The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 16, February, 1859

IV. GUERRA Á LA MUERTE!

Yet, towards the close of 1813, the star of liberty glimmered once more from the summits of the Western Cordillera. During and after the memorable earthquake, the city of Puerto Cabello, at that time held by the Patriots, was under the command of a young colonel in the Republican service, who had devoted a portion of his immense patrimonial wealth to the culture of his intellectual powers in European travel, (not, however, without subsequently applying a large share to the necessities of his country,) and whose name was Simon Bolívar. The treachery of an officer delivered the citadel of Puerto Cabello into the hands of some Spanish prisoners who were there confined, and in June, 1812, Colonel Bolívar was compelled to evacuate the town with all his force. While Monteverde lorded it over his country, he took refuge in the neighboring islands, and afterwards in New Granada, where he conceived the daring project which freed Venezuela, and has perpetuated, with his name, the simple but expressive title: Liberator, Libertador.

It is not our purpose here to follow the intrepid partisan in his descent, with six hundred New Granadian adherents, from the Andes, upon the astounded Spaniards. We cannot follow him, nor the generals whom he created, in their marvellous marches, and still more marvellous triumphs, during many succeeding years. Suffice it to say, that he fell like a thunderbolt from a sunny sky upon the confident Royalist troops,—that he defeated and routed them time after time, broke, with his terrible lancers, upon encampments which believed him a hundred miles away, and drove the Royal commanders, with varying success, from one point to another of Venezuela. His watchword was, Guerra á la muerte, "War unto death!" Every battle-ground became a shamble, every flight a butchery. The system was inaugurated by his antagonists, who cruelly slew eight Patriot officers, and eight citizens of Barinas, shortly after the commencement of hostilities, under circumstances of peculiar barbarity. Thenceforward Bolívar's men took no prisoners.

In the mean time, Wellington had driven the French across the Pyrenees, and Ferdinand the Adored ruled once more in Madrid. Even now, judicious management might have secured again the allegiance of the Colonies; but the first action of Ferdinand was to vituperate his American subjects as rebels, whom he commanded to lay down their arms at once; and on the 18th of February, 1815, there sailed from Cadiz a stately armament intended to enforce this peremptory order. Sixty-five vessels composed the fleet, bearing six regiments of infantry, one of dragoons, the Queen's hussars, artillery, sappers and miners, engineers, and eighteen pieces of cannon, besides incalculable quantities of arms and munitions of war. The expedition numbered fifteen thousand men, and was commanded in chief by the famous soldier, General Don Pablo Morillo, the guerilla champion, the opposer of the French.

On the 4th of April, this redoubtable army effected a landing; and once more, all but an insignificant fraction of Venezuela fell under the hand of Spain. The flood of successful rebellion was rolled back from the coast, and Bolívar, with his dauntless partisans, was soon confined to the Llanos, which stretch away in level immensity from the marshy banks of the Orinoco, the Apure, and their tributaries.

Our readers have already been introduced to these Llanos, and have beheld their wild inhabitants amid the monotonous avocations of a time of peace. Let us now approach them while the "blood-red blossom of war" blazes up from their torrid vegetation. Let us descend upon them at night, here, at no great distance from the banks of the cayman-haunted Apure, and we shall gaze upon a different scene. All around us, the plain extends in the same desolate immensity that we noticed when we looked upon it from the hato; still, as before, we see it covered with a dense wilderness of reedy grasses that overtop the tallest trooper in Morillo's army; as before, we notice the scattered palm-islands, breaking here and there the uniformity of level; and hosts of cattle and wild horses are still roaming over the plain.

Near a mata, or grove of palm-trees, there is a sound of merry voices to-night. Fires are crackling here and there; huge strips of fresh beef are roasting on wooden spits; the long grass has been trodden flat in a wide circumference, and three or four rudely-constructed huts of palm-branches close the scene on one side. Five hundred men are collected here,—the élite of the liberators of Venezuela. Gathered about their camp-fires, these troopers, who have ridden a hundred miles since morning, are enjoying rest, refreshment, and recreation. But the word trooper must not conjure up a vision of belted horsemen, rigid in uniform, with clanking sabres, and helmets of brass. Of a far different stamp are the figures reclining before us. These are improvised warriors, hateros, cattle-farmers, who, grasping their lances and lassos, have eagerly exchanged the monotony of pastoral life for the wild excitement of the charge upon Spanish squadrons, and the ferocious slaughter of fellow-men. No two of this invincible band are clad alike. Here is a sergeant, wearing an old and dilapidated blanket poncho-fashion, with the remains of a palm-leaf hat sheltering his head, and with limbs which a pair of ragged calzones make only a pretence of covering. Yet over his left shoulder is slung a gorgeous hussar jacket, which he wears with the greater pride since it belonged last night to a lieutenant in the Queen's regiment, whom he slew in cold blood after the fight! Next to him leans a private, bare-legged and bare-headed, wearing only an old piece of carpet about his waist, a flannel shirt, and the uniform coat of a Spanish officer, from which he has cut the right sleeve in order to secure greater freedom for his arm. A third has made himself a suit which Robinson Crusoe might have envied. Helmet, jerkin, breeches, sandals, all have been cut from the same raw bull's hide! His neighbor, a new recruit, still wears the national dress of his order, which has not yet been tattered and torn from him by long service; and he is the envy of the motley troop. But the lack of uniformity in no wise detracts from valor, nor does it diminish the gayety of these terrible lancers as they lie idly grouped about the flickering fires. Half-a-dozen circles are absorbed in as many games at cards; others are swallowing greedily some improvised fantastic tale; and some are singing, in wild, irregular cadence, the favorite songs of the Plains. Their example soon becomes contagious, and group after group chimes in with the uproarious chant. Listen! From the farthest extremity of the encampment comes a querying solo:—

"De todos los Generales cual es el valiente?"

and from five hundred throats the response is thundered:—

"Mi General Paez con toda su gente!"

Again the solo demands:—

"De todos los Generales cual es el major?"

and the tumultuous answer is vociferated:—

"Es mi General José con su guardia de honor!"

And who may be the valiant General, the General with his guard of honor, excelling all the rest? This, we learn, is the guard of honor; the General is José Antonio Paez, little José Antonio who killed the highwayman and betook himself to cattle farming on the Plains! Now, however, he is the famous Llanero chieftain, favorite champion of Venezuela, brother-in-arms of Bolívar, who allows him, alone of all the military leaders, the privilege of an especial body-guard. Since 1810,—for five years,—he has been fighting constantly in his country's service, and has won himself fame while our eyes have been turned in other directions. Look! he is standing there, at the entrance to his hut, while the chorus yet echoes among the palm-branches. Scarcely of middle stature, certainly not more than five feet four in height,—but broad-shouldered, muscular, with a constitution of iron, equal to perpetual exertion, capable of every fatigue. His countenance is open and prepossessing, his features rounded, forehead square, eyes piercing and intelligent. Like his men, he wears a motley garb,—part Spanish uniform, part costume of the Llanos; and he leans upon a lance, decorated with a black bannerol, which has carried death already to innumerable Loyalist hearts. Thus José Antonio Paez stands before us, on the banks of the Apure, in the twenty-fifth year of his age.

He has perhaps been hitherto too much neglected by us, and we must look backwards in order to take up the thread of his career. At the very first outbreak of insurrection in 1810, Paez took service as a volunteer in the hastily-levied militia of Barinas, and was quickly promoted to the post of sergeant in a corps of lancers. His influence and example attracted multitudes of Llanero horsemen to the Revolutionary ranks, but the calamitous period of the earthquake put an end to his military service, and he returned, in 1812, to his pastoral post. Soon, however, came news of Bolívar fighting from the mountains of New Granada; and in 1813 Paez was once more in the saddle, with the commission, this time, of captain in the Patriot service. The Spaniards soon learned to dread the fiery lancer of Barinas. They were never safe from his sudden onslaught; and Puy, the commandant of the Province, rejoiced loudly when an unlucky defeat placed the indefatigable guerrillero in his power. Paez was condemned to be shot, and was actually led out, with other prisoners, to the place of execution; but a concatenation of extraordinary accidents saved his life, and he escaped once more to the head of his command. It was not long before he was brought in immediate contact with the now famous Bolívar, and he rapidly rose to independent command. In 1815, he was second only to the Liberator. Thousands of grim Llaneros acknowledged no chieftain beside el Tio Pepe,—Uncle Joe. When Morillo landed, in 1815, with his overwhelming force, only the Llaneros of Paez held out for the Republic; everywhere else in Venezuela the banner of Spain waved in triumph, but on the Plains of the Apure there was neither submission nor peace. Yet, after a while, as the victorious legions of Morillo flooded, in successive waves from the coast, the level region of his refuge, Paez was compelled to evacuate the Plains, and leave them to the invader. With a few hundred of his horsemen he established himself on the Plains of New Granada. Scarcely had he grown familiar with his new centre of action when the troops of Morillo were turned westward for the purpose of curbing the rebellious spirits in the neighboring Vice-Royalty,—when, quicker than thought, Paez was once more over the mountains, and recovered by a sudden swoop the Llanos of Barinas. Thenceforward, this region remained the surest foothold of the revolution in Venezuela. Encircled with Spanish troops, it remained, nevertheless, a practical republic in itself, and the vast basin of the Orinoco was the cradle of Venezuelan freedom. The Provisional Government consisted of a mere council of generals, who, in 1816, created Paez General and Supreme Chief of the Republic. A vast stride from the hatero's hut that we saw him inhabiting in 1808!

Paez resigned this dignity in favor of Bolívar in the following year, contenting himself with his great military command. Surrounded by the body-guard we have seen, through all the years 1816, 1817, and 1818, now in Venezuela, now in New Granada, in the Plains to-day, in the mountains to-morrow, enduring every privation, braving odds apparently the most overwhelming, fighting pitched battles at midnight, and triumphantly effecting surprises in the open day, he maintained alive, in the midst of general discouragement, the cause he had espoused. Bolívar, the Liberator, was meanwhile endeavoring to make head against the Spaniards elsewhere, and gathered a considerable force in the interior province of Guiana. In 1818, the vanguard of the British legion—troops browned by the sun of Spain, who had marched with Wellington from Lisbon to the Pyrenees, and who gladly accepted the offers of the Patriots when Waterloo had put an end to European strife—sailed up the Orinoco, and effected a junction with the assembled Patriot forces.

At this time, not only the whole of New Granada, but the entire sea-coast of Venezuela and every important city in the Republic were possessed by Morillo. Yet the Royalist cause made no progress. Morillo's dominion was like that famous Haarlem lake which occupied so large an extent of the lands of Holland; it might be great and threatening, but barriers insurmountable, though unpretending, forbade its expansion, and perseverance gradually succeeded in curtailing its limits. Whatever the hand of Morillo covered, he possessed; but his authority ceased outside the range of his guns. His men were growing weary of the struggle; few reinforcements came from Spain; and the troops suffered frightfully, through their constant fatigues and hardships. The war had become that most terrible of all wars,—a deliberate system of surprises and skirmishes. Paez here, Bolívar there, Monágas, Piar, Urdaneta, and a score of other chieftains, at every vulnerable point, harassed, without ceasing, the common foe.

In 1819, Bolívar set out upon that marvellous expedition across the Andes in which, by marching one thousand miles and fighting three pitched battles in somewhat less than eleven weeks, he finally liberated New Granada, and secured a vast amount of Spanish treasure and munitions of war. During his absence, Paez was left to keep Morillo in check on the east of the Cordillera. His plan of operations was, to be everywhere, and to do everything with his lancers. Venezuela clung with terrible tenacity to the idea of freedom; and the Republic was converted into two great camps, perpetually shifting their boundaries, yet ever presenting the same features. Trade and commerce were at an end; the only business thought of was that of war unto death. Death, everywhere; death, at all times; death, in every shape. By the sword and the lance, by famine, by drowning, by fire, decimated by fever, worn out by fatigue, the Spaniards perished. When their convoys failed or were intercepted, it was impossible to obtain food; no foraging-party dared venture forth from the fortified encampment; it was necessary that an entire division should march out into the Llanos, and seek for the nearest herd of cattle. It not unfrequently happened, in these expeditions, that the very cattle were enlisted on the Patriot side. Herds of several thousands of the savage beasts were sometimes driven headlong upon the Spanish lines, throwing them into confusion, and trampling or goring great numbers to death. Close in the rear of the resistless herd then charged the lancers of Paez, with the terrible black bannerol fluttering in the van. Before the scattered Royalists have time to rally, they are attacked in every direction by their merciless foes,—and in another minute the battle is over, and the men of the Plains are out of sight! Sometimes, too, a detachment traversing the savanna would notice with affright a column of thin smoke stealing up into the sky a mile to windward; and almost before the bugle or the drum could summon them to arms, the flames would be seething and crackling around them, and roaring away, in an ocean of fire, across the savanna beyond. And then, in the rear of the flames, dashed the bloodthirsty lancers, and the blackened embers of the grass turned red with the richness of Spanish veins! No venture was too arduous for the Llanero chieftain. He accomplished at one time an exploit in which only the multiplicity of witnesses who have testified to the achievement permits us to believe. San Fernando, an important town on the Apure, was strongly fortified, and was held by the Spaniards as a potent means of annoying the Patriots in any attempts they might make to cross the river. In order further to defend the passage, six large river-boats, each containing a piece of artillery, were anchored at a short distance below the only ford. But it became necessary that the Apure should be crossed, and Paez quietly undertook to secure the passage. With a few of his lancers, he rode to the river-bank, and there gave the command, Al agua, muchachos! "To the water, boys!" which he was accustomed to use when ordering his men to bathe. His meaning was at once apprehended. The men, stripping off their upper clothing, and holding their swords under their arms, plunged into the stream, shouting loudly to keep off the alligators, and partly rode, partly swam, nearly half a mile towards the gun-boats. Only the heads of horses and men were visible above the water, and the crews of the gun-boats, after a single discharge, which wounded none of the extraordinary attacking party, threw themselves into the river and made the best of their way to San Fernando, where they alleged that it was useless to contest possession of their charge with incarnate devils, to whom water was the same us dry land, and who butchered all their prisoners. The gun-boats were navigated in triumph to the Patriot camp, and did excellent service in ferrying the troops across the Apure.

V. LIBERTAD

By the year 1820 the Revolutionists had for the third time perceptibly gained ground, and Morillo's force, spread like a fan at the inland base of the sierra, was gradually yielding to the unceasing pressure;—in a word, the Patriots were at length driving their enemies into the sea. Towards the close of 1820, Morillo opened negotiations with their chiefs, and a suspension of hostilities was commenced on the 26th of November, when the Spanish general gladly quitted the scene of his fruitless efforts, and retired to Spain with the title of Count of Carthagena, leaving Generals Morales and La Torre in authority behind him. The armistice was not prolonged. The Congress of Colombia, as the united republics of Venezuela and New Granada were then termed, demanded unqualified independence as the price of peace; and in June—the Battle Month—of 1821, Bolívar and Paez took up arms once more. The Spanish troops were concentrated at the base of the mountains, with Valencia and Caracas in their rear. Before them, the road wound westward, through tortuous passes, towards Tinaquilla and Barinas, at the former of which places Bolívar with his forces was now halting. Six thousand men were in arms on either side; but the troops of the Republic, though ragged, ill-fed, and badly armed, were flushed with the consciousness of success and the presentiment of triumph, while those of Spain were dispirited, worn out, and malcontent.

It was plain to the meanest trooper, however, that Carabobo must be held; and on intelligence of the Patriot advance, the position, of amazing strength, was resolutely occupied. It seemed, indeed, that a regiment could defend such a pass with ease against an army. In order to debouch upon the Plain of Carabobo, the Patriots must penetrate a defile, forming a narrow and tortuous pass, the road through which was a mere seam at the base of a deep ravine. This narrow passage, through which, of necessity, Bolívar's troops must march in straggling line, terminated abruptly in a basin or valley shut in by hills, except upon the northeast, where it opened upon the boundless expanse of the contested plain. At the mouth of this gorge La Torre lay with all his force. Despite the unfavorable condition of his men, with whom, moreover, he was not popular, the odds seemed overwhelmingly in his favor. He stood on the defensive, in one of the strongest of military positions, and well provided with artillery, while his adversary was to struggle through a narrow valley in the face of his opponents, before a single man could be made available. The mouth of this valley was blockaded by the Spanish infantry, who stretched in silent lines from side to side in the evening of the 23d of June. On either flank, the hills were occupied by corps of riflemen, and the artillery was posted at their base. No force, it appeared, could enter the beleaguered valley and live. Bolívar commenced his passage through the defile on the morning of the 24th, and halted in dismay as he reached the outlet. It was too apparent that such a conflict as lay before him could not be braved. At this moment Paez learned that a narrow side-path existed, permitting the passage of a single file, which led, by a détour, to the plain. It was one of those curious accidents on which the fate of battles seems to hang; and after some hesitation, Bolívar permitted Paez to venture the passage. Heading the famous Battalion of Apure, he at once wheeled to the left, and commenced the toilsome march. One by one the veterans struggled through the pass, but they were discovered by La Torre before they issued upon the plain.

Although taken entirely by surprise, the Spaniards had time for a partial change of front, and before the veterans of Apure had assembled at the mouth of the pass, a volley of musketry rang out from the Spanish lines, and the gleaming of bayonets told of a wall of steel across the path. The scanty force of Paez, however, dashed from the ravine, and, forming hastily, rushed upon the enemy. Four Royalist battalions converged upon them, and they were crushed. They fell back, flying in disorder, and the Spaniards were on the point of securing the pass, when a shout arose before them that made the stoutest quail. With one ever-memorable cheer, a long hurrah, which spoke of well-known unconquerable determination, the British legion, less than eight hundred strong, with their Colonel, John Ferrier, at their head, appeared at the mouth of the ravine. Forming instantaneously and in perfect silence, but with the accuracy of a regiment on parade, they threw forward their bayonets, and knelt down, sedately, calmly, immovably, to confront destruction. The remaining troops of Bolívar were in their rear, traversing slowly the defile; and until they reached its mouth, that living wall of Anglo-Saxon valor neither stirred nor blenched. Volley after volley enfiladed their ranks, and, after each discharge, the mass of men was smaller. Still their cool and ceaseless firing rolled death into the ranks of the enemy, until at length the troops whom they had saved from destruction rallied once more. Then, what remained of the legion, headed by the two or three officers whose lives had been marvellously preserved, rushed fiercely forward like an avenging flame, and swept before them the affrighted Spaniards, wildly scattering at the onslaught which it was impossible to withstand. In another moment, eighty or ninety of the lancers of Paez issued from the ravine, and, hurling themselves upon the broken enemy, turned the defeat into an utter rout. La Torre's troops, with the exception of one regiment, fled in disgraceful confusion, or perished by hundreds under the lances of the implacable pursuers; and on the evening of the 24th of June, Bolívar, encamped upon the Plain of Carabobo, laid his hand upon the shoulder of José Antonio Paez, thenceforward General-in-chief of the Armies of the Republic of Colombia!

Carabobo decided the War of Independence throughout South America. It snapped the chain which held Venezuela down, and the Spaniards, hemmed in for two years longer at Puerto Cabello, which place they defended with honorable pertinacity, were finally expelled from the free Republic in November, 1823. The city was taken by storm on the 7th of that month, and on the 9th the citadel surrendered. General Calzada, the commandant, with all his officers, and four hundred men, was shortly afterwards shipped for Spain.

Here the career of the Llanero closes. A new and still more brilliant avenue to distinction opens before Paez. At this, however, we can scarcely glance. Our business has been to study him in the saddle, wielding lasso and sword and lance; nor have we left ourselves room for adequate allusion to his subsequent life as President and private citizen, deliverer of his country, and exile in these Northern States. Yet the record could not be called complete, unless we passed briefly in review the vicissitudes of the past thirty years.

After the taking of Puerto Cabello, Paez administered the affairs of Venezuela as Provisional Chief of the State, and held that office under the Congress of Colombia, until the two republics were dissevered in 1830, when he was elected first President of Venezuela. Only partially disturbed by a military insurrection, headed by the turbulent General José T. Monágas, which was soon suppressed, the administration of Paez was such as surprised all lookers-on in America and Europe. He displayed administrative talents of a high order, with all the firmness and resolution of a soldier, yet with all the business capacity and peaceful proclivities of a civilian.

Laying down the Presidential office in 1834, he was again called upon to assume it four years later, and until the close of 1842 Venezuela prospered under his direction. The foreign and domestic debt was liquidated by the products of national industry, and three millions of dollars were left in the treasury on the accession to the Presidency of General Soublette, in 1843. Honors had rained on the ci-devant impetuous horseman, whose shout had once so frequently been the prelude to slaughter and devastation. William the Fourth of England presented General Paez, in 1837, with a sword of honor; Louis Philippe of France invested him, in 1843, with the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honor; and two years later, there arrived from Oscar of Sweden the Cross of the Military Order of the Sword.

But in 1850, and thenceforward, until 1858, José Antonio Paez trod the streets of New York as an exile from his native land.

General José T. Monágas was elected President of Venezuela in 1848, and created dissatisfaction by his course of action. Paez placed himself at the head of an insurrectionary movement against him, and, being defeated, was imprisoned in the city of Valencia. General Monágas, influenced, it is probable, by feelings of ancient friendship, and remembering the pardon extended to himself on a former similar occasion, contented himself with a decree of exile against the captive veteran, and Paez embarked for St. Thomas on the 24th of May, 1850. He passed from St. Thomas to the United States.

All, whose memories extend so far back as the year 1850, remember the ovation received in New York by the exiled chief. New York grants an ovation to every one; and Monágas would, doubtless, have been received with the same demonstration, had the breath of adverse fortune blown him hither, instead of his antagonist.

After the first effervescence produced by the dropping of a notability into the caldron of New York, the Llanero general was permitted to enjoy his placid domesticity without molestation; and in a pleasant street, far up-town among the Twenties, he lived in the midst of us for eight quiet years. A curious serenity of evening, for a life so turbulent and incarnadined in its beginning! How many of the thousands who were wont to pass the stout old soldier, with his seamed forehead and gray moustache, as he enjoyed his quiet stroll down Broadway, thought of him as the lad of Araure, the horseman of Barinas, terror of the Spaniard, victor of Carabobo, and President of Venezuela? But though retired and unpretending in his exile, Paez was not neglected in New York; and the procession which followed him, but a few weeks since, to the steamer destined to bear him back to his native land,—a procession saddened, it is true, by the feeble condition to which an accident had temporarily reduced the chieftain,—showed that his solid worth was recognized and honored.

Not yet, however, is it time for the summing-up of his history. The exile of 1850 has been solicited to return to his country, and the ninth anniversary of banishment may find him occupying once more the Presidential chair. General Monágas having been deposed in March, 1858, repeated invitations were dispatched, by the Provisional Government, to Paez, entreating his return; and, after much cautious hesitation, he resolved, in the following September, to comply with the request. Subsequent events belong rather to the chronology of the day than to the page of history we have thrown open here. Our task is at an end; the career of the Llanero has been unfolded; we have placed ourselves in the presence of the comrade of Bolívar, and have witnessed the rise of the Venezuelan Republic.