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