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In the preceding chapter mention was made of two regions in which the spirit of revolt triumphed during the period of reaction after the Napoleonic wars—Greece and Spanish America. The revolt in Greece was there described; that in Spanish America awaits description. It had its hero, one of the great soldiers of the Spanish race, perhaps the greatest and ablest of guerilla leaders; “Bolivar the Liberator,” as he was known on his native soil.

How Spain Treated Her Colonies

Spain had long treated her colonists in a manner that was difficult for a high-spirited people to endure. Only two thoughts seemed to rule in their management, the one being to derive from the colonies all possible profit for the government at home, the other to make use of them as a means by which the leaders in Spain could pay their political debts. The former purpose was sought to be carried out by severe taxation, commercial restriction, and the other methods in which a short-sighted country seeks to enrich itself by tying the hands and checking the industries of its colonists. To achieve the latter purpose all important official positions in the colonies were held by natives of Spain. Posts in the government, in the customs, in all salaried offices were given to strangers, who knew nothing of the work they were to do or the conditions of the country to which they were sent, and whose single thought was to fill their purses as speedily as possible and return to enjoy their wealth in Spain.

The Oppression of the People

All this was galling to the colonists, who claimed to be loyal Spaniards; and they rebelled in spirit against this swarm of human locusts which descended annually upon them, practicing every species of extortion and fraud in their eagerness to grow rich speedily, and carrying much of the wealth of the country back to the mother land. Add to this the severe restrictions on industry and commerce, the prohibition of trade except with Spain, the exactions of every kind, legal and illegal, to which the people were forced to submit, and their deep-seated dissatisfaction is easy to understand.

GREAT ENGLISH HISTORIANS AND PROSE WRITERS

PIUS IX.

LEO XIII.

FAMOUS POPES OF THE CENTURY

The war for independence in the United States had no apparent influence upon the colonies of Spanish America. They remained loyal to Spain. The French Revolution seemed also without effect. But during the long Napoleonic wars, when Spain remained for years in the grip of the Corsican, and the people of Spanish America were left largely to govern themselves, a thirst for liberty arose, and a spirit of revolt showed itself about 1810 throughout the length and breadth of the colonies.

Bolivar, the Revolutionary Leader

Chief among the revolutionists was Simon Bolivar, a native of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. In 1810 we find him in London, seeking the aid of the British government in favor of the rebels against Spain. In 1811 he served as governor of Puerto Cabello, the strongest fortress in Venezuela. He was at that time subordinate to General Miranda, whom he afterwards accused of treason, and who died in a dungeon in Spain. In the year named Venezuela proclaimed its independence, but in 1813, Bolivar, who had been entitled its “Liberator,” was a refugee in Jamaica, and his country again a vassal of Spain.

An Attempt at Assassination

The leaders of affairs in Spain knew well where to seek the backbone of the insurrection. Bolivar was the one man whom they feared. He removed, there was not a man in sight capable of leading the rebels to victory. To dispose of him, a spy was sent to Jamaica, his purpose being to take the Liberator’s life. This man, after gaining a knowledge of Bolivar’s habits and movements, bribed a negro to murder him, and in the dead of night the assassin stole up to Bolivar’s hammock and plunged his knife into the sleeper’s breast. As it proved, it was not Bolivar, but his secretary, who lay there, and the hope of the American insurrectionists escaped.

Bolivar Returns to Venezuela

Leaving Jamaica, Bolivar proceeded to San Domingo, where he found a warm supporter in the president, Petion. Here, too, he met Luis Brion, a Dutch shipbuilder of great wealth. His zeal for the principles of liberty infused Brion with a like zeal. The result was that Brion fitted out seven schooners and placed them at Bolivar’s disposal, supplied 3,500 muskets to arm recruits who should join Bolivar’s standard, and devoted his own life and services to the sacred cause. Thus slenderly equipped, Bolivar commenced operations in 1816 at the port of Cayos de San Luis, where the leading refugees from Cartagena, New Granada, and Venezuela had sought sanctuary. By them he was accepted as leader, and Brion, with the title of “Admiral of Venezuela,” was given command of the squadron he had himself furnished. The growing expedition now made for the island of Margarita, which Arismendi had wrested from the Spanish governor; and here, at a convention of officers, Bolivar was named “Supreme Chief,” and the third Venezuelan war began. It was marked by many a disaster to the patriot arms, and so numerous vicissitudes that, until the culminating triumph of Boyaca on August 7th, 1819, it remained doubtful upon which side victory would ultimately rest.

The Savage Cruelty of the Spaniards

The war was conducted on the part of the Spaniards with the most fiendish cruelty, prisoners taken in war and the unarmed people of the country alike being tortured and murdered under circumstances of revolting barbarity. “The people of Margarita,” writes an English officer who served in Venezuela, “saw their liberties threatened and endangered; their wives, children, and kindred daily butchered and murdered; and the reeking members of beings most dear to them exposed to their gaze on every tree and crag of their native forests and mountains; nor was it until hundreds had been thus slaughtered that they pursued the same course. The result was that the Spaniards were routed. I myself saw upwards of seven thousand of their skulls, dried and heaped together in one place, which is not inaptly termed ‘Golgotha,’ as a trophy of victory.”

Another writer tells us: “I saw several women whose ears and noses had been cut off, their eyes torn from their sockets, their tongues cut out, and the soles of their feet pared by the orders of Monteverde, a Spanish brigadier-general.” The result of these excesses of cruelty was an implacable hatred of the Spaniard, and a determination to carry on the war unto death.

The Methods of General Morillo

In 1815 Ferdinand of Spain determined to put an end once for all to the movement for independence that, in varying forms, had, been agitating for five years the whole of Spanish America. Accordingly, strong reinforcements to the royalist armies were sent out, under General Morillo. These arrived at Puerto Cabello, and, besides ships of war, comprised 12,000 troops—a force in itself many times larger than all the scattered bands of patriots then under arms put together. Morillo soon had Venezuela under his thumb, and, planting garrisons throughout it, proceeded to lay siege to Cartagena. Capturing this city in four months, he marched unopposed to Santa Fe de Bogota, the capital of New Granada, ruin and devastation marking his progress. In a despatch to Ferdinand, which was intercepted, he wrote: “Every person of either sex who was capable of reading and writing was put to death. By thus cutting off all who were in any way educated, I hoped to effectually arrest the spirit of revolution.”

An insight into Morillo’s methods of coping with the “spirit of revolution” is furnished by his treatment of those he found in the opulent city of Maturin on its capture. Dissatisfied with the treasure he found there, he suspected the people of wealth to have anticipated his arrival by burying their property. To find out the supposed buried treasure, he had all those whom he regarded as likely to know where it was hidden collected together, and, to make them confess, had the soles of their feet cut off, and then had them driven over hot sand. Many of the victims of this horrid piece of cruelty survived, and were subsequently seen by those that have narrated it.