(1778-1850)
"Seras lo que debes ser,
Y sino, no seras nada."
SAN MARTIN.
San Martin, the ideal liberator of South America from the long and
tyrannical rule of Spanish viceroys, was one of the most remarkable
men of his own or of any age. From a moral point of view he stands
in the first rank of the world's heroes. "He was not a man," said a
student of South American history, "he was a mission." Cincinnatus,
after serving the state, returned to the plough, and Washington to
the retirement of Mt. Vernon; but San Martin for the peace of his
country went into voluntary exile. His country crowned him dead and
made for his dead body a tomb of Peace, surrounded by the marble
angels of the arts of human progress, more beautiful in its meaning
than any tomb on the Appian Way, and one of the most wonderful
memorials on earth.
The Battle of Maipú, of which San Martin was the victor, completed
the emancipation of South America, and made the achievements of
Bolivar easy in the Northern Andes. Said the hero of Maipú--and what
words of man under the circumstances ever equalled the declaration
in moral sublimity!--
"The presence of a fortunate general, however disinterested he may
be, is dangerous to a newly founded state. I have achieved the
independence of Peru: I have ceased to be a public man!" He died at
Boulogne, France, in poverty, after nearly thirty years of exiled
and fameless life. His career seems like that of some hero of
fiction, such as the imagination of a Plato, a Bacon, or a Sir
Thomas More might create for an Utopia. He is the one perfectly
unselfish man in history, and his fame has grown steadily in Spanish
America, since Argentina built a tomb-palace for his remains, and
decreed for him one of the most splendid funerals ever known to the
Western World.
General Don Joachim de la Pezuela, the last Spanish ruler of Peru,
was the forty-fourth viceroy from Pizarro. "The Indians," he said,
"love the memory of the Incas--the country is ready to rise." The
banner of Argentina was putting to flight the condors of the Andes,
and the last viceroy saw in its advance the end of Spain in the New
World.
The Argentine hero who had created the army of the Andes for
universal liberty was San Martin. He was born on February 25, 1778,
at Yapeyu, in Misiones. His father was a South American officer
under the last rule of the viceroys. The family removed to Spain in
his boyhood, and he became for two years a pupil in the Seminary of
Nobles, at Madrid. At the age of twelve he became a cadet, wearing a
uniform of blue and white, which he made in manhood the colors of
South American emancipation.
He fought in the war against the Moors, and in the campaign against
France, in 1793. In 1800 he took part in the so-called "War of the
Oranges against Portugal."
In the early part of the nineteenth century there began to be formed
in Spain secret societies for the purpose of advancing the cause of
liberty and human progress. One of these associations, called
_Caballeros Racionales_, became very influential, and corresponded
with the society of the Grand Reunion of America (_Gran Reunion
Americana_) of London. This society was pledged "to recognize no
government in America as legitimate unless it was elected by the
free will of the people." San Martin joined this society. The London
society was established by Miranda, the Spanish patriot, a friend of
Bolivar, by whose inspirations San Martin became a disciple of
liberty, and whose dreams he fulfilled long after the patriot was
dead.
San Martin won honors and a medal in the Spanish resistance to the
victorious eagles of Napoleon. In that campaign he fought under a
banner of the Sun, having this motto in Latin: "We bear this aloft
dispersing the clouds." He made this banner the flag of the army of
the Andes.
In 1812, San Martin, as a disciple of the principles of the Spanish
apostle of liberty, Miranda, returned to South America, and in March
went to Buenos Ayres, and offered his sword to the Argentine
patriots for the cause of independence. The country was in
revolution against the Spanish rule. San Martin was not only an
American, but a Creole; he was unselfish, truthful, the soul of
honor, and of all men in the world the one that would seem best
fitted to lead the cause of the South American patriots. He was
destined to become "the greatest of the Creoles of the New World."
Soon after the arrival of San Martin in Buenos Ayres he married Doña
Remedios Esculada, and Mercedes, a daughter of this marriage, shared
with him his voluntary exile after the conquest of Peru.
Appointed at once to a high military position under the Argentine
Government, he conceived the plan of creating an army of the Andes,
of crossing the Cordillera, and of driving the Spaniards from Chile.
Mendoza, with which Buenos Ayres is now connected by railroad, lies
on an elevation under the snowy Cordilleras. San Martin made his
military camp here. On January 17, 1817, he began his march up the
Andes, one of the most perilous achievements of modern warfare. The
summit of the Uspallata Pass, over which the army was to climb, is
12,500 feet above the level of the sea, or 4,000 feet higher than
the Pass of St. Bernard.
The 17th, on which the army set forth, was a high holiday in
Mendoza. The plaza was gay with banners, and the streets with
patriotic decorations. The ladies of the city presented an
embroidered flag to San Martin. The general, above whose head
gleamed the snowy heights of the Andes, ascended a platform in the
plaza, and waved this flag over his head, and shouted:
"Soldiers, behold the first flag of independence!"