Great Bastards of History

by Juré Fiorillo

  Shortly afterward, in 1790, an emissary of the viceroy came and scooped up Bernardo and swept him off to Lima, not to the vice regal palace but to a Jesuit school for the education of the sons of high government officials. He wore the school uniform of black suit and cocked hat for four years. But word somehow crept out—or his father may have feared it would—of the boy’s parentage. This would never do; O’Higgins’s appointment was already being criticized by high-placed criollos loyal to Spain as “the English viceroy.” Spain and England had been enemies since the days of the Armada in 1588.

  O’Higgins’s father, the viceroy of peru, “Don Ambrosio,” wears the tricorn hat and embroidered coat of Spanish America’s highest colonial office. © North Wind / North Wind Picture Archives—All rights reserved.

  Don Ambrosio now also referred to himself as the Baron Bollyready, the hereditary title to which the name O’Higgins entitled him. It would be a major scandal if the viceroy, supposed upholder of truth and virtue, were disclosed to have fathered a bastard son whom he had kept secret. Bernardo, now sixteen, was once more unceremoniously picked up by a friend of the viceroy and this time placed on a ship to Spain. He was greeted in Cádiz by Albano’s son-in-law, Don Nicolas de la Cruz, a wealthy merchant who had amassed a fortune in Spain and whom O’Higgins had appointed as the boy’s guardian. Under the viceroy’s instructions, de la Cruz transshipped him to England to complete his education.

  IT WOULD BE A MAJOR SCANDAL IF THE VICEROY, SUPPOSED UPHOLDER OF TRUTH AND VIRTUE, WERE DISCLOSED TO HAVE FATHERED A BASTARD SON WHOM HE HAD KEPT SECRET.

  “MY DEAREST FATHER AND BENEFACTOR”

  Exactly when or how Bernardo learned the true identity and exalted position of his unseen father is not certain, but now began a voluminous one-way correspondence. The viceroy had established an ample three-hundred-pound-a-year allowance for the young man, but much of the money apparently disappeared into the pockets of a pair of London clockmakers whom de la Cruz had named to look after Bernardo’s affairs. Many of the letters addressed to “My dearest father and benefactor” complained of these financial problems, along with a cascade of letters to the supposed guardians.

  Much of the correspondence, found in a copy book after Bernardo’s death, dealt with the “moderate progress I am making here in my studies which are English, French, geography, history ancient and modern, music, drawing and the exercise of arms, in the last two of which I am tolerably proficient.” He also apologetically asked for his father’s guidance in choosing a career, pointing out that he was then twenty-one and not yet chosen a career path. A “career of arms,” he wrote, perhaps prophetically, might bring him “advancement and honor.” What did his father think “fit and proper”? He never received a reply.

  Britain—and all Europe—was buzzing in the 1790s with revolutionary ideas, stirred up by the American and French Revolutions. Teachers and scholars preached antimonarchism, anticolonialism, and the rights of man over those of aristocrats. One charismatic and eloquent apostle was Francisco Miranda, a Venezuelan exile who befriended the lonely Bernardo. Miranda called for the overthrow of kings like the Bourbons of Spain and the Hapsburgs of Austria and their replacement with governments of the people. Moreover, colonies should be abolished, totally abolished. People should be enabled to choose their own rulers. He urged Bernardo to be a courier carrying this radical gospel back to Chile.

  Not surprisingly, word of this inflammatory rhetoric reached Madrid and thus the colonial functionaries in Spanish America, including the ears of the viceroy, a monarchist through and through who owed his eminence to the crown. By now Spain and England were at war, the offshoot of the ongoing conflict between Napoleon and Britain. Madrid warned the viceroy of possible English efforts to undermine Spanish rule in the colonies. Sure enough, another of Miranda’s pupils came forward to reveal an alleged conspiracy against the Spanish colonial government, including a memorandum Miranda had supposedly written outlining the plot to the British government. The document named his fellow conspirators. One name was that of Bernardo Riquelme.

  ILLNESS AND DISAPPOINTMENT

  By then, however, Bernardo had left England. Borrowing money from friends that he was unable to wrest from his supposed guardians, he sailed to Spain and returned to the household of de la Cruz in Cádiz. He sent a flurry of letters to his father describing the many horrors that had befallen him, the last of which was his unsuccessful attempt to return to Chile and the subsequent seizure as a prize of the Chile-bound, Spanish-flagged ship by the British, in which he lost all of his possessions, right down to his newly purchased trousers.

  He returned to the de la Cruz home just as Cádiz succumbed to an epidemic of yellow fever. Bernardo, too, was soon stricken so severely that he was given up for lost, the last rites of the church administered to him. Then, after a miraculous recovery, he attempted to enlist in the army but was rejected because of his irregular parentage. De la Cruz grudgingly gave him a clerk’s job.

  Then came the worst blow of all. De la Cruz called him in one day in early 1801 and read from a letter received from the viceroy himself. Bernardo’s father declared that he was most displeased with his ungrateful son, who had wasted his money, consorted with enemies, and failed to choose a career for himself. De la Cruz was directed to forthwith evict Bernardo from his house.

  A flabbergasted Bernardo immediately sat down and wrote an imploring, beseeching letter to “My dear father and my only protector.” He protested that he had been very careful with money, even doing his own sewing and mending, and had been wearing the same suit of clothes for four years. Why, there had been days when he had to go completely without food, and he had never asked his father for anything more than parental wisdom, guidance, and advice. “Sir, I will trouble you no further,” he concluded. “May God still prolong your precious life for many years. Your Excellency’s most humble and grateful son, Bernardo Riquelme.”

  The viceroy never read this last valedictory letter. By the time it reached Lima, another letter had passed it in the opposite direction. O’Higgins, eighty-one years old and now carrying the title of Marques de Osorno, had passed away. In late January 1801, he had suffered a debilitating stroke. After dallying with lawyers whom he feared might disclose his most closely guarded secret, on March 14, 1801, he dictated his will to his close friend Thomas Delfin. Apparently remorseful at his failure to acknowledge Bernardo in his lifetime, the will at last recognized Bernardo as his natural heir and granted him a large and valuable estate in southern Chile near the city of Concepcion. He left most other possessions to a favorite nephew, Tomas O’Higgins. Bernardo left immediately for Chile and in September 1802, after a stormy voyage around Cape Horn, arrived in Valparaiso to take possession of his new estate, a large and fertile tract of land known as Las Canteras.

  BUILDING HIS LEGACY

  Bernardo spent the next years developing the property. He built up the cattle herds to three thousand head, planted ten thousand vines that launched the Chilean wine industry, and constructed new farm buildings and an imposing house for his now-married mother and his half-sister. But the winds of revolution had not subsided and now reached Spanish America. In 1807, the populace of Madrid rebelled and ousted the harsh and incompetent Carlos IV, replacing him with his son, who became Ferdinand VII.

  Napoleon, pretending to referee the dispute, reestablished Carlos on the throne and sent troops into Spain and Portugal to reinforce his edict and also to prevent the two neutrals from supplying his enemy, Great Britain. He then jailed Ferdinand, persuaded Carlos to abdicate, and replaced him in 1808 with his older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, whom he had previously installed as the king of Naples. The Spanish rose up in protest at the French emperor’s highhandedness, and guerrilla fighting broke out, later supported by English troops under the Duke of Wellington.

  In all this turmoil, Chileans saw an opportunity. They had long grumbled about being ruled from afar or locally by “Peninsulares”—those born in Spain as opposed to Chilean-born “
criollos”—Creoles.

  O’Higgins had paid only scant attention to politics, but as a large landowner he had been elevated to the cabildo, a local council whose duties were primarily consultative. Now, on the pretext of mustering support for the legitimate King Ferdinand, they persuaded the Chilean governor-general to enlarge the cabildo by a dozen members. The group, confused by the conflicting signals from the two camps in Madrid, began to talk openly of obtaining greater power locally. Opinion split into three factions: diehards wanted to retain the monarchial ties just as they were; moderates wanted to continue the kingly role but with some self-government in a limited monarchy; and radicals wanted to throw the Spanish rascals out and strike for independence.

  The three groups united long enough to persuade the governor to call a cabildo abierto, a kind of congress representing all citizens. Bernardo first allied himself with the pro-king moderates, but he gradually favored a more radical stance, with parliamentary self-government based on the English model that he had witnessed in London. Meanwhile, word reached Chile that the citizens of Buenos Aires had revolted and thrown out the viceroy. Thus inspired, Santiago voted overwhelmingly on September 18, 1810, to oust the Spanish-appointed governor of Chile and replace him with a junta of local citizens. That date was designated Chilean Independence Day. It also marked the date of a whole new career for Bernardo O’Higgins. He was to spend much of the ensuing decade fighting for that independence.

  THE RELUCTANT WARRIOR

  For all his talk of a possible military career, O’Higgins had no military experience and no real grasp of military strategy. (José de San Martín, the Argentine Patriot leader who fought alongside O’Higgins in the war for liberation, downplayed O’Higgins’s military skills while praising his valor and sense of purpose.) He raised two units of cavalry from his workers and neighbors at Las Canteras, but he had no real idea of how to lead or train them.

  The vast Spanish colonial domain in South America has developed into the modern states of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia, as shown in this early map. © Blueberg / Alamy

  He turned to another Irishman, his father’s friend Juan Mackenna, who had served with the Don Ambrosio in the frontier wars against the Araucanian Indians. “I hope you will not think me a coward when I confide that I cannot bear the thought of ending my days in some obscure dungeon without being able to raise a hand to help liberate my country,” he wrote Mackenna, in English.

  Mackenna responded with a bulky memorandum of instruction, suggesting that he first enlist an experienced sergeant of dragoons, who could instruct him in the horseback use of sword and lance and the basic maneuvers of cavalry and infantry units. Bernardo’s militia, Mackenna wrote, should be modeled on his father’s old outfit, the Frontier Dragoons. “If you study the life of your father,” Mackenna wrote, “you will find in it military lessons which are most useful and relevant to your present situation, and if you always keep his brilliant example before your eyes, you will never stray from the path of honor.” Mackenna went on to compare Don Ambrosio’s military skills to those of Frederick the Great.

  The first major test of Bernardo’s leadership and skills—as well as his willingness to compromise—came in one of his early major battles in 1813. A power-hungry and manipulative band of brothers, José Miguel, Juan José, and Luis Carrera (along with an equally fanatic sister Javiera), had insinuated themselves into the junta, José Miguel becoming chairman and then replacing the other members with his brothers. José Miguel, with grandiose dreams of military success but even less knowledge or command presence than O’Higgins, had named himself commander in chief of the Patriot armies. O’Higgins dutifully agreed to serve under him, even though other officers protested that José Miguel Carrera was not only ruthless but also incompetent.

  In October 1813, after a series of skirmishes in southern Chile that left Las Canteras in ruins, the Royalist and Spanish troops surprised the Patriots as they were crossing the River Itata at El Roble ford. José Miguel abandoned the troops and fled on a fast horse. O’Higgins was badly wounded in the leg. He bandaged the wound personally, then insisted he be carried to the front lines, where he lay in pain and under fire but nevertheless rallied the troops in a successful counterattack. Word spread of O’Higgins’s courage but also of the ineptitude and cowardice of José Miguel, who had lost four times as many men as the enemy. O’Higgins became a hero. Still, he deferred to José Miguel as commander in chief.

  The relationship was put to a further test in the 1814 bell tower incident at Racangua.

  José Miguel had divided his Patriot army into three divisions; one commanded by O’Higgins, the others by his brothers. The Patriots numbered four thousand men, their enemy five thousand under the seasoned Spanish general Mariano Osorio. The Royalists were moving forward toward Racangua, which commanded a road leading to the Chilean capital, Santiago. O’Higgins advanced to confront them, expecting Luis Carrera to join him. Instead he received a frantic message from Luis. His force had taken refuge in Racangua, and he begged O’Higgins to come to his aid.

  A savage two days of street fighting ensued, with O’Higgins momentarily expecting to be reinforced by Luis’s Third Division. It was Luis’s division that the bell tower lookout had seen retreating. Without reinforcements and bereft of supplies, O’Higgins recognized that the battle was lost. His men responded to his urgent appeal and manned a valiant cavalry charge, broke through the Royalist ranks, and escaped, badly bloodied but still in good order. O’Higgins decided the best option was to retreat over the Andes to the friendly northern province of Argentina.

  EXILE AND A NEW ALLY

  O’Higgins was not to see Chile again for three years. He spent the time in Buenos Aires mustering more men, stocking up supplies, obtaining armaments, and, most important, allying himself with San Martín, who had led his own insurgents to victory in Argentina. San Martín dreamed of the complete expulsion of Spanish rulers from the southern part of the continent as Simón Bolívar was achieving in the north. San Martín gladly merged O’Higgins’s forces with his own into an “Army of the Andes.”

  José de San Martín, the Argentine Patriot leader who fought alongside O’Higgins, is seen here after crossing the Andes in 1817 to invade Chile. General San Martín after crossing the Andes in 1817, 1865 (oil on canvas), Boneo, Martin (1829-1915) / Museo Historico Nacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina / Photo © AISA / The Bridgeman Art Library International

  At this time, José Miguel Carrera resurfaced in Argentina and announced he should command the combined armies and the liberation of Chile. San Martín waved him off and appointed O’Higgins deputy commander. By the end of 1816 the two leaders, San Martín and O’Higgins, had built an invasion force of five thousand men, plus artillery and fourteen hundred cavalry horses and mules. On January 18, 1817, the height of the southern summer, the army began its arduous trek over the challenging passes and by February 1 had stepped into Chile.

  The Royalists set a stout defense around the village of Chacabuco, guarding the approach to the capital. O’Higgins exhorted his men to charge with the bayonet. By February 12, 1817, the enemy had been disastrously routed, with one-third of the men killed or disabled and another one-third taken prisoner. A normally reserved San Martín triumphantly messaged Buenos Aires: “In the space of 24 days, we have crossed the highest mountain range in the world, overthrown the tyrants, and given freedom to Chile.”

  The two generals rode into Santiago to wild acclaim. On February 15, 1817, the leading citizens of Santiago gathered to choose a new head of state. The unanimous choice was San Martín, but the victorious general had a government in Buenos Aires to lead. He declined and said that, anyway, the position should go to a Chilean, a policy with which many Chileans agreed. He nominated O’Higgins in his place. The following day O’Higgins took the oath of office as Chile’s “Director Supremo.” The illegitimate son of the viceroy had now become the country’s dictator, without opposition.

  The war between the P
atriots and the Spanish/Royalists continued until 1818, when an army commanded by San Martín overwhelmed the Royalists at the village of Maipú on the road to Santiago. O’Higgins, despite a serious arm wound, hurried to the battlefield, embraced his old comrade, and thanked him profusely for liberating his homeland.

  O’Higgins served as Director Supremo until 1823. He fended off attempts by the Carreras to undermine him and faced down opposition by the powerful, Spanish-trained clergy and conservatives protesting his democratic reforms and abolition of nobility titles. He built a Chilean navy to protect the country’s long coastline, which played a key role in the invasion of Peru, bringing Spanish colonial rule to an end once and for all. He established courts, colleges, libraries, and hospitals; revamped the school system; and rebuilt the major cities. A conservative coup deposed him in 1823, and he went into exile in Lima, where he died in 1842.

  The Battle of Maipu on the Chilean border, depicted here, subdued a Royalist uprising and cemented patriot control of Chile. The Battle of Maipu on the 5th April, 1818, printed by Raffet (lithograph), Spanish School, (19th century) / Private Collection / Index / The Bridgeman Art Library International

  Buried initially in Lima, his body was brought back to Santiago with great ceremony in 1866, escorted by the navy that he had established, and reinterred in the capital as Chile’s foremost hero. The main street in Santiago was rechristened Boulevard O’Higgins, and it honored the once-outcast Bernardo, not the father who had turned his back on an unfortunate boy.