AFTER MAIPO.
1818.
The same day on which the despatch announcing the victory of Maipó
reached Mendoza, Don Luis and Don Juan José Carrera were shot in that
city. The suit against them had been carried on in a most irregular
manner, both in Mendoza and in Santiago. Don Luis was accused and
convicted of having violated a mail bag; Don Juan José was accused of
the murder of a boy, of which there was no proof. Both were indicted for
conspiracy against Chile in Argentine territory, and in Chile for high
treason. It was at once an international, criminal, and political case,
and was tried by two courts of different nationalities, and totally
independent of one another. The Argentine Government was by accident,
and San Martin indirectly mixed up in it. Questions of jurisdiction
arose, and the case was still pending when, in February, 1818, Don Luis
was discovered to be engaged in a conspiracy against the Government of
Cuyo.
After the disaster of Cancha-Rayada fugitives from Chile spread panic
through the province, and Luzuriaga, the Governor, asked permission to
send the accused to Buenos Ayres; he was apprehensive of what might
happen should another defeat bring upon him a flood of Chilian
emigrants, but the municipality called upon him in the name of the
people to finish the case at once. He then appointed three judges to try
the case, of whom one was Dr. Monteagudo, who was one of the fugitives
from Chile. On the 8th April at 3 P.M. both the accused were sentenced
to death; at 5 P.M. they were shot. They fell not so much in expiation
of crimes committed as in sacrifice to the necessities of the
Argentine-Chileno Alliance.
San Martin, writing of this affair, says:--
“After the action of Maipó, I used all my influence with the Government
of Chile in favour of the Carreras, and I procured a pardon for them,
but it was then too late.” O’Higgins had acceded to his request when
they were no longer dangerous.
Now that the victory of Maipó had secured the independence of Chile, the
latent spirit of opposition to the dictatorial government of O’Higgins
again broke out. The most moderate desired the establishment of a
constitutional régime; the more extreme deemed that the time had come
for a radical reform. Among these were the old adherents of the
Carreras, who from local patriotism were inimical to the
Argentine-Chileno Alliance, and to the influence of San Martin. Dr.
Rodriguez was one of them, and aspired to be their leader. During the
forty-eight hours of his rule, in the confusion which followed the
disaster of Cancha-Rayada, he had raised a squadron of horse, which he
styled the Hussars of Death, entirely composed of men disaffected to the
Government. He now declared that they would bring the rulers of the
people to order.
O’Higgins saw in this corps a focus of sedition, and ordered it to be
disbanded. Rodriguez protested but was compelled to submit. Rodriguez
was at once a guerilla chief and a demagogue; he was a lawyer who wore
the epaulets of a colonel. He was a true patriot, but had neither
judgment nor foresight, and infused his own disorderly spirit into the
agitation.
The municipality of the capital called upon the Director to convene an
open Cabildo. It met on the 17th April. Rodriguez called upon the
Assembly to declare itself a representative body until the convocation
of a Congress, and as such superior in authority to the actual rulers of
the State. The motion was carried. O’Higgins ordered the arrest of
Rodriguez, and the ferment subsided. O’Higgins then decreed the
appointment of seven principal citizens as a committee to draw up a
plan of a provisional constitution, which “should define the powers of
each authority and should establish on a solid basis the rights of
citizens.” A constitution was accordingly drawn up and promulgated.
Rodriguez was sent under arrest to the barracks of Alvarado’s battalion
under charge of a Spanish officer named Navarro, who was told by
Alvarado and Monteagudo that Government desired “the extermination of
Rodriguez,” for the sake of public tranquillity and the existence of the
army. On the 23rd May the battalion left Santiago for Quillota, where
Rodriguez was to be tried by court-martial as a disturber of public
order. On the march an officer presented Rodriguez with a cigarette on
which was written, “It would be well for you to fly.”[12] On the evening
of the 24th the party encamped on the banks of a stream. As night fell
Navarro, with a corporal and two men carrying carbines, walked with
Rodriguez into a gorge near by. Soon after a shot was fired. “Rodriguez
is dead,” said some officers in the encampment. Next morning his body
was found covered with stones and twigs; his escort said he had tried to
escape, and the affair was hushed up.
Of all the trophies of the victory of Maipó, San Martin had reserved
only one for himself; this was the portfolio containing the secret
correspondence of Osorio, which was found in his carriage when it was
captured by O’Brien. On the morning of Sunday, the 12th April, San
Martin, attended only by O’Brien, and taking the portfolio with him rode
out from Santiago some seven miles to a secluded spot called “El Salto.”
Procuring a chair from a house close by he seated himself under the
shade of a tree, opened the portfolio and read the contents carefully.
They were letters written by several of the leading citizens of Santiago
to Osorio after the affair of Cancha-Rayada, declarations of their
loyalty. Then asking for a small fire of sticks to be lighted in front
of him, he burned them one by one, the wind carrying away their ashes;
proofs of treachery which arose only from panic, were buried in
oblivion. No one but himself ever knew who were the writers of these
letters.
The next day he left for Buenos Ayres, on the same errand which had
caused his sudden journey after Chacabuco, to concert measures for an
expedition to Peru. On the 11th May, again avoiding a triumphal entry,
he quietly took up his residence in his own house in the Argentine
capital. Again the Argentine Government decreed him a commission as
Brigadier-General; again he declined all promotion, but Congress
insisted upon giving him a public vote of thanks, and a crowd of
Argentine poets celebrated his victory in verse.
San Martin spent the whole of June in consultation with the members of
the Lautaro Lodge, upon the means of fitting out a squadron for the
Pacific. In July it was resolved that 500,000 dollars should be raised
by a loan for that object, and soon afterwards Don Miguel Zañartu was
officially received in Buenos Ayres as the representative of Chile.
San Martin then returned to Mendoza and made two attempts to cross the
Cordillera, but was driven back by snowstorms, and remained there all
the winter, nothing loth, for he found himself much more at home among
the simple, bluff-spoken Cuyanos than in the more polished society of
Santiago.
About the end of July he received a letter from Pueyrredon telling him
not to draw upon the treasury as he had been authorized to do, for it
was found impossible to raise the projected loan. San Martin at once
sent in his resignation, which caused such consternation in official
circles that he was again authorized to draw for the full amount
specified. At that time there arrived in Mendoza various remittances of
coin from Chile to merchants in Buenos Ayres. San Martin seized this
money on the pretext that transit was not safe, which was quite true,
and gave the owners drafts on the national treasury in exchange.
Pueyrredon, with great difficulty managed to pay these drafts on
presentation, but he wrote to San Martin:--
“If you do that again, I am bankrupt, and we are lost.”
With these resources and other remittances which followed, San Martin
replenished the empty chest of the Army of the Andes with 200,000
dollars, and the situation was saved.
His spare time in Mendoza he filled up by making elaborate calculations
concerning the men, arms, and equipment necessary for his projected
expedition to Peru, while Pueyrredon and the diplomatic corps were as
fully occupied in the construction of a scheme which was to render the
expedition unnecessary. It was proposed that a conference of European
powers should nominate a sovereign who should unite all the Spanish
colonies south of the Equator under his sway. Of this monarchy San
Martin and his army was to be the right arm. Of all this San Martin was
fully informed, and to the scheme he made no opposition, but went on all
the same with his calculations, till he crossed the Andes in October,
and on the 29th of that month dismounted at the gate of his palace in
Santiago full of hope, for his last letter from Pueyrredon announced the
despatch of two vessels of war for service on the Pacific.
Bolívar, victorious in Venezuela and encouraged by the victory of Maipó,
was at this time preparing for another passage of the Andes.
Spain in eight years of warfare had sent sixteen expeditions to America,
with more than 40,000 veteran troops, had expended seventy-five millions
of dollars, and seemed in no way as yet inclined to relinquish the
attempt to subdue her rebellious colonies. She had yet 100,000 soldiers
and militia in America, and was preparing a fresh expedition of 20,000
men for despatch to the River Plate.
Thus while diplomatists amused themselves and the world with visionary
schemes for securing the independence of America, those more nearly
interested in the question thought only of settling it by fire and
sword.