Battle of Junín

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The battle of Junín
The battle of Junín. Oil painting by Martín Tovar y Tovar.
The battle of Junín.
Oil painting by Martín Tovar y Tovar.
date August 6, 1824
place Junin , Peru
output decisive victory of the patriots
consequences Retreat of the Spaniards from the central highlands
Parties to the conflict

Flag of Peru (1822-1825) .svg Republic of Peru Greater Colombia
Greater Colombia 1821Greater Colombia 

Spain 1785Spain Spain

Commander

Simón Bolívar

José Canterac

Troop strength
900 cavalry 1300 cavalry
losses

144 dead and wounded

259 killed or wounded, 80 prisoners

The Battle of Junín on August 6, 1824 marks the beginning of Simón Bolívar's campaign , which initiated the liberation of Peru with the defeat of the Northern Division of the Royal Spanish Army. The campaign ended with the Battle of Ayacucho in early December and the Spanish domination in South America.

prehistory

After the partial successes of the Chilean-Argentine liberation expedition of José de San Martín , which was able to bring the north of Peru, as well as the central coast with Lima to independence, but could not bring the entire country under control, the political conditions began to become unstable and the patriots got caught up in differences of opinion. In this internally and externally difficult situation, the Congress called on Simón Bolívar , the successful liberator of New Granada ( Battle of Boyacá ), Venezuela ( Battle of Carabobo ) and Quito ( Battle of Pichincha ) , to help. The background to this was an assistance pact signed on July 6, 1822 between Greater Colombia and Peru. Bolívar, who in 1822 was still pacifying the royalists in the liberated countries, met with José de San Martín in Guayaquil (which led to his final withdrawal from the war of liberation) and sent his most capable officer, Antonio José de Sucre, with five thousand soldiers in two parties in March and April 1823 to support the patriots in Peru. Sucre should also sound out the political situation, since Bolívar felt no inclination to put his reputation at risk in internal Peruvian disputes. Despite the strong presence of the Spanish in the central highlands east of Lima, the political challenge for Sucre was greater than the military one.

Andrés de Santa Cruz , who came to power through a coup d'état in early 1823 after the catastrophic failure of a campaign on the south coast, was supposed to expand the republic's sphere of influence in a second campaign on the south coast. His obstinacy, which rejected Sucres' offer of help, caused a second failure, although this time even parts of Upper Peru ( Alto Peru , today: Bolivia ) were briefly liberated. This failure in mid-1823, together with another coup, brought Bolívar himself onto the scene, who knew that only a completely liberated continent could secure the independence of the already liberated countries. On September 1, 1823, Bolívar reached Lima by sea with another 1,500 soldiers. His first task was to restore order in Peru, as there were two presidents at the time who did not recognize each other. By the end of 1823 Bolívar was busy with this task and the establishment of a functioning administration.

When he was on his way from Trujillo , where he had deposed the surplus president, to Lima at the end of the year , he was attacked by a serious illness (his incipient tuberculosis , of which he died in 1830), which struck him for a month. While he was bedridden in January 1824, in Callao , the port of Lima, an uprising by Argentine troops left behind by San Martín took place, which ended with the capture of the Real Felipe fortress in the port of Lima. The Spaniards immediately saw their chance and sent troops to support the insurgents. This made Lima untenable for the patriots, especially since a large part of the soldiers were stationed in the north, as they had been needed to remove the second president.

After his recovery, Bolívar let his officers - especially Sucre - equip his troops and prepare them for deployment in the heights of the Andes. He had previously been proclaimed military dictator with unrestricted powers by Congress in Trujillo. He left Lima for the time being to the Spaniards and drafted the plan for a campaign that first provided for the defeat of the northern division, which ruled the central highlands, and then the final liberation with the overthrow of the southern division, which was (at least partially) under Viceroy de la Serna in Cusco lay.

The beginning of the campaign

During the preparation, Sucre had repeatedly pushed for a faster approach and Viceroy José de la Serna had also instructed the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Army, José Canterac, to attack the patriots during the preparation. But both Bolívar and Canterac preferred to wait. The Venezuelan because he insisted on full preparation and the French because the risk of losing the northern highlands was too great for him. On June 15, 1824, Bolívar finally gave the order to leave for the troops who, for logistical reasons, had prepared for the campaign at various locations on the slopes of the Andes in the area of ​​the southern north coast. The meeting point for the Greater Colombian, Peruvian and Neo-Renadine divisions was Cerro de Pasco . This was the first larger town north of the positions of the Spaniards in the central highlands, who were stationed from Tarma via Jauja to Huancayo .

While preparing and awaiting supplies from New Granada for the united army of Great Colombians, Peruvians and Chileans, local guerrillas, called montoneros , had dealt with the Spaniards in order to distract them. These skirmishers , as one could say in German, were not popular with either of the two great liberators, but with their ambushes, supply disruptions, intimidation, but also important auxiliary services for the republican army, such as reconnaissance and intelligence transport, they made a contribution that should not be underestimated for the liberation of Peru.

On August 2nd, Bolívar held a military demonstration near Cerro de Pasco , which also earned respect from the European officers in its ranks. As usual, he used this to commit his soldiers to the goal and to strengthen them morally: “Soldiers! You will complete the greatest work Heaven has commanded men: to free the whole world from slavery. Soldiers! The enemy whom you will destroy boasts fourteen years of triumph, so they would be worthy to measure their weapons against yours, who have shone in a thousand battles. Soldiers! Peru and all America look to you for peace, Son of Victory, and even liberal Europe looks upon you with delight, because the freedom of the New World is the hope of the universe. Are you going to betray them? No. No. You are invincible. "

Due to an uprising in their own ranks in Upper Peru, the Spaniards had to divide up their army, so that Canterac had to do without his chief of staff Jeronomó Valdés with five thousand men. With around eight thousand men at his disposal, he was numerically inferior to the Republicans, who had deployed around nine thousand soldiers, but the strategic skills of the native French, together with the experience and discipline of his troops, could well compensate for this. When he heard of the approach of the United Army, he united his troops on August 1st and moved with the bulk of his army to the northern border of his area of ​​influence, to Tarma, to oppose Bolívar.

About twenty-five kilometers southwest of Cerro de Pasco begins a lake, then Lago de Chinchaycocha , on the southeastern shore of which is Pueblo de Reyes de Chinchaycocha . Today the place and the lake are called Junín on the instructions of Bolívar . While Canterac marched directly on Cerro de Pasco to the east of the lake to face his opponent, Bolívar had already bypassed the royalists on the west side of the lake. When Canterac, who was exploring with his entire cavalry, learned on the afternoon of August 5th that he had been bypassed, it was too late to retreat that day. So he hurried back the following day to prevent the connection to his supply camps and the Viceroy de la Serna in Cusco from being interrupted.

At this point the Republican army was already southwest of the lake and had been waiting for reinforcements. When Bolívar decided to march south-east, also on August 6th, he no longer had the opportunity to choose the location of the battle, but chance determined the choice of location.

Course of the battle

Canterac had returned in forced marches on the east side of the lake, hoping to find a suitable position himself to stop the separatists. His infantry formed the march head, while he himself covered the rear space with the cavalry. Bolívar, on the other hand, led the vanguard with the cavalry to cut off the path of the Spaniards. When the two troops saw each other that afternoon, their infantry and artillery were each a few kilometers away, so that actually both should have waited for them to arrive. However, it would have been too late for a battle that day.

Bolívar, however, did not want to miss the opportunity and ordered the attack despite his less favorable position. Because while Canterac was able to let his riders line up on the Pampas of Junín, which is around 4,200 meters high, Bolívar's cavalry stuck in a column formation between the swamp southeast of the Junín lake and a mountain south of the Patriots.

Than between 16 and 17 o'clock took place the attack of the Spaniards, after all, were the mounted Guard Grenadiers under the Kasselaner Major Otto Philipp Braun at the top, stopping at the first impact of the Spaniards. The battle- hardened llaneros of José Antonio Páez , which Pablo Morillo , the Spanish expedition leader in 1815, had praised in the highest tones, were at the end of the column and could not intervene for the time being. Braun, who actually commanded Bolívar's bodyguards and only alternately commanded the grenadiers, set the example with his steadfastness for the South Americans who did not leave his side, although Canterac first threw his hussars in the center and then his dragoons on the flanks. More squadrons were able to get through the bottleneck onto the battlefield - slowly. Not a single shot was fired in the cavalry battle, which was conducted exclusively with cutting and thrusting weapons.

But even the riders of the patriots who pushed after were not able to turn the tide at this point: Mariano Necochea, the Argentine chief of the cavalry, was captured with a total of seven minor wounds and the commander of the Peruvian hussars, William Miller from Kent , took the lead. But even his attack, ordered by Bolívar, did not improve the situation of the separatists, as Canterac skilfully directed his mounted men.

Bolívar was now inclined to give up the battle and merely wanted to bring his troops to safety. With this order he sent the Peruvian major Andrés Rázuri into battle. Many of the patriots were already in retreat, and Canterac saw himself as the victor. So it can be explained that he stood by while his formations for the persecution were disbanded. Rázuri recognized this and arbitrarily changed Bolívar's order: he transmitted that the attack should be repeated. The Peruvian cuirassiers under Isidoro Suárez charged forward and suffered heavy losses, but their efforts paid off. Above all from a psychological point of view, because the other units of Bolívar's cavalry now regained order and pushed into the disorganized ranks of the Spaniards. Now the Llaneros under José Laurencio Silva had finally arrived on the battlefield. The eyewitness Francis Burdett O'Connor from Bolívar's staff writes in his memoir that the lancers' ride made the earth shake. This attack, the former cattle herders with up to three and a half meters long but lighter and more stable lances than those of the Spaniards, made the meeting a disaster for the royalists.

With Canterac at their head, the royal troops sought their salvation in flight. Only the falling night prevented the total loss of the Spanish cavalry. They had lost 330 men, including 80 prisoners, a third of their troops in the three quarters of an hour that the battle had lasted. As Miller states, many of her wounded died from the night frost. The Republican horsemen did not lose 150 men, a sixth of Bolívar's horsemen.

Follow-up

In terms of magnitude, even by South American standards, more of a skirmish than a battle, the importance of the Junín meeting lies in the smashing of the Spanish northern division in the central highlands, since the psychological effect of the victory - even with Canterac - did not inspire confidence to be able to stop the united army on its way to Cusco. The Spaniards fled, not seriously pursued by the separatists, but besieged by montoneros , to Viceroy de la Serna in the southern highlands. Its initiative in November and December culminated in the Battle of Ayacucho , in which the Spaniards in South America were finally defeated.

Bolívar found many heroes whom he honored for their achievements on the Pampas of Junín - but not Rázuri, whom he himself does not mention at all - but Otto Philipp Braun was appointed lieutenant colonel on the battlefield and, when the certificates arrived, added to it the promotion to the colonel, since his use made the advancement of the rest of the riders possible in the first place and prevented them from getting caught in the unfavorable marching formation.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Garcia Camba: Memorias para la historia de las armas españolas en el Perú. 1846, p. 197 ( books.google.es ).
  2. ^ Parte oficial de la Batalla de Junín emitido por el Comandante del ejército repiblicano. In: Bencomo: La emancipación del Perú. 2007, p. 142.
  3. ↑ a b Parte oficial de la Batalla de Junín emitido por el Comandante del ejército repiblicano. In: Bencomo: La emancipación del Perú. 2007, p. 140.
  4. ↑ Bencomo: La emancipación del Perú. 2007, p. 39.
  5. ↑ Lecuna: Crónica Razonada de las Guerras de Bolívar. 1950, chap. XXV, Bolívar en Lima.
  6. ↑ Garcia Camba: Memorias para la historia de las armas españolas en el Perú. 1846, p. 113 ff. ( Books.google.es ).
  7. ↑ Bencomo: La emancipación del Perú. 2007, p. 73
  8. ↑ Lecuna: Crónica Razonada de las Guerras de Bolívar. 1950, chap. XXVI, Gestiones en Chile.
  9. ↑ Mendiburu: Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú. Volume II, 1876, pp. 153-154 ( bib.cervantesvirtual.com ).
  10. ↑ Bencomo: La emancipación del Perú. 2007, p. 83.
  11. ^ Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. 1829, p. 138 ff. ( Books.google.de )
  12. ↑ Translated from Lecuna: Crónica Razonada de las Guerras de Bolívar. 1950, chap. XXVI, La misión del ejército. Elocuencia de Bolívar.
  13. ^ Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. 1829, p. 161 f. ( books.google.de ).
  14. ^ Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. 1829, p. 160 ( books.google.de ).
  15. ^ Parte del general Canterac sobre la acción de Junín. In: Garcia Camba: Memorias para la historia de las armas españolas en el Perú. 1846, p. 368 ( books.google.es ).
  16. ^ Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. 1829, p. 164 ( books.google.de ).
  17. ↑ In Lecuna: Bolívar y el Arte Militar. 1955, chap. XII, Batalla de Junin.
  18. ^ Miller: Memoirs of General Miller in the service of the Republic of Peru. 1829, p. 164 f. ( books.google.de ).

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