 Section 20 of the South American Republics, Volume 2, by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Piotr Natter. Part 4, Ecuador. Chapter 3, The War of Independence. The beginning of the 19th century saw Spain involved to her ruin in the tremendous struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. Her fleets were destroyed at San Vincent and Trafalgar, her treasury was emptied, her administration demoralized. Free communication with her American colonies was impossible, while British frigates commanded every sea, and both on the peninsula and in America Spanish subjects lost their traditional respect for the monarchy. Though the jealousy against their important rulers, which always fermented among creals, was not so strong in quiet, isolated and agricultural Ecuador as in the coast provinces and mining regions, the news of Spain's defeats and humiliations awakened ambitious lawyers and wealthy landowners to a realization that the Spaniards might be ousted from the lucrative offices. The opportunity came in 1809 with the resignation of Charles V, the deposition and imprisonment of III and VII, the usurpation of the Spanish throne by Joseph Bonaparte and the occupation of the peninsula by the French. The viceroy's and governors of Spanish America refused to recognize Joseph. The many patriots on the peninsula, who resisted the French usurpation, organized provisional juntas, which assumed to be the supreme depositories of power, pending the expulsion of Joseph and the return of Ferdinand, while the queen claimed a regency for herself. The Spanish authorities did not know who would come out on top and were principally anxious to maintain themselves in their places, while ambitious leaders among the creals immediately began to plot to turn the confusion to their own advantage and to secure autonomy and even independence for the colonies. In 1809 Don Ruiz de Castilla was president of Quito. His jurisdiction included not only all present Ecuador, but also the southern part of Colombia extending north 300 miles along the great Andean Plateau through the popular regions of Pasto and Papayan, and far down the high and fertile valley of the Cauca. These portions of Colombia are continuous with the table land on which Quito stands, and directly accessible therefrom, while they are separated from the parallel series of plateaus on which Bogota, Tunja and Socorro lie by the deep valley of the Magdalena. Castilla's dependence upon the Bogota viceroy was therefore largely nominal, and he could expect as little help from New Granada as from Peru. He had only a few troops at Quito, probably not more than two or three hundred, while the governors of the subordinate provinces, Papayan, Guayaquil and Cuenca, each could master only a few dozen armed police. A number of wealthy Creole proprietors and restless lawyers determined in the early part of 1809 to overthrow the president and create a governing junta composed of residents of Ecuador. Castilla was powerless to avert the storm. The handful of troops in barracks was easily suborned by the conspirators, who included the persons of greatest wealth, intelligence and influence in the community. The mass of the Indian population was inert and would naturally side with their landlords, while the Spanish residents and Creole Tories had formed no plans for common action. On the night of the 9th of August 1809, the chiefs of the movement, with the officers of the troops, met in the house of Donia Manuela Canisarias, the Madame Roland of Ecuador, and assigned to each the role which he was to play in the coup d'etat. The officers went to the barracks, let out the troops and took possession of the government buildings in the name of the revolutionist committee. The president and those Spanish officials who proved recalcitrant were imprisoned, a governing junta of nine, with Juan Montufar as chief was appointed, and an open cabildo salmon, which confirmed these acts. The junta notified the viceroy of Bogota and Lima that it had assumed the government, and sent messengers to the provincial capitals, demanding that they expel their Spanish authorities, adhere to the new order of things, and recognize the supremacy of the Quito junta. But the movement met with no favorable response from the rest of the presidency. The governors of Papayan, Cuenca and Guayaquil immediately began to enlist troops to defend themselves against an attack from Quito. The junta prepared for war, but though plenty of ambitious young Creoles volunteered as officers, there were no firearms enough to go round. At last an expedition set off to the north against Pasto and Papayan, only to be easily defeated by the hasty Levis the Spanish authorities had made among the sturdy Indians of these regions. Frightened by this defeat and their hopeless isolation, the junta resigned under promise of amnesty and in October Castilla returned to Quito and resumed the reigns of government. But his position was insecure, and rumors of a fresh conspiracy soon drove him to repressive measures and the imprisonment of leading Creoles. The feeling grew bitter, and in August 1810 a desperate effort was made by the Creoles to get possession of the barracks. Its failure was followed by a frightful massacre, in which many of the most popular men in the place were murdered. Meanwhile the Supreme junta at Seville, anxious to pacify the revolutionary disorders, had commissioned Carlos Montufar, a son of the chief of the fallen Quito junta, who then happened to be in Spain, to go to Ecuador and reconcile the factions. Under his advice Castilla resigned to a new junta the direction of affairs, taking however the position of its chief member and sent away his troops. In reality the younger Montufar sympathized with his brother Creoles. The universal indignation at the massacre of 1810 pushed him on to vengeance. Spaniards travelling through the country were way late and assassinated, and by the time Molina, appointed by the Spanish government in Castilla's place, had reached Cuenca on its way north to Quito, the old governor had again been deposed and imprisoned, and open war existed between Arredondo, the Spaniard commanding the troops who had retired from Quito in accordance with the compromise, and the junta in the latter city. The year 1811 passed without any material change in the situation. The Spanish generals controlled Guayaquil and Cuenca in the south, and Pasto and Papayan in the north, practically isolating the revolutionary government at Quito. As the troops of both sides became better trained, the war took on a more determined and cruel character. Royalists and revolutionists both raised recruits among the sturdy mountain Indians and half-breeds. In technical knowledge of their profession, the Spanish officers were superior to the revolutionary readers and could procure arms more readily. Their armies were usually better disciplined and more efficient, although more liable to depletion by desertion. In this state of perpetual war, government rapidly became exclusively military. On the surface, the contest seemed only a struggle between two sets of independent chiefs, in whose mouths liberty and loyalty were mere catchwords, and who continually quarreled among themselves even when they nominally belonged to the same side. Early in 1812 Montufar was overthrown by another Creole chief in Quito who thereupon undertook an expedition against the Spanish general at Cuenca, but sedition among the Patriot troops gave an easy victory to the latter and the Spaniards took the offensive. Marching toward Quito, they dispersed the Patriot army at Mocha and entered the capital in Triumph. Montes, the Spanish general who now became ruler of the presidency, was a wise and moderate man and spared no pains to conciliate. He soon succeeded in so completely consolidating his power that during nine years Quito and most of the presidency remained quietly submissive and became one of the centres when Spain expeditions went out against the parts of the continent which still remained in revolution. An able general, Samano by name, carried the successes of the Spanish arms to the north and although the Patriots of Colombia obtained some temporary advantages in the winter of 1814-1815 they never penetrated south of Pasto. In 1816 the tide again turned with the arrival of 1100 Spanish veterans in the north of Colombia. The Patriots were soon everywhere defeated, Bohota itself taken and a remnant of revolutionists who attempted the invasion of Papayan and Pasto were overwhelmed by Samano in 1816 at the Battle of Tambo. The Patriot cause was at its lowest ebb in all South America. Resistance ceased in Colombia. Only a few scattered bands kept up a desultory warfare in Venezuela. Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia were quiet. Spanish authority had been re-established in Chile. Uruguay had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese king and Spanish armies were invading the Argentine, the last refuge of the revolution. San Martín's thunderbolt descended upon Chile and his victory at Cecabuco changed the aspect of affairs. A fleet was improvised at Valparaiso which obtained command of the Pacific coast, cutting off the Spaniards in Ecuador from receiving supplies except overland from the Caribbean ports. Bolivar took Newhart for his tedious task of arousing the north and driving the Spaniards from Venezuela and New Granada. In 1819 he climbed the east side of the Andes to the neighborhood of Bohota and by defeating the Spanish army at Boyacá freed most of the present Colombia and even in Quito the Patriots renewed their revolutionary plotting. Meanwhile San Martín had completed the expulsion of the Spaniards from Chile and in 1820 he transported an army by sea to the neighborhood of Lima itself opening communications with the anti-Spanish party all along the coast. On the 9th of October 1820 a successful revolution broke out at Guayaquil and little time was lost in sending an army to the plateau. The Spaniards defeated it but with Bolivar threatening them from Colombia their comrades in Peru fighting for their lives against San Martín, the population of Quito on the verge of a revolt and the Pacific in the control of the Patriots they could not follow up their advantage. On June 24, 1821 Bolivar gained the crowning victory of Carabao in Venezuela. The Spanish position in the Caribbean provinces became irretrievable and the Patriot general was then sfor free to pursue his plans for the expulsion of the enemy from southern New Granada and Ecuador with their incorporation with Colombia. In the fall of that year General Sucre who shares with San Martín the honor of being the greatest soldier on the Patriot side arrived at Guayaquil by sea bringing with him 1700 Colombian and Venezuelan veterans. Bolivar was to advance from Bogota conquering Papayan and Pasto on his way to Quito while Sucre came up from the south. The latter advance ascended the Andes to the plateau but was badly defeated. Retreating to Guayaquil he reorganized his army incorporating with it a reinforcement of 1200 men sent by San Martín and again climbed the Andes. By this time Bolivar was advancing from Papayan to Pasto and the Spaniards thinking it best to concentrate their forces abandoned Cuenca and the southern provinces and allowed Sucre to advance unopposed to the neighborhood of Quito. There he outmaneuvered them and gained a commanding position on the slopes of the great volcano Pichincha overlooking the city. His foes were forced to the alternative of giving battle at a disadvantage or permitting him to effect a junction with Bolivar and overwhelming them by superior numbers. On the morning of the 24th of May 1822 the battle decisive of Ecuador's fate was fought. The Royal Army suffered annihilation. 400 dead lay on the mountainside and 200 wounded. 1100 men and 160 officers surrendered the following day. The only troops who escaped belonged to scattered detachments not present at the battle who fled down the eastern slope of the Andes into the trackless forests and finally made their way down the Amazon to the Atlantic. End of section 20. Section 21 of the South American Republics, Volume 2 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Piotr Natter. Part 4, Ecuador. Chapter 4, the formation of Ecuador. At the head of a victorious army of Colombians and Argentines, Sucre could naturally do as he liked with Ecuador and an assembly of the people of Quito accepted in cooperation into the Republic of Colombia. Bolivar, meanwhile, had had some hard fighting with the stubborn loyalists of Pasto and the issue remained doubtful until news of the victory of Pichincha was received. The Spanish commanders surrendered, Bolivar came on to Quito and then proceeded to Guayaquil. The inhabitants of this important city were divided. Many wanted to be independent. Others preferred incorporation with Peru to being tied up with Colombia, a country whose capital could only be reached by months of tedious traveling. Others, however, were willing to maintain the ancient political connection with New Granada. As a matter of fact, discussion was useless, for Bolivar threw into the scale the weight of his military power. Guayaquil and the adjacent coast region became a department of Colombia, while the southern Plateau provinces, Cuenca and Loja, were also erected into a department of Bolivar's vast confederation. This completed the division of the old presidency of Quito into four parts, Pasto and the northern provinces, Quito and the central, Cuenca and the northern, and Guayaquil with the coast, and in all of them the influence of Bolivar's satraps was predominant. Shortly after his arrival at Guayaquil, Bolivar and San Martin had their famous interview. The latter came up from Lima hoping to arrange plan of joint campaign, but he quickly saw that Bolivar would never consent to share the glory of driving the Spaniards from their last stronghold. The great Argentine magnanimously determined to retire, and returning to Lima resigned the presidency of Peru. San Martin, once out of the way, Bolivar was eager to lead the Colombian army to Lima, but the Peruvians declined his assistance. Alone, however, they had little chance against the able Spanish generals, and aghast at the progress of the enemy, they soon sent to Bolivar, begging his assistance on his own terms. The selfishly ambitious liberator gladly accepted, and within a month Sucre was on his way south at the head of a fine army of Colombian veterans. Bolivar himself followed with reinforcements, and though hampered and delayed by the revolt of the Cayao Gaisan, Sucre's military ability, backed by Bolivar's tireless energy and large resources, produced their legitimate results. Bolivar in person advanced to the plateau, and August 6, 1824 won the cavalry action of Junín, which compelled the retirement of the Spanish army to Cusco. Bolivar returned to Lima, leaving Sucre in command, and on the 9th of December the latter annihilated the main body of the enemy in the Battle of Ayacucho, the crowning victory of the War of South American Independence. Bolivar was supreme from the Caribbean to Potosí. As president of the United States of Colombia, he ruled Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador. He himself was dictator of Peru, and his faithful lieutenant exercised supreme power in Bolivia. The realization of his cherished plan for the union of all South America into one great confederacy, with himself as life president, seemed near at hand. But successful soldier though he was, heroic, resourceful and unwavering in reverse, his statecraft was short-sighted and impracticable. The moment of his apogee marked the beginning of his decline. He failed to appreciate that the spirit of South America was profoundly democratic and local, and that the War of Independence owed its beginning and successful prosecution to a deeply rooted impulse toward division, liberty and anarchy among the Creoles. To build a tower out of sand would have been easier than to create a stable union between the recently liberated provinces of Spanish America. Viewed in the light of subsequent events, the wonder is that the territorial disintegration stopped where it did, and that South America did not split into twenty, instead of nine separate countries. Bolivar's partisans in Colombia were unsuccessful in their intrigues to replace the constitution of Cucutá, with one drawn up after the plan their chief had imposed upon Bolivia and Peru. Neither leaders nor people, army nor professional classes showed any disposition to concede him greater powers. His attempts to interfere in the affairs of Argentine and Chile were repulsed. Peru became restless under his dictatorship. Bolivia only waited a favorable opportunity to expel Sucre. The very troops he had brought from Colombia to Peru became mutinous. His Pan-American Congress at Panama turned out a fiasco. He remained two years in Peru, until the news of a great uprising in Venezuela made it necessary for him to hurry to the north. Hardly had he left Lima, then the military chiefs in Peru virtually disavowed his authority. Under the leadership of their officers, the Colombian troops in Lima revolted, and the Peruvians, delighted to be rid of these embarrassing guests, paid their pecuniary demands, and to the number of over three thousand dispatched them in ships for the north. They disembarked in Ecuador, where one division took possession of Guayaquil and another of Cuenca. Bolivar was so occupied with the troubles in Venezuela that he could personally take no measures against disaffection. But General Flores, a Venezuelan whom he had appointed commander of the military forces of the three southern provinces of the old Quito presidency, Guayaquil, Cuenca and Quito, proved energetic and fortunate. His intrigues sowed discord among the officers of the revolting troops. A counter-revolution occurred in his favor at Cuenca, and after a short period of virtual independence, Guayaquil also returned to its old connection with Quito. The movement against Bolivar from Colombia proper involved Pasto and Papayan, the northern division of the old Quito presidency, while Quito and the southern provinces were left largely to their own devices. General Lamar, who had succeeded in making himself president of Peru, conceived the idea of enlarging the limits of that country by the acquisition of Guayaquil and Cuenca, and he was the more enthusiastic, because the latter was his native province. In 1828 war broke out between Colombia and Peru. Peruvian ships blockaded Guayaquil, and in January 1829 forced the surrender of that place, while a Peruvian army 7000 strong invaded the Ecuadorian plateau and penetrated beyond Cuenca. Flores and his rivals united in force of the common danger, the Colombian veterans scattered throughout the country, rallied to the banner of sucre, who came in person to take command, and the decisive battle was fought at Tarquí in February. The Peruvians were so badly defeated that they sued for peace and agreed to surrender Guayaquil and the greater part of the southern provinces. By this time however Bolivar's own position had become desperate. Venezuela had already separated from the confederation, and when on the 12th of May 1830 Flores proclaimed the Quito presidency independent, it was little more than the announcement of an existing fact. He attempted to disarm jealousy against Quito by christening the country by the fanzful name of Ecuador, and by decreeing that each province should have an equal vote in the legislative assembly. Flores was merely one of a multitude of military chiefs who had been fighting among themselves since the expulsion of the Spaniards. Though married to a Quito lady he was a Venezuelan and could rely on few local friendships or sympathies, and the Colombian veterans, who swarmed over the country devouring the substance of the people and eager for pay and plunder, regarded him as one of themselves and were ready to desert him for any chief who might offer higher wages. Now that Bolivar was overthrown and Sucre murdered on a lonely mountain road by hired assassins, the sentiment of loyalty to their own chiefs tardily revived among the fickle Colombian regulars. They received Flores's declaration of independence with indignation, an insurrection broke out among the garrison at Guayaquil, and the veterans marched to the plateau. Flores had no force capable of making headway against them, and was compelled to negotiate a treaty agreeing to support Bolivar in case the latter should remain in South America. On the other hand the troops consented to recognize Flores if Bolivar should go into exile. Hardly had the treaty been signed, then word was received of the lonely death of the great Venezuelan at Santa Marta. Most of the veterans took service under Flores, and he pursued the recalcitrance with relentless and bloody severity. Casto and Papayan, composing the province of Cauca, the northern division of the old kit of presidency, wavered as to whether they would cast their lot with Ecuador or New Granada. The government at Bogota sent an army into the disputed territory, and Flores tried to organize a force large enough to beat it, but he was hampered by mutinies, conspiracies and poverty, and after a year of expensive, though nearly bloodless, operations withdrew and consented to a treaty by which Ecuador gave up all claim to Pasto and Papayan, losing a third of the territory and population of the old presidency of Quito. Flores, however, managed to hold Guayaquil and Cuenca as well as Quito, and must therefore be regarded as the founder of Ecuador, though his reactionary, absolute and violent government was hated by all that was young, intelligent and liberal in the country. The Indian peasants groaned under the burden of taxes imposed to subsidize a horde of functionaries. Finances were in deplorable confusion, the public debts left unpaid, population decreased, especially in the Andean region. Agriculture, industry and commerce remained stationary except in the cacao districts on the coast. The lower classes had a hard struggle for bare existence, and the parasitical ruling race was solely preoccupied with political war and intrigue. It cannot fairly be said that Flores, or any other one man, was responsible. The lamentable condition of affairs resulted inevitably from the long struggle with Spain and from the situation, character and ideals of the people. But such a Janissary system of government was too burdensome, unwieldy and wasteful not to fall by its own weight sooner or later. The people were simply unable to pay the taxes which Flores levied vainly trying to satisfy his troops. The colonies broke out among the latter, and the liberals were encouraged to organize. A revolutionary society was formed in Quito, whose ramifications extended among the enthusiastic youth in every part of the republic. In Guayaquil, the wealthiest and most commercial city, the demand for better financial administration became universal. In 1833 Vicente Rocapuerte, the foremost of Ecuadorian liberals and the most accomplished public man in the country, openly assumed the leadership of the opposition to Flores. Elected a member of Congress, he bravely defied the dictator, who sentenced him to banishment. But when he reached Guayaquil, the troops and citizens of that city arose to support him. Flores led an army down the Andes and attacked and captured Guayaquil. Rocapuerte and his partisans escaped and kept up the struggle at different points of the coast, while sympathetic insurrections broke out on the plateau in Flores's rear. Though the dictator finally succeeded in capturing Rocapuerte, the only use he was able to make of his victory was to secure better terms from the liberals. Rocapuerte and he formed an alliance, and together they pacified the country, the former becoming president, and the latter retaining command of the army. Ecuador enjoyed her first real respite from civil war and tumult since 1809, and Rocapuerte's inauguration in 1835 marks the beginning of civil and constitutional governments. End of section 21 Section 22 of the South American Republic's Volume 2 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Piotr Natter, Part 4, Ecuador, Chapter 5, Modern Ecuador. President Rocapuerte was not only animated by revolutionary principles, imbued with liberal ideas and a student of the best political and economic writers, but he proved to be a good administrator, practical, cautious and sure, and earned the title of the greatest of Ecuador's reformers. His first step was to summon a constituent assembly, which divided the country into provinces and parishes, outlined a rational scheme of administration, and made a substantial beginning towards substituting civil for military government. Although he did not attempt to carry into practice the dreams of radical liberals, impracticable among a population nine-tenths Indians in semi-bondage, and in a country where the clergy were dominant, he reformed the taxing system, set in order the finances, so far as his means and knowledge would permit, earnestly encouraged industry, agriculture and commerce, repaired and built roads, promulgated a new and humane criminal code, and established schools. He set up the pyramids of the French geographers, showing that tender regard for his country's repute abroad, which is rarely absent in statement of high character and noble aims. Under his administration, Ecuador assumed the payment of her proportion, 21.5% of 1,800,000 pounds of the debt contracted by the defunct United States of Colombia during the War of Independence. However, this debt proved a burden too great for her resources, interest fell behind, and the principle has been scaled down repeatedly. Only in 1900 was an arrangement satisfactory to the bondholders finally reached. His efforts made Ecuador the second South American republic whose independence was formally recognized by Spain. In religious matters he proved true to his liberal convictions, and while never persecuting the clergy, always advocated religious freedom for the individual. But though he set his country's feet in the path of progress, the steps were slow, short and uncertain. His alliance with the military element, as represented by Flores, and the religious and social conservatism of the bulk of the people, hampered rapid progress. The radical liberals conspired against him, but their plots were sternly stumped out. Government remained essentially military and aristocratic, and active participation was confined to the educated and military classes. Nevertheless, a sort of equilibrium between the demands of the governing case and the capacities of the producing masses was reached, and a certain degree of order replaced the indiscriminate executions and tyranny which the proletariat had endured ever since the first Spaniard had landed. When Rocafuerte finished his term in 1839, Ecuador was at peace, and had recovered much of the material prosperity lost during the long wars. On the plateau the Indians cultivated their wheat and potatoes in security, while on the low coast lands the cacao industry flourished, making Ecuador one of the chief sources of the world's supply of chocolate, and multiplying Guayaquil's population and wealth. Flores's command of the army ensured him the succession to the presidency. Though his return to power meant political reaction, the beneficial effects of Rocafuerte's system had been too obvious to be entirely ignored and heistly abandoned. Flores's first measures were moderate, but his irrational ambition quickly led him into an expensive and fruitless intervention in the Colombian Civil War of 1840. His financial difficulties and a return to military habits caused him to adopt measures continually more arbitrary, and he went stubbornly ahead with his schemes to make his dictatorship permanent. He forced the adoption of a new constitution, lengthening the presidential term to eight years, and caused himself to be declared elected in 1843. The conflict with the Liberals became acute. Rocafuerte protested and was forced to fly for his life. The young radicals of Quito plotted the tyrant's assassination, while the villagers of the plateau arose in revolt against the gatherers of an obnoxious poll tax. In 1845 a liberal revolution broke out at Guayaquil. Flores descended from the table land, but the liberal army met and defeated him at the foot of the mountains, and he accepted the offer of $20,000 in cash and the pension to leave the country. The better elements of the triumphant party were not able to keep the upper hand. A new constitution was hastily adopted, and the mulatto Ramon Roca installed as president. For four years he ruled, while the gulf between liberals and conservatives widened day by day, and factional jealously and ambitions within the dominant party became menacing. The Congress of 1849 quarreled bitterly over the presidential succession, and was unable to agree on anyone. Ambitious chiefs got arms and men together, and after a year of uncertainty General Urbina of Guayaquil issued a pronunciamento declaring Diego Noboa provisional head of the government. A convention called for the purpose adopted a new constitution and elected Urbina's nominee president for the full term. To the consternation of the liberals he recalled the Jesuits and gave asylum to the defeated conservatives from Colombia, going so far as to send troops to the frontier to aid in their restoration. But Urbina, to whose command these forces had been entrusted, proclaimed himself dictator and exiled Noboa. He promulgated a new constitution, Ecuador's sixth in 22 years, persecuted the conservatives and ruled for four years as an ultra-liberal. At the expiration of his term in 1856 he named his friend Robles as his successor, who maintained himself against the conservative attacks until in 1859 his government became involved in a war with Peru. When Robles and Urbina went to the Peruvian frontier, the conservatives rose behind them. As a matter of fact the country was tired of the misrule of the military chiefs, miscalled liberals, whose government was a compound of oppression for their enemies and license for their friends. The clericals armed their adherents in the northern villages and marched on Quito. The partisans of the administration at the capital could oppose no effective resistance and the insurgents entered the city and on May 1st installed a provisional government with Garcia Moreno at its head. The latter at once pushed on south with a small force and though defeated by Robles he escaped to Peru where he received help for new operations. In spite of Moreno's temporary reverse his friends retained possession of Quito and the Peruvian blockade of Guayaquil absorbed the president's attention. The forces under Robles soon crumbled away and he resigned and went into banishment. Urbina, the real chief of the liberal party, had a small body of troops in Cuenca with which he tried to maintain the unequal contest. But his position soon became untainable and he followed Robles into exile. Moreno was now master of the whole Andean region. Guayaquil, however, remained in the hands of a liberal chief. The Peruvian government had tired of its bargain to support the Ecuadorian clericals, the blockade was abandoned and the Peruvian ships retired after making a treaty with the Guayaquil authorities. This rid Moreno of an embarrassing entanglement with a foreign power, although it left the Guayaquil insurgents free to employ older forces against him. Descending with all the forces he could master, his mountaineers defeated the coast troops in every encounter and on the 2nd of September 1860 Moreno captured the Great Seaport, putting an end to open a position in all Ecuador. Every successful revolutionist in those days made his own constitution, so it is a waste of words to tell that Moreno summoned a convention which promulgated a new fundamental law for the Republic. During the next 15 years he remained the dominant personality in Ecuadorian history. His biography is typical of the careers of the higher class of Creole statesmen and profoundly interesting to a student of South American history as illustrating the difficulties with which men of constructive minds and the passion for order have been obliged to content. A scion of one of the oldest and proudest Spanish families he had been proscribed in his youth and spent the years of his exile studying in the old world. He returned with his naturally fine mind stored with the fruits of study and observation, but with his prejudices of caste and religion unshaken. The clericals set older hopes on this brilliant young advocate, and his public life, his opinions and his personality resume the reactionary characteristics of Ecuador. Nevertheless it is hard for an unprejudiced outsider to study the history of his country during his time without retaining a strong admiration for his abilities and force, even if not convinced that his career made for the moral uplifting of the Republic. He found the finances in a wretched state, salaries were unpaid, the revenue amounted to less than a million pesos, and the government was living from hand to mouth on 20% loans. He directed his activity principally towards effecting urgent material reforms, increasing the revenue by systemizing taxation, suppressing frauds and contraband, funding a mint and hospital at Quito, building the Great Wagon Road from Quito to the southern provinces, and connecting that remote and mountain-locked capital by a telegraph line with Guayaquil. The whole of his own salary he devoted to the public use, the laws were better enforced, life and property became safer and material prosperity increased. The government was centralized, the semi-independency of the departments abolished, the Jesuits recalled, the rights and privileges of the clergy restored and increased, and the Concordat signed with the Holy See which virtually freed the Ecuadorian Church from all secular control. The Concordat was denounced throughout the continent as treason to South American independence, and his relations with European diplomatic representatives were so cordial and frank that rumors of his willingness to accept a foreign protectorate or even annexation by Spain were rife in the other capitals. The publication of his personal correspondence with a French diplomatist raised such a storm against him that other countries plotted his overthrow, and the Democrats of Colombia, victorious in the Civil War of 1863, sent an army to the frontier, proclaiming that their purpose was, quote, to liberate the brother-democrats of Ecuador from the theocratic yoke of Professor Moreno, end quote. His army was defeated in the Battle of Guasput, but he stood firm and his people showed no eagerness to accept Colombia's invitation to re-enter that confederacy. Her army was unable to follow up its advantage, and the danger quickly passed. When war broke out between Spain and Peru, he, like the Emperor of Brazil, refused to follow Chile's example and take sides against the mother country. In a word, his foreign policy was a selfish but intelligent opportunism, and he was not influenced by vague sentimental considerations and blind chauvinism. In 1864 Urbina, with the countenance and assistance of Peru, invaded the southern province Loja, but the insurrection was promptly crushed. Next year Moreno's term expired, and he named a disciple and friend to be president in his place, but his own political preponderance was so unquestioned and his prestige so enormous in the barracks, convents and pulperias that he continued the real ruler of the country. His understudy did not please him, and he demanded and received a resignation. The incumbent next selected proved insubordinate and had to be displaced by force. When Moreno declared himself provisional dictator, the Guayaquil liberals undertook an armed resistance. But by 1869 he was firmly in the saddle once more. He kept his hold on the government, apparently becoming more securely entrenched each year in the love and confidence of the soldier, the priests and the common people. From the safety of exile, the liberals wrote crushing pamphlets against him and his despotism, his favoritism towards the clergy, his steady relentless policy of conservatism and reaction. But their attempts at insurrection were feeble, and in 1875 he was re-elected as a matter of course. The liberals, hopeless of ending his domination constitutionally or by open war, had recourse to assassination. On the 6th of August a party of young creoles deliberately killed him at midday on the principal square of Quito in the presence of the populace and the soldiery. The murderers were executed, and the vice president succeeded to the vacancy. However no one appeared big enough to fill Moreno's shoes, and his death made civil war inevitable. After a few months the vice president was deposed, then one of Moreno's ministers remained at the head of affairs for a short time, but finally Antonio Borrero was selected president in constitutional form. He proved not to possess the resolution requisite to cope with the situation. General Veinte Mia, commander of the troops in Guayaquil, revolted in the name of the liberal party, defeated Borrero and went through the usual form of summoning a convention, adopting a new constitution and having himself named president. He held power insecurely and by the aid of a personal party from 1878 to 1883. But neither conservatives nor liberals were satisfied. The radicals attacked him furiously for not putting in practice anti-clerical principles, and the conservatives never trusted him. When his constitutional term expired the army proclaimed him dictator, but he soon fell before the combined forces of his enemies. During the fighting Jose Camano came to the front and now seized the presidency. Alfaro, the principal liberal leader who had cooperated with Camano in overthrowing Veinte Mia, made war against his late ally, but was defeated. The new president, once securely in his seat, formed close relations with the clergy and the old partisans of Moreno, and though the liberal chiefs kept up a guerilla warfare in the forests and swamps, he finished out his term. In 1888 he was succeeded by Antonio Flores, who followed his predecessor's policy in the main, and was, in his turn, succeeded by another friend of Camano's, Luis Cordero. It was not until 1895 that the liberals were able to gather their forces for a formidable rebellion. Camano was then governor of Guayaquil, and the immediate occasion of the outbreak was the charge that he had taken part in the sale of the Chilean ironclad Esmeralda to Japan, then at war with China. It was claimed that Ecuador had acted as a go-between and committed a willful breach of the rules governing the conduct of neutral nations. President Cordero's prestige was seriously compromised by this incident. His forces were defeated in several actions, and he resigned. Alfaro, who had been in exile since 1883, returned, took possession of Guayaquil, was proclaimed dictator, and finally completely overthrew the conservatives in the Battle of Gatajo. His election to the presidency followed in 1897, and he was succeeded four years later by the president incumbent, General Leonidas Plaza. The Ecuador coast is one of the most fertile and lovely regions on the earth. It already furnishes a considerable proportion of those tropical products, of which the great nations of the temperate zone demand more every year. Like a luthon, which has been stranded at the foot of the Andes, its great shores refresh the eyes of the northbound traveller tired of the dreary desert that stretches from Valparaiso to the Gulf of Guayaquil. It possesses the best harbor on the Pacific south of Panama, and one of the few in all South America which is not mountain-locked. Between the Cordillera and the sea there is room for untold millions of cacao and coffee trees. In spite of civil war and political upheavals, which have made her custom house so often the prey of irresponsible bandits masquerading under the name of dictators, Guayaquil's population, and wealth, have increased until she has outstripped the hoary old capital, which, enthroned on a volcano site, overlooks a narrow strip of cultivable land. Nevertheless, the plateau is still predominant in the Ecuadorian state, and supports a vast majority of the population. Nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the Andean region are Indians, mostly in a condition not far removed from bondage by circumstance and their own distrustful natures shut up within the narrow limits of an existence which has no outlook over the mountains. Nonetheless, they are sturdy fellows, admirably suited to the climate of those high altitudes, and though their numbers have been practically stationary since the Spanish conquest, the failure to increase has been rather due to lack of room than to miss government, vice, or the want of the qualities that make for success in the struggle for existence. In that day, now near at hand, when a great railway shall connect the string of towns on the Ecuadorian plateau with Peru and Colombia, and when branches shall run to the ports and take the place of the well-nigh-impossible trails down the tremendous, rain-soaked slopes of the Andes, the mountain region of Ecuador may be transformed and revivified by new system of agriculture, and the artistic taste and remarkable ingenuity of the people may find a market and a reward. The railway from Guayaquil long stopped at the foot of the mountains, but within the last three years the almost insurmountable difficulties of the ascent have been overcome by American engineers and the line is being rapidly built along the plateau to Quito. Ecuador already supplies the world with Panama hats and other manual industries may flourish when unfavorable transportation conditions are removed. Not only are the common people patiently industrious, but they possess innate good taste and artistic feeling. Such a people has special aptitudes, sure to give it a place in that vastly complicated workshop into which the multifarious needs of modern civilization are transforming the earth. The plateau of Ecuador does not, however, offer a room for any considerable immigration, and its wheat, barley and potatoes do not and will not much more than suffice for local consumption. Ecuador's great future lies in the beautiful and as yet sparsely peopled Pacific plain, and in the vast and absolutely unknown forests which stretch east from the Andes. On his third voyage in 1498, Columbus sighted the Venezuelan coast just south of the Windward Islands. A year later, Alonso de Ojeda saw the mainland at about the same place and skirted the coast for 400 miles west without finding any important break in the line of mountains which rose almost directly from the sea to a height of 3 to 9,000 feet, covered to their very tops with luxuriant vegetation. But there was no such barrier as that made by the main Andes on the Pacific. The passes were only half a mile instead of nearly three miles high. The slopes were not dry and desolate as in Peru, or covered with a tangled mass of forest as in Pacific Columbia and Ecuador. Just beyond the harbor where Puerto Cabello now stands, the coastline turned abruptly to the northwest, leaving the mountains further inland. But the intervening plain was swampy and uninviting. Still following west, Ojeda rounded Cape San Roman and turned south into the great Gulf of Maracaibo. There he saw Indian villages of houses built on piles near the shallow shores, and he called the place Venezuela, Little Venice, a name shortly extended to the whole coast from the mouth of the Orinoco west to the forbidding and uninhabitable peninsula of Guajira, which forms the western promontory of the Gulf of Maracaibo. There is no record that either Columbus or Ojeda affected a permanent landing, and it was not until 1510 that some adventurers founded a settlement on the small island of Cubagua in the channel between the large island of Margarita and the mainland. This was a mere nest of pirates who persecuted the Indians of the shore, kidnapping and selling them as slaves to the Spaniards on the Antilles, and it was shortly abandoned. In 1520, on the coast just opposite, was founded the settlement of Cumana, the oldest city on the South American continent, which, though destroyed by the natives, was rebuilt in 1525, when valuable pearl fisheries were discovered in the neighboring waters of Margarita. However, the place remained of little importance, and did not become a center for the colonization of the adjacent country, and the Spaniards attaching little value to this region because it contained no gold washings. The real colonization of Venezuela began 400 miles farther west, with the foundation, in 1527, of the city of Coro, on the narrow neck of land which separates the Gulf of Maracaibo from the Caribbean Sea. Then there was easy access by water to the shores of the Great Lagoon, or by land over the coast plain to the northwestern slopes of the Andean Range, which runs southwest to the giant plateau of Pamplona, just over the Colombian border. The Andean valleys were filled with gold, and among the higher mountains lay fertile plateaus, cultivated by tribes of semi-civilized Indians. Altogether, the region was well calculated to stimulate the cupidity of adventurers. Charles V granted the Venezuela coast to the Velzer family of Augsburg, the greatest merchants of their time, and his heavy creditors. Under their commission, the first Adelantaro, Alfinger, took possession of Coro and conducted various expeditions southwest along the Andes, perishing near Pamplona about 1531. His successors continued, these murdering, kidnapping incursions into the interior, often being led to the ruin among remote mountain fastnesses by tales of a mythical Eldorado, where the rivers ran over silver sands, the palaces were of solid gold, with doors and columns of diamonds and emeralds, and the Indian king every morning covered his body with gold dust and bathed in precious aromatic essences. Eighteen years, however, elapsed before the Spaniards established a permanent settlement in the interior, and only in 1545 was the city of Tokuyo founded in a beautiful Andean valley, 150 miles south of Coro. But the cruelties of the proprietor's agents scandalized public opinion. Charles V declared their concession cancelled, and a governor, responsible directly to the government, was appointed in 1547. Thence forward, the settlement of Venezuela proceeded more rapidly. Five years later, the city of Barquisimiento, 50 miles north of Tokuyo, and near the point where the Andes joined the coast range, was established on a secure footing after hard fighting with the Indians. In 1555 the Spaniards penetrated east a hundred miles along the lovely plateaus of the coast mountains and founded Valencia. The following year they settled Trujillo, 50 miles southwest of Tokuyo, and two years later Merida, a hundred miles farther in the same direction and not far from the Colombian frontier. To the east of Valencia lay valuable gold washings, and to work these, the Spaniards fixed a camp at San Francisco in the Aragua Valley about 1560. This is the garden spot of Venezuela, and the war-like Teques Indians under their terrible chief Guaycaipuro, massacred the miners, and defeated several expeditions from Valencia and Barquisimiento. It was not until 1567 that the Spaniards succeeded in establishing their power in the valley of Caracas, which a hundred miles east of Valencia lies close to the shore, although 3,000 feet above sea level and separated from the ocean by high mountains. The defensibility of the site, as well as the fertility of the soil, pointed it out as the best place for the seat of government. The city was founded, which ten years later replaced Coro as the capital of the province, and shortly thereafter a port was opened at La Guaira, giving direct communication with Spain. The savage tribes fought more pertinaciously than the civilized natives of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and northern Chile and Argentina, and a greater number of Europeans and Negroes replaced those who were slain. Finally, however, the majority submitted and were incorporated as peasants into the Spanish system. By the end of the 16th century, the Spaniards had obtained undisputed possession of that lovely strip of mountainous country which extends from Cape Codera West between two parallel coast ranges to Barquisimiento and thence southwest, nearly to the head of Lake Maracaibo, a belt some 400 miles long and 50 or 75 wide. They also held the great peninsula east of Maracaibo Gulf and had established outlying settlements in the Llanos south of the mountains besides the two isolated ports, Cumano on the eastern coast and Maracaibo on the western. Notwithstanding the Sack of Caracas in 1595 by the daring British buccaneer Amias Preston, the colony prospered. Unlike the Pacific coast, it had easy and direct communication with the Antilles and Europe, and altitude was great enough to ensure a healthful climate, while its fertile valleys could be reached from the sea in a few hours over easy passes, far different from those formidable gorges which are the only ways of reaching the table lands of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The interior, instead of being a heavily forested plain like that of the Amazon, practically inaccessible behind tremendous rain-soaked declivities, was an open prairie into which the mountains sank gently and whose grassy expanses afforded pasture for immeasurable herds. These geographical and topographical features have been determinative of Venezuela's development and history, political as well as industrial. In the early years of the 17th century the long-neglected Cumana district on the eastern coast began to be developed. The city of Barcelona was founded in 1617 near a magnificent body of grazing land, and in the best tobacco country in Venezuela, where the Indians had grown the plant for untold generations. Barcelona soon became an important center of population and the starting point for missionaries to the interior tribes. The gold placers which had attracted the first adventurers to the mountains west of Caracas became exhausted within a few decades. Nevertheless, the fertile lands distributed among the Spaniards in Encomiendas continued to be cultivated by Indian and Negro labor, and although maize, bananas, potatoes, and in the higher valleys even wheat, as well as divine and olive, with the cattle introduced by Europeans furnished an abundant supply of food, to say nothing of tobacco and sugar, Spain's blind colonial policy virtually prevented export of agricultural products. The Spanish authorities wanted nothing from their American dominions but gold and silver, and when Venezuela's placers were exhausted the colony was neglected. It was in spite of the prohibition of the Spanish government that cacao trees were introduced, and the exportation which soon grew up, the first of any importance from Venezuela, was mostly clandestine. Practically all the goods legally imported had to be procured from the Cadiz Monopoly, and were sent to the Isthmus and their trans shipped into coasting vessels, paying enormous freight charges, profits, and duties. Tobacco and salt were monopolized by government concessionaries, and not a chicken could be sold in the markets without paying an exorbitant tax. Education was completely neglected. It was not until 1686 that a priest's school was established in Caracas, and when the city of Merida asked a similar boon, it was denied because, quote, his Catholic majesty did not deem it wise that education should become general in America, end quote. So the Creoles grew up nearly as ignorant as the Indians around them, although retained all the fierce pride of their Spanish descent, acknowledging no man as superior, and retaining very dim sentiments of loyalty to the mother country. Nevertheless the ancient municipal forms, traditional among peoples of Spanish descent, survived, furnishing the framework of civil government, while the priesthood continued a moral and intellectual tie, binding the Creoles to their Castilian ancestors. The repressive regulations against commerce could not be perfectly enforced, although the arrival of a ship from Spain was a real event. British, Dutch, and French traders frequented the coast, opening markets with their swords, and often turning buccaneers and sucking a town when not satisfied with their reception. But the burning of a few coast hamlets was more than compensated by the advantages of practical free trade, and Venezuela owed much of the prosperity she enjoyed during the 17th century to these semi-pirates. The settlements crept along the Andean valleys to the Colombian frontier. The Creoles ventured farther and farther into the wide plains of the Orinoco, and their cattle were soon roaming half-wild in the immense and luxuriant pastures stretching south of the agricultural strip. From the mixture of the Indians of Lilianos with Europeans sprang a new race of men, the semi-nomadic Llaneros, whose hardiness, courage, horsemanship, and prowess as hunters of big game have given them equal celebrity with the Gauchos of the Argentine, the Cossacks of the Russian Steps, or the Texas Cowboys. The buccaneers and smuggling traders were especially active in the latter part of the 17th century. In 1654 Frenchmen were repelled in an attack on Cumana, but in 1669 the Britisher, Morgan, sacked Maracaíbo, and in 1679 the French pillaged Caracas itself. The paralysis suffered by Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession nearly destroyed Venezuelan commerce, and it did not recover with the Peace of Utrecht. Only five ships arrived in the first thirty years of the 18th century, and from 1706 to 1721 not a single vessel sailed for Spain. The Spanish government determined to try if another system would not bring a larger revenue into the Royal Treasury. The Guiputkoa Company was granted an exclusive franchise to buy and sell in the colony, and the operations of this powerful corporation galvanized commerce into a certain activity. In order to stimulate the receipt of hides and prevent the incursions of wild plains Indians, trading posts were established in the Llanos, and soon the prairies south of Valencia and Caracas rivaled the Barcelona country in cattle, and the ranches extended up the Apuree, the great western tributary of the Orinoco to the foot of the Colombian Andes. Meanwhile expeditions penetrated up the Orinoco from its mouth, and in 1764 the city of Angostura was established 400 miles from the sea. The operations of the Guiputkoa Company did not aid in establishing a more friendly understanding between the home government and the Venezuelan Creoles. The independent merchants constantly quarreled with the company's agents. The low prices for which they were compelled to sell their stock outraged the ranch owners. The farmers resented the monopolization of tobacco and the restrictions on sugar culture. Exorbitant prices were demanded for imported goods. Protests became so loud that special commissioners were sent from Spain to investigate, but they gave no satisfactory relief. Shortly after the foundation of the Guiputkoa Company, Venezuela had been raised to the dignity of the captaincy general. The increased efficiency of the administration assisted the monopoly in suppressing clandestine trading, and the feeling grew to such a height that in 1749 a Creole leader named León menaced Caracas itself at the head of 6,000 armed men demanding the suppression of the company and the expulsion of its factors. The captain general was forced to yield, and the revolutionists dispersed, but his promise was never redeemed. The active measures of the company effectively shut off foreign trading ships, and the ports were so fortified that the British expeditions retired defeated from the attacks they made in 1739 and 1743 on La Guira and Puerto Cabello. Although in 1797 they captured the island of Trinidad and menaced the entrance to the Orinocoa. It was not until 1778 when the Spanish government fully abandoned the monopolistic colonial system and opened all the ports of South America to free commerce with each other and with Spain that the Guiputkoa Company retired from business. Six years before this, the provinces of Maracaíbo, Cumana and Guyana, as the lower Orinoco region was called, all of which had here to fall been directly dependent upon the viceroy of Bogota, were placed under the jurisdiction of the captain general of Caracas, fixing the modern boundaries of Venezuela. End of section 23. Section 24 of the South American Republic's Volume 2 by Thomas Clelland Dawson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Piotr Natter, Part 5, Venezuela, Chapter 2, The Revolt. Venezuela's conditions during colonial times produced a people possessing in the clearest and most accentuated form the characteristics distinctive of the Spanish Creel. Not more than 1% of the total population of over 800,000 were native Spaniards. 15% were Creels of pure European descent, 60% were Indian, 2 thirds of whom had an admixture of white blood, and 3 fourths of the 25% of Negroes and Milatos were free. The majority did not consist of docile, inert, pure-bread natives as in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, though the white element was not so large that the Creels had ceased to occupy the position of a government and property-owning caste who lived upon the labor of the half-breeds, Indians, and Negroes. They regarded themselves as a superior class, entitled by birth to exemption from manual labor and even considered commercial pursuits unworthy a gentleman. The Spanish government had concerned itself little with this purely agricultural colony, and its hand was felt only in the collection of taxes. The officials were comparatively few, the number of resident Spaniards small, and neither mutual commercial interests nor a solid administration existed to strengthen the flimsy ties that bound Venezuela to the mother country. So little had the interference of the Spanish government been felt since the abolishment of the Guipuzcóa Company that no well-defined and widespread sentiment in favor of separation existed. There was a vague feeling of dissatisfaction among the masses, but their ignorance prevented them from forming any rational plans for the betterment of their condition. However, the Venezuelan coast is so accessible that the fertilizing and disturbing currents of trade and ideas had really profoundly modified the people, and the leaving of unrest was at work. The wealthier Creels had imbibed radical notions and were ambitious of trying their hands at governing. By heredity, social custom, and environment, indisposed to industry and commerce, their unemployed activities naturally flowed into the channel of politics, intrigue, and fighting. The first outbreak owed its origin to events in Spain. In 1796 a Republican conspiracy was brought to light on the peninsula, and several of its leaders were exiled to La Guaira. In their prison they were visited by many prominent Creels into whose minds they inculcated the Republican principles, and it was not long before the existence of an extensive Republican plot among the Creels of La Guaira and Caracas was denounced to the Captain General. Many persons were arrested, and of the two principles, Espana expiated his treason on the scaffold while the other, Gual, escaped into exile. But the seed of revolution had been planted, and many leading Creels entered into correspondence with the British authorities on Trinidad, who promised aid and arms, munitions, and ships. Francisco Miranda, a native of Caracas who had fought under Washington and distinguished himself at Valmy and Remapé as a soldier of the French Republic, planned an invasion with the avowed purpose of achieving Venezuelan separation from Spain. With three ships manned by American filibusters, he sailed from New York early in 1806 and attempted to land at Ocumare near Puerto Cabello. But the Spanish authorities had been warned, and he was beaten in a sea fight, where he lost 60 prisoners. 10 North Americans were condemned by court-martial and shot in Puerto Cabello, and their names are inscribed on a monument recently erected in the principal square of the town. The Captain General offered $30,000 for Miranda's head, but the latter retired to Jamaica where, with the help of the British authorities, he organized a force of 500 foreigners. Three months later he made a descent on Coro, effected a landing, and took the city. But the population remained inert, and the indifferent or hostile attitude of the region forced him to withdraw. Though the western provinces received Miranda so coldly, among the Creels of the upper classes at Caracas, aspirations for constitutional government, autonomy, and even for independence had made headway in the ten years since the suppression of the conspiracy of Gual and Espana. In 1808 French commissioners arrived bringing the news of Ferdinand's expulsion. They were empowered to receive the allegiance of the colony for Joseph Bonaparte, but the Captain General hesitated and asked the advice of leading citizens, who proved unanimous against recognizing the French regime. The Captain General's vacillation gave the Creels of the Cabildo a predominance in governmental councils. Although in the middle of the following year it was decided to recognize the Seville junta as supreme, pending Ferdinand's return, this decision was reached only after many debates, and the Numerous Party among the Creels saw no reason why Venezuela should not establish a junta of her own. The news of the frightful cruelties perpetrated by Goyenche in suppressing the junta at La Paz excited great indignation among Creels. The anti-Spanish feeling grew rapidly, and when on the 19th of April 1810 the Captain General summoned an open Cabildo to receive the news that the French armies had overrun nearly the whole of Spain, and that only Cadiz remained faithful to Ferdinand, the electors had no sooner met, excited by suggestions of ambitious persons, they turned into a mob howling for the resignation of the Captain General and the establishment of a Caracas junta. Accordingly a junta was named which exiled the Spanish functionaries and sent messages to the provincial capitals demanding their adhesion. The cities of the mountain strip extending from Cumaná to the Colombian Andes responded favorably and sent delegates to Caracas, while Maracaíbo, Coro and Guyana refused. As a matter of fact the masses as yet took little interest. The Caracas revolution was effected by a few determined spirits and the adhesion of the mountain provinces was given by Creel municipal authorities who saw in the change an opportunity to better their personal fortunes. Nor was the resistance of Coro and Maracaíbo so much inspired by love of Spain as by the presence of the resolute, clear-headed Jose Ceballos who gathered troops and sent emissaries into the revolted provinces. The Caracas junta responded by raising an army which marched towards Coro and the civil war was on. The news of the massacre of the Ecuadorian revolutionists at Quito in August 1810 warned the junta Creels that they had engaged in no child's play. The commission went to London to solicit the intervention of the British government in reaching an accommodation with the patriot authorities in Spain but the civil junta declared the Caracas revolutionists traitors. The commissioners fell under Miranda's influence and he convinced them that an open declaration of independence was the only course left. Meanwhile the troops sent to conquer Coro had been defeated by Ceballos threatened by the royalist arms, unable to count on the support of any considerable proportion of the rural population of even their own provinces. The Creels of the ruling coterie proceeded to extreme measures. A congress met in March and on the 5th of July 1811 adopted a declaration of independence, proclaiming the seven provinces of Cumaná, Barcelona, Caracas, Barinas, Trujillo, Merida and Margarita free and sovereign states. Venezuela was therefore the first independent republic in Spanish America. Congress adopted a constitution full of the most radical reforms and advanced ideas and a handful of political theorists and advanced radicals took the direction of affairs and imposed their crude theories on a bewildered and reluctant population. The ruling clique issued fiat money in immense quantities and the resulting disorganization of business increased discontent. Miranda, who had come from Europe to take command of military operations, warned them that the fabric was not strong enough to withstand the shock of battle but the eager young reformers persisted. The clergy and the native Spaniards were the first to react though an outbreak of the Spaniards in Caracas was bloodily suppressed the priests stirred up the people of Valencia and that city, the second in the republic, declared against the Caracas government. Miranda succeeded in reducing the place only after costly fighting. The ruling clique did what they could to raise and equip troops to meet the approaching attack from Coro and the West Indies but their efforts were hampered by a loyalist risings. In February 1812 Monteverde, a Spanish leader, marched with a small detachment south from Coro and northern Trujillo welcomed him. Defeating the Patriot forces wherever he met them and refusing quarter to his prisoners he prepared to advance eastward on the center of the revolution. The junta was already trembling when on the 26th of March a terrific earthquake devastated the revolted provinces. The solid ground rocked with such violent oscillations that in less than a minute the cities of Caracas, Barquisimeto and Merida were mere heaps of ruins. 12,000 persons perished in Caracas alone. The loyalist provinces escaped injury and the priests preached that the earthquake was a punishment sent by God upon the Empire's rebellion. The people of Barquisimeto joined Monteverde and he marched east, slaughtering the raw recruits with which the Patriot leaders tried to block his way. Merida, Trujillo and Barinas declared for the king and an expedition sent from Caracas to the lower Orinoco was destroyed. Monteverde entered Valencia unopposed and only the coast from Caracas east to Cumana remained to the Republic. In despair the politicians made Miranda dictator but though the army numbered 5,000 he had no confidence in his men. He signed the capitulation and tried to fly while his army dispersed or joined the loyalist forces. On the 30th of July Monteverde entered Caracas and the first Venezuelan revolution ceased to exist. Among the volunteer officers who had been entrusted with positions of confidence by Miranda was a young Creole named Simon Bolivar heir to some of the largest estates in Venezuela he had been left an orphan at three years of age and was educated by a tutor who filled his marvelously impressible mind with a crude political philosophy and under whose teachings he evolved original theories of government which all the wars, debates and revolutions of his stormy life failed to modify. Preoccupied with his own ideas he gave no heed to the councils of others took no thought of obstacles and, victor or vanquished, stubbornly followed his own way always confident of infallibility and persevering in the face of difficulties that would have appalled a rational man. From the earliest childhood a little feudal lord owing obedience to no parent with hundreds of slaves at his orders his precocious intelligence the object of that ruinous admiration with which thoughtless strangers and servants spoil a rich and lonely child his naturally strong will uncurrupt by any discipline he grew into manhood arrogant, uncompromising solitary, suspicious a deep thinker wildly ambitious marvelously brilliant though lacking steady common sense blindly confident of his own moral and intellectual infallibility firmly convinced that he was destined for vague great things inordinately fond of honors and praise and absolutely unable to distinguish his desires of gratifying selfish ambitions and his easty notions of regenerating mankind at sixteen he went to Spain to complete his education his wealth procured him an entrance into the aristocratic families of Madrid and he even penetrated the pressings of the ceremonious court and had the honor of playing ball with the lad who afterwards became third and under the seventh when only eighteen he married a beautiful girl who died shortly after he brought her back to Caracas for the rest of his life he remained without family ties again he went to Europe and wandered through England, France and Italy falling more and more under the spell of the mighty spirit of Napoleon the Great at the age of twenty three Bolivar returned to his native country and took up his life as a rich slave owner when the revolution broke out in 1810 he took no part until the junta requested him to go to England on the embassy previously mentioned there he became acquainted with Miranda and appreciating that the South American Revolution must be decided by arms made up his mind that only as a soldier could he put himself at the head of affairs in Venezuela his first essays into the military art were not successful and it was he who lost Puerto Cabello giving the first revolution its cude gas but a situation in which others saw no hope he regarded as an opportunity and resolved to devote his life to South American independence Bolivar went to Cartagena in Colombia and offered his sword to the patriot junta which ruled that city given a small military command on the Magdalena river he embodied a few militia and surprised two posts which were obstructing the navigation of the river delighted at these successes the Cartagena junta sent him reinforcements with which he captured Ocana an important city lying east of the Magdalena and not far from Pamplona and the Venezuelan border the loyalists had collected a considerable force in the Venezuelan province of Barinas with which they proposed to advance into Pamplona the patriot chief of this Colombian province appealed to Bolivar this suggested to him the Napoleonic plan of relieving Pamplona and reconquering Venezuela on his own responsibility he dashed with only 400 men over the Andes in front of Ocana descended into the plain north of Lake Paracaibo took the royalists on their march to Pamplona by surprise and routed them joined by the patriots from Pamplona he received formal authorization to drive the Spaniards from the Venezuelan provinces Merida and Trujillo his movements among the mountain valleys were like lightning flashes and though the Spanish forces were more numerous their commanders were demoralized by his attacks made in defiance of all the rules of prudent warfare within 50 days there was not an enemy left in two provinces and Bolivar's army had been troubled by enlistments the new Granadan government ordered him to pause but he paid no heed issuing a proclamation that no quarter would be given he crossed the mountains southwest into the province of Barinas annihilated the Spanish forces there and rushing to the east caught another army of 1000 men near Valencia and destroyed it Monteverde had no time to concentrate his scattered forces and the news of this last defeat caused him to flee to the protection of the fortifications of Puerto Cabello Bolivar occupied Valencia without resistance in a campaign of 90 days with a handful of new Granadans and mountaineers from western Venezuela he had defeated and dispersed over 4000 royalists and conquered the country from the Andes to the capital only the lower plains of the Orinoco and the coast provinces of Maracaibo and Coro remained royalist for while Bolivar had been overrunning the west another young Creole, Marinho had led a small expedition from the island of Margarita captured Maturín just east of the mouth of the Orinoco and with the military stores found there armed the inhabitants of Cumaná province made ripe for revolts by the cruelties of Monteverde the Spanish attempts to recover Maturín by assault were repulsed with great slaughter and Marinho followed up his success by besieging Cumaná by the time Bolivar reached Caracas the place was in the last extremities of starvation and Monteverde's flight was a signal for its surrender there were therefore two dictators in Venezuela and Marinho sent to Bolivar to treat about the form of government but the latter had determined on a centralized administration with himself supreme Marinho refused to agree and only the activity of the loyalists prevented a war between him and Bolivar Monteverde held out in Puerto Cabello but when reinforcements arrived from Spain resumed the offensive though Bolivar won a victory at Las Trincheras and was greeted on his return to Caracas with the title of liberator reaction had in fact begun reports of loyalist movements came from all sides Bolivar's power was confined to the towns the terrible boves roused the Llaneros and gathered the nucleus of a formidable army of horsemen Ceballos sailed out from Coro and captured Barquisimeto utterly defeating Bolivar when the latter attacked him difficulties however only stimulated this remarkable man to fresh exertions the patriot leader Campo Elias overthrew boves's horsemen near Calabotho on the Llanos south of Caracas killing the prisoners and butchering every man in the town because it had helped the loyalists this cruel deed decided the Llaneros for the Spanish side and though Bolivar with the assistance of Campo Elias's troops won the pitched battle of Araure from Ceballos boves had escaped to the plains there to recruit another army of Llaneros which was destined to expel the liberator Bolivar was soon reduced to the possession of Caracas and its neighboring valleys with a feeble reserve at Valencia Marinho had 3500 men and Bolivar finally agreed to recognize him as dictator of the eastern provinces as the price of his help but their union only put off the evil day boves crushed Campo Elias at La Puerta and advanced on Caracas raging like a trapped wild beast Bolivar ordered the wholesale assassination of 866 Spaniards confined at La Guaira his desperation inspired his followers and when boves attacked the entrenchments outside Caracas and thrashed the Patriot magazine the young Granadan who was in command seeing that the place could not be held ordered his men to fly but when the loyalists triumphantly rushed into the building they found him in the act of throwing a match into the powder in the explosion 800 of the assaulting column were blown into the air and the survivors desisted Marinho was coming by forced marches from the east along the plains and boves retired to cut him off while Ceballos also abandoned the siege of Valencia Marinho eluded boves and beat off one attack if the liberator had concentrated his forces and united with his colleague the Patriots would have stood a chance but he sent most of his own troops to recover the west joining Marinho with only a few men at La Puerta on the 14th of June 1814 the battle decisive of the Second Venezuelan Revolution was fought the desperate charges of boves' Leonardo horsemen overwhelmed the Patriots and more than half their numbers were left dead on the field Bolivar fled to Caracas gathered all the money and jewels and encumbered by a great multitude of fugitives retreated east but at Aragua the Patriots were driven out of their trenches with terrific slaughter the liberator took ship at Barcelona with the intention of making a last stand near the mouth of the Orinoco but his comrades had had enough of him he was declared a traitor and Drivas put in command the remaining Patriots managed to repulse one attack of the royalists but in a second they were defeated and in a third boves slaughtered them nearly to the last men although he himself was killed in the melee only a few scattered bands on the plateaus of Barcelona and the planes of the upper Orinoco kept up a resistance the detachment which Bolivar had so imprudently sent west before the battle of La Puerta escaped into New Granada while the liberator went by sea to that country and took service under its government the revolution headed by Bolivar and Marinho had been crushed by boves, Morales and Ceballos with troops recruited in Venezuela itself Monteverde's defeat and boves' death left Morales master of Venezuela and virtually independent of outside control but by 1815 Ferdinand was securely on the throne of Spain and absolutism had replaced the constitution established by the popular leaders of 1812 the Spanish government determined to suppress the revolutionists who still maintained themselves in New Granada and the Argentine and to reduce the semi-independent royalist chiefs to a more exact obedience in April Morillo Spain's ablest general arrived near Cumana at the head of 10,000 veteran regulars Morales sailed out to meet the marshal and place his troops at his orders but the regular officers gazed in astonishment at the dark-skinned Llaneros wearing only a hat and a waistcloth who were the pillars of royal authority in Venezuela at first the Spaniards accepted the aid of these half-savage allies but Morillo lost no time in establishing a military despotism in which the Llanero chiefs had no place even more unpopular was his leaving 3,000 Spaniards to Garrison Venezuela while he impressed an equal number of native troops to accompany him on his expedition against New Granada nearly a third of the latter deserted rather than embark and the attitude of the Spanish officers behind to rule the country roused the native instinct for independence meanwhile the scattered bands of patriot guerillas on the western headwaters of the Orinoco near the Granada border had been uniting and increasing in strength José Antonio Paeth, a mixed-blood only 26 years old who could neither read nor write but of Herculium's strength and skill in the use of lans and sword proved the leader for the occasion a small corps in which he was a simple captain was threatened by the Spanish governor of Barinas at the head of 1400 men his own commander wished to retreat but Paeth persuaded 500 reckless fellows to follow him in a night assault leading his men in a furious charge he bore down the enemy with a rush killing 400 and taking many prisoners whom he treated so well that they all joined him the fame of his success spread through the Llanos and the rough plainsmen dissatisfied with the discipline and routine of the regular Spanish officers flocked to the banner of this new chieftain and he began the organization of the Army of the Apure destined to be the principal instrument in the redemption of Venezuela meanwhile the guerilla chiefs further down the Orinoco made headway against the Spaniards and the whole plain turned to the Patriots side hearing of these successes Bolivar resolved to return to Venezuela he landed near the mouth of the Orinoco but was soon driven dense and took ship for Okumare near Puerto Cabello from this point he sent a small expedition inland towards Valencia under the command of Magregor who achieved some successes against isolated bodies of loyalists was joined by Menelianeros and finally made his way to the plains of Barcelona while Bolivar was compelled to re-embark and flee to Haiti Magregor took the city of Barcelona and then with the assistance of the negro chief Piar who had been besieging Cumana repulsed Morales himself at the Battle of Juncal by the end of 1816 the Patriots had gained so many advantages that Morillo thought himself obliged to return to Venezuela at the head of future reinforcements however the Patriot cause needed a head the chieftains were rude and ignorant men with a talent for fighting and nothing more while Bolivar was a man of wide and varied accomplishments in spite of his failures he retained great prestige among the Creole officers he was agreed upon as general in chief and in December landed at Barcelona but Piar had led his victorious army over to the Orinoco and not withstanding Bolivar's entreaties the Llaneros persisted in their refusal to return to a country where cavalry could not maneuver to advantage when Bolivar arrived at Piar's headquarters near Angostura he appreciated that the true theater for a successful war had been found in those plains the Llanero cavalry which formed the bulk of the Patriot force was invincible Morillo also realized that the coast would not long remain tainable if the line of the Orinoco were in the hands of the Patriots and he sent a regular force of 3000 men under La Torre down the Apure and Orinoco to Angostura while he himself quickly made an end of the few insurrectionists who stubbornly refused to retire from the coast to the Llanos during one of Bolivar's absences La Torre offered Piar battle and at San Felix in April 1817 the Plainsmen annihilated the Spanish infantry Bolivar now went vigorously to work to secure complete command of the river and soon had quite a fleet his ascendancy over the officers increased daily and when Piar conspired against him he was strong enough to have the Negro hero arrested and shot as a traitor before the end of 1817 the Patriots were in command of the whole line of the rivers except the fortress of San Fernando near the junction of the Apure and Orinoco and Morio could do nothing against them because the Plains were flooded when the waters fell in early spring the royalists achieved some successes but Bolivar joined Paes established a blockade of San Fernando and surprised Morio himself near Calabotho against Paes' advice he now insisted on making a campaign for the recovery of Caracas but was badly defeated by the Marshal at La Puerta a spot for the third time the scene of a Patriot downfall though Paes had captured San Fernando his expedition into the mountain country was no more successful than Bolivars and the two retreated to the river to raise fresh troops Morales followed the Patriots to the Apure but was in his turn repulsed by Paes giving Bolivar a breathing spell the liberator's position was desperate his infantry had been destroyed his cavalry reduced in numbers his men were nearly without arms his ammunition exhausted Il considered maneuvers had turned the brilliant situation in which he had found Patriot affairs a year before into the gloomiest sort of an outlook on the other hand a defensive campaign in Delianos could be kept up indefinitely and though Morio had 12,000 men in the populous mountain provinces north of the plains he also was without money, arms and supplies as he reported to the Peruvian viceroy quote 12 pitched battles in which the best officers and troops of the enemy have fallen have not lowered their pride or lessened the vigor of their attacks end quote with that indomitable energy which more than compensated for his inferiority as a strategist Bolivar set to work to create a new army cavalry of the most admirable sort could be recruited in sufficient number amongst Delianeros but bitter experience had convinced him that against Spanish regulars the native infantry stood little chance the cessation of the Napoleonic wars had left thousands of European veterans without employment and Bolivar contracted for a few thousand Britishers and Irishmen paying a bounty of 80 dollars per man on enlistment and promising 500 dollars at the conclusion of the war some of these troops arrived opportunity late in 1818 and few as their numbers were no soldiers in South America could stand against them in October Bolivar issued a proclamation foreshadowing the union of Venezuela and New Granada in the midst of defeat with all of both countries except the thinly populated Orinoco plains in possession of the Spaniards he was confidently planning the creation of a great empire Murillo opened the campaign of 1819 by advancing with over 6000 men against Piaz on the Upper Orinoco the Creoles 4000 were mostly cavalry and he had learned better than to risk a pitched battle the Spanish columns were harassed beyond endurance by his light horsemen and after weeks of heartbreaking marches Murillo had to retire having accomplished nothing from Bolivar's erratic genius now emanated a great stroke of strategy west of the plains of the Apure and Casanare tributaries of the Upper Orinoco rises the giant range of the Cordillera and on its top lay the fertile plateaus of Socorro Tunja and Bohota the populous heart of New Granada for three years the Spaniards had been in secure possession and all except 3000 troops had been drafted for service in Venezuela and Peru a small Spanish force came down from Tunja to attack the Patriot guerillas in Casanare and was repulsed where the enemy could go he could follow, reasoned Bolivar Piaz's cavalry had proved itself amply able to hold the Llanos so no risk to Venezuela would be incurred by temporarily withdrawing the heart of the infantry with 2000 natives and 500 British the Liberator followed up the Orinoco Meta and Casanare to the latter's source at the foot of the Pia Pass which leads directly into the fertile valley of Sagamoso the heart of Tunja province this pass is high and very difficult although the distance to be traversed was only 80 miles the road was a mere track leading along precipices crossing and recrossing mountain torrents and the rain fell incessantly as the Patriots struggled up the slippery path when they reached the higher regions a hundred men perished with the cold and not a horse survived the army arrived at Sagamoso in a pitiable condition but without seeing an enemy except an outpost which was easily dislodged not knowing Bolivar's numbers Barrero, the Spanish commander dared not attack and the Liberator thus obtained a much needed opportunity to rest his men and gather horses for his dismounted cavalry as soon as he got his army in hand he outmaneuvered Barrero and by a rapid march captured the city of Tunja where he found a good store of arms and material this movement also placed the patriot army between the Spaniards and Bogota Barrero, seeing himself cut off from his base made a desperate dash for the capital but Bolivar knew the enemy's route and took up a position directly across his path on the right bank of the small river Boyacá though the Patriots were only slightly superior in numbers the Spaniards had to attack at a disadvantage and fled completely defeated after losing a hundred men practically their whole force was dispersed or made prisoners small as where the numbers reached and easily as it was won Boyacá was the most important battle fought in northern Spanish America Central New Granada the wealthiest and most popular part of the country fell into Bolivar's hands without a further blow its revenues relieved his financial difficulties and among its sturdy inhabitants he recruited a new army Morillo, now isolated in Venezuela must expect an attack from the Llaneros reinforced by the Granada mountaineers during the liberator's absence from Venezuela he had been branded as a traitor for abandoning his country without the authorization of Congress and Morinho made commander in chief but the news of Boyacá fell like a thunderbolt among the disaffected and his return in December quilted them utterly no opposition was made when he announced that Venezuela and New Granada were united into a single republic the United States of Colombia with himself as president and military dictator the year 1820 passed without any decisive campaign Bolivar occupied himself principally in recruiting and refitting his armies 1200 Irish mercenaries arrived and were incorporated with an army which was sent by sea to threaten the Spaniards in Cartagena and cooperate with the new Granadas a strong division of Venezuelans was sent against Quito Paeth with the main army of the Apure was however reposed in advance into Barinas in spite of this success Morinho could only lie inactive south of Caracas his forces were not numerous enough both to retake New Granada and to hold northern Venezuela but word came that Ferdinand was preparing an army of 20,000 men which would shortly sail from Cadiz for America and with this reinforcement the Marshal believed he could destroy all the Patriot armies the revolution which broke out in Spain in 1820 against Ferdinand's absolute government overturned his hopes the expedition never sailed and the new liberal government showed itself disposed to make terms with the revolted colonies in November a six months armistice was arranged depending the dispatch of peace commissioners to the mother country and Morinho resigned in favor of La Torre Bolivar's lieutenants respected the armistice only when convenient and shamelessly continued war like operations resting the new Granada coast from the Spaniards beginning the siege of Cartagena and encouraging a revolt in the province of Maracaibo when La Torre declared the armistice at the end late in April 1822 Bolivar had 20,000 men in the field disposed in five armies Montia was besieging Cartagena with 3,000 one granada army held the valley of the Magdalena, another was operating against Ecuador Bermudez with 2,000 men threatened Caracas from the east and Bolivar and Paeth at the head of 9,000 men were ready to advance directly from the Orinoco on Valencia and Caracas to these forces La Torre would only oppose 9,000 troops besides his garrisons the moment the armistice was formally terminated Bolivar started straight for La Torre the latter had made the fatal mistake of dividing his forces and had only about 3,000 men drawn up on the wild plain of Carabobo at the northern foot of the passes which lead through the mountains from the Llanos to the Valencia Plateau Bolivar's 6,000 captured the passes but he could not deploy his infantry on the flat ground in front except at the risk of having them cut to pieces on June 23, 1821 he detached the British Legion of 1,000 men and 1,500 cavalry under Paeth around to the left to take the Spaniards in flank the charge of the Llanero horse was driven back by the masquot fire but the pursuing Spaniards were checked by the steady Englishman who stood in their tracks and withstood the fire of the whole Spanish army their ammunition was soon exhausted no help came from Bolivar all seemed to be over with them a second cavalry charge was as unsuccessful as the first and the surviving Britishers made up their minds to carry the enemy's position or parish their commander had fallen the colors changed better seven times still they kept their formation as steadily as if on parade and bayonet in hand rushed on the Spaniards who outnumbered them 4-1 for a brief time the struggle was fierce and the result doubtful but cold steel in the hands of such a desperate forlorn hope was too much for the Spaniards they began to give ground and at last broke and fled the Llanero horse rode them down and only a remnant escape to the shelter of Puerto Cabello Bolivar entered Caracas acclaimed this time justly as the liberator of his country meanwhile the constituent congress of the new republic of Colombia had met at Cucuta a town near the limits of Venezuela and New Granada it was composed entirely of civilians and lawyers and proved to be radically republican and opposed to Bolivar's anti-democratic theories though a centralized government was adopted congress rejected the life presidency and hereditary and abolished the military dictatorship by providing that the commander in chief when on active service should leave his political functions in the hands of the vice president Bolivar made a pretense of declining the presidency but yielded to the importunities of congress and continued in command of the army on the terms proposed stipulating however that he be allowed to organize as he saw fit the provinces he might conquer the conquest of South America the Spaniards now held only Puerto Cabello and Cumaná but no progress was made toward driving them out of these positions during the remainder of 1821 nor until after Bolivar had early in 1822 left for the south to cooperate with Sucre in the conquest of Quito in October Cumaná surrendered to Bermudez but from Puerto Cabello Morales to the expedition which reconquered Maracaíbo and Coro he was unable to hold them and the defeat of his squadron on Lake Maracaíbo in July 1823 forced him to surrender on the 8th of November Puerto Cabello was taken by assault and the long war for Venezuela's independence was over End of section 24