The Emancipation of South America/Chapter 35
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DISASTER AT ICA.
1821—1822.
After the return of the expedition from Callao, La Serna removed his head-quarters to Cuzco, leaving the bulk of the army behind him in the valley of Jauja, under Canterac. He strengthened the garrisons of Puno, Arequipa, and Tacna, and entrusted the defence of the southern coast to the army of Upper Peru.
Canterac detached two light columns under Loriga against Pasco, where the insurrection had still a footing under Otero, who had 200 regulars with him and 5,000 Indians. On the approach of Loriga, Otero marched out to attack him, and fell upon him suddenly, in the early morning of the 7th December, at the village of El Cerro, where the Royalists had halted to collect supplies. In the confusion a part of the ammunition blew up, and the troops in the darkness were seized with panic, but Loriga succeeded in rallying them, occupied the church and some neighbouring houses, and waited for daylight, when he in his turn attacked the Patriots, and completely routed them, killing 700 Indians.
In Upper Peru, Lanza, the guerilla chief, maintained himself in the mountains between Cochabamba and La Paz.
In Potosí a mutiny broke out among the troops, which was quelled by General Maroto.The Indians of Cangallo and Huamanga again rose in arms; but the former town was burned by Carratala, and the Viceroy issued a decree forbidding any attempt to rebuild it. The Government of Peru erected a monument to the memory of the unfortunate town, and Buenos Ayres named one of her principal streets Cangallo, as a lasting record of this barbarous deed.
But these transitory events had no effect upon the war itself, the Cordillera formed a barrier between the opposing forces which neither of them could pass. The Royalists still outnumbered the Patriots, two to one, but the territory occupied by them, extending from Pasco to the Argentine frontier, was so enormous, that they were nowhere strong.
Bolivar was on the march against Quito; success would enable him to assist San Martin to crush the Royalist forces in Peru, but no cordial alliance was possible with Bolívar until all these new nations had agreed upon one common form of government, and the unsettled state of Guayaquil, which was claimed as a province by both Columbia and Peru, threatened to produce discord between them.
San Martin rose to the emergency. He sent a contingent of 1,500 men from Peru to assist Bolivar in his operations against Quito, and so secured his success. Then, setting on one side his monarchical ideas, he, on the 27th December, 1821, issued a decree summoning a Congress:—
"To establish a definitive form of government, and to give to the country the constitution best adapted to it."
He at the same time appointed the Marquis of Torre-Tagle Deputy-Protector, while he himself went off to Guayaquil in the hope of obtaining an interview with Bolívar.
Not daring to leave La Serna unmolested while he arranged with the Liberator of the North the plans for united and decisive action, he despatched General Tristan and Colonel Gamarra, both Peruvians, with 2,000 men, to occupy the valley of Ica, and spread a false report that Arenales was about to return with another expedition to the Highlands. La Serna was too well informed to trouble himself about reports, and knew well the quality of the two Patriots now in command at Ica.
Early in April Canterac, with 2,000 men and three guns, marched from Jauja, and Valdés with 500 from Arequipa. The Patriot army evacuated Ica at their approach, but their retreat by night was intercepted, they were thrown into disorder and cut to pieces. The Royalists made more than 1,000 prisoners, including fifty officers, took four guns and two flags, and returned in triumph, after shooting one in every five of the officers of the Numancia battalion, whom they had made prisoners.
Tristan and Gamarra were tried by court-martial, and shown to be utterly incompetent for such a command; but the chief blame of the disaster fell upon San Martin himself, who had appointed them.
This defeat was in some measure compensated the following month by the fall of Quito, which terminated the war in the North, and San Martin not having been able to effect his proposed interview with Bolívar, who did not come to Guayaquil when expected, when he returned to Lima left the civil administration in the hands of Torre-Tagle, and devoted his attention exclusively to the army. He issued a proclamation in which he promised the Peruvian people that the war should be concluded in the year 1822, then current, and on the 4th July signed a provisional treaty with Columbia.
At the same time he applied for help to the Government of Chile, and to the governors of the various Argentine Provinces, bordering the eastern slopes of the Andes, now de facto independent States, an endeavour to unite all Spanish America in one grand effort to crush the Royalist cause in its last stronghold, the Highlands of Peru.
Still harping on the ideas he had disclosed at Punchauca and Miraflores, he also wrote to La Serna, proposing a cessation of hostilities, on the basis of the recognition of the independence of Peru. To this the Viceroy returned a curt answer, "That however beneficial independence might be to Peru, it could only be hoped for or established by decree of the nation (Spain)."
San Martin also wrote to the same effect to Bolívar, but found that their ideas did not at all coincide. And wrote to O'Higgins proposing a naval expedition to the coasts of Spain.
Torre-Tagle was but the nominal head of the civil Administration, the real ruler was his Minister, Monteagudo, an inveterate enemy of all Spaniards, who thought the true way to victory was to make the struggle one of race. On the 31st December he issued a decree, that all Spaniards who had not been naturalised should leave the country; in January, that they should also forfeit half their property; and in February, that the infraction of these decrees should entail banishment and confiscation. After the disaster of Ica still more barbarous decrees were issued, and a commission was appointed to enforce them.
Two great forces from the South and from the North were about to join hands in the great work in which they were both engaged. We have sketched the progress of the revolution from the banks of La Plata, across the Cordillera, and by the Pacific to Peru; it is now time to turn our attention to its progress from the Spanish Main through New Granada and Columbia to the frontiers of Peru at Quito.