Cochrane in the Pacific

by Brian Vale

  The Brazilian offer was opportune, and Cochrane accepted. On 28 November 1822, after another argument when the Minister of Marine ordered Independencia to sea without his authority, he resigned his commission as Vice Admiral of Chile.27 Two days later his reply was on its way to Correa da Camera. 'I have this day tendered my resignation to the Government of Chile,' he wrote, 'and am not aware that any material delay will be necessary previous to my setting off for Rio de Janeiro ... it being understood that I hold myself free to decline as well as to accept the offer made through you by His Imperial Majesty.'28 He then began to prepare for the journey.

  But Cochrane's Chilean adventures were not quite over. The Ministry of Marine had made no reply to his letter of resignation and Cochrane's flag continued to fly. Thus there was a final clash on 18 December, when Galvarino was ordered to sea without Cochrane being informed. The Vice Admiral promptly made the brig stay where she was and told Lautaro to fire on her should she attempt to leave.29 That seemed to do the trick. Later the same day a decree was issued, demobilising the Chilean Navy and placing its officers and men on half pay. The Chileans wisely exempted Lord Cochrane, Captains Crosbie and Cobbett and those of their lieutenants who had shown particular merit during the Peruvian campaign and kept them on full salary. Finally, a week later, Cochrane's resignation was tacitly accepted and he was ordered to hand over control of the ships in commission to the Commandant-General of Marine.30 His time as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Navy had finally come to an end.

  Cochrane's last month was spent at Quintero in the company of friends who - once again - included Miers, Stevenson and Maria Graham. There were occasional dashes to Valparaiso and Santiago as Cochrane tried to wind up his affairs. He had already received $63,500 (£12,700) in prize money, and $25,330 (£5070) in pay and -disenchanted with Hoseason and anxious to end the relationship - had made arrangements for the balance of $15,466 (£3090) owing on the latter to be paid to Kitty through the Chilean Legation in London.31 But he was still owed money for the captures of Valdivia and Esmeralda, and for the balance on the squadron's accounts. He was also anxious to get something on his brother's behalf for the Rising Star. Alas, none of these problems were settled before he left Chile and Cochrane was forced to leave others to act on his behalf. Paroissien's friend, the Valparaiso merchant J. J. Barnard, was authorised to settle his claims on the Rising Star and to sell the extra engines she had carried from England. John Miers was left to develop the coinage initiative, and was left as sole proprietor of the beef and biscuit business in Quintero on a delayed payment to Cochrane of $25,000. Hoseason was paid off with a letter of credit on the government for $17,683 (£3767), which, according to his accounts, was what Cochrane owed him.32

  By the beginning of 1823 preparations were well advanced for the voyage to Brazil. As a final flourish, on 4 January, Cochrane had three proclamations printed on his new lithographic press. The first was a rhetorical farewell to the Chilean people; the second to the British and foreign merchant community reminding them of the benefits his command had brought; and the third one of thanks to his fellow officers in the Chilean Navy. Two weeks later, the merchant brig Colonel Allen arrived in the bay. A succession of boats began to transfer luggage and possessions from the shore. Amongst them were boxes containing $52,000 (£10,400) in gold bullion, which Cochrane was taking with him out of the country.33 Also accompanying him were five of his followers - Secretary William Jackson, Captain Thomas Sackville Crosbie and Lieutenants John Pascoe Grenfell, James Shepherd and Steven Clewley. Henry Dean also wanted to come but, avoiding the unpleasant duty of dismissing him, Cochrane left him behind in the hope that he would realise his services were no longer required. Cochrane also invited Maria Graham and her invalid cousin William Glennie to join the party. He remembered the relief he had felt when Captain Shirreff of Andromache had removed Kitty from a place of danger, and felt that he could do no less for the widow of a fellow naval officer apparently stranded so far from home. On 18 January, all was ready. There was an impromptu piece of ceremonial when Lord Cochrane's flag as Vice Admiral of Chile was lowered for the last time from the main mast of the Montezuma. Then, the Colonel Allen made sail and slowly slipped out of the Bay bound for Brazil.

  Chapter 15

  INDEPENDENCE - AT LAST

  By the middle of 1823, the three protagonists whose efforts had been so decisive in securing the liberation of Chile and Peru had all left the scene of their triumphs and, alas, tragedies. Lord Cochrane was now First Admiral of Brazil and was about to repeat his performance in the Pacific -securing the independence of the country through a series of astonishing victories against the Portuguese; then leaving under a cloud as a result of a bitter quarrel over money and alleged poor treatment.1 José de San Martin was back in his native Argentine, but was about to leave for a prolonged exile in London, Paris and Boulogne, where he died a lonely, unhappy and sickly man in 1850. Bernardo O'Higgins, having been under house arrest for months following his overthrow by Ramon Freire, was on his way to Peru to offer his services to Bolivar in the final liberation of the country from the Spanish. Alas, Bolivar saw O'Higgins as San Martin's stooge and gave him a cool reception. O'Higgins was to spend the next 20 years of his life quietly in a ranch south of Lima before the cautious Chileans agreed to allow him to return in 1842. Tragically, O'Higgins died on the journey home and never saw Chile again.

  The removal of O'Higgins from the Supreme Directorship in 1823 did nothing to solve Chile's problems. The country relapsed into chaos, disintegrating in the face of local warring factions. It was only ten years later that the conservative Diego Portales restored order and imposed a centralising constitution that put the new republic on the road to stability and prosperity. The disarray in Chile did Cochrane no favours. As happened in so many South American coups, the incoming governments disavowed or forgot the commitments of their predecessors. The claims Cochrane left behind him therefore got nowhere: the letters of credit given to Hoseason were not honoured; and papers relating to the construction and costs of the Rising Star were lost in the upheaval. The new government flatly refused to give anything for the steamship2 and, with no hope of payment, in May 1824, her agent, J. J. Barnard, sold her lock, stock and barrel for $10,000. Cochrane's own actions did not help his case either. The Auditor General, Correa de Sa, once more wrote to him in Brazil asking for the appointment of a representative to go through the accounts of the Peruvian campaign and to justify the $67,000 he said was owing to him.3 But Cochrane, who received the letter while blockading the Brazilian port of Salvador de Bahia in June 1823, flatly refused to cooperate and merely replied with a denunciation of the duplicity of the government.4

  Meanwhile, the commercial ventures that Cochrane had launched with John Miers began to falter. Their plan to produce copper coins was abandoned when the Chilean Mint objected to the supply of currency being put in private hands. The attempt to manufacture salt beef and biscuits in Quintero failed to prosper. Severe drought in the region reduced the numbers of livestock, the price of local beef rose, and the demand for preserved meat was more than amply covered by cheaper imports from Britain and the United States.5 Then the original landowner initiated a process to reclaim possession of the estate. He eventually succeeded, though only on the payment of compensation. Dean too, who had been left behind when the Colonel Allen sailed for Brazil, immediately began to feather his nest at the Admiral's expense, claiming fraudulently that Cochrane had left him in charge of his affairs, and planning a large-scale smuggling operation using his cattle! Fortunately, Miers managed to frustrate Dean's tricks. When, to his relief, Dean left for Brazil with his wife and children, Miers wrote a long and detailed report on his activities, denouncing him as a man who is 'as well known in Brazil as in Buenos Aires and Chile as a complete swindler, ... one who since your departure has abused you in violent terms in Valparaiso,' and concluded 'you may rely upon it, he is an extremely dangerous and cunning man.' He urged Cochrane to have nothing more to do with him.6
Inexplicably, Cochrane re-employed Dean in Brazil, though writing him what can only be described as a letter of warning.7 It made no impact and Dean proceeded to manipulate the Admiral's prize money and property, ultimately suing him for £14,700!8

  When San Martin led his army across the high passes of the Andes in 1817, the removal of Spanish forces from Peru had been the key to the liberation of South America. Five years later, the challenge was much the same. True, Peru had declared its independence, but San Martin's hope that Spain would accept the inevitable and withdraw its troops had not been realised. Indeed, an army under Viceroy de la Serna remained intact and undefeated in the mountains of Upper Peru and in the fertile valley of the Juaja, only ten days march east of Lima. Without San Martin's firm direction, independent Peru also began to fall apart. The bulk of the population was apathetic, the ruling class ambivalent, the army went unpaid, and the security of the country remained dependent on troops from Chile and Colombia.

  In January 1823, a Spanish attack northwards from Arica caused panic in Lima. The determined but unpleasant Riva Aguero seized power, entrusting command of the army to General Andres Santa Cruz and of the navy to Martin Guise, now a Peruvian Vice Admiral. When appeals for foreign assistance fell on deaf ears, Riva Aguero foolishly sent his troops to attack the Spanish forces alone. Outnumbered and outclassed, they were soundly beaten. The royalists seized the initiative to launch a major attempt at reconquest. In Spain, the government sent the 64-gun Asia and the brig Achilles to the Pacific carrying reinforcements. In Peru, Canterac began to advance on Lima with his Division of 8000 troops, leaving 3000 men under General Valdez to watch Arequipa and another 4000 under General Olaneta to guard Upper Peru. As the Spaniards drew near, the Peruvian Government and army disintegrated before them. While Guise and the navy blockaded the coast, the Marquis of Torre Tagle seized power and fortified the Castles of Callao. Now attacked by land and sea, independent Peru seemed on the brink of extinction. There was only one man who could save the situation - the Liberator, Simon Bolivar.

  Answering an appeal from Torre Tagle, Bolivar reached Lima on 1 September, to be greeted with joy, cheering crowds, gala performances at the theatre, and celebratory bull fights. Momentarily he was able to stem the royalist tide. But it was clear to the Liberator that the Spanish forces were formidable and those at his disposal too weak. He therefore withdrew to the northern border with Guayaquil to reorganise his army, leaving Viceroy de la Serna free to reoccupy the country from the east. The high point of the Spanish campaign came in February 1824, when the unpaid black Argentine troops that formed the garrison of Callao mutinied and surrendered the Castles. Lima quickly fell to the royalists, and many of the Peruvian elite hastened to change sides, including Torre Tagle who unleashed a bitter denunciation of Bolivar.

  On the verge of victory, the royalist effort suddenly faltered. This was not the result of any action by the patriots, but of splits within the Spanish forces themselves. While de la Serna had been busy occupying Peru during 1823, a French army, acting on behalf of the Holy Alliance of reactionary European monarchs, had been invading Spain with the aim of overthrowing the constitutional government. In October, they succeeded and Ferdinand VII was restored to absolute power. Spain was plunged into a year-long reign of terror in which thousands of officials and liberal sympathisers were purged, imprisoned and exiled. The effects were not confined to Spain. When the news reached South America, one of the Viceroy's divisional Generals, Pedro Antonio Olaneta, promptly seized control of Upper Peru in the name of Ferdinand VII. At a stroke, the Spanish forces were fragmented. Not only was Olaneta's command of 4000 men removed from de la Serna's control, but Valdez's units had to be detached to keep an eye on them.

  In the north, Bolivar was now ready to go at the head of some 10,000 men - 3500 Colombians under Antonio de Sucre, 3000 Peruvians under José La Mar - the former American-born Governor of Callao who had now joined the patriot ranks, 500 artillerymen, and 1500 cavalry, including a brigade of lancers commanded by William Miller. Learning of the division within the Spanish forces, Bolivar seized his opportunity. In May 1824, he led his army forward on another epic march across the mountains of Peru. Advancing in three divisions, his men snaked up the high passes, across rocky defiles, through narrow mountain gorges and over rushing torrents, often only able to keep in contact with the units ahead and with the line of march by bugle calls. Without the careful planning that had marked San Martin's crossing of the Andes six years before, there were heavy losses of men and animals from exhaustion, snow blindness and altitude sickness. The army finally emerged from the mountains to unite and recover beneath the Cerro de Pasco, some 100 miles northeast of Lima as the condor flies. On 6 August, Bolivar advanced a few miles south onto the plateau of Junin, surprised Canterac's army, defeated it, and forced it into ignominious retreat towards Cuzco. It was the royalists who were now on the defensive as Bolivar's army surged on.

  Meanwhile, further south, Asia and Achilles were approaching Callao after a three-month stay at Chiloe where Commodore Roque Guruzeta had refitted his ships. On guard outside Callao was Vice Admiral Martin Guise in the frigate Protector (the renamed Prueba) with two Peruvian ships - the brig Congresso and schooner Macedonian - and two Colombian brigs. Midshipman James of HMS Tartar was thrilled when he met the captains of Congresso and Macedonian - Young and Robertson - to discover that they were old Royal Navy shipmates. Guise and his men had been on blockade duty for six months, making occasional attacks on Callao, arresting blockade runners and - Cochrane fashion - demanding 25 per cent of the value of cargoes for permission to enter a port. With the Peruvian state in disarray, it was the only way Guise could pay his crews and maintain his ships.9 Watching him was a flotilla of British, American and French warships, alerted by this renewed threat to their trade. There were HM ships Cambridge, Tartar and Fly, the USS United States, and the French ship Lancier. The presence of the 80-gun Cambridge was an accident. The British Government had announced the previous January that it intended to recognise the independence of the well established states of Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, though it had excluded Chile and Peru from the list in view of the uncertainty of the situation there. Nevertheless, the same month, HMS Cambridge had sailed for South America from Portsmouth carrying the full team of diplomats needed to establish official relations with all the new republics on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts - three consul-generals, one consul and five vice-consuls.10 Unfortunately, by the time the ship reached Peru in May, there was no longer an independent state with which relations could be established.

  Nevertheless, Captain Maling made himself useful. Following their defeat at Junin, the royalists had garrisoned Callao but had sent all other available troops to join Canterac's army. As a result, the area around Lima became a lawless no-man's land haunted by bandits and desperadoes, many of them deserters or unpaid soldiers. And when the newly appointed British Consul-General for Lima, Mr Rowcroft, went ashore with his daughter in a private capacity wearing the uniform of the City of London Volunteers, he was promptly shot and killed in an altercation with jumpy security forces. Following a solemn local ceremonial with ships firing minute guns and flags at half mast, Rowcroft's body was sent back to England Nelson-fashion in a barrel of spirits. Following this incident, the Spanish authorities allowed Cambridge to send 120 Royal Marines to Lima to safeguard British lives and property. For two months between August and October they were the only agents of law and order in the capital.11

  The Spanish warships Asia and Achilles sighted Callao on 12 September 1824, ignored the tacit offer of combat made when Guise's blockading flagship fired a gun and backed his mizzen topsail and - in the words of Commodore Isaac Hull of the United States - 'sneaked' into the port. The Governor of the Castles, the ruthless General José Ramon Rodil was unimpressed with his colleague's reluctance to take on the Peruvians in spite of the disparity of force in his favour. In his Journal, Surgeon Cunningham of Cambridge, alleges that Rodil coldly greeted the Spanish co
mmander with the words 'Commodore, all the little boys in Lima are saying that Don Roque Guruzeta is a coward!'12 A month later, on 8 October, Guruzeta finally sailed out to confront Guise with the Asia, Achilles, a corvette and two locally armed brigs. Cambridge, Tartar and the United States followed them out to watch.13 Guise and his four smaller consorts immediately dispersed to escape into the intermittent mist, the Protector being chased by Asia until the frigate's superior speed outdistanced her. But Guruzeta lacked the killer instinct and was too gentlemanly to destroy the smaller patriot warships and left them unmolested. As he wrote loftily in his dispatch, 'these small vessels were so contemptible and so badly handled on that day, that I felt it unseemly to occupy myself with them and concentrated solely on the Prueba.'14 Guruzeta then led his force back to Callao having achieved nothing. After minor repairs, Guise and his blockading ships were soon back in station. Rodil was furious and refused even to speak to Guruzeta.

  Bolivar was pleased with his victory at Junin, but believed that there could be no further military operations until the end of the rainy season. So, leaving Sucre in the mountains to block any royalist advance, he withdrew slowly towards Lima. De la Serna, however, was less complacent than Bolivar expected. After Junin, he concentrated his scattered forces on Cuzco, and at the end of November began to move forward with a united army of 10,000 men against Sucre's force which, with fewer than 6000 troops, was heavily outnumbered. The two armies met at Ayacucho on 6 December 1824. The patriots should have lost, but they did not. After a day of brilliant manoeuvring, Sucre defeated the Spanish army in one of the decisive battles of South America. By nightfall, 1900 Spaniards lay dead, while 2500 soldiers, 480 officers, 100 colonels, and eight generals - including Canterac, Valdez and Viceroy de la Serna - had been taken prisoner. The capitulation agreed after the battle was one of total surrender and the withdrawal of the Spanish army. It was the end of all royalist hopes for the reconquest of South America. Only Olaneta's force remained at large, and this was destroyed - and its commander killed - the following March.