Thank you kindly @Midnite Duke ! I am even happier now that I timed my update when I did. I am glad it was well received and managed to provide some tnertainment. Thanks again!
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A (slight) bit to the party myself.
And just here to say, that I'll take a while to read through this but so far so grand to see you back at this. Keep up the great work.
And just here to say, that I'll take a while to read through this but so far so grand to see you back at this. Keep up the great work.
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Chapter 65: I Believe in America, 1692-1696
“A weak man requires a long fight in order to win. A strong one delivers a single blow, and an empire vanishes.” – Simón Bolívar
The arrival of Europeans in the Americas in the last quarter of the Fifteenth Century changed the course of history. The contact between the two alien worlds unleashed staggering levels of change, conflict, migration (whether forced or voluntary), oppression, wealth, and disease. The Portuguese explorer João Vaz Corte-Real was the first European to make landfall on the new continent, arriving in what is now Brazil and founding the city of Bahia in the process. For half a century, the Portuguese remained the only European country to maintain a permanent presence in the Americas, expanding their territories along the Coast of Pernambuco. However, once Spain put her full effort into the venture, she quickly overtook her Iberian neighbor. The Genovese explorer Cristoforo Colombo, sailing for Spain, explored the north coast of South America Panama, claiming them for Spain. Launching simultaneous colonization efforts in the north and south of the continent, founding Paramaribo in April of 1513 and Fuerte San Miguel in September of 1514, they then began an intensive colonization process that would transform the Americas and Europe.
Led by the Portuguese and Castilians, and followed closely thereafter by the English and the French, these states began to colonize the American mainland and the islands of the Caribbean. The cataclysmic collision of worlds caused by these contacts, neatly summed up as the “Atlantic Exchange”, transformed not just societies but even the natural environment itself. The early European arrivals in the New World were faced with numerous dangers and uncertainties, and brought with them everything they needed: the food they ate, the liquids they drank, the clothes they wore, the tools they used, and the animals that labored for them. These items provoked some of the greatest transformations in recorded history, down to the very biological processes of the continent’s flora and fauna. It was Spain, above all her rivals, who transformed the economic and social realities of the Atlantic world. It was through their empire, first and foremost, that the permanent links between the “Old World” and the “New World” were established. It unleashed a new wave of commercial activity, enriching and transforming Spain and Europe forever. The more sinister side of the picture was the untold human suffering paid by the indigenous population and those of African descent forcibly transported across the ocean to be exploited for their forced labor.
Despite strong competition, King Enrique V de Trastámara (r. 1479-1558) established Spain as the major power in the New World. One of the greatest and longest serving monarchs in European history (ruling for 78 years, 6 months, and 16 days), Enrique completed the Reconquista when he annexed the Emirate of Granada in 1554, and then united the crowns of Castile and Aragorn that same year. He led his state to become the premier empire of Christendom, dominating and conquering the local peoples they encountered. His successors would extend the conquest to the Pacific Coast, subjugating several of the mighty Andean kingdoms of South America. Because of her victories and successes on both sides of the Atlantic, by 1600, Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful state in Europe, and she dictated affairs on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Conquistador Cristoforo Colombo claiming land in the New World for the Crown of Castile
The establishment of a Spanish presence in the Americas always began with the distribution of encomiendas, legal agreements which granted rights over the labor of natives. This was based on an institution born out of the Reconquista which created a special type of feudal contract specifically designed for newly conquered non-Christian lands and subjects. It was easily exported to the New World. Instead of extracting labor and economic value from peasants in Europe, the conquistadores-turned-encomenderos, would wring it out of the natives across the ocean. For this system to be viable, it was necessary for the Spanish to reach agreements with local indigenous political leaders. Where possible, they opted to retain existing patterns of authority among their new subjects. In South America, the existence of centralized Andean kingdoms made the job simple: with the Spanish simply replacing the Cusco and the other pre-contact imperial powers. The old tax system continued, with local potentates collecting tribute from their populations. Many local communities allied willingly with the Spaniards for freedom from other rulers (like the Cusco) and a position of advantage for themselves. However, in many areas, Spanish authority was ephemeral. In the steep valleys of Peru, indigenous societies continued their traditional way of life. The immense changes taking place in surrounding areas did not affect them. In the parts actually under Spanish control, a different world developed, where everything was organized in response to the demands of the ruling elites.
It did not take long after the Conquest for a strictly observed racial hierarchy to develop all across colonial South America. Building upon the Portuguese racial system in Brazil, it came with a dizzying set of rules and a host of terms to define the new identities that came with such mixing. At the top were the peninsulares, Spanish-born, crown-appointed overseers, such as the viceroy and his functionaries. Just below them were the criollos—whites, usually of Spanish but also of other European ancestry, born in the colonies. After that came the pardos, a growing mixed-race population that was either mestizo (part-white, part-indigenous), mulatto (part-white, part-black), or sambo (part-black, part-indigenous). As in most slave societies, labels were fashioned for every possible skin color: quadroons, quintroons, octoroons, moriscos, coyotes, chamisos, gíbaros, etc. As in the Italian Indies and other European New World colonies, the race of every child was carefully recorded in the church registry at birth. The outcome of that child’s life would be hugely dependent on whatever was written down. If he was of indigenous stock, he would be subject to the Spanish tribute, a tax imposed by the crown, or else condemned to hard labor in the mines or fields if he could not pay. He would also be subject to the mita, a period of compulsory toil whether he could pay or not. Many did not survive the brutal conditions which saw them chained, herded into gangs, and separated from their families, often being shipped great distances to satisfy the viceroyalty’s demands. Indigenous people were also forced to buy goods according to laws of repartimiento. Europeans would sell them food and supplies and expect them to pay with gold or silver. Often, they were cheated and tricked, being sold sick animals, rotten food, and poorly made goods at exorbitant prices. The proceeds were gathered dutifully and sent off to the royal coffers in Madrid.
For the black population, life in Spanish America was also punishing. Severed from their family and their homeland, they were made to be fishermen, pearl divers, and workers in the endless cacao and sugar fields. In the course of a little more than two hundred years, an estimated one million enslaved people were brought into South America by the Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and English. Uniformly disdained as the lowest rung in the hierarchy, they nevertheless left a great mark on the culture. They worked every job from skilled craftsmen to pig boys, field hands to beloved nannies. It would not be until after the coming revolution that these oppressed groups would win greater rights.
Still, all these rules and structures did not prevent, and in fact were the result of, the racial mixing that was inevitable in a world dominated by male conquistadors and their successors and descendants. The crown adopted a position that marriage between races was acceptable, so long as Spanish men could persuade non-Spanish women to be baptized Christians. For Spain, boasting her own ethnically eclectic past, that combined the blood and traditions of the Romans, the Arabs, the Jews, the Basques, the Phoenicians, etc, etc, this was hardly new ground. When the nobleman Rodrigo de Villahermosa arrived in Cartagena in 1582, the population of the Viceroyalty of New Granada was about one million, of whom approximately 20,000 were Spanish, 45,000 African, and the rest indigenous. By the time his descendant Carlos de Villahermosa was born in 1675, the population had nearly doubled, and more than half were mestizo or mulatto.
A painting depicting the various categories within the Spanish-American racial hierarchy
At the dawn of the Seventeenth Century, Spain’s power appeared unassailable. However, the 1600s would see her enter a long, often agonizing period of decline. In 1612, a Spanish-Portuguese army commanded by King Fernando VII lay siege to Florence. That siege, and the ensuing battle turned out to be the turning point in the rivalry with Italy. Before 1612, the Italian Peninsula had been prey to numerous invasions from Iberia. It appeared that King Fernando had victory within his grasp. His Italian counterpart, Alberto II, stubbornly ensconced in his capital, would have been a prisoner and Madrid would have dealt Florentine pretentions to Italy a fatal blow. Instead, the city’s stubborn defiance kept the besiegers at bay just long enough for a relief army of Italians, Frenchmen, Poles, and Austrians to descend upon the Iberian lines and sweep them from the field. After extracting his battered army, King Fernando successfully guided them to the safety of Sicily and the protection of the Spanish navy. However, he soon died, leading to a minor succession crisis back home. The empire had never recovered from those losses. Spain was eclipsed as a world power by Italy, France, and Great Britain over the ensuing decades.
Despite these setbacks, Madrid maintained an impressive overseas domain. As the Seventeenth Century entered its final decade, she still possessed the largest territory in the New World, slightly ahead of the rival French, and far ahead of Italy. The lands were divided into four viceroyalties. In North America was the most rugged and sparsely populated of the quartet: the Viceroyalty of the Californias (Virreinato de Las Californias), which claimed the Pacific coast of North America from the Gulf of Catalina to the Salish Sea as well as lands deep into the interior. The reality on the ground was of course different, with any notion of Spanish authority being a mere fantasy over much of that territory. The other three were In South America. In the north was the Viceroyalty of New Granada, ruling over the territories from the region of Loreto in the Amazon Rainforest through the Isthmus of Panama and up to the Mosquito Coast; and from the Pacific Coast in the west to the headwaters of the Orinoco River in the east. The viceroyalty had once commanded the entire Orinoco Basin, but the eastern province, known as Venezuela, was seized by the British in 1661 after their decisive victory in the Second Anglo-Spanish War. In the south was the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (Virreinato del Río de la Plata), which ruled over most of the basin of its eponymous river. Between them, on the Pacific Coast, was the crown jewel of the Spanish-American empire: the Viceroyalty of Peru (Virreinato del Perú). This last colony was not only the richest, but, thankfully for Madrid, the most conservative and loyal of the four. It was home to the ancient imperial capital of Cuzco, Spain’s premier city in the Americas, as well as the massive silver mines of Potosí, which by the early Seventeenth Century were producing an estimated 60% of all the silver mined in the world. The determined colonial authorities maintained a strong grip on power there. The Spanish-American mines flooded the world market, transforming economies from Western Europe to East Asia and in turn delivering untold wealth to the ports of Cádiz and Sevilla.
Potosí
The Spanish Empire in the Americas, circa 1690
Cracks in the colonial edifice were beginning to show all over, but it would be on the furthest frontiers where the dam finally broke, allowing the floodwaters of revolution to wash over the empire. The event would be a sudden, organized, violent strike against the mission system which had been imposed on Spanish California, and its attendant disruption of indigenous lives and traditions. The bold plot was hatched, planned, and executed in secret by the Pueblo peoples and their allies, among the most ruthlessly targeted of Madrid’s colonial subjects. The grievances and resentments that pushed the Pueblos to rise up against the Spanish had been brewing ever since the Acoma Massacre in 1599, when Spaniards led by the encomendero Juan de Oñate killed eight hundred Pueblos. It was made worse by the slave-trafficking in the province. From the mid Seventeenth Century on, slave caravans carried Pueblo and Apache captives into the unknown, breaking up families and shattering communities. The hatred centered overwhelmingly on the Franciscans, who professed to love and care for the Pueblos but did nothing to stop the trafficking. The decades-long record of famines, plagues, and deaths had made it plain that the friars could not stabilize the world. Yet they nevertheless interfered with the most intimate aspects of Pueblo life. By the 1630s, there were churches, missions, and other religious establishments everywhere; even the locations of the missions on a map were in the form of a cross. As many as eighty thousand indigenous people, classified in the official Church documents as “neophytes”, were held as de facto slaves, surrendering their freedom and enduring forced labor under Franciscan watch. It was not lost on anyone that the Spanish missions, churches, and friaries in the west constituted a network of power and surveillance. They were always willing to lend a disciplining hand if needed. They looked at Pueblo customs and traditions with zealous urgency because they found them disturbing. Pueblo marriages were not monogamous, polygamy was common, and divorce was normal. Individual people could have their own possessions, but the accumulation of wealth was viewed with suspicion and equated with witchcraft. Women oversaw the households, up to and including the construction of houses, which also belonged to them. Sexuality, equated with fertility, was publicly celebrated, and people could become increasingly godlike with age. All of this was sacrilegious to the Franciscans, who feared that things were only getting worse. In 1675, panicked royal officials organized an investigation that concluded California was in danger. The officials hanged three Pueblo priests in a public execution and lashed forty-three others at a whipping post. It was this event that served as the match that lit the fire of revolution.
The organizers of the Pueblo campaign were determined to maintain a level of secrecy. One of them, fearing that the plan might be revealed to the Spanish, had killed his own son-in-law to protect the operation. In August of 1690, knotted cords of yucca fiber began appearing across the desert. Carried by trained operatives who covered vast distances, the cords were a message signaling an upcoming event of great importance. The system was simple: the recipient would untie one knot per day and, on the morning of the last knot, execute the plan. In this case, the plan was the complete and utter annihilation of the Spanish colonial authority. The Pueblo did not see themselves as victims or subject peoples, but rather as a powerful nation fighting for their interests. Spanish pretentions, in the form of the Viceroyalty of the Californias (Virreinato de Las Californias), had claimed indigenous land and resources. Now, they meant to roll this encroachment back. The Spanish did manage to capture two Pueblo operatives, and even got them to talk, but by then it was too late. The war had already been launched.
Missionaries in California
Pueblo leaders had coordinated well, visiting one another, tightening their bonds, pooling information, and debating how to best rid their world of the Spanish and their hateful animals and institutions. They strategized in secret. Mobilizing soldiers from more than two dozen independent towns demanded a new kind of strategic thinking. Po'pay, a respected Tewa religious man from the north, where the traditions of the old priesthood endured, became their leader. When the time came, in each location Pueblos brought overwhelming numbers against the Spanish and forced them to fight for survival in numerous skirmishes, thus preventing any attempts at a colony-wide military response. From there the violence spread, particularly along the slave trafficking corridor going west toward the silver mines in San Juan Bautista, Opodepe, and Teuricache. Since the early seventeenth century, large numbers of Pueblos and Apaches had been sold to mining towns far to the south. The area covered by the slave corridors was almost identical to the radius of the rebellion. Most of the surviving Spanish fled to Santa Fe and Isleta Pueblo, two of the only towns that had not joined the rebellion.
The killing of a Spanish missionary by indigenous troops
When word reached San Francisco, Viceroy Miguel de Mendoza flew into a rage and ordered the full mobilization of the colony’s military assets, though these were somewhat lacking. The militia was poorly organized and even worse trained. Mendoza turned to the region’s most effective coercive force: the Catholic Church and the Archbishop of San Francisco, Fausto de Montceda. A devout reactionary with the utmost loyalty to God and the king, Montceda undertook the task of constructing a new, professionalized armed force, to be grandiosely called “the Royal Army of California.” At the same time, Mendoza dispatched agents to the south to beseech the colony’s largest landowner and richest man to devote his own resources to the fight. That man was Tomás de Coronado, who was the de facto ruler of his own personal fiefdom, owning most of the lands in the provinces of San Diego and Los Angeles. A brutal man with a singular mind for profit, he was despised by the Pueblos, whose members his cronies often kidnapped and transported to the coast to labor on agricultural projects. He already possessed his own military force entirely independent of colonial control and had the means and the motivation to expand it. Together, Mendoza, Montceda, and Coronado plotted to crush the indigenous revolt, all the while ignoring the threat in their rear.
Miguel de Mendoza, Viceroy of the Californias
Fausto de Montceda, Archbishop of San Francisco
Just as the royalists plotted their vengeance, another trio of bold Californians was getting to work on a similar project, but on the other side. The San Francisco merchant community had chafed for decades under restrictive Spanish trade laws. They knew that access to the markets of Asia could make them rich, if only they were allowed to do business there. They were wealthy and they were angry, and none were wealthier or angrier than Francisco de Paula Álvarez de Toledo. When the Revolt of the Pueblos began, he saw an opportunity to join their fight and break California from Madrid’s grip. Born and raised in San Francisco, he had extensive business ties to various indigenous communities in the interior, giving him a leg up on intelligence gathering and the ability to contact Pueblo leaders and their allies. He understood the breadth of the revolt and the precarious position of the colonial authorities. California’s isolation from the imperial center made it all the more vulnerable. If Álvarez and his allies moved quickly, they could seize control of the entire colony before Madrid even had a chance to muster an army to stop them. If there was ever a time for the Californians to chart their own path it was now. He brought into the fold Juan Bautista de Figueroa, a fellow businessman with a reputation as a political philosopher. Considered one of the more refined men in the colony, he was well respected in San Francisco. Álvarez also partnered with another key participant: Jorge Sastre. A retired career soldier in his late fifties, Sastre had served for decades with the royal army back in Europe as an infantry officer and was the perfect man to help the anti-royalist side build a fighting force of their own.
The political and economic ideologies of men like Álvarez and Bautista came out of the world of Enlightenment salons that were sprouting across European settlements in the Americas. By the 1690s, new and radical ideas were spreading despite the Spanish crown’s stranglehold on the flow of information. In addition to San Francisco, salons existed in Paysandu, Buenos Aires, Quito, Tunja, and Cartagena, among others. Ostensibly, these clubs discussed literature and art, but in truth, they were laboratories for “dangerous” thoughts. Some, like Felipe Vicente de Villahermosa’s in Cartagena, Andrés Bello’s in Tunja, and the Marquis del Toro’s in Quito even corresponded with universities in Europe. Cartagena, with its university and vibrant cultural scene, became South America’s main intellectual center. The Villahermosas were one of the city’s wealthiest families as well as patrons of artists and natural scientists alike. Other aristocratic art patrons with radical leanings included Felipe Vicente’s boyhood friends Oscar and Javier Montilla; as well as Pedro Palacios and Juan Carlos Ballester. They were all scions of the privileged aristocracy ready to become conspirators. Their meetings masqueraded as literary events or musical recitals, even card games or cock fights, and many were hosted by Villahermosa, especially at his plantation on the River Guaire, surrounded by ample gardens perfectly suited for clandestine encounters. As Villahermosa regaled his friends with eye-opening tales of his travels in Europe, his teenage son Carlos was almost always present. Not only did the boy hone his social skills by dancing with ladies and discussing swordsmanship with gentlemen, but he also took in the new radical ideas, sometimes whispered, and sometimes shouted, professed by many of the intellectuals that ran in their circles.
The various salons’ ideologies did not always line up. In New Granada, strong divisions emerged between the more radical republicans, who would eventually coalesce into the Partido Republicano, and the more moderate Realistas, or royalists. The latter wanted reforms but preached patience and loyalty to the king. They wanted to remain within the empire, just with more rights and autonomy. However, this sense of loyalty would not survive the coming tumult. The moderates would be forced to choose. While the colonial authorities may have made the occasional arrest, they more often than not responded to such salons with indifference. It seemed impossible to think that these privileged men of letters and business presented any sort of danger simply by socializing.
In Europe, on the other hand, the Spanish crown moved aggressively against anyone they suspected of advocating or recruiting for the patriot cause. By the late spring of 1691, word had made it back to Spain about the Revolt of the Pueblos, accompanied by graphic stories of the “savages’” depravity. The man leading these crackdown efforts was the notorious Vicente Patiño, head of royal intelligence for the King of Spain. Born in Asturias in 1631, Patiño rose through the ranks of the army and then into the royal bodyguard. By the time he was 40, he was the Trastámaras’ most capable fixer and intelligence gatherer. Patiño was legendary for his brutal methods and ability to interrogate prisoners uninterrupted for hours and even days at a time, allowing food and sleep for neither himself nor his victims. His agents fanned out across Europe, seeking out those criticizing Spanish policy in the Americas. Among those kidnapped and clandestinely shipped back to Spain were Fernando Escalona, a professor at the University of Padua; Iago Piedrabuena, a book shop owner in Vienna; and Gabriel Morató, a merchant in the port of Amsterdam. In March of 1692, Queen Regent Maria Maddalena of Italy sent an angry letter to King Ramiro III on Escalona’s behalf, demanding his release and payment to his family. The letter went ignored, and the imprisoned man died a year later in a Cadiz dungeon.
The most dangerous were those trying to convince rival states to take up the cause of Spanish-American independence. None was more notorious among the officials in Madrid than the colorful Sebastián de Miranda. Born in Caracas in 1628, Miranda received a top-class Jesuit education and even as a young man put it to use in political causes. He was arrested twice for distributing subversive pamphlets in his early twenties, but both times his connections among the local elite got him out of trouble. Despite his intense dislike for Spanish rule, he nevertheless joined the militia when the British invaded his homeland, though he and his comrades failed to stop Caracas from falling in February of 1655. He moved to Cartagena along with his wealth, and established himself there for a time. However, he soon found himself in radical, underground circles once again, and it was not long before he came under the suspicion of the Spanish authorities. In the spring of 1661, they came to believe that Miranda and a group of others were hatching a plot to overthrow the viceroy (though their reports can’t seem to agree on whether to accuse him of doing it for independence or on behalf of the British). Militiamen began rounding up the alleged ringleaders, and nearly caught Miranda at his home, but he leapt from a bedroom window and escaped. From there, he went overland back across to the British side of the border, and all the way to Puerto Cabello, from whence he got out aboard a French merchantman. From then on, Miranda led the life of an exile.
Suave and sophisticated, he charmed his way first through some of the major settlements of the New World, like Forte della Palma, Nouvelle Orléans, and Philadelphia; before crossing the Atlantic to stay at some the most illustrious European courts. He also fought in the armies of France and Holland, reaching Istanbul while campaigning with the former during the Great Crusade. At every turn, he would try to convince anyone who would listen of the validity of the cause of Spanish-American independence. While traveling across Asia in the mid-1680s, he had even attempted to win the support of the Ming Emperor and the Shah of Afghanistan. He reached Moscow in 1688 where he intended to have a brief sojourn before continuing on to Stockholm and Paris. However, he was left stranded in the Russian capital when Emperor Paul II attacked the Livonian Order, thus triggering the Great Russian War, or War of the League of Krakow. During this time, he accepted a position as a military advisor and was even rumored to have become a lover of the empress consort, though this also meant he got caught up in the ensuing siege of the capital. When Italian troops under the Duke of Mantua entered the city on 2 January 1692, Miranda happily delivered himself into their hands. He ended up accompanying King Francesco II when the monarch and his army returned to Italy, eventually taking up residence in Florence, where he continued agitating for the patriot cause.
Sebastián de Miranda
On the other side of the Atlantic, the patriot cause gained a new friend on 4 April 1692 when Pietro Leopoldo Galilei was elected Doge of the Italian Indies. The favored candidate of the crown and the islands’ big shipping companies, he ousted his predecessor, Isidoro Casanova, who had lost his own base of support among the big planters after he sided with the loyalists during the 1691 insurrection. Galilei was a strong supporter of Spanish-American independence, and he would take steps to Increases flow of smuggled pamphlets and books and guns to the anti-Spanish cause. He lobbied both the crown and the parliament for a more active intervention in the Americas, issued letters of marque for Italian privateers to raid Spanish shipping routes, and even went so far as to try and solve the problem of a recent increase in pirate raids against Italian colonies by paying those who were doing the raiding to target Spanish settlements instead. This less than honorable solution did increase buccaneer activity against Madrid’s colonies, but it did not save the Italians either, as new crews of marauders soon arrived on the scene, launching devastating incursions against Guadelupe later in the year, and San Vincenzo in early 1693. As with the Santa Lucia insurrection before it, instability on the Spanish Main brought even more danger to the region. The “Golden Age of Piracy” was in full swing.
By the early Autumn of 1692, Miguel de Mendoza, Viceroy of the Californias, felt ready to launch his strike against the Pueblo insurgents and their allies. In early October, he mustered both the Royal Army of California and Tomás de Coronado’s militia at Palo Alto, just south of San Francisco and made final preparations for a nearly 1,800 kilometer march from there to the settlement of Isleta, deep in the interior. There, a large group of Franciscan missionaries and other Spaniards were besieged by a medium sized force of Pueblo soldiers. Lacking the firepower to punch through the formidable walls, the attackers had opted to starve them out. Commanding a force of about 2,500 men, Mendoza meant to relieve Isleta and use it as a bastion from which to launch his pacification campaign. The pueblo was built on a knife-shaped reef of lava running across an ancient Rio Grande channel. Known as Shiewhibak in the Tiwa language spoken by its inhabitants, it served as a strategically important logistics hub. Once they left the areas of primarily Spanish settlements in the provinces of San Francisco and Monterrey, the royalist forces began to burn every native town they came across while imprisoning hundreds to be sent into forced labor. Pueblo operatives retaliated by sabotaging wells and raiding supply lines, forcing the royalists to resort to water rationing as they crossed the deserts.
On 15 November 1692, the California royalists staggered into view of Isleta. A few hundred Pueblo and allied soldiers ringed the town to prevent people and goods from getting in or out, but they hardly made for an imposing foe. However, as the royalists began to approach, they started taking fire from the heights to the west. What Mendoza and his army did not know, was that they had been beaten to their destination by Jorge Sastre and a 500 strong republican militia, who had arrived a week earlier. The particular group of men raining down musket fire were a specially picked sharpshooters’ platoon, and they caused panic in the enemy lines. Coronado ordered his men to scale the hillsides and engage the shooters, but before they could even begin, a massive force of Pueblo and Apache troops emerged in the royalist rear, cutting off their retreat to the north.
The royalists were not necessarily in a hopeless position yet. They still had about even numbers and could have attempted to break through to safety. Coronado and his men, most of whom were mounted, did precisely that, redirecting the charge intended for the sharpshooters against the Pueblos encircling Isleta. Their cavalry managed to scatter them and the infantry followed behind, skirting around the settlement and continuing south down the Rio Grande. However, for Archbishop de Montceda and his Royal Army of California, mostly on foot, things went much worse. It quickly became clear that the newly built force was poorly trained and ill disciplined, and that their commander was tactically inept. Smelling blood, the Pueblo and republican forces tightened the noose, trapping the royalists between the high ground on one side and the river on the other. The remnants of the Spanish army were butchered, with Montceda himself dragged from his horse and beaten to death with rocks, his corpse stripped of jewels and clothing. The Viceroy, having watched his armed forces obliterated before him, made the choice to yield. He and some of his top officers were brought into a tent to formalize the surrender of the army. At some point, an altercation broke out, and it remains unclear what precisely transpired, but the viceroy and his companions were all killed. Whether on purpose or not, the act represented the completion of a total victory by the anti-royalist forces at the Battle of Isleta. All Spanish colonial authority in North America had suddenly ceased to exist.
While the fate of California was being decided on the dusty banks of the Rio Grande, the course of New Granada was about to experience its own abrupt change in a city on the delta of the Magdalena River. After months of secretive planning, many of the colony’s most prominent men gathered in the city of Barranquilla beginning on 12 January 1693. They were there to decide the future of the colony. Not yet radicalized to the point of wanting independence, they recognized the weakness of the Spanish position and their opportunity to wring concessions out of the regime. Despite the organizers’ precautions, the authorities were well apprised of the plan and on the first day sent a letter to the congress ordering them to disband their meeting and go back to their homes. However, when the delegates returned to the hall the next day, there was nobody there to stop them, so they carried on. The colonial authorities stopped short of shutting them down for fear of inciting violence. The cautious viceroy did not believe that it was any threat, dismissing the attendees as “bloviating professors.”
Among those arriving at Barranquilla was Felipe Vicente de Villahermosa. As the host of the colony’s most prominent salon, he was hugely influential among his clique of wealthy criollo aristocrats and typified their thinking. Villahermosa was considered a moderate by many, including the viceroy, Antonio Pizarro. He wanted for his class to rule and he wanted to do away with most of the taxes and tariffs they had to pay. Otherwise, he remained loyal to the king, he was an upholder of the racial caste system who did not think that mixed race people (let alone those of full indigenous or African ancestry) were fit to wield political power; he was an elitist who considered the poorer classes of any race to be inferior; and he was a notorious womanizer (despite being married) who also did not think women were fit conversation partners. As the wealthiest man in the colony and its largest private landowner, he was also the biggest slave owner. Likewise, most of his friends, relatives, and acquaintances each kept hundreds, if not thousands of people in bondage on their massive plantations. Their fear of any revolutionary movement was that it would go too far, that those they held in bondage would get it in their heads that they could be freed. This group largely fell into the camp of realistas.
The criollos made sure that they were the ones to control the congress, with almost all the delegates hailing from their ranks. But not everyone thought it like Villahermosa and his colleagues. José Antonio de Rojas was a middle class criollo who nevertheless had a broader vision for the future of the colony. He represented the more radical republican faction. They too wanted free trade, but they also wanted a full separation from the home country, and the elimination of the monarchy. Some, like the young firebrand Paulino Jose de Francisco Contador y Romero, went even further, calling for a republican government based on an inclusive electoral process, the elimination of social classes, the abolition of slavery, and, once that was all done, radical land redistribution. They did join with their more conservative criollo brethren in calling for free trade and abolished tariffs. Rojas and his followers would remain marginalized at the congress, but gain more influence in the streets and in the fields as time went on.
The Congress continued for several weeks, imbuing Baranquilla with a festive atmosphere as the men inside the hall attempted to chart a new course for their country. However, the authorities had spies on the inside, and they were relaying back news that discussions continued to radicalize. There were some openly talking of armed insurrection. More and more delegates were starting to back Rojas over Villahermosa and his fellow realistas. Complaints from local church authorities as well as some prominent conservative citizens finally prompted Pizarro to act. He ordered a battalion of soldiers garrisoned in Cartagena to march south and disperse the congress, by force if necessary.
As the soldiers attempted to approach the building housing the congress, townspeople flocked to block their way, and numerous delegates emerged to join the throng. Together, they erected barricades from market stalls. Throughout the day, hand-to-hand clashes broke out between soldiers and protesters, with beatings and the occasional stabbings, but through the first day, no deaths or gun shots fired. The following day, 10 February, the soldiers got the order to open fire on anyone who would not disperse and resisted violently. When they reached the barricades, the protesters met them and the clashes began again. After about an hour, a group of men began forming up atop one of the barricades, preparing to charge at the soldiers with clubs and other crude weapons. The garrison, hemmed in on a narrow street, panicked, took aim, and fired. They successfully scattered the protesters, but when the smoke cleared, four men lay dead, and another six wounded. Among the fallen was Felipe Vicente de Villahermosa, who had been one of those organizing the men on the barricade. They had slain the leader of the faction most in favor of remaining loyal to Madrid, a man with whom they could have worked to bring about a mutually beneficial deal. Instead, he and the other deceased would be immortalized thenceforth in patriotic literature as “the Martyrs of Baranquilla”.
Engraving depicting the “Massacre of Baranquilla”
The colonial authorities had meant to conduct a show of force, but never intended for a man as prominent as Villahermosa to be killed. The Viceroy immediately attempted to appease the enraged criollos, issuing a public apology and condolences, opening an inquiry into the matter, and arresting the officer who gave the order to fire. Still, the authorities otherwise continued with the process of dispersing the Congress of Baranquilla. After the bloodshed of 10 February, most of the delegates did indeed flee the city, while the few who remained were rounded up and arrested. However, Viceroy Pizarro and his cronies had miscalculated, their scattershot policy failing to either reconcile the delegates with the colonial regime or to cow them enough to dissuade them from further revolutionary activity. By apologizing for the killing of Villahermosa and the others, the Viceroy had shown that he feared the power of the criollos, but by continuing with the crackdown on the congress, he ensured their fury would not abate. Instead of managing the demands of the reformist congress, the Spanish crown now faced an open, violent rebellion.
Many former members of the congress went underground and took up arms, forming the core of what would become the republican army. Rojas retreated to his hometown of Santa Marta, where he began raising men for the cause and stockpiling supplies. Rojas was one of the wealthiest men in the city and had connections there more far reaching than anyone in the service of Madrid. Within weeks of the congress’s dispersal, Paulino de Francisco Contador would become a celebrated hero among the common people, leading daring raids against royalist patrols and supply depots through the spring and summer of 1693. Born in Tunja in 1669, Contador was a recent law school graduate and had recently started practicing in his hometown. His father had been a civil servant and his well-educated mother kept a library in their home. Always known for his radical streak, even as a law student, he had gone enthusiastically to the Congress of Baranquilla.
Carlos de Villahermosa would also take up arms and carry on the legacy of his dead father. Only 17 years old and now head of the wealthiest and most powerful criollo families in New Granada, he would eventually overtake all the rest. Above all, in a society that prized the prestige of bloodlines, Carlos had the strongest of them all. With Felipe Vicente’s death, Carlos inherited one of the biggest fortunes in Spanish America, instantly becoming a major player in the expanding struggle. He suddenly presented a third way for those who both wanted freedom from the monarchy but feared the republicans’ radicalism. Here, for the first time, was a candidate who could also bring some of the society’s more conservative elements into the patriot coalition. Though he carried his father’s name of Villahermosa, marking him as the scion of one of the colony’s oldest and most prestigious dynasties, it was his mother’s name that mattered most of all: Trastámara.
Carlos de Villahermosa
Carlos happened to be a distant cousin of the King of Spain. They had a shared ancestor in Carlos, Duke of Girona; the same man who had attempted to usurp the throne from the infanta Ana after the death of her father Fernando VII in Sicily. The duke and his two eldest sons, Felipe and Ramon, tried to rally support for a rebellion but were outdone by the quick thinking of the Duke of Alba, who saved Ana’s crown during the succession crisis of 1613. The queen would go on to rule for 47 stable and prosperous years, dying childless in March of 1670 at the age of 62. She had prudently made arrangements for her succession, avoiding the unpleasantness that had plagued her own rise to the throne. The choice was easy: Prince Ramiro de Trastámara. Prince Ramiro was Ana’s cousin twice removed and still a child of seven years, but he hailed from what was set to become the most senior line of the dynasty, and had the best claim by blood. Ramiro also happened to be the great-grandson of the same Duke of Girona who had challenged Ana’s claim as a little girl.
While the Duke of Girona’s sons, Felipe and Ramon, were helping their father plot to steal the throne from Ana, their younger brother, Emilio, was still a child. When he grew to adulthood, the young man surveyed his opportunities in Spain and decided instead to emigrate, seeking the thrill of life in the Americas. Using his considerable family resources, he quickly established himself as a country gentleman who also made sure to keep a fashionable residence in Cartagena, becoming a mainstay in the city’s vibrant social scene. He married Alba Maria Blanco y López, a daughter of the city’s criollo aristocracy, and settled comfortably into his new home. The couple would go on to have four daughters. The eldest became a nun, but the second married a very wealthy and very ambitious and rebellious young landowner named Felipe Vicente de Villahermosa.
Even for rich criollos like the Villahermosas, a title of nobility was an enormously valuable asset, and nearly impossible to attain. Despite the wealth and comfort they enjoyed, criollos were technically second-class citizens as well, barred from the government's most powerful positions. Thus it was that Felipe de Villahermosa eyed a daughter of the Trastámara dynasty for his bride. If he was going to aim high, he had decided, it was best to go for the best.
The revolution in New Granada was still in its infancy, but the Spanish colonial authority had clearly grown brittle and lacked the institutional flexibility to adapt to an ever changing and ever expanding crisis. Just as the royalist security apparatus tightened the grip in New Granada, they were struck by a new threat in the Río de la Plata. In La Plata, the wave of revolution was just forming. It all began in Paysandú on 15 March 1693. Viceroy Domingo de Portocarrero decided to crack down on the smuggling and tariff dodging that was rampant in the colony’s major settlements. He dispatched legions of inspectors to ports and markets across the region, fining and even arresting those alleged to be defrauding the crown of revenue. It did not take long for the situation to escalate. Soon, every time an inspector arrived at a pier, word would spread and a mob would form, threatening violence and blocking the way to the ship or stall in question. In response, Portocarrero sent in the militia to escort his officials as they went about their duties. The viceroy, however, made a fatal miscalculation. He had decided to finance his new regime of inspectors by slashing spending in certain other areas. One of these sectors subject to cuts was the militia, who had not been paid for over two months. Thus, when the militiamen marched in and were confronted by angry protesters, most very quickly decided to simply switch sides. Soon, instead of guarding royal officials, they made common cause with the radical intellectuals and backed their demand for an open meeting of the Paysandu town council. The next day, they voted to establish a junta, and elected José de Benavides, wealthy proprietor of numerous warehouses, as its president.
When news reached Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the revolts spread there as well, with the militiamen crossing the lines almost immediately upon the news being read aloud in the major squares. By 19 March, all three cities had declared independence, though all remained aloof from each other. In its fortified bases, the regular royal army made preparations to crush the rebellion, and they hoped to capitalize on the uprising’s disjointed nature. In particular, the fierce historical rivalry between Buenos Aires and Montevideo appeared to present an opportunity to exploit. Meanwhile, out in the countryside of the Banda Oriental, the cowboys, ranchers, and small farmers all turned against Spanish rule and coalesced around Alfonso de Ojeda. A wealthy rancher, he set to work recruiting in his home region, and in little time, he had established a well-trained and effective militia of his own. Whether Ojeda and his followers declared for the rebels or struck out on their own, could well determine the course of the coming war.
Back in California, the victorious revolutionaries were ready to move on to the next phase of the independence struggle: building the a nation. On 22 August 1693, delegates from across the colony arrived in Taos, with those from San Francisco having traveled for over two weeks to attend. The white criollos from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego arrived prepared to give up their eastern provinces to the Pueblo. Po'pay and the other Pueblo leaders “received us as their American brothers,” in the words of Francisco de Paula Álvarez, who was present. The coastal elites primarily wanted to make sure they kept control of the Shasta gold mines plus the fur hunting grounds and fisheries of the northwest coast, particularly around the inlets of the Salish Sea. However, when Po'pay spoke to open the gathering, he addressed them as brothers and declared that the Pueblo and the Hóāihei (meaning “long-distance traveler” in Kiowa, the name commonly used among several indigenous groups to refer to the white criollos) were as one body, and should remain one nation. However, he made it clear that his people would not accept a secondary or subordinate role. The new state was to be one, and that its people be part of it as equals. The Pueblo and their allies had started the revolt, and without their initiative, their logistical networks, and their military skill, the criollos would still be under Spanish rule. After a few days of talks, all the parties involved emerged with an agreement. The pact they formed, known to history as the Taos Compact, founded an independent state in California.
Taos Pueblo
Across two continents, the struggle for independence in Spanish-America was now underway in earnest. On the other side of the Atlantic, Sebastián de Miranda was hearing news of the many ongoing revolts and became desperate to return to this homeland. However, he could not leave without first gaining some support for the cause. After petitioning the Italian parliament, Miranda was invited to speak on 1 March 1693. He pleaded for support against the Spanish oppressors and declared that if Italy stepped in to help, they would never find more loyal and appreciative friends than the Spanish Americans. He was given a standing ovation and warmly received by both of the major parties. The Guelphs supported Miranda’s cause because they backed the king’s interventionist foreign policy and wanted to strike a blow at the Spanish. The Ghibellines supported the patriot cause for business reasons: they wanted free trade and open ports in the Americas that were previously denied to them by Spanish mercantilist policy. However, nobody was sure precisely what the parliament was supposed to do, so the issue was tabled for the time being. After years of acrimonious controversy over Francesco II’s foreign adventures, this was finally a war both sides could agree on. Miranda, however, could wait no longer.
Three months later, on 2 June 1693, he was aboard a ship sailing for South America. However, he was departing with a bountiful haul. King Francesco had provided him with some small field artillery pieces, enough muskets and equipment to outfit a battalion of infantry, and several chests full of gold. If New Granada was going to be independent, then it was important for Italy to have influence there. There was no better way than for Miranda to become leader, or at least very close to the leader, in a position of power; and for that to happen, their man had to make a serious contribution to the war effort. The American also had with him about two score expatriates from the Americas who volunteered to return and fight with him, a dozen Italian adventurers whom he had managed to recruit during his time in Florence, as well as an assortment of other hangers on. More importantly, he had with him a half dozen Italian army officers there to help him build a new army for the fledgling colony. King Francesco II had appointed new cabinet ministers in May, and Yalbay Aybak, who had overseen the development and expansion of the Italian intelligence network in Egypt, became the new Minister of War. From his experience training locally raised Egyptian and Palestinian troops for the Italian crown, Aybak understood how with a skilled and experienced core of officers and NCOs, one could rapidly build a competent fighting force from freshly raised recruits. Thus, he sent some of his best officers to the Americas to support Miranda. It was only a matter of time before the Italian crown and parliament gave him much, much more. Admiral Francesco Stefano Carafa, the newly appointed foreign minister, was also eager to help. To escort Miranda, he dispatched five heavy war vessels, each armed with 70 to 90 guns, to make a show of force. When he made landfall, Miranda was sure to make a big impression.
The returned exile landed in early September near Riohacha, the first time he set foot on the American mainland in over three decades. As his party splashed ashore and began unloading their goods from the Italian warships, rumors quickly ballooned. Before long, the royalist garrison commander at Santa Marta was receiving reports of a full-fledged Italian invasion of New Granada. He panicked and ordered the garrison to abandon its positions and withdraw to Barranquilla where a larger royalist force was stationed. As soon as they fled, this word filtered back to the now disembarked patriots, who had not even known that enemy troops were in such close proximity. Had the Spanish acted decisively, they likely could have blasted the invaders off the beach. Instead, they ceded Miranda a great victory without making him fire a shot. Never one to shy away from attention, the revolutionary embraced the moment and paraded into Santa Marta. José Antonio de Rojas, who had been conducting guerilla operations in the area, emerged from hiding and embraced the adventurer like a returning hero. Like-minded republicans, Rojas had always admired Miranda though the two had never met. The patriots were happy to have a veteran soldier with experience fighting with European armies, and quickly made him a leader in the militias. More pressingly, Rojas was smart enough to see that the newly returned exile brought with him the support of the Medici, and that was well worth an embrace.
Miranda's landing
Miranda was already being hailed a hero in his homeland when, on 4 November 1693 in Florence, the camera dei deputati voted overwhelmingly to “champion the independence of the colonies of California, New Granada, and La Plata from the Spanish yoke, and to support any efforts, undertaken by the Crown of Italy, whether by diplomacy or by force of arms, in order to bring this liberty about.” The senate seconded the resolution soon afterwards. With the overwhelming support of the political class and the elites, Francesco II was ready to unleash his war machine against Spain. Setting aside the high-minded talk of liberty and free trade, there were strategic calculations at play for Italy. Her colonies in the New World were critically exposed to attack from rival European powers who had larger and more well-established presences in the New World. The fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to secure them, Francesco and his advisors decided, was not by increasing their own colonial holdings, but rather to secure alliances with formidable local powers. This strategy was not new. Indeed, this same thinking drove Gian Gastone I to support the Brazilian rebels with money and weapons. When Brazil became independent in 1665, Italy became the first power to recognize and ally with the new Grand Republic. An independent New Granada could provide an even closer partner.
Cartagena de Indias
Back in New Granada, the year 1694 dawned with huge portents and would mark a turning point in the struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule. Over the course of several months, the patriots conducted guerilla attacks against Spanish troops while citizens harassed and intimidated crown officials. Through force and threats of force, they had managed to drive most of the royalists from the areas east of Cartagena. The royalists remained ensconced in the capital, where Viceroy Antonio Pizarro was writing frantic letters back to Madrid begging for troops and money. The winds of change began to blow through the coastal city when, on 16 February 1694, news arrived of King Francesco's declaration of war against Spain. Emboldened by this news and by continuing rebel pressure, the people of Cartagena rose up, even attempting to storm the viceroy’s palace. Pizarro escaped, but the rebellious citizens took the armory and the treasury, sending messengers immediately summoning Miranda and Rojas to move on the city. The confused royalist troops, abandoned by their senior leadership and facing the prospect of an angry mob at their backs, fled as well. Three days later, the patriot leaders arrived with a vanguard of cavalry. They were greeted ecstatically by the people. Immediately, they sent word out to all rebel towns summoning delegates to a new congress, one to finish the work they began in Baranquilla just over a year earlier.
Just a few weeks later, on the 6 March, 1694, the Congress of Cartagena ratified the Declaration of Independence, announcing, for the first time, the creation of a new nation, the Republic of Colombia, named for the man who had claimed the lands between the Mosquito Coast and the Apure River for Spain. However, amidst the jubilation, signs of fracture began to show. The first thorny issue was the election of a president. Rojas and most of the moderate republicans assumed it would be Rojas. But Miranda threw his hat in the ring and the two erstwhile allies were suddenly enemies. Rojas was seemingly a shoe-in to defeat Miranda, who had only been back in the Americas for a few months and was, in many practical ways, an outsider. However, he had his own issues to deal with. Contador and his supporters thought Rojas too moderate, and preferred Miranda’s diplomatic skill and seemingly impeccable record of gathering support overseas. Carlos de Villahermosa was taken with the dashing older man’s romantic backstory and self-proclaimed military skill. They were enough to tip the balance, and the congress elected Miranda the President of Colombia. The die was cast, and the struggle for sovereignty had begun in earnest. With the declaration of independence, the situation in New Granada escalated into open warfare.
While the patriots may have been claiming independence for all of the colony of New Granada, the actual territory held by the Republic of Colombia was small. They had Maracaibo, Santa Marta, and Cartagena, with some pieces of adjacent lands as well. The vast majority of the colony remained beyond their control. There remained a royalist force at Baranquilla, right in the center of their territory, athwart the supply lines between the eastern towns and the capital. On 20 March 1694, Miranda gave Contador command of an army of about 2,500 men and ordered him to march against the royalist positions. Their commander, Diego de Egmont, ordered his own troops to form up and march out to meet the rebel forces. Already at a slight numerical disadvantage, the royalists were unnerved by the patriots’ ferocity and Contador, a natural tactician, found himself quickly gaining command of the field. However, the weight of command seemed to stifle the daring spirit that had defined his days as a guerrilla leader. Despite having an opportunity to potentially corner and annihilate the royalist army, he hesitated, preferring to not overextend himself and allowing the shrewd General Egmont to withdraw in good order. It was a moment of indecision that infuriated Carlos de Villahermosa when he learned of it.
Just a few weeks later, on 6 April 1694, another significant engagement took place at Maracaibo. Miranda and Contador combined to lead the patriot forces to what appeared to be a resounding victory for the cause of independence. The royalists had marched an army north from Merida in an effort to strike the royalist where they were not expecting it. Miranda brought an additional regiment of reinforcements to Contador, bringing their total to about three thousand; their enemies numbered between four and five thousand and were protected by a flotilla of Spanish warships in the lake who could open fire on advancing hostile ground forces. To counter them, the patriots built small craft and commandeered rafts and fishing boasts, mounted guns on them, and attacked the Spanish vessels. Struggling to deal with the tiny, swarming watercraft in the tight confines of Lake Maracaibo, the Spanish admiral ordered his ships out to sea to regroup. As they moved out of range, Contador ordered his forces to attack while the Spanish were no longer protected by naval gunfire. Once again, the patriots’ initiative won them the day, and the disheartened Spanish withdrew with some confusion. This time, Contador did advocate a pursuit. “March now and we will sweep into Merida like a wave,” he pleaded, but to no avail. Still, the momentum seemed to be shifting, and the dream of a free New Granada seemed closer to realization than ever before.
The patriots’ gunboats engage the royalist flotilla at Maracaibo
Back in Madrid, the king and his council had been debating the colonial matter for months. There were liberals, like the natural scientist Nicolau Pinó and the general Hernando Cagigal de la Vega, who thought the best policy was to grant a fair amount of autonomy to the colonies in exchange for their renewed vows of loyalty. Cagigal, as war minister, was adamant that he did not have the forces to smash three colonial uprisings while also maintaining suitable defenses in Europe. With Italy preparing to enter the war, thus expanding the conflict to Europe, they needed all the men they had. There was little to spare to save the colonies. Opposing them were the spymaster Patiño and the master of the mint, Hernando Galvez. They believed that the king must claw back every inch of his domains, or else appear weak. They advocated for a strong defense against the Italians in Europe while sending a powerful army across the ocean to smash the rebellious colonies piece by piece. Ramiro preferred the latter option. However, the king did not have much time to sit around and debate. He ordered only 5,000 troops sent to the Americas, much to the hardliners’ dismay, and the rest to the Pyrenees to meet the oncoming Italians. The spring of 1694 brought with it the opening stages of the war in Europe and Madrid now faced a true crisis. They met the challenge bravely, deciding to take a proactive approach instead of waiting to absorb the Italians’ blows in the mountains.
That the first battles of the war became known to history as the Occitan Campaign was the result of a critical diplomatic blunder by King Louis François I of France, who had remained neutral in the conflict. As a fierce rival of Spain, France was certainly not going to support the royalist side. However, with his massive colonial holdings in the Americas, the French also feared the possibility that the wave of revolts could quickly spread to their own domains. Trying to tread between the two paths, he left in place rights-of-passage agreements with both states, not wanting to offend one or the other. What he had not considered was the possibility of both forces moving into France at the same time and engaging in battles on his territory.
The Armata Reale, led by King Francesco II, departed their marshaling grounds at Campi Bisenzio on 10 March 1694, traveling along the Mediterranean coast, passing through Genoa and Nice and then across the French border, skirting around Toulon, Marseilles, and Montpellier. From there they would target the first great Spanish fortress at Perpignan, beyond which lay the rich and populous region of Catalonia. Meanwhile, the Duke of Mantua was following with a second army, the just over 30,000 strong, and headed for the central Pyrenees. They followed the same coastal path as the king’s men up until Montpellier, at which point they turned inland, headed for the Portalet Pass, through which they intended to invade Aragon. Arrayed against them were three armies forming a line along the Pyrenees. In the southeast was King Ramiro III of Spain commanding an army nearly 40,000 strong and guarding the coastal approaches. In the center was King João IV of Portugal, commanding a Portuguese army numbering just over 30,000. Finally, to the northwest, was another Spanish army of similar size commanded by Ramon de Mendoza, Duke of Cardona. King Ramiro III did not want to sit idly by and wait to absorb the enemy’s blows. Instead, he proposed to make full use of the Iberians’ military access rights in France. At a war council in early April the commanders determined to move northward and array themselves in a crescent formation. Their intent was to block the Italians’ advance along the coast and force them inland while also preventing them from advancing through the Somport Pass are any points further west. In essence, the strategy was to keep the Italians bottled up along the tallest and most rugged portion of the Pyrenees and, most importantly, on the French side of the border. To achieve this, all three armies advanced into French territory under the pretext of “transiting through the French lands,” as the vaguely worded communiques from Ramiro III to Louis François I stated.
By the time April turned to May, forward elements from both sides began to engage in running skirmishes. On 7 May 1694, King Ramiro took up positions along the river Aude to the west of Narbonne, knowing the city would not open its gates to the oncoming Italian, forcing them to pass in that direction. He split his artillery in two and positioned the formations on high ground at either end of his line. He kept the cavalry on the wings as well and positioned the bulk of his infantry in the center. The Spanish had more artillery on hand than did the Italians, but what the latter lacked in firepower they made up for with maneuver. About a quarter of the army was made up of cavalry, giving Francesco nearly a five to one advantage in mounted forces. In a risky maneuver, the King of Italy sent about half his cavalry racing ahead to ford the Aude further upstream. From there, they managed to maintain a constant harassing pressure against the Spanish left. Amidst bloody fighting in the center, several regiments of infantry managed to gain the south bank and hold their position, allowing reinforcements to cross behind. As more men came across, Ramiro III suddenly found his left flank getting more isolated and vulnerable. Fearing the loss of at least half his artillery, the monarch decided to begin withdrawing, knowing that he had fortresses within which to shelter once he got back across his own border. However, by the time the order reached those fighting on the left, the guns were already being attacked by several enemy regiments. Only a near suicidal charge by a mass of Spanish cavalry managed to save the gun park from falling into any hands. Further a number of infantry regiments had become isolated in pockets along the river, and they would soon be forced to surrender. The King of Spain managed to extract himself, though at tremendous cost. He had lost half his infantry, and more than two thirds of his cavalry. Though he had saved most of his artillery, the army was dangerously unbalanced and needed to regroup before it could fight again in the field. A few days later, the Italian army crossed the frontier and appeared before the walls of Perpignan. The Battle of Narbonne would prove to be a foreshadowing of even more disasters in store for the Spanish cause.
Ramiro III of Spain at the Battle of Narbonne
The Battle of Narbonne
Never one to be outdone by his sovereign, Napoleone Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, prepared his own strike against Iberian positions. By 14 May, emissaries had reached the camps of all the foreign armies on French soil carrying angry missives from Louis François, demanding they depart his lands forthwith. Several regiments of cavalry rode around to the camps as well, but they were only there as a show of force. The King of France was not quite ready to declare open war against either Spain or Italy, though the increasing damage done by the armies was threatening to cause a crisis in the capital. Gonzaga, feigning a move toward Spain, split his army near the town of Montauban, just over forty kilometers north-northwest of Toulouse, left a rearguard force there, and then headed south with the main force of his army. He struck the Portuguese at Lectoure on 20 May 1694, dealing King João IV a sharp defeat. Then, without wasting time, he ordered his men to turn back north. He sent off replies to Louis François, apologizing for the violent behavior exhibited on his territory, but he swore that he had been prevented from departing by the Portuguese. Now, he promised he meant only to retrieve his rearguard then immediately decamp for the Spanish frontier. His army made a big show of departing the town from the south, and he paid French peasants to sow this disinformation among the Spanish ranks. However, in truth, he pushed passed Montauban and took up positions around the town of Albias, around a bend in the river Aveyron. There, they sat and waited in ambush until on 5 June 1694, when the Duke of Cardona’s army came south, not expecting to encounter an enemy, and prepared to cross the river. Just as the first Spanish units reached the south bank, the Italians began their attack with a ferocious artillery barrage from field guns in camouflaged positions. Caught off guard, the Spanish panicked, and Mendoza failed to gain control of his army. As the Italian cavalry pressed the attack, the Spanish soon became surrounded, though the general and some of his cavalry managed to break through. Though they resisted for the better part of three hours, they were eventually forced to throw down their arms. The catastrophe at Albias was complete. The Spanish lost the entire army, with several thousand dead and the vast majority taken prisoner.
Gonzaga’s victories in southern France decimated the Iberian allies
Gonzaga quickly pivoted and, before word of the battle even reached Paris, was making a beeline for the Spanish frontier. Never lacking in diplomatic tact, the Duke of Mantua left two regiments behind to manage the mass of prisoners they had just taken. The labor of these captives was then offered to the French so that they could rebuild any infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the course of hostilities. In the end, the offer of forced labor and an extra infusion of gold from Florence helped soothe any bad blood that may have come up during the Occitan Campaign and limited any long-term damage to the Franco-Italian relationship. For the Spanish, the foray into France had been catastrophic. They had crossed the frontier with high hopes and a combined strength of 84,000 men; they returned with dashed morale and less than 35,000 men. The fight was far from over, and there were reinforcements and new defensive positions to occupy, the opening defeats seem to set the stage for the battles to come.
Napoleone Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua
Back in New Granda, the royalist army was regrouping. Aside from the rebel cities along the coast, the soldiers of the king still controlled the majority of the colony. They swept the countryside in search of armed patriotic militants who were raiding supply depots, stealing horses and cattle, and kidnapping loyalist informers. Some, like Carlos Lottyn, a mestizo landowner-turned-guerilla, inspired fear and even admiration among their foes. General Bartolomé de Figueroa, commanding royalist troops, had split up his forces as he awaited reinforcements. A portion of his soldiers were assigned to keep the rebels contained in their current positions until a reinforcement army could arrive to help crush them. More royalist troops held a string of towns along the Magdalena River, dominating the main route of commerce and communication to the interior. It was along this river where the career of Carlos de Villahermosa would begin its vertiginous ascent.
Following the early victories, the Republic of Colombia had settled into a period of uncertainty. Miranda appeared to be indecisive and unsure of what to do next. After spending a lifetime striving for Spanish-American independence, he had seemingly reached his goal only to find himself out of his element. Further, the congress in Cartagena was deadlocked, with numerous laws and ordnances held up in endless debate, with no side strong enough to take control and set an agenda. There were three roughly equal factions in the congress: the first wanted to use the new republic as a bargaining chip, wanting ultimately to reconcile with the crown, but on better terms for the colonists; the second wanted an independent republic but with the Spanish social structure in place, minus the peninsulares; the third wanted an independent republic and abolition and land redistribution. The end result was that government business languished and the fledgling country with it. Contador wanted to raise more troops from among the lower classes, but the president resisted, claiming they would be too ill disciplined.
Carlos de Villahermosa wanted to launch an offensive, a desire Miranda also rebuffed. In an effort to keep Carlos and his followers on his side, he did agree to make him “commander of the Magdalena River and all its commerce.” The young man took it in stride, and left almost immediately for the small town of Barranca, where his family owned some land. Alongside a loyal band of about a dozen childhood friends, the young aspiring revolutionary set about recruiting men in and around the town. It was not easy going, and often they had to resort to some of the lowest rungs of society, such as criminals or the destitute. Carlos, still possessing the racial prejudices of his caste, continued to fear the potential consequences of bringing enslaved people or those formerly enslaved under arms, and so excluded a potentially huge pool of recruits. It would take a catastrophe and a brush with death to shake the racist attitudes ingrained in the young Carlos. Still, by the start of June, he had brought together one hundred and fifty men, having paid to arm and outfit them from his own family’s substantial fortune.
On 4 June 1694, the small band of fighters set out from Barranca on eight champanes, large, flat-bottomed dugouts propelled by poles and oars, to strike the royalist garrison at Tenerife, composed of about 500 men. He sent his friend Jonatán Ureña ahead under a flag of truce to offer the royalists a chance to surrender. The commander immediately rejected the ultimatum and told Ureña to depart immediately or be arrested. When his emissary returned with the response, Carlos gave the order to attack. The flotilla of champanes rounded a bend in the river and unleashed a hail of fire against the garrison. Terrified by the ferocity of the attack, the defenders fled into the surrounding forest, leaving much of their weaponry and equipment behind, included a pair of small field guns. Even better, Tenerife was a major royalist supply depot, and once the patriots entered the town, they were delighted to find plentiful muskets, powder, swords, and pikes. It was a stunning and fruitful victory. Once the dust settled, the bewildered townspeople emerged to find Carlos and his victorious patriots holding court in the main square. He admonished the mayor and the town council for remaining loyal to the king, and offered the people the opportunity to join him. Whether out of patriotic fervor or simply a desire for plunder, plenty of men in Tenerife were suddenly ready to join the cause.
Carlos did not tarry in Tenerife. By the next day, he had nearly 250 men under his command and had added three champanes to his flotilla. Their next destination was the strongly patriotic Santa Cruz de Mompox. Unlike at Tenerife, Mompox welcomed the men as liberators. They were met on the shore by Father Pelayo de la Cerda and a delegation of town notables who showered them in flowers and cheers and later held a festive ball in their honor. Father de la Cerda was to become one of Carlos’s most important backers. Born in Andalusia, he had been sent to the Americas as a young priest and remained there, ministering to the mixed race and enslaved populations in and around Mompox. Much of the church hierarchy in New Granada disliked him and suspected him of seditious ideas, a notion he did little to disabuse them of. His support helped imbue the patriot cause with some religious support of its own, something it conspicuously lacked, as most of the Church had aligned behind the royalists.
Carlos did not stay still in Mompox either. He remained there only two days, recruiting more men and arming them with the supplies seized at Tenerife. With his army grown to five hundred men, he organized them into smaller units and set them out against Guamal, Banco, and Tamalameque, sweeping royalists from their positions with the same kinds of ferocious surprise attacks that had won the day further downriver. Finally, he completed the campaign by marching seventy kilometers inland from the river and liberating the heavily fortified city of Ocaña on 20 June, when sympathetic townspeople threw open the gates in the dead of night, causing the startled garrison to quickly surrender. The victory confirmed patriot control of the entire length of the Magdalena River. In sixteen days, Carlos de Villahermosa and his troops had defeated a third of the royalist forces in New Granada and brought huge swaths of territory under patriot control. It made him an instant national hero and even won him accolades in Europe. More importantly, with the royalists cleared from the Magdalena, it suddenly seemed like Republic of Colombia was not only possible, but was already practically a reality. However, time would soon reveal that the Spanish were far from spent in the Americas.
The Magdalena River
To the north, the Republic of California was no longer in a state of war. They had moved on to the development of a new state. On Monday 3 September 1694 a new congress met in San Francisco and formally declared the creation of the Republic of California. Building upon the foundations of the Taos Compact, they drafted a constitution for the new country. Juan Bautista de Figueroa, a well respected publisher from Monterrey, was elected president of the House of Representatives, the republic’s legislative body. The constitution also created the position of president as head of state, but this was largely ceremonial and elected by the house (and could also be replaced by the house). The government they created was extremely limited, primarily concerned with staying out of its citizens’ way. For the Pueblo and other indigenous groups, this was just fine, as they returned to their traditional social and political structures now that they were rid of the hated Spaniards and the reviled Franciscans. On the coast, the criollo merchants were primarily concerned with not paying tariffs and customs, and as little tax as possible. Po'pay, the great organizer and hero of the Pueblo Revolt, was elected the first president and invited to take his seat to oversee the assembly, though he declined this offer. Instead, the leader and instigator of the Great Pueblo Revolt preferred to stay in his native lands, enjoying the fruits of a peaceful retirement. He had thrown off the yoke of Spanish oppression for his people, and laid the groundwork for the founding of a new nation, an experiment in principles of democracy and coexistence. They had forged a “dual republic”, one part for the criollo on the Pacific coast, and the other for the Pueblo and their fellow indigenous groups in the interior. The shared struggle for independence would help bind this unlikeliest of nations together, and set it up for a successful transition to independence.
Celebrations in San Francisco after the declaration of the Republic of California
Statue of Po'pay outside the Palacio Legislativo de San Francisco
On the opposite end of the American landmass, in La Plata, things were also hopeful. In May of 1694, a secret meeting occurred in between José de Benavides, president of the Paysandu junta, his counterparts, Vicente de Borbón of Buenos Aires and Alonso Elcada of Montevideo, as well as Alfonso de Ojeda, leader of the ranchers and farmers of the Banda Oriental. They had received intelligence that a royalist army about 5,000 strong was marshaling along the Dulce River near Santiago del Estero. The force was made up of the remnants of the colonial army of La Plata plus reinforcements from Peru. Separately, the cities would have no hope of stopping them with their local militias. Together, however, they did stand a chance and could bring even numbers to bear on the field. The four men agreed to set aside their differences, particularly the rivalry between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and work as a group. Together, they ratified the creation of the junta suprema, to take command of the disparate forces. They moved their forces to Paysandu, dug in, and waited.
It did not take long for the royalists to oblige them. Led by Ramiro Palafox, they meant to strike right at Paysandú and the heart of the patriot territory. On 11 July 1694, they reached the town of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz near the junction of the Paraná and Salado rivers, made camp for the night, and prepared to navigate a difficult river crossing the following day. What they were not aware of, was that the patriot forces had taken up ambush positions in the night and were primed to spring on their unsuspecting victims when they were at their most vulnerable. Ojeda had overall command and had prepared his men well. The patriots’ intelligence sources had tipped them off to Palafox’s intended route, giving them plenty of time to conduct detailed reconnaissance of the area before their foe arrived. In the middle of the morning of 12 July, the rebels opened fire from multiple directions on the royalists as they were crossing the river. Ojeda’s cavalry charged in hard and took the bridge, cutting the enemy forces in half. Palafox, who was already on the eastern bank, found himself cutoff, and ended up being taken prisoner with nearly 2,000 of his men. The victory was decisively in favor of the La Platans. As the dust settled, it became apparent that large numbers of royalist troops had also switched sides, pledging their loyalty to the patriot cause. Most of the soldiers who had remained on the western bank managed to extricate themselves from the fighting, but that did little to save the army. Ignacio Elhuyar, took over command and withdrew deep into loyal territory to the south. However, by the time he reached his destination at the fortress of Candelaria, only 500 men remained after the mass desertions that had plagued their march south. They were to play no further role in the war.
Emerging from the Battle of the Paraná with more men than they had when they went into it, the patriot leadership wasted no time resting on their laurels. With royalist forces east of the Andes effectively neutralized, it was time for them to look west. If they could invade and capture Chile, it would give their new state ports on the Pacific Ocean and even allow them to threaten Peru. Benavides and Ojeda were convinced that success in Chile, and subsequent Spanish fears of also losing Peru, would force Madrid to capitulate and recognize La Plata as an independent state. To achieve this, they decided to mount a daring crossing of the Andes mountains. The path to the Pacific Coast lay beyond the treacherous peaks, but the patriot leadership was resolute in their determination to crush the royalists before they could regroup and threaten La Plata once again.
On the morning of 10 October 1694, the patriot army set out from their base camp El and began their journey across the Andes Mountain range. Departing with 4,000 soldiers and about 1,200 auxiliaries and camp followers, they headed for the Paso de Los Patos, which would allow them to emerge north of Santiago. They ate maize cakes and a local dish called valdiviano and brought with them 3,000 head of cattle. The journey tested the limits of the army’s endurance, pushing soldiers to their breaking points as they climbed steep slopes with only thin mountain air to breathe. Frigid winds howled through the narrow mountain passes, and blizzards threatened to engulf them. Yet, every time their spirits faltered, they found a way to motivate themselves. Their leaders’ unwavering resolve bolstered their own. Despite being surrounded by awe-inspiring Andean peaks, the harsh conditions seemed sometimes insurmountable. They lost near a third of their number on the crossing, but when they reached the other side, they had the enemy completely by surprise.
Benavides and Ojeda during the crossing of the Andes
The royalist soldiers in Santiago, numbering about 3,000, were the only force in the vicinity, and there was nothing to stop the rebels from marching north into Peru. The patriots had intended to put the Spanish in a difficult position, but their fortunes were even better than they had expected. What Ojeda, Benavides, and the other commanders did not know, was that most of the strength of the royalist army in Peru had been ordered north to suppress the rebellion in New Granada. Thus, the army in Santiago was forced to act, lest they end up in a race to capture Cuzco, the rich colonial capital. On 8 November 1694, commanded by a Catalan officer named Cristòfor Carrera, they marched north quickly, and ran straight into a patriot ambush. Thinking the encroaching foes were just mounted raiders, they were not expecting to fight a pitched battle. The rebels opened fire with artillery and gained the better ground. Within a few hours, the matter was resolved, and the La Platans stood decisively victorious on the field. As they were forced to withdraw south, and now found themselves badly outnumbered, Carrera asked for a parlay with the rebel leaders. Knowing the importance of saving Peru, and having no means to do so militarily, he made a simple offer: he and his men would lay down their arms (with the exception of officers keeping their swords and side arms), take only the personal items they could carry, and immediately take ship for Spain. In exchange, the junta suprema would sign a peace treaty with all of the Spanish colonies, thereby ending hostilities and precluding any march on Peru. Among the junta leaders, there was little desire to push any further as it was. They all knew that a foray north could easily and quickly transform them from beloved liberators to despised occupiers in the conservative colony. Instead, they took the deal. On 16 November 1694, the two sides signed the Pact of Chacabuco, formalizing the agreement they had just reached. By signing the treaty, Carrera had also provided de facto recognition to La Plata, by coming to formal agreement with the junta suprema. The war in the southern half of South America was over and a new nation was on the verge of being born.
Despite good news from north and south for the patriot causes, the Spanish Empire was not going to go give up without a fight. As the Californians and La Platans celebrated, Madrid’s hammer blows were preparing to fall hard upon New Granada. Barranquilla, Maracaibo, and the Magdalena Campaign had put the royalists on the defensive, but they were far from defeated. The armada of ships and soldiers sent by King Ramiro III finally arrived at Turbo in August of 1694. Their commander, General Alonso Manrique de Lara, was one of the best Spain had to offer, and Vicente Patiño had personally lobbied for his appointment to head the expedition. He added the beleaguered men remaining after the patriot offensives (about 2,000 men) and integrated them into his own force. He also added three regiments of royalist regulars, freshly arrived from Peru, to bolster his forces, bringing the total to about 10,000. He further replenished his ranks with black and mixed-race troops, who were fearful that a criollo victory would result in fewer rights for them. The royalist commander emphasized this point, portraying King Ramiro III as a protector of the rights of the black and indigenous population against criollo depravity.
De Lara’s first order of business was to assault unprotected cities and towns that had declared loyalty to the Republic of Colombia. Beginning in September, the royalists unleashed hordes of plainsmen they had been recruiting in the interior. They would come to be known as the “Legions of Hell”. They were cowboys out of the southern plains or llanos. Once exclusively the preserve of Spain, half the plains had been ruled, nominally at least, by the British since 1655. But these galloping hordes remained outside of any government’s control, though a group of enterprising Spaniards had set about employing them against foes of the king. Originally organized into military formations to harry British trade routes and ranches, they now rode north from the barren llanos to punish anyone who dared side with the patriots. The men hailed mostly from the “colored” classes, and they were out to wreak vengeance against the elite criollos. Ironically, many of their leading commanders were peninsulares, who won their men’s loyalty by letting them plunder whatever they would. Leading these colored troops was the fearsome Tomás José del Cuervo. Fair-haired and strong-shouldered, with an enormous head, blue eyes, and a notoriously short temper, he was loved by his troops with a loyalty and drive verging on worship. He would lead them to some great victories and to some unimaginable violence. Beholden to no one, this formidable army of black, pardo, and mestizo llaneros lived on plunder, rich booty, and their desire to exterminate the criollo as a class.
The llaneros were accomplished horsemen, well trained in the art of warfare. They owned few worldly goods, rode bareback, wore loincloths, made tents from hides, slept in the dirt, and reveled in suffering and uncouth behavior. The llaneros’ weapon of choice was a long lance of alvarico palm, hardened to a sharp point in the campfire. They were accustomed to making rapid raids, swimming on horseback through rampant floods, the sum of their earthly possessions in leather pouches balanced on their heads or clenched between their teeth. In war, they had little to lose or gain, no allegiance to politics. They were rustlers and hated the ruling class and they fought for the abolition of laws against their kind, which the Spaniards had promised. They believed in the principles of harsh justice. They were, in essence, a perfect revolutionary army. That they were still at least nominally loyal to the crown was due to the ever-present racial tensions that made them second-class citizens in the best case and slaves in the worst. With all the congresses and declarations that had come to pass, nobody had bothered to consult with the non-white people of New Granada, let alone actually grant them any rights. It proved to be a catastrophic mistake on the part of the republicans. It soon became clear to the patriots that though they might win the occasional skirmish, they simply could not recruit soldiers as quickly and effectively as the enemy. For every win the republicans could deliver, the Legions of Hell would come back stronger. The reason for this was obvious, although the patriots were slow to see Its significance: the Spanish had race on their side. The vast majority of those with black, indigenous, or mixed blood followed an age-old democratic impulse: they wanted to crush the people of privilege. However, in this case, it was a narrow interpretation of democracy, promoted by Spanish generals, and blind to the revolutionary struggle at hand. The colored masses understood that the world was unjust and that the criollos who lorded over them were rich and white. But there was still hope for the patriots to win them over, by taking up their cause and thus revealing the true pyramid of oppression. Many could not see that the roots of their misery were in empire, that Spain had constructed that unjust world carefully, that tyranny was rooted in the colonial, and that its system had been in place for two hundred years. However, it would still take time for the patriot leaders to truly understand and embrace this notion.
As the devastation spread in the interior, the major patriot-aligned cities along the coast began to panic. In Cartagena, Magdalena, and Santa Marta, panicked republican leaders began to agitate for action, though it seemed to be impossible to determine what action. They claimed dominion over vast tracts of land, but their army was not large and they could not garrison all of it. Officially, the army of the Republic of Colombia numbered 9,000, and thus already outnumbered by the royalist forces, without considering that in truth perhaps as many as a quarter of the soldiers were not present and/or fit for duty. They depended on local militias to enforce the “republican constitution”, but these would very quickly prove unfit for the task of defending the territory. Advancing along two axes, one on the Pacific Coast, the other downriver along the Magdalena, the Spaniards rapidly undid patriot gains. By the end of December, the marauding royalists had devastated the provinces of Mariquita and Antioquia, leaving a trail of slaughtered civilians and charred villages in their wake.
This sparked a crisis in Cartagena, where the nascent republican government soon fell. Angry citizens denounced the cowards of the congress and demanded action. Every day, someone new in the capital learned of family in the provinces killed by the marauders. Some called for Carlos, the Hero of the Magdalena to ride out to meet them. Others demanded Paulino de Francisco Contador, author of the great victory at Barranquilla. It all became too much for the moderates in the congress to hold power. The centrist Miranda could not hold his coalition together, and was ousted as President of the Congress and replaced by the more radical José Antonio de Rojas. Rojas and his allies immediately ordered the formation of a new army to defend the capital and the republic. As they were stout republicans, they immediately gave the command to one of their own, Ignacio Mariño, angering the Carlists. Carlos, nevertheless, accepted his subordinate role gracefully, and took command of a battalion of cavalry made up of criollo aristocrats from Cartagena, which meant a great deal of them were men known to him since childhood.
It was during this crisis, on 15 October 1694, that the first group of what would become the Foreign Legion arrived in Cartagena. Recruited from Italy and across Europe, this mix of professional soldiers and adventurers arrived with dreams of glory and land after the war. About a third were Italian, the rest a mix of Irish, Polish, French, Scottish, German, and Greek volunteers. Despite the claims of many of them, most sources estimate that at least half the legionnaires arrived without any prior military training or experience. However, those who truly did bring their hard won knowledge to their adoptive country would prove indispensable in the battles to come. The first wave consisted of about three hundred men, and they were quickly made into an infantry company and integrated into the nascent republican army.
Feeling they finally had the strength to make a stand, in late October the republican army marched out from Cartagena to roaring crowds and celebrations. They meant to go forth and smash the royalists and firmly establish the republic. Taking up positions near Valencia along the Rio Sinu, Mariño planned to use his disciplined infantry to hold the line against the Legions of Hell and then counterattack them once they were spent. In other words, he meant to use their own tactics against them. However, del Cuervo was already a step ahead of him. Using both his superior maneuverability and numbers against the republican hero, he sent half his men on a massive loop around the enemy positions. On 14 November 1694, the royalists attacked the patriot forces from multiple directions, lighting fires to mask their movements. The llaneros circled the embattled formation for hours, striking and retreating, never giving them the chance to steady themselves and recover. With the risk of being shut into a trap, Mariño ordered retreat, leaving behind nearly two thousand dead. Those who were captured were also put to the sword by the royalists, who then quickly swept into the town of Valencia and unleashed further bloodshed there.
By the end of November, the royalist army was approaching Cartagena. Everyone was gripped by a panicked fear, not that they could be blamed. Plentiful stories of the plainsmen’s atrocities had made their way back to the capital. When Montería surrendered, del Cuervo promised pardons for everyone and even celebrated mass in the Cathedral of San Jerónimo. Afterwards, he ordered all the criollos in the town to a ball and decreed that all the women had to dance the piquirico for him and his officers. In exchange, he promised, their husbands would be spared. When they resisted, he took out his lash and made them dance by force; then, sufficiently amused, he beheaded them all. Within days, his multitudes were riding toward the capital of Cartagena. They called for sweeps of all the precious silver and gold objects in the city’s churches, impounded the treasury, put all of it in twenty-four trunks, and ordered them sent by pole boat up the Magdalena to Mompox and then to the fortress at Ocaña.
News of the plentiful pillage available to willing llaneros had attracted more men to the army, and thus when the two sides met, the republicans were suddenly outnumbered more than two to one. Despite having recently ousted him from the presidency, the congress nevertheless asked Miranda to take overall command of the army. Knowing that a victory could easily mean his return to power, he eagerly accepted. However, it would prove to be an ill-fated decision. On 2 December 1694, after marching out from Cartagena, the republican forces were quickly surrounded and annihilated. There was never much of a fight. The darting lancers cut the infantry to pieces and were too fast to suffer much from artillery fire. A few units managed to escape by cutting or shooting their way out, with Contador among them, but the remainder were left to be killed by the plainsmen. The patriot army had effectively ceased to exist.
With that, the capital suddenly lay open before the enemy. Miranda and Villahermosa had also escaped the battle with a few hundred men and made it back to Cartagena. Without warning the congress or consulting with Carlos or anyone else, Miranda ordered what still remained in the treasury be emptied, loaded into trunks, and then brought on board a ship waiting in the harbor. Before he could get the first chest on board, however, the president of the congress was confronted by some young officers, Carlos among them, demanding to know what was happening with the gold. Miranda claimed he was trying to evacuate the treasury to safety as the route to Ocaña was cut off, but suddenly he was being accused of treason. The congress, as it was preparing to flee, stopped to take time to vote to imprison Miranda and formally convict him of treason. They took possession of the trunks, loaded them onto the same boat, and sailed away. Miranda was left in the dungeon. The Spaniards appeared only mildly interested in him anyway. He was briefly interrogated but otherwise left in his cell until 22 December 1694. On that day, Gilberto Sebastián de Miranda was taken into the Plaza de la Aduana on the harbor and unceremoniously shot as part of a larger mass execution of about two dozen patriot prisoners, thus putting a grim conclusion upon what was otherwise a life filled with swashbuckling adventure and rendezvous with famous historical characters.
As the patriots fled, the stampeding llaneros must have seemed like a vision of the apocalypse. The Legions of Hell had metamorphosized into a massive, undisciplined, lawless horde, with no loyalty to anyone and no real love for King Ramiro III and his empire. They no longer had any strategy aside from that which would maximize the amount of looting, rape, and murder they could carry out. They seemed to be everywhere at once, terrifying villages, violating women, sporting squirming babies on lances. De Lara, as commander of all royalist forces, was aghast at the behavior of del Cuervo and his men. He wrote an angry letter ordering them to cease unnecessary killings immediately and reminded them that all civilians remained subjects of His Majesty the king. Del Cuervo responded that he was the leader of the colored people, whose cause he championed, and that he and his men had no superiors and answered to no higher authority. Finally, he concluded with the threat that if General de Lara was still in the country once the Legions of Hell had finished exterminating the patriots, he would turn them against the king’s armies.
With the Legions at their heels, almost the entire criollo population of Cartagena began a mass exodus. Even beyond the capital, supporters of the republic were forced to flee or go into hiding, as the wave of royalist repression washed over the land. There were thousands of refugees. Some went with Contador to Barranquilla, then to Santa Marta, and then into the densely forested hills of the interior, from where the republican leader would mount a fierce guerilla campaign. Other groups were scattered as well. Rojas led many people to Ocaña, where there were friendly fortifications in an easily defensible position. In the mountains, the effectiveness of the plainsmen would be limited, and at least give them a fighting chance. Father Pelayo de la Cerda, who had come to the capital with Carlos, shepherded many to his hometown of Mompox, though they would eventually be forced to flee again to join their compatriots at Ocaña. The largest group of followers, however, went with Carlos de Villahermosa.
For nearly thirty days the ragged, beleaguered troop forged ahead despite dwindling food and no shelter. They persevered through roaring rivers, clambered over treacherous mountains, and soaked under torrential rains with nothing to protect them from the elements. They were bitten by snakes and hunted by jaguars. Many died along the way, drowned in floods, killed by roving bandits, or devoured by wild animals or, later, felled by cholera and yellow fever. Despair and madness took hold of many. Carlos de Villahermosa refused to succumb. With an iron resolve and maturity beyond his nineteen years, he willed his people on, pacing up and down the ragged column offering what comfort and hope he could. He brought his sisters, Maria Antonia, Paula, and Elisa, with him despite their insistence on remaining behind in Cartagena to guard the family home. Indeed, in the days before the city’s evacuation, Carlos had begged many to leave, to join him, though not all did. Some, like his family friend the Marquis de Casa León, were peninsulares and would be pardoned. Some were patriots who preferred to die at home. Still others because as nuns, priests, or artists they felt immune to war’s prejudices. But Carlos knew what del Cuervo’s men would do to any criollo who fell into their hands: he had seen the pyramids of skulls, heard the stories of rape and mutilation. All he could do now was keep himself and his supporters alive long enough to rally and save the dwindling patriot cause in Colombia.
Back in Europe, few were paying attention to happenings across the Atlantic. There was, after all, a new pope to elect. The death of Pope Innocent XII on 25 September 1694, brought about the usual fraught process of selecting a new Holy Father, with all the bribes, threats, and promises that go with it. The result was the election of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Cercignani, taking the name Martin IV, who was fiercely loyal to the Medici. Whereas Innocent had remained steadfastly neutral in the conflict over Spanish-American independence, despite his own known ties to the Medici, Martin pledged immediately to be an interventionist pontiff in that regard. Only two months after his election, the new pontiff issued the papal bull Immensa Pastorum Principis which prohibited explicitly the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and established that all those born in the Americas were of equal standing with those born in the heartland of Christendom. It was seen by many as giving tacit approval to the ongoing revolutions, and helped dampen criticism of the patriot cause by local church authorities.
Pope Martin IV would become an important champion of the cause of Spanish-American independence
Aside from pontifical elections, there was also the European theater of the war to attend to. After defeating the Spanish and Portuguese forces in southern France, the Italians again engaged them this time on the south side of the Pyrenees. Since May, The Duke of Mantua’s men had taken up positions along the Gállego and Aragón rivers, waiting for the king to advance along the coast to cover his flank while also threatening both Huesca and Pamplona. However, the siege at Perpignan had bogged down, the newly expanded and improved walls proving frustratingly resistant to Italian artillery fire and thus far their engineers and underminers had been unable to make any significant progress. With ample supplies and a well-armed garrison of disciplined veterans, the great border fortress appeared to be in no danger of falling any time soon. With winter approaching, and its attendant rain and mud, the king decided to strike in a different direction. First, he ordered Gonzaga to take his men south and attack the Portuguese army of King João IV, which had retreated to Huesca after being routed in southern France. On 8 October 1694, the Italians won another victory there, forcing the Portuguese to fall back again with heavy losses.
Huesca was only the start of a larger operation. The main thrust of the campaign was to come from the Armata Reale. Two days after the Battle of Huesca, 280 kilometers to the northeast, the main body of the Armata Reale (about 60,000 men) broke off from the siege of Perpignan. Leaving behind Matteo Giustiniani commanding only a force large enough to maintain the encirclement, the king took his men through the Pyrenees via Andorra and then turned south to move on Zaragoza. A new army under the command of the Duke of Cardona had recently arrived there seeking to reinforce the mountain front. However, he was already at a disadvantage from the start. Instead of having the Portuguese to his north, he now faced an Italian army under the Duke of Mantua, who had already defeated him once. When the Spanish army reached the outskirts of Zaragoza and Mendoza positioned his troops with the Ebro River to the left and the Torrero heights to the right, forming a strong defensive position. Beginning on 28 October, the Armata Reale began probing the enemy defenses with cavalry attacks, most of which were quickly repulsed. Cavalry clashes and infantry skirmishes began to intensify in the next days, and the Italians forced a crossing of the Ebro on 1 November and were able to deploy successfully during the night, using cover of darkness. When the Spanish awoke on the morning of the 2nd, they found the their enemy arrayed for battle before them. The two forces were roughly equal in strength, the Italians having 27 regiments of infantry, 24 of cavalry, and 9 of artillery against the Spaniards’ 33 regiments of infantry, 5 of cavalry, and 16 of artillery. At first light, an artillery-duel started which lasted four hours before Francesco ordered a charge against the Spanish left. The battle followed the same pattern as at Huesca, with the Italians repulsing fierce Spanish cavalry charges before counter-attacking with their infantry and pushing the Spanish back. As the enemy retreated, Francesco once again unleashed his mounted forces. The Dragoni del Po, a dragoon regiment led by a younger half-brother of the Duke of Mantua, boldly charged the Iberians’ lines, broke through, and began to wreak havoc in their rear. With the situation looking desperate, Mendoza began an attempt to disengage. By the end of the day, it was clear the Italians had won a comprehensive victory, inflicting over 20,000 casualties while sustaining less than half their own.
The King of Italy slowed down his pace, waiting for Gonzaga to move west from Huesca and toward the Atlantic Coast. Meanwhile, to the east, Matteo Giustiniani would maintain the siege of Perpignan and, whenever he managed to subdue the fortress, move forward along the Mediterranean Coast. From Zaragoza, Francesco and his men would rest and refit before advancing with a central thrust, aimed at Valladolid and then Madrid. Francesco invested the former just before the end of the year, on 28 December 1694, but like Perpignan, the mighty fortress would prove a tough problem to solve. It also had been recently upgraded and reinforced in 1692 and was one of the most formidable defensive structures on the Iberian Peninsula, the final major bastion guarding the approach to Madrid. It was while preparing his siege lines at Valladolid that Francesco received news of Carlos de Villahermosa’s exploits along the Magdalena River. It was here too that he began to imagine a marriage pact that could guarantee an alliance with any future state to come out of New Granada, one between his daughter, the vivacious and vexing Princess Maria Angelica, and this promising young prospect.
The Battle of Zaragoza proved to be one of the most decisive engagements of the war
While the King of Italy may have been reading about Carlos’s daring exploits along the Magdalena and conjuring a marriage plot, for the patriots back in New Granada, the situation was as dire as ever. Driven from the cities, the patriot refugees and small armed bands wandered aimlessly, preyed upon by roving patrols of horsemen who had no regard for even the youngest child or frailest old woman. As Carlos reflected on the lessons of his and his allies’ defeats, he could not help but recall the appearance of the opposing armies. On the patriot side, was always a mass of white criollos, with perhaps a few brown faces in auxiliary roles carrying baggage or jugs of water. Meanwhile, it was the royalists whose forces more accurately reflected the true racial makeup of New Granada. It was with them, with the Africans, with the pardos, with the natives, that the true potential for revolution lay. The scion of the colony’s richest family now understood that it was in the interior, with men like the llaneros, that a revolution was possible. The plains had horses, mules, and the grass to keep them alive. There was livestock to feed and clothe an army. Alone, the criollos simply lacked the numbers to win. Their well-heeled leaders like Villahermosa and Miranda could mingle in their salons and make all the eloquent speeches they wanted, but all their education, and even their skill at arms, would be for naught if they could not win over the non-white masses. It was to them that Carlos now turned.
On the vast expanse of savanna near Mantecal, the cowboy-turned-rebel José Antonio Padilla had executed a stunning victory against the Spanish garrison on 10 December 1694, by employing what had by then become his signature maneuver: the ferocious counter-charge. Padilla’s men, outnumbered, provoked the Spanish with a flank attack, then went into immediate retreat, riding into the wind and drawing the enemy’s front lines after them. Then, as the royalists emerged from their position, the llaneros set fire to the savanna’s dried grasses so that smoke blew back into the Spaniards’ faces. Giving them no respite, the horsemen turned and crashed into their lines, impaling soldiers on their lances and sending their surviving comrades scurrying in retreat. Mantecal was not the first such victory, Though they had yet to defeat the royalists decisively, they inflicted heavy and dispiriting losses. Every time the royalists fled through the flaming grass, they abandoned horses, swords, guns, and artillery. General de Lara, writing back to Madrid, confessed that, “the constant harrying attacks on my tired battalions have made me see that these plainsmen are not just an inconsequential gang of riffraff, as I’d been told, but organized troops that could compete with the best of His Majesty the King’s.” In another skirmish with even greater implications for the war, a group of riders led by Juan Pablo Castejón, one of Padilla’s top lieutenants, clashed with forces from the Legions of Hell personally led by Tomás José del Cuervo. After several charges and counter-charges, the two forces were beginning to disengage with the royalists holding the field, when del Cuervo was hit in the chest by a pistol shot and killed. His death had far-reaching consequences. Others succeeded him, but in the long run, the llaneros he had recruited and led began joining the patriot cause in increasing numbers from that point on. A master motivator and organizer, del Cuervo held his army together by force of will. Without him, the rough riders of the plains were suddenly free agents again, and they overwhelmingly turned to one particular leader above the others.
Born of a Canary Islander father and a pardo mother, Jose Antonio Padilla was past thirty when he met Carlos. Though he was not tall, Padilla was broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, and built like a bull, with black wavy hair and a muscular neck. He had started his career as a cattle rustler and petty brigand, but the rise of the patriot movement had inspired him and awakened his political consciousness. He rejected the royalist message that recruited so many of the members of the Legions of Hell, and instead was one of those who held out and founded their own war bands to fight back against the royalists. When the bulk of the royalist llanero legions rode north to sack Cartagena and the other rich cities, the plainsmen on the patriot side had performed an admirable rearguard action, and seized back much of the interior. As he piled up victories in skirmish after skirmish, Padilla quickly won the loyalty of numerous other patriot-aligned warbands and he soon earned the nickname that would stick for the rest of his life: El Centauro de los llanos, the Centaur of the Plains.
Padilla’s army rode at night, sometimes sixty miles at a time, in order to avoid the scorching sun. They rode against the wind whenever possible, so that the Spaniards could not see or smell the dust of their approach. Even in torrential rain they worked, ate, and slept under the open skies. When rivers flooded, they rode into the muddy waters, their worldly possessions perched on their heads. They were masters of their terrain, well accustomed to the jaguars, vultures, vampire bats, and flesh-devouring insects that terrified the more urbane soldiers of the king.
José Antonio Padilla leads his llaneros in a counter-charge against royalist troops
Carlos was thrilled when he heard of Padilla’s triumphs, as all the patriots were. The victories in the llanos had kept alive a spark of hope among the demoralized rebels, and now Carlos resolved to join with them. With the cause hanging by a thread, the young criollo aristocrat rode with only a few loyal retainers into the rugged interior for a meeting with Padilla and his lieutenants. On 16 January 1695. outside a small village on the banks of the Apure River, the two leaders dismounted, embraced, and greeted one another warmly. The courtesy, however, could not mask that the two came from alien worlds. To Padilla, Villahermosa must have seemed like the embodiment of an effete intellectual, refined, highly animated, with a slight frame and delicate features. The pair met outside a small tent, and the older man invited the younger to sit with him atop some cattle skulls. From the outset, it was a test. One man had come of age playing tennis and hunting with princes; the other had come of age rustling cattle and drinking with ruffians and runaway slaves. Still, though it may have appeared on the surface that the two would be incapable of living in each other’s worlds, both were to prove adaptable. Padilla may have been rude and untamed, but in time he would become a statesman, a diplomat, and even a regular of the salon scene. Carlos, on the other hand, would go on to perform Herculean feats of physical endurance and within a year, would be riding as long and hard as any horseman of the Apure.
In the end, the most important thing for the patriot cause was that the two needed each other. Carlos could not win without the llanero cavalry and, even more importantly, with the credibility an alliance with Padilla would give him among the non-white population of New Granada. Most of the llaneros were men of mixed race, denied economic opportunities in the “more civilized” parts of the colonies, or escaped slaves who might still have families in bondage and toiling on the plantations. But Padilla needed Carlos too. On the battlefield, he needed the discipline of a professional (or, at any rate, semi-professional) infantry to back up his horseman. On the political front, he needed someone to rally his men around. Charismatic men like del Cuervo rallied them to the Spanish crown with promises of plunder and revenge against the elite criollos. Carlos could obviously not make the same offer. But he had to give them something. It was Padilla who showed him the way. He and his men would pledge their fealty not only to the patriot cause, but to Carlos personally as their generalissimo. In exchange, the young criollo had to make one very simple, yet very momentous promise: that if the patriots won, they would abolish slavery and the entire racial caste system. It was a promise with enormous implications, and Carlos did not take it lightly. It would earn him the scorn of much of his class and caste, even those who claimed to be progressive and enlightened.
Padilla told Carlos to take the night to think the decision over, and the two men and a few of their officers drank into the early morning hours. When Carlos awoke the next day, Padilla and his men were gone save for one young horseman. He informed Carlos that there was to be a meeting down by the river. When Carlos arrived, however, he found that the “meeting” was with Padilla and a gigantic mass of assembled llaneros. The Centaur of the Plains told the young criollo that they were all there to hear his answer. The young man remained, by all reports, unflappable, smiling and thanking the older commander for the opportunity to address his men. Then, looking out at the sea of rugged plainsmen, he presented a passionate plea: “until now many of you have fought for the Spaniards for you feared that the revolution would only trample further upon your already limited freedoms. But I am here to swear upon my honor and my family’s, that if you join me, if you join the cause of freedom, you will win the rights that for so long have been denied to you.” Perhaps, he admitted, the criollos had conspired to keep the colored population down, but were they not also just a part of the colonizer’s system of oppression? Had not the social and political order that established those with black or indigenous blood as second class citizens originated in Spain? “I come to you as an American,” he declared, “and I come to promise you liberty.” The young man knew better than to overpromise anything else. Instead, he laid bare his honesty, telling the horsemen, “we have no gold, no quarters to rest our heads, and no provisions; we have only our will, and our ability to endure the hunger, thirst, forced marches, killing, and death that surely awaits us.” He demonstrated his own personal dedication to the cause of emancipation, declaring that from that moment on, all those who worked in bondage on any Villahermosa land and all their families and descendants were free, effective immediately. Finally, he asked for six volunteers from among the group who had previously been enslaved. They were to be commissioned as captains in the patriot army and sent out to recruit battalions from those freed or fled from bondage. “I believe in America,” Carlos concluded, “and I am looking for men who share my belief.” The llaneros roared back, “we believe in America!”
For the next six months, Villahermosa and Padilla reformed and trained their army. They drove their men hard, knowing the monumental task that lay ahead of them. The infantry drilled constantly, building up the discipline necessary to withstand the murderous charges from the enemy’s mounted forces. Padilla’s own llaneros were able to perfectly mimic the tactics the patriot troops would encounter, since they fought in the exact same manner. Further, those members of the Foreign Legion with real combat experience were able to contribute immensely, honing the units’ skills on the drill field in the European manner. This training was crucial, since the overwhelming majority of the troops had no combat or military experience whatsoever. It would prove critical in the battles to come. It was also important to ensure that the infantry and cavalry worked in tandem. Additionally, Pietro Leopoldo Galilei, Doge of the Italian Indies, allowed patriot recruiters into his domain, even permitting them access to the islands’ interiors. Here they would find many eager recruits from among the maroon colonies and other communities of those who had escaped bondage. As word of Carlos’s proclamation of abolition spread, so too did enthusiasm in the Italian colonies. Many of those whose owners had participated in the insurrection a few years earlier had subsequently been freed. The problem for many was that they were left without work or income, and many languished in their newfound freedom. It was from this pool of disenchanted but highly motivated men that most of the volunteers came from. This new mission suddenly offered a renewed meaning, a chance to be both a hero spreading freedom to other lands, but also offered the prospect of financial gain.
By the middle of the spring, Carlos was ready to strike. On 23 May, as the army moved westward along the Apure, he called a war council with his top officers, including Padilla, Mariño, Jonatán Ureña, Artemio Nuvolari, and Carlos Lottyn. They perched upon cattle skulls outside an abandoned, crumbling village. Most of the army assumed they were preparing to make winter quarters nearby, but Carlos soon disabused them of that notion. Arguing that if they stayed in the llanos they would encounter nothing but rain, hunger, mosquitoes, and disease, he instead proposed marching the army over the Andes, as the La Platans had done, and catch the enemy off guard. He had received reports that the royalists were preparing to cut off Ocaña and lay siege to the city, the final patriot stronghold. Further, he had reliable intelligence that the Spanish were sending fresh reinforcements north from Peru to assist with the siege and, what they thought at least, would be mop up operations against whatever remnants of rebel forces remained. The Peruvians had stopped and made winter quarters of their own at Tunja. Carlos intended to cross the mountains in between the Peruvian army and Bogotá, defeat the former, and capture the latter. With the huge stores of weapons and supplies in Bogotá, the patriots could replenish their arms and ammunition and then race down the Magdalena to save Ocaña. It was an audacious plan, and nothing like it had ever been attempted. When the La Platans crossed the Andes to liberate Chile, they did it at the height of summer; Carlos was proposing to do it in the depth of winter. Ne vertheless, most of his officers enthusiastically agreed, and those who were more hesitant eventually came on board as well.
As the rains started to pour onto the llanos, the patriot army began its march toward the mountains. By early June, they were enduring torrential rains, flooded savannas, and all manner of debris adrift. They carried their powder and ordnance on crudely constructed cowhide rafts, since they were almost constantly walking through water that was at least waist high. Soldiers’ families, women and children, were also a part of this lumbering horde, enduring the harsh conditions alongside the men. For a month they continued on, hungry, weary, and always soaked through to the bone from the rain, as the people’s feet became swollen and blistered, and horse’s hoofs softened and lamed from the endless moisture. There were tiny flesh-eating fish in the water, mosquitoes and sand flies in the air. They did not reach dry land again until they staggered into Tame, in the foothills of the mountains.
There they met with fresh reinforcements: Contador and several hundred patriot veterans who had been waging a fierce guerilla war against the royalists, doing anything to undermine the Spanish cause and exact some revenge for their repression. They stole cattle, poisoned wells, burned storehouses, executed informants, and even ambushed royalist soldiers. The goal had been to inflict as much damage as possible, without being decisively engaged, until a better opportunity presented itself. That opportunity was now at hand. Carlos’s declarations against slavery and the racial caste system had not only won over many people of color, but also the young republican firebrand and his small but fiercely loyal band of followers. Though he was a staunch republican, and there were now openly monarchist declarations coming from the Carlist camp, Contador was willing to abide that in exchange for the social and economic program Villahermosa was espousing. Writing to his brother Antonio, he said: “Carlos wants to be a king, and his followers are even more desperate to crown him. So be it. For true liberty for all of our people, I will call this man ‘majesty’ and pretend that he and I did not sleep in the same dirt and piss in the same streams.”
On 1 July, after resting for one week, the army resumed its march. This time, instead of being drenched by torrential rain crossing flooded swamps, they would be drenched by freezing rain crossing icy mountains. They were to cross the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes, effectively a wall of snow and stone. “The harshness of the peaks we have crossed would be staggering to anyone who hasn’t experienced it,” Carlos wrote to his sisters, “there is hardly a day or night when it does not rain, and our only comfort is that we have passed the worst and are nearing the end of our journey.” To negotiate ferocious streams, they crossed in long human chains, gripped arm to arm to ensure nobody was carried away by the rushing waters. To traverse ravines, they lassoed trees and improvised hammocks together, carrying people over one by one, suspended over the abyss. The bone-chilling heights and unstable rocks were punishing on the animals, and few of them made it to the other side alive. For his part, Carlos was inexhaustible, carrying soldiers too weak to continue, and stopping to provide encouragement to those in despair. Slipping and sliding over wet, icy rocks, they ascended past 4,000 meters in elevation, knowing that anyone who stopped at those vertiginous heights was bound to die. The women, mostly mistresses or wives of the soldiers, or else volunteers who had come of their own accord, served as medics, saving lives, and giving hope to the ill. Astoundingly, one woman even gave birth on the journey. Carlos, spotting her the next day walking with a strapping young infant on her back, offered his horse and his undying admiration.
Patriot troops in the Cordillera Oriental
On 6 July, the lead elements of the army began staggering down the other side of the mountain, weak, hungry, but still alive. They reached the village of Socha, where the townspeople met them jubilantly, bringing out food and setting about to sew them new clothing to replace the rags that remained to them. Most importantly, there were no Spaniards nearby who knew of their presence. They had dismissed the possibility of someone crossing at the Páramo de Pisba as too difficult: they had placed no guards or watch posts to guard against the possibility. Villahermosa’s fellow officers marveled at his energy. As the army recovered, he wasted no time organizing supplies, raising new men, and planning their next move.
After giving his army five days to rest and refit, Carlos was ready to move again. By that point, the royalists in Tunja had learned of the appearance of this patriot army, yet they had failed to locate them. Their commander, Luis Miguel Cedillo, was cautious, and did not want to move out from his fortified stronghold until he pinpointed his enemy’s location. This allowed the patriots to maintain the initiative. On 11 July 1695, a vanguard force of llanero cavalry under Juan Pablo Castejón, as well as a few units of militia, took up positions at a bridge near the town of Boyaca, athwart the road from Tunja to the great supply depot at Bogotá. In total this represented about a quarter of the patriot forces. When Cedillo heard the news, he assumed this was Villahermosa’s full army and ordered his own forces to march and crush them. The royalist cavalry charged the forces at the bridge, receiving several volleys of deadly fire in the process. As royalist casualties fell, the patriots nevertheless withdrew in the face of the seemingly larger force. As the Spaniards began streaming across the bridge, pursuing the withdrawing militiamen, Castejón wheeled his lancers about and launched a flanking charge as the enemy was only about a third of the way across the bridge. As this happened, the rest of the men crested a nearby hill, screaming battle cries and firing their weapons. The foreign legion took up positions on the right, where they would become a wall, repelling every enemy assault and withstanding every hail of gun fire, stabilizing the line with their cool discipline.
With both sides fully engaged, Cedillo realized his peril, and quickly rallied his troops. His men were well disciplined Peruvian regulars, and they stood admirably against the charges of the llaneros and the foreign legionnaires. At one point, they counter-charged and scattered the horsemen, leaving a gaping hole on the patriot left. Suddenly, the line wavered and there was a risk for a royalist breakthrough. Several battalions on the far left soon became surrounded. However, the veteran troops among them kept their cool and they held for the moment. Still, their situation was dire, and regardless of any discipline or valor, they would soon be shot to pieces. If that whole section of the line fell, there was a good chance the royalists could turn the battle into a rout in their favor. In that moment, with the patriot cause in the balance, the second battalion of the Freedmen's Brigade stepped into the breach. Led by their fearless captain, Antonio Moreno, they withstood an alternating series of fierce infantry charges and volleys of murderous artillery fire. They held their ground long enough for Carlos to rally his forces and counterattack the royalist lines. Of the roughly 250 men of the second battalion who had stepped up to the line, only 73 survived the battle. With the line stable again, and the cavalry ready for another attack, Carlos issued one of his most famous orders. Turning to the plainsmen he shouted, “men of the Apure! Go and win our liberty!” The fearless Castejón led the first wave while Padilla followed with the second, larger group. They made a fierce charge up the hill, swinging machetes and spears, driving the Spanish from the high ground. That was to be the beginning of the end. The patriots believed they could win, and the Spanish were now falling back in fear. Once the riders peeled off, Carlos personally led a follow-on infantry charge, scattering the remaining soldiers on the hill, and seizing key high ground. The royalists were soon ready to abandon the field. Cedillo managed to withdraw, but about have his army had been killed or captured. They retreated first to Tunja and then headed west toward the coast, leaving the route to Ocaña unguarded.
The Battle of Boyacá
There was little time to spare, however. With the last major rebel stronghold at Ocaña under siege, the patriots had no time to lose. José Antonio de Rojas and Father Pelayo de la Cerda were leading a heroic and inspired defense, but their supplies were dwindling and their ranks thinning. Leaving behind small garrisons to hold Bogotá and Tunja, Villahermosa and Contador took the rest of their forces north. They commandeered barges, or built their own, and floated their field guns, supplies, and infantry down the Magdalena River, while Padilla’s cavalry screened the shores on both banks. They covered the 550 kilometers to Ocaña in two weeks, first making contact with enemy patrols on 24 July. The royalists had surrounded the city, and occupied the high ground as the patriot forces advanced up the hill. Estimates of the number of troops differ, but most put the number of Spanish troops at about 4,000 against approximately 2,500 rebels. With disadvantages in numbers and positioning, Villahermosa’s position seemed untenable. However, the relief army remained undaunted and possessed some advantages of their own. Their troops were now seasoned and highly motivated, riding a wave of momentum since Boyacá. The Spaniards, having partaken for months in a rather desultory siege, were not ready for what was coming at them. They feared the llaneros, the reputation of the foreign legionnaires, the freedmen, and, above all, Carlos himself. The Spaniards had greater numbers, held better terrain, wore fancier uniforms, carried better weapons, and had been through European training, but they had one critical vulnerability: they were afraid. Placing the foreign legion in his center and his cavalry on the flanks, the young commander executed an action of reckless daring that would win the day. Artemio Nuvolari, commander of the foreign legion, ordered his men to fix bayonets and led them on a charge right into the teeth of the royalist infantry, with several companies of freedmen and volunteers coming up behind them to reinforce the line. Carlos meanwhile led the horsemen on the left while Padilla took those on the right. The ferocity of the envelopment took the Spaniards aback, and within a few hours, all they could do was withdraw to avoid becoming completely surrounded. Over a thousand royalists were taken prisoner, the remainder retreated along the Catatumbo River and kept going until they reached Maracaibo.
The survivors within the city, including Rojas and Father de la Cerda threw open the gates and welcomed their rescuers with joyous outbursts. Their resistance had been rewarded with a stunning victory. Now, as the royalist melted away, the advance of the patriot army, begun in such a state of uncertainty, danger, and difficulty, was set to become a victory parade. As the army marched north along the banks of the Magdalena, they liberated every town they passed through, with overjoyed citizens coming out to fete them as they went. Those still enslaved began deserting their plantation and joining the march, as Carlos declared that anyone who joined the rebel army would be freed on the spot. By the time they made camp at Turbaco on 18 August, their numbers had swelled to nearly 10,000. To be sure, most of the newcomers were neither trained nor armed, so they hardly constituted an increase in fighting strength, but the unifying spirit of the procession north imbued the newly freed country with a sense of purpose and unity. For the moment at least, the racial and caste animosity was forgotten, and the throngs of people out to meet the patriots reflected the demographic realities of their homeland. Even those who had remained loyal to the crown were forgiven and welcomed, with the patriot leadership strictly forbidding reprisals.
The great victory at Ocaña effectively brought the revolutionary wars in the Americas to an end. All royalist forces were defeated and scattered, their organized resistance all but evaporating. Some pockets of hardcore loyalists would fight on until the formal armistice with Spain, but all hopes of recovering California, New Granada, or La Plata were dead.
While Carlos de Villahermosa was leading his troops over the mountains and finishing off the royalists in New Granada, the Italians were grinding down the Spanish and Portuguese in Iberia. After Huesca and Zaragoza, the Italian war machine seemed all but impossible to stop. By the middle of March 1695, the Duke of Mantua and the Armata del Po had invaded the Portuguese province of Galiza and began laying siege to Corunha. On 5 June 1695, the mighty border fortress at Perpignan finally surrendered, the Italian commander allowing the garrison to depart with full military honors out of respect for their 387-day long resistance. A month later, on 10 July 1695, the Italians marched into Barcelona, capturing that city before beginning a siege of Valencia six days later. On 25 July 1695, Fernando de Vilhena, Marquis of Astorga, led 46,000 men against the siege lines of the Armata Reale, hoping to relieve Valladolid. King Francesco and his men were able to drive them off and continue their siege. The Duke of Mantua followed that up by capturing Corunha on 10 August then marching on Porto. All of the military officers sent by other kingdoms to observe the war were united in their belief that there was no hope for the Iberians and that they ought to sue for peace.
The Battle of Valladolid
Within the king’s court and council however, debate still raged and those who favored continuing the war remained in the royal favor. Vicente Patiño was steadfast in his conviction that Spain should fight to the bitter end to reclaim all her colonies. Hernando Galvez, the master of mints and formerly a hawkish hardliner, had switched positions and now stood in agreement with the natural scientist Nicolau Pinó and the general Hernando Cagigal de la Vega. De la Vega, an experienced and highly respected soldier, despaired privately over the state of the army and its future if the war continued. In public, he tried to emphasize the other threats the empire faced. They had no shortage of predatory rivals who would gladly take advantage and finish the job the rebels and the Italians started. This was also the line taken by Galvez and Pinó. Still, King Ramiro III was not ready to give in. He gave his spymaster one more chance and ordered him to do whatever he could to overthrow the rebellious government. Patiño was a spy at heart, and he presented Ramiro III with a fantastical plan involving covert agents, assassinations, and bribery. However, he would never have a chance to truly implement it before the end of the war, though some of his agents did make it to the Americas. His colleagues on the council remained unconvinced of this fanciful new operation, and it would not take much longer for them to finally win out.
Across the ocean, meanwhile, everyone was carrying on as if the war was over. There had not been any Spanish imperial presence of any sort in California going on three years. Their dual nation experiment thus far carrying smoothly, with the indigenous groups mostly living in the interior and the criollo merchants and miners along the coasts.
In La Plata, things were trickier. The major cities, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Paysandu were deadlocked in a continuing rivalry. Furthermore, the lands they liberated on the Pacific coast, the former Captaincy General of Chile, were only nominally tied to the eastern cities. The Republic of La Plata was to evolve as highly decentralized state with a strong federal tradition. Even the choice of the new country’s capital, Paysandu, was only partly due to its role as the first city to initiate the revolution. In truth, the city emerged as the compromise candidate, both between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and between the rural farmers and ranchers on the one hand, and the urban centers on the other.
Colombia remained a step or two behind in the nation building process. As the last to throw off Spanish control, they were still in the process of formalizing a constitution. The first step was to re-assemble the Congress of Barranquilla, returning to the same city where the revolution began two years earlier. For those who assembled to draft and adopt a new constitution the time between the two congresses had been a seemingly uncontrollable series of ups and downs: from revolutionary optimism to royalist repression to fleeting glory to ruin and devastation and, finally, to victorious liberation. Now, as peace finally settled in, nobody was in the mood for more warfare. The congress was thus a subdued, almost somber affair, as if the delegates were aware how much death and destruction had paid for the life of the new nation.
Two intertwined issues that did threaten to spark discontent, however, were those of the racial caste system and of slavery. Rojas and the moderate republicans, and the many wealthy landowners who backed them, were wise enough not to come out in total opposition to reforms, but instead took the position that it should be phased and slow and also include reparations for the enslavers. Carlos de Villahermosa, on the other hand, stuck to the pledge he made in the llanos to Padilla and his men, calling for immediate abolition and the ending of all official racial discrimination He was backed in this by Contador, who also included land redistribution in his platform (this was a step too far for Carlos). Unlike the other two new states, Colombia would emerge with a centralized government and a strong executive.
Pelayo de la Cerda, now Archbishop of Cartagena, was also a major player. The religious authorities in Colombia had been dismissed from their posts and expelled by order of Rome, their vacancies filled by priests who had supported the patriot cause, many of whom were loyal to de la Cerda himself. This unsubtle intrusion of great power politics directly into the internal affairs of the church was deemed unseemly and corrupt by critics but delivered to Carlos de Villahermosa a massive boon of support. As
Pelayo de la Cerda, Archbishop of Cartagena and a strong supporter of Carlos de Villahermosa’s claim to kingship of Colombia
On the opposite side of the Atlantic, the war entered its final stage. On 16 November 1695, Italy captured Valladolid after 323-day siege, leaving the road to Madrid open to the invaders. It was at this point that Francesco II reached out to his Spanish counterpart. Offering to meet at Segovia, roughly halfway between Valladolid and Madrid, the King of Italy made clear that he was happy to end the war, and even to spare the Spanish capital. Ramiro III, with the backing of his council, save for the recalcitrant Patiño, agreed to begin peace negotiations. Accompanying Francesco II were Enrique Zapatero and Fernando Notario, envoys sent by Colombia and La Plata, respectively. Authorized to negotiate on their countries’ behalf, they would also be present for the peace talks, forcing Spain into the diplomatically important act of engaging in direct negotiations with them. California, on the other hand, took a different approach. News had just come reached Iberia about the patriots’ resounding victories at Ocaña and Boyacá and the only option left to the royalists was to give up some of their empire in exchange for not losing all of it. The threat to the court and capital had changed everything. Time had run out even for the spymaster’s enigmatic machinations. On New Year’s Day of 1696, the Italians took Valencia and a month later Matteo Giustiniani defeated another Spanish army sent to retake it. Porto fell on 25 March 1696, putting Lisbon under threat as well.
Then, on 8 April 1696, another disaster struck Spain: the Grand Republic of Brazil declared war on Spain. Madrid was forced to give up the fight against her colonies in order to try and preserve some portion of her American domains. There was little hope left of ever pacifying the regions in revolt. Indeed, California was already operating as if independence were an establish fact. Still, some regions, such as Peru, had remained loyal to the crown, and could still bring in revenue for the empire. It was little enough, but it was something. More alarmingly, Italian armies stood ready to besiege Madrid and Lisbon. The King of Portugal made it clear that he was ready to sign a separate peace should Ramiro remain intransigent. Further, if the court was forced to flee the capital, it would extinguish whatever legitimacy they still held overseas. Even steadfast Peru might choose to go its own way at that point, an outcome officials and Madrid dared not even contemplate.
Accordingly, Ramiro III and his council finally accepted defeat. He invited Francesco II and his officers to Madrid, an offer the Italians accepted. Ever the gallant, the Italian king entered the city unarmed, telling his counterpart, “I arrive as a guest, not as a conqueror.” The negotiations did not take long. With Italy making no territorial claims, there was little to haggle over. The viceroyalties of California, New Granada, and La Plata were to be immediately granted independence along with recognition from both Spain and Portugal. On 16 April 1696, Spain was forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid, granting independence to New Granada, La Plata, and California. It was a humiliating defeat for Spain. Though they had pioneered New World colonization, they now found themselves in the second tier of powers. Further, the entire world had borne witness to the inferiority of Iberian arms against their Italian foes. The armies sent forth by Florence had bested their rivals at every turn, and the combined powers of Madrid and Lisbon had barely slowed down their advance. Any pretensions the Trastámara still had to European Great Power status were now extinguished. Spain would get to keep Peru, their port at Oiapoque, and the Galápagos Islands. The rest of the New World Empire; California, Colombia, and La Plata were to be free and independent. Queen Maria Maddalena of Italy personally insisted on one final Spanish concession: that they award a state pension, in perpetuity, to Juana Escalona, the widow of the professor they had seized from Padua in 1691.
The signing of the Treaty of Madrid
Later that spring, Florence witnessed a spectacular wedding, not seen since Francesco II’s own nuptials with Queen Maria Maddalena. The royal marriage between Princess Maria Angelica de Medici, 18, and the dashing Carlos de Villahermosa, 21, was more than a pact between dynasties, it represented a bridging of the Atlantic. Within a year, the new queen would give birth to a son and heir for her new kingdom: Felipe, named for the new king’s father, whose death had helped spark the revolution. The Italo-Colombian relationship would profoundly shape the futures of both countries. This was not only true in strategic terms, where the creation of new allies in the Western Hemisphere granted a warm blanket of security to Florence’s exposed colonies, but also in social and cultural terms. Having just helped the new nations of the Americas throw off the Spanish yoke, grant civil rights to their non-white populations, and abolish slavery, the hypocrisy of Italy’s own colonial system was thrown into sharp relief. The victory Italy helped achieve led to the emancipation of the enslaved of South America, but those in the Indies remained in bondage. It would not take long until the cries of freedom reverberated through Florence’s halls of power.
Not everything would be joy and success for the three new American nations either. Each in their own way would have to confront the challenges and adversity of building multiracial societies out of a highly hierarchical social structure. Like Brazil before them, California, Colombia, and La Plata California would undertake grand experiments. In the Americas, there were independent indigenous states on the one hand, still free from foreign conquest, and there were European colonies on the other. The new entities existed in a middle ground, with influences from both sides coursing through them. But this did not mean that they were free from internal conflict. In Colombia, the masses of newly freed citizens created an economic crisis. Without the radical land redistribution favored by leaders like Contador, those who were free from bondage had little opportunity to look forward to. Within a few years, most were forced back into the same sort of work they had when they were enslaved. The relentless productivity of the plantations had to churn on after all. Yes, they were now paid a (very low) salary, and could in theory leave whenever they wanted to, but there were now also costs of living to attend to. There was no doubt that emancipation improved the lives of those previously enslaved, but without accompanying social supports, citizenship remained a mere formality for far too many freedmen. In La Plata, the issue was more around governance, and a lack of national unity. The city juntas stubbornly clung to power even after the Peace of Madrid, and a strictly enforced federal system prevailed. La Plata also faced the hostility of Brazil to the north, and it would not take long for the tension to lead to open war between the two.
Through the challenges, all three states would prove successful. La Plata and California, like Brazil before them, would prove that republicanism was a viable form of government even on the scale of a massive state. The new governments did indeed The existence of multi ethnic independent states in the Americas also created an inspiring vision for the future, one where the violence and exploitation of the first two centuries following the European-American contact would be replaced by a time of cooperation and peace.
The Republic of California (in red), the Kingdom of Colombia (in blue), and the Republic of La Plata (in purple) following the Peace of Madrid
Flag of the Republic of California
Flag of the Kingdom of Colombia
Flag of the Republic of La Plata
Note on this chapter: I did not have a ton of information on what happened during the war on the American side of the Atlantic. I have some of the broad outlines, like which provinces broke off, some of the leaders, etc, but by and large, I had to make up the details of the campaigns in the New World. For those of you familiar with the history of Spanish-American independence, you will quickly recognize that I took much of the story from real world history. Most of my major characters were inspired by real world historical analogues: Carlos is inspired by Bolívar, Padilla by Páez, de Lara by Monteverde, etc. Though I have modified or embellished some of the stories, most are based on true events. Carlos’s crossing of the cordillera in winter is of course based on Bolivar’s crossing of those same mountains, with even the dates matching (though not the years of course). The seemingly incredible detail of a woman giving birth while crossing the snowbound Andes was likewise based on a true story that really took place on or around 3 July 1819 during the campaign. Much of my inspiration for the events and stories in New Granada came from Marie Arana’s excellent Bolívar: American Liberator as well as Season 5 of Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast. Likewise, I got many of the ideas and details for the California portions, particularly the parts about the Great Pueblo Revolt, from Pekka Hämäläinen’s Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America.
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Now that is going to be an interesting Americas going into the 18th century.
Great to see this back. Time for Italy to become the dominant power in Europe?
Great to see this back. Time for Italy to become the dominant power in Europe?
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A wonderful update, Italy was very magnanimous in not taking anything for themselves in the victory.
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They did force two half's of two different continents away from Spain.
For their own spoils...idk. if Spain had any African colonies that might have been useful. But they don't want to make the iberian kingdoms too weak. In between Italy and them, is France, who are far more likely to benefit and annex iberian regions.
Getting some huge and wealthy new allies (who will be strong in a century or so), getting the war paid for, and proving themsevles to be better at war than the ostensible top dog in Europe was probably worth it.
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Riveting chapter! Took a few days to go through, but it was totally worth it.
The Americas of this timeline will be very different (and dare I say better) than in our timeline. The radical decentralisation of La Plata, the complete abolition of the racial caste system in Colombia and, above all, the dual republic of California where europeans and natives stand as equal will surely influence a much more democratic, equitable and multi ethnic america than in our world.
Being freed so early will also bring valuable time to catch up with their old masters. And who knows, in time maybe the American revolutions will threaten the old order on the old continent itself.
The Americas of this timeline will be very different (and dare I say better) than in our timeline. The radical decentralisation of La Plata, the complete abolition of the racial caste system in Colombia and, above all, the dual republic of California where europeans and natives stand as equal will surely influence a much more democratic, equitable and multi ethnic america than in our world.
Being freed so early will also bring valuable time to catch up with their old masters. And who knows, in time maybe the American revolutions will threaten the old order on the old continent itself.
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Thank you for the update. California and La Plata have borders that need to be refined. After a conflict, no matter the victor, the world is greatly changed.