Military career of Simón Bolívar

The military and political career of Simón Bolívar (July 24, 1783 – December 17, 1830), which included both formal service in the armies of various revolutionary regimes and actions organized by himself or in collaboration with other exile patriot leaders during the years from 1811 to 1830, was an important element in the success of the independence wars in South America.

His second challenge was implementing a vision of unifying the region into one large state, which he believed (and most would agree, correctly) would be the only guarantee of maintaining American independence from the Spanish in northern South America.

His early experiences under the First Venezuelan Republic and in New Granada convinced him that divisions among republicans, augmented by federal forms of government, only allowed Spanish American royalists to eventually gain the upper hand.

Nine years later, in 1806 long-time Venezuelan expatriate Francisco de Miranda led a small group of mostly British and American foreign volunteers in an attempt to take over Venezuela and set up an independent republic.

So the Criollos' failure to support Gual, España and Miranda, which would have created a state under their control, needs to also be understood by the fact that a national identity separate from the Spanish had not yet emerged among them.

In the subsequent decades, a few New Granadans, like Antonio Nariño, became intrigued by the ideas of the French Revolution and attempted to promote its values by disseminating translated documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

[1] In 1809 a twenty-six-year-old Bolívar had retreated to his estate in the Valleys of Aragua, refusing to openly participate in calls for the establishment of a Venezuelan junta, because the plans did not consider the option of independence.

At the same time that Frigate Captain Domingo de Monteverde was making fast and vast advances into republican territory from the west (his forces had entered Valencia on May 3, 1812), Bolívar lost control of San Felipe Castle along with its ammunition stores on June 30, when the royalist prisoners held there managed to take it over and attack the small number of troops in the city.

Monteverde's troops had already carried out atrocities: he had allowed his soldiers to loot many of the cities he occupied and several of his commanders became notorious for torturing and killing civilians suspected of collaborating with the Republic.

Bolívar's forces easily defeated the overtaxed and underpaid royalist army in a series of battles, entered Caracas on August 6, 1813, and laid siege to Monteverde, who had retreated to Puerto Cabello.

By 1814, the regular royalist army headed by Governor and Captain General Juan Manuel Cajigal was overshadowed by a large, irregular force of llaneros recruited and led by José Tomás Boves.

With the royalist irregulars displaying the same passion and violence that Bolívar had demonstrated in his "war to the death" decree, the republicans suffered their first major setback at the Battle of La Puerta on June 15, 1814, and Boves took Caracas on July 16.

Due to their series of repeated reverses both Bolívar and Mariño were arrested and removed from power by José Félix Ribas and Manuel Piar, each representing the two republican commands then in place in Venezuela.

Once in Spain, however, Ferdinand was not pleased by the revolution in government that had been undertaken in his name, and by May he had abolished the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and began persecuting and arresting the liberals responsible for its creation.

Originally, they were to head for Montevideo in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, another region that had fallen out of royalist control, but soon it was decided to send these forces to the Venezuela and New Granada, where the war had become exceedingly savage.

With Venezuela pacified, plans were quickly made to subdue neighboring New Granada, and the bulk of the troops moved to the coastal city of Santa Marta, which had remained in royalist hands since 1810.

Like many other Venezuelan republicans who fled to New Granada after the second wave of royalist victories, Bolívar once again entered into the service of the United Provinces and fought against cities that had refused to acknowledge its authority.

He was then given the task of capturing the royalist stronghold, Santa Marta, but Cartagena, the obvious base from which to launch this offensive, refused to give him the necessary soldiers and supplies, so infighting broke out.

His famous Letter from Jamaica, though ostensibly written to one man, was an appeal to Great Britain specifically and the European powers in general to aid the cause of Spanish American independence, but it found no significant response.

There was debate, however, over who should be in charge, but his ability to win over Pétion and a Curaçaoan sea merchant, Luis Brión (he is traditionally referred to by the Spanish form of his name), who had just acquired a much-needed warship in England to aid the embattled Cartagenan Republic, forced the other Venezuelan leaders to grudgingly accept his leadership.

The river's tributaries also provided access to the Venezuelan and New Granadan Llanos to the west, especially those in Casanare, where refugees from Morillo's troops had organized themselves under Francisco de Paula Santander.

Under Páez and Piar, the republican armies had begun to recruit the local llaneros who, after Morillo disbanded Boves's informal units, no longer had an outlet for quick enrichment and social advancement under the royalist banner.

The first overt challenge to his rule came with the meeting of the "Congresillo of Cariaco" on May 8 and 9 under the auspices of Canon José Cortés de Madariaga—who had been a member of the Junta of Caracas and had just returned to Venezuela after being imprisoned in Spain—Luis Brión and Santiago Mariño.

Less than a month later, Rafael Urdaneta and Antonio José de Sucre, who remained loyal to Bolívar, lead a group of officers that forced the triumvirate to dissolve itself.

It took a route that went from the hot and humid, flood-swept plains of Colombia to the icy mountain pass of the Páramo de Pisba, at an altitude of 3,960 meters (13,000 feet), through the Cordillera Oriental.

On receiving the news, the viceroy, Juan José de Sámano, and the rest of royalist government fled the capital so fast that they left behind the treasury, an incredible coup for Bolívar and Santander.

On January 28 the cabildo of Maracaibo, which had been in secret negotiations with the republicans aided by native son Rafael Urdaneta, declared the province an independent republic, which chose to join Colombia.

To prevent the splintering of Gran Colombia, Bolívar proposed to introduce an even more centralist model of government, including some or all of the elements he had been able to place in the Bolivian constitution: a lifetime presidency with the ability to select a successor, and a hereditary third chamber of the legislature.

Addressing these fears, the Congress went in the opposite direction that Bolívar had hoped, and drafted a document which would have implemented a radically federalist form of government with greatly reduced the powers for the central administration.

Many of the officers who had fought by him were not only involved in the revolts that led to the dissolution of Gran Colombia, but continued to play important political and military roles in the decades and wars that followed.