Morales led the second or vanguard division, Tómas García the 1st division and José Maria Herrera the 5th. The total number of Spaniards at the time of the battle was 4279 men.

On this Sunday morning, Bolívar himself explored the positions of the Spaniards in the approximately 4 × 3 kilometer large plain of Carabobo from a hill. Here he made the final modifications to his plan of attack. From San Carlos the colonial road to Valencia led at this point almost exactly in a west-east direction through a hilly terrain that bounded the plain to the west and south. Here the Spaniards had positioned their two cannons, which were secured by 1st Battalion Valencey from 1st Division. Behind it was the second row of their defenses with the other infantry battalions, behind them the battalion Burgos as a reserve. The Spanish cavalry was northeast behind it. Since Bolívar judged a frontal attack on the Colonial Road to be too costly, he only let the Plaza division follow the road slowly, while the other two divisions, accompanied by forty engineers and some local leaders, bypassed the Spanish defenses to the northwest, around the weaker left Attack flank by de la Torres troops.

Course of the battle

Detail from the above picture by Martín Tovar y Tovar

De la Torre sent Burgos up a hill to the north to stop the Paez and Cedeño divisions, which were moving through a flat hilly landscape in fire from the Spanish artillery. Paez hit the Spaniards' right flank with the Bravos de Apuré at around 11 a.m. Because of the heavy defensive fire from Burgos on a hill, which made the attack fail twice, Páez ordered the British hunters ( Cazadores Británicos ) to intervene. Burgos could be pushed aside with the bayonet . De la Torre meanwhile withdrew the closest battalions of Hostalrich and Barbastro from the colonial road and posted them on the flanks of Burgos . Without the support of the riders of Páez, the British hunters, the reformed Bravos , and two companies of Cedeños Tiradores de La Guardia ( guardsmen ) received the order to attack. 17 British officers fell during the first quarter of an hour of the murderous attack, but the Spaniards in turn left the positions to approach the Europeans. These waited in cold blood for the most favorable moment and were therefore very effective. At the same time, Páez let his riders bypass the Spanish line. De la Torre now also sent the Principe and Infante battalions , as well as the cavalry in the form of dragoons and hussars into battle. Páez responded with a hundred lancers who drove the Spaniards apart. Since many South Americans served in the ranks of the cavalry in particular, morale was not very high.

Detail from the above picture by Martín Tovar y Tovar

After the cavalry had operated behind the Spaniards and routed their cavalry, the division of Cedeño advanced over the hill from which the remnants of the Burgos battalion and its reinforcements had been driven or captured onto the rest of the Army de la Torres, which had largely given up the road and was moving towards the focal point of the fighting. The division of Plaza, especially the Boyacá and Vargas battalions, had meanwhile deviated from the road and were able to intercept some Spanish units. One of de la Torres' staff officers, José Rodríguez Rubio, wrote a few days later: “On the 24th of last month the enemies penetrated through the gaps on the left and underhandedly managed to attack their positions battalion by battalion and defeat them, which led to the fact that we were finally defeated in many small battles, while parts of their cavalry seized us and cut us through their left flank, which ultimately led to the dissolution of the force in all directions, and only the brave battalion Valencey withdrew in an orderly manner . "

While pursuing, especially in pursuit of the Valencey battalion , General Manuel Cedeño lost his life trying to persuade the Spaniards to surrender. The same happened to Colonel Ambrosio Plaza during the attack by the Infante Battalion . Páez's bodyguard, Pedro Camejo , was among the victims in the first cavalry regiment, the Guardia de Honor , during the skirmishes with the Spanish horsemen. On the other hand, under the protection of the remnants of his army, de la Torre was able to move to Puerto Cabello (the only fortified port in Venezuela).

Follow-up

Bolívar himself tried to prevent the Spanish from fleeing with his remaining reserves. Since the cavalry of Páez had to get ammunition first, and because Bolívar had to bring the Rifles and Granaderos (grenadiers) battalions in pursuit, the remaining Spaniards had time to organize their retreat. In addition, there was a rain shower, which made it easier for the Spaniards to flee. The Spaniards suffered 2,908 casualties, about 1,500 prisoners being taken, but due to countless desertions, after the detached units had also returned to Puerto Cabello, barely 3,000 soldiers remained with the Spaniards.

The tough fighting continued for several days until the capture of Valencia. Pereira, who had held the Calvary in Caracas the day before the battle, withdrew to La Guaira after learning of the outcome of the battle . Here a French squadron refused to allow him to flee to Puerto Cabello. It was only after he surrendered to Bolívar's aide Diego Ibarra that Bolívar allowed the transport, which the French willingly carried out in early July.

Bolívar, who moved to his hometown of Caracas four days after the battle, wrote to Vice President Francisco de Paula Santander in Bogota on the 25th that he had only 200 casualties, but in reality there were three to four times as many . In the following weeks he exchanged letters with de la Torre to persuade the Spaniards to surrender nationwide, but was unsuccessful. Because he returned to New Granada and had Venezuela ruled not centrally but by Santiago Mariño in the west, Paez in the center and Carlos Soublette in the east in three departments, the Spaniards were able to take advantage of their opportunities and, in the following year, succeeded by de la Torres, Morales, achieve considerable success in retaking. It was not until the end of July 1823, with the naval battle of Maracaibo and the third siege of Puerto Cabello, which Páez took in November of that year, that the Spaniards were finally defeated. Local uprisings by loyalists, however, shaped the picture in Venezuela for years to come.

monument

Since 1971, a white triumphal arch by the Spanish architect Antonio Rodriguez de Villar and a lookout tower have adorned the extensive park of the memorial to the battle that secured Venezuela the final liberation from Spanish colonial rule. The Campo de Carabobo is located in the state of the same name, around 25 km southwest of the provincial capital, Valencia.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela . La Batalla de Carabobo
  2. ↑ TORRENTE, 130, Vol. II, pag. 231
  3. ↑ LECUNA, 1950, chap. XIX. Maracaibo.
  4. ↑ BARALT, 1841, Vol. II. P. 30 (PDF; 348 kB) holds desertions responsible, p. 42 (PDF; 311 kB)
  5. ↑ ARAUJO
  6. ↑ TORRENTE, 1830, Vol. 3, p. 234
  7. ↑ LECUNA 1955, chap. IX, Reunion del ejército.
  8. ↑ Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela . Campaña de Carabobo.
  9. ↑ PAEZ, 1867, Vol I. pag. 203
  10. ↑ a b Bencomo: Mito y realidad de la Batalla de Carabobo
  11. ↑ BARALT, 1887, vol. 3, pag . 44-48 (PDF; 305 kB), and TORRENTE, 1830, vol. III. p. 234-237.
  12. ↑ According to Otto Philip Braun in the Spanish language Wikipedia, this was during Bermudez 'campaign.
  13. ↑ LECUNA 1955, Chapter IX, El Libertador en San Carlos.
  14. ↑ LECUNA, 1950, chap. XIX. La diversion de Carrillo.
  15. ↑ LECUNA 1955, Chapter IX, Diversión de Cruz Carillo.
  16. ↑ BARALT, 1887, Vol. 3, p. 50f. (PDF; 339 kB)
  17. ↑ TORRENTE, 1830, Vol. III. p. 239.
  18. ↑ Historico de Venezuela . La Battalla de Carabobo
  19. ↑ PAEZ, 1867, Vol I. pag. 206
  20. ↑ TORRENTE, 1830, Vol. III. p. 240.
  21. ↑ a b c Lecuna, 1950, chap. XIX. La batalla de Carabobo.
  22. ↑ in LECUNA 1955, Chapter IX, Retirada del batallón Valencey.
  23. ↑ PAEZ, 1867, Vol I. pag. 208
  24. ↑ LECUNA, 1950, chap. XIX. Persecución. Rendición de Pereira.
  25. ^ Letter from Simón Bolívar on the battle of Carabobo
  26. ↑ Photo gallery at Venezuelatuya