In Our Time - Bolivar

Episode Date: October 30, 2008

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and times of Simon Bolivar, hero of the revolutionary wars that liberated Spanish America from Spain. In 1804 Bolivar stood on a small hill in Rome and made a grand declaration. He said, “I swear before you, I swear before the God of my fathers, I swear by my fathers, I swear by my honour, I swear by my country that I will not rest, body or soul, until I have broken the chains with which Spanish power oppresses us.” Unlike most teeenage declarations, Bolivar made good on his word. A wealthy young man, Bolivar was inspired by Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau and by the compelling personality of Napoleon. His story is one of ideas and adventure, of armies crossing the Andes, of the far flung influence of the Napoleonic Wars and an unexpectedly large role for Britain. But when he died he was anything but a hero, his reputation undergoing a transformation after his death to make him an icon of liberation and the national hero of Venezuela, Columbia, Equador, Peru and Bolivia – a country that bears his name. With Anthony McFarlane, Professor of Comparative American Studies at the University of Warwick; John Fisher, Professor of Latin American History at the University of Liverpool and Catherine Davies, Professor in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In 1804, a young man from Venezuela stood on a small hill in Rome and with two friends and made a grand declaration. I swear before you, he said.

I swear before the God of my fathers. I swear before my fathers. I swear by my honour, I swear by my country, that I will not rest, body or soul, until I have broken the chains with which Spanish power oppresses us. His name was Simon Bolivar, and, astoundingly, over the next 30 years, he made good on his promise, so much so that his name is synonymous with the removal of Spanish rule from much of South America. He's become more icon than man, a romantic hero, and a revolutionary symbol.

But what did he actually do to achieve such fame? And was it the power of ideas that drove him to success or the fortune of events? With me to discuss the life and times of Simon Bolivar at John Fisher, Professor of Latin American History at the University of Liverpool, Catherine Davis, Professor in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Nottingham, and Anthony McFarlane Professor of Latin American History at the University of Warwick.

Anthony McFarlane, can you tell us something about Bolivar's early life? Well, Bolivar was born in Caracas and Venezuela, and he was the sum of a very wealthy, family that had been established in Venezuela in the 16th century, a slave-owning, plantation-owning family. His father died when he was about two and a half. His mother then subsequently died, orphaning him completely when he was about nine. And he went on to live with his uncle, with whom he did not get along at all well. After being schooled in Caracas and meeting up with a man who was to become important later in his life, a man called Simon Rodriguez, who was briefly his teacher

in Caracas. He then went to Europe in 1799. Before he gets here, he was born in 1783, and his family is described as a Creole family. That's important. Can you tell the listeners what he's meant by Creole in that context? Creole in the Spanish-American context means Spaniards who are born in America, people of pure Spanish descent or who claim to have pure Spanish descent, but who are born in the Americas.

Creoles, generally speaking, are divided between the rich and the poor. They're not necessarily all rich. He just happened to come from an extremely well-heeled plantocracy family. Coco. Cacao. He joined the army at 14 and after a few years.

He went on a grand tour of Europe like a young gentleman from Britain rather than... But he was becoming the fashion now. He went with a man called Rodriguez. What was he learning from Roder's? His tutor, personal tutor, what did Rodriguez teach him? Well, Rodriguez becomes more

important later in his life actually on his second trip to Europe when Rodriguez, who was a man dedicated to disseminating the doctrines of the European Enlightenment, it's then the second trip to Europe that Rodriguez has a real influence on him by persuading him to extend his education, to read in the classics, to read Enlightenment authors, in particular political thinkers such as Montesquieu, Russo and so on, Locke. So it's through Rodriguez's influence really that he gets the beginnings of his political education. But the first trip, sorry, I mixed up, much. The first trip was in 1802, the second with Rodriguez, and was 1804.

In 82, he made this marriage, he was age 19, to a young Irish-Socratic woman who died two years later, and he's described in the notes I have from you three years, as anybody would be distraught. How big and effect did that on him? Did that happen on him? It's obviously very difficult to say, because one, there's a counterfactual, isn't there,

what would have happened, had he remained married, happily married, had his wife not died of a fever so suddenly after their return to Venezuela, perhaps he would have gone on to become, like his father before him, a Creole land-owning aristocrat cultivating his estates. But of course, that doesn't happen. He goes

back distraught immediately to Europe, and it's that journey to Europe that in effect begins his intellectual and political career. And that, as you were saying, with Rodriguez begins a serious intellectual adventure into the Enlightenment. How well do you think he was taught?

was Rodriguez just passing on ideas that were around or was he trying to sort of convert him, as it were, to the Enlightenment? I think Rodriguez is determined to convert him and all of those around him to the ideas of the Enlightenment, the ideas of natural rights and political contract and an end to monarchy and so on. But having said that, I mean, Bolivar is very much an autodidact. He's somebody who takes up reading enthusiastically on his own behalf,

and he's particularly interested in the classics, and that's something which is going to stay with him for the rest of his life and many of his political models are going to come from Rome and Greece. So just to clarify, because I made the muddle up, he went in 1802 first of all, married, went back to Venezuela, his wife died, and then he comes back to Europe

on a second grand tour with Rodriguez, as Anthony has pointed out. John Fisher, Napoleon's star was then massively in the ascendant, and he was one of many young men dazzled and impressed by Napoleon. Can you tell us the influence that Napoleon had specifically on Bolivar at that time? Boniva was both dazzled by

appalled by Napoleon. He admired Napoleon's military skill, his leadership. He actually refused to attend Napoleon's coronation in Notre Dame Cathedral. He'd been invited to go with the Spanish ambassador, but he sunk in his rooms because he disapproved of Napoleon making himself an emperor. And that was to be a thread throughout his career. Admiration for Napoleon.

He saw Napoleon in Italy, in 1805. He admired his prestige, his authority, but from that point he was a determined Republican and therefore Napoleon was both a model to follow and also a model to avoid in his eyes. Was he a model to follow mostly as a military man? I think in part Belvoir admired Napoleon's military skill

although as military men they were quite different Napoleon was leading armies of 100,000 men Bolivar was leading armies which never got bigger than about 9,000 men back in Venezuela. Many of Bolivar's troops were semi-professionals, local people, but Napoleon had a very professional army. So he admired Napoleon's tactics, his imagination, which he put into good use himself in the second decade of the 19th century. But I think he admired Napoleon above all as a self-confident leader of men,

and he saw himself in not light. So what would you say led him to make the declaration, which I read at the beginning of the program, an introduction on Montesacro, in Rome, well-chosen that place where Sikinus led the revolt of the people against the Roman Patriarchs. What led him to make that declaration, have it remembered or written down? Well, it takes place just around the time the Spanish and French navies are being defeated by Nelson at Trafalgar. Spain has re-entered a long war against Britain, which he foresees will disdise, will destroy Spain's power.

He's already spent a number of years in Madrid where he's been appalled by the incompetence of a Spanish court. I think he's seeing already that a political vacuum is going to be created, that Spain is going to lose its empire through its own incompetence, and he wants to be at the head of the movement

which will replace Spanish rule with independence. Although it's not until 1810 that he is fully identified in political terms in Venezuela, as somebody who is committed to the cause of independence. I think he's rather diffident.

This Montesacro declaration doesn't elevate him a publicity at the time. He writes about it later. Roderiggas writes about it later. So there's a possibility of a slight embellishment of the facts. Just trying, before we set out on this journey with Bolivar, I mean, to get a grip on this young man, Anthony Falun's talked about him being autodidact,

he's being well taught, presumably, and well-rated. He's also had a thorough military. training as a younger man. How would you describe the character? What sort of person would you think this young man was? Supreme self-confidence, charismatic, popular, has very good relationships with his men. He's an inspired leader, very sociable. He's remarkable for being on his horse all day and dancing all night. He's obviously a man with personal charisma. I'm not sure that his military training had been all that thorough before he went to Europe. He'd been in the militia.

He'd never fought a battle before he became fully involved in the independence period. He had been trained in the use of arms, but like many young upper-class Venezuelans, he'd had a sort of military training, but not a very extensive military training. But you knew what the army was about to put it to give it the lowest common annoying. Absolutely, yes. And he knew what groups of men were supposed to do when they went into battle. Yes. He clearly was a great believer in his own. capacities. He likes praise, he likes flattery, but he manages to project that image while still remaining popular. Catherine Davis, can we give people an idea of the power and strength and length

of the Spanish Empire in South America at that time at the beginning of the 19th century? It'd been now for about 300 years, I don't know. Well, Columbus got to the new world in 1492, so yeah. It's very extensive. Just think about the geographical scope because it stretches from the lands in the New World stretch from Patagonia right the way through up South America, Central America, into North America and what today is Mexico and then was New Spain,

right into what these days is the United States with those states that have got Spanish names like California, Arithona, Nevada, Utah, Tejas, Colorado, all of that was all part of New Spain or Mexico later on, and was until the 1840s, of course, when the United States nabbed it from Mexico. So it's very extensive. Of course, then you've got the Philippine Islands as well

as part of the Spanish Empire, and parts of Europe that aren't Spain and sometimes even Portugal, so Naples and Sicily and so on. So it is a big area, and it's really difficult. to get one's head around how it all stayed together. That was the next question, so I'm afraid. We're going to have to focus on that.

Your head is going to, I hope, get around it. How did they hold it together? I mean, you've got a comparative with a small population there in Europe running this massive empire. Well, I think it's best to think of it rather than some kind of modern day state or system, to think of it as what it was, which is the domains of a king. So, you know, this is a king. and it would be a Habsburg or a Bourbon.

At the time it was a Bourbon. Who was the head of, was the crown of, this very, I think Anthony Padden said it was a kind of loose conglomeration of principalities and kingdoms. So that's how it worked. And you have in the New World, in the Americas at the time, it's divided up into vice royalties, where the king would send out a vice-roy to govern.

in his stead or Captain Seas generals where they're more like garrisons or Audeanthias which were more like the courts, the centre of the courts. They were still very much the top dogs,

the rulers and people like Bolivar's family, however wealthy, were of the second rank, as I understand it. Now, this began, one of the, it's going to get a bit complicated now, but one of the big upheav was in 1808 when Napoleon

March in Spain put his brother on the throne and that is an upheaval because nobody quite knows who is in charge there in Spain and to whom they should give allegiance. They don't know that for the next five years or so, and then 39 comes back. But things have changed by them. Obviously, if they've changed that much, they were ready for change. So can you give us some general idea of what the main changes were in that period?

Well, it's as you say. It's a very confusing period. In 1808, it's very confusing because it's not clear. who is in charge on whose head the crown sits because as John said there's a kind of vacuum power

and that's because the old king Charles IV who represents the Anshone regime if you like he had ruled before but he'd been forcibly deposed by his son the Principae de Asturias if you like the Prince of Wales

he'd been forcibly deposed and the son was to become Fernando the 7th right so there's a kind of family argument going on here. And meanwhile, of course, as John said, France and Spain were allies. So Charles IV asked Napoleon to intercede, and could he help him sort out this situation

with his son, right? So Napoleon, of course, of course, yes, come to France, so they both go to France. And of course, once they're in France, he doesn't let them back again. And Napoleon puts his brother on the Spanish throne as Joseph or Jose, the first. first. So this crown has gone on three heads, as it were, back and forth. And at the same time, as I say, they're

allies, France and Spain. So Napoleon has kind of asked if Carlos the force would mind if his troops could end to Spain and therefore invade Portugal. So meanwhile, all these French troops are pouring into Spain. And

there's no declaration of war, because it's all meant to be part of the the big plan was Spain and France in Vogue Portugal. So it's a very confusing time in 180s and in fact what happens I mean do you want me to go on to what happens how we get into the peninsula wall?

No, we can leave the peninsula wall we can come back to... But it's very important the peninsula war. It's very important but we have to get quite a bit of move on and we can summarize it by saying there was a disruption at the head of the empire. The head of the empire being Spain. The head of the empire was

disputed those in South America like Bolivar and many others saw this, but they were rather uneasy about it, maybe even fearful about it, but they acted because of it. Can you tell us what gathered force after what Catherine described, please, Anthony? Well, it is, as Catherine says, there's a fragmentation, and the fragmentation starts in Spain. There's a collapse at the centre, a kind of implosion of the empire. And it's possible actually thinking of it to liken it, rather than to say the French Revolution or the American Revolution, to think of this as something like the collapse of the Soviet Union.

the centre collapses and the satellites begin to fall away, begin to break away. Interestingly, the first reaction in Spanish America is that of loyalty. As soon as news arrives from Spain, from these junters or interim governments that are set up in the provinces in Spain, as soon as news arrives that Spain has been taken over by the usurpur Napoleon, creoles on the whole, through their town councils, which is a major institution, and through other assemblies that are called together by Crown officials, vote their loyalty to the Crown and seek to defend it. But that doesn't last because as soon as they begin to realize

during the course of 1808 and 1809, the beginning of 1810, that things are not going to be the same again, that Spain is not going to recover, that the old monarchy is not going to recover, then they begin to look to their own autonomy. Can I ask an addendum, Catherine Davis here, Are we talking, we've talked about how Bolivar is educated in the Enlightenment. And I think it was you who mentioned,

the ideas coming from the American Revolution and from the French Revolution, which fed in. Were these ideas at play in South America, or was it more, as Antonia said, like the breakup of the Soviet bloc? Were these ideas feeding it is our turn to play a part in liberation? The ideas were certainly there, yes, but, but, among a few

these would have to be educated men and women actually belonging to the Creole elite so first of all they'd have to be able to read and rice which cancelled out quite a few a heavy percentage of the population many of those who were in favour of independence had travelled like Bolivia to Europe

some had been in the United States and yes they picked up these ideas and some of the writers as I think it was Anthony mentioned were very well, not popular but certainly they'd be familiar with Montesquieu. I mean Montesquieu the spirit of the laws

you see is a book about law and these men were all trained in law. A lot of them had studied at Erecho, had studied law at university. They were very familiar with the classics so they knew all about Roman republicanism and

classical antiquity in general. So they'd be familiar with that. Locke, as Tony said, was important and particularly Russo's social contract. And I think although these were books that would not be easily, it'd be difficult to get hold of them. And in the pre-independence period,

they'd be certainly on the black list as it were. once the system started to break down, it was much easier to get hold of them. Of course, they'd be reading them in French. Another popular reader, writer at the time, was Bentham. Utilitarianism was very popular. So these books were very much in play. Can you bring us back to our subject of the discussion,

main principal subject, John Fisher? Moving on in this period, after 1808, upward, where was Bolivar then? He made this declaration, and what was he actually doing in what became, as you've begun to describe, and a series of different sorts of unrest, cross-currents of unrest, as Anthony said, loyalty at the beginning,

and as Catherine said, ideas coming in, but only to a few. Mind you, it only needs a few, but that's a different argument. Where was Bolivar in all this? Bolivar goes back to Venezuela in 1807, and he spends most of his time running his estates. Like many Venezuelans, he's confused by the news from Spain, and bear in mind the time gap here. Venezuela and others are celebrating the accession of 13 on the 7th

when he's already been deposed. There's this problem. What is it about the month? It's about three months. It's about three months. To some parts of South America, it's even longer to the Pacific. In general, Spanish Americans

accepted the authority of the so-called central hunter, which claimed to govern Spain in the name of 13th from the middle of 1800s. despite their support, which is often financial, the French had overrun all of Spain by the end of 1809. And it's when the Central Hunter itself implodes and appoints the Council of Regency, and the French are in all of Spain apart from Cadiz.

It's when news of that reaches Spanish America that people like Believa begin to invoke Locke and also have some Spanish theorists, arguing, as Catherine pointed out earlier, that the overseas possessions of Spain had been kingdoms of Spain, of the Spanish King. And it's then they begin to argue that perhaps a social contract between

them and the King has been broken and they have the same rights as the Kingdoms of Spain to set up their own provisional governments. At this stage very few people are arguing very clearly in favour of independence. They're arguing for some sort of autonomy or devolution. Some believe they are genuinely protecting

the overseas possessions of Spain from the French. Others are committed to independence. Bon Ivar probably not. Bon Iva is quite prominent in 1909 in holding conversations, Samholtans in his houses in Caracas, with other young men, basically saying,

what are we going to do? What are we going to do in this situation? Now, there are an enormous number of cross-currents here, as you have made clear the three of you, and I completely appreciate that, but I think we've got to take out the line of Bolivar now for the rest of the programme. And John set us on that path,

and the action that he began to take Anthony McFarlane and rest in the listeners' minds that there are civil wars, there are different sorts of dependency and independency and so on across this massive, as Catherine pointed out from this massive chunk from north of Arizona down to Patriconia. So Bolivazia got cracking in revolt which led to the 1811, which led to the Republic of Venezuela, which was short-lived. What significance did that have for him, if we can stick to him now?

It's enormously significant for him because it's his first entry into real political action, as John was just saying, he'd been engaged in a sense in the periphery between in 1808, 1810. However, when the junta is set up in Caracas, he undertakes a diplomatic mission to London. And when he's in London, he meets with Francisco de Miranda. Miranda had been a Venezuelan revolutionary who had a quite remarkable career. And Bolivar was specifically told, do not get in touch with Miranda when you're in London. The first thing he did was get in touch with Miranda because when the mission arrived they were completely at sea

they knew nobody. Miranda, who'd been a revolutionist in Europe for a couple of decades, knew everybody in London, including cabinet ministers. So they were able to meet with Lord Wellesley, for example, in Apsley House and have discussions about what might happen. But without going into that story, they're not looking for independence, they're not looking for recognition of a separate republic.

What it does give Bolivar is a sense of, a sense that he already has to some extent from his previous trips to Europe as a private citizen, a sense of what's going on in Europe and a sense of the delicacy of the balance of power. And so he goes back to Venezuela with Miranda in tow. Miranda follows on shortly afterwards

and then he begins to radicalise. They set up a club, a political club, under the name of the Agricultural Society, strangely, a good disguise and that agricultural society, the few radicals in it, those few radicals are able to push through the first Venezuelan independence. And in 1811, in July 1811,

the first declaration of Venezuelan independence takes place. So we're moving forward, Bolivar now, Catherine Davis, and in the end he's forced to leave Venezuela. He collapsed. He's exiled several times in his career. But he finds a home in Jamaica, where he writes what became a famous letter, a letter from Jamaica. Can you say why it was important for him

and why it was important in the context of what we're discussing? Well, it's important for him because it was a crucial moment. You think about 1815, you see now, Napoleon's out, having the Congress of Vienna. That's the end of Napoleon. The Spanish king had come back, Ferdinand is back, and he's shown himself not to be, the nice generous king, he said he would be, but he's a tyrant

and is taking all kinds of repression against the liberals in Spain and therefore in the Americas. So it's a crucial moment in that respect and it looks as though the whole enterprise might founder because apart from which Fernando is very keen on reconquering the Americas and he's getting troops to send out to South America. In fact they did arrived there under the Spanish general Pablo Morillo. So Bolivaz's got to kind of recoup and decide what's going to happen. And he's in Jamaica.

Now, of course, Jamaica's British. So this letter that he writes, which was in response to, apparently, to a citizen of Jamaica asking him for news about what was happening and what was the situation now in South America. and he writes this very long Kālte de Chamaica, which is a letter from Jamaica, explaining his vision about what had happened so far, why the independence movement had failed, what was it that hadn't quite gelled,

and what was it that they had to do? I mean, it was a political programme, basically. And he's hoping that this letter would reach the British authorities of the British government. because now that Waterloo's finished with, or at least Napoleon's out, it could be argued that Spain and Britain need not be allies anymore. So, I mean, the British government was freer to intervene in some way, and they were quite keen, obviously, that the Americas didn't go back to the Spanish.

Was it effective at the time, this letter from Jamaica? Sorry? Was it effective at the time? Did it reach the British? Did it reach people in South America? Did it have any effect? John? Don't be sure. The first publication of the letter is in 1818 in English.

Right. The first Spanish edition of the letter is in 1830-something. So it's very important in Bongiva's thinking. With hindsight, we can see the development of his ideas, but it probably had little practical impact with other Spanish-Americans, except those who converse with Bongiore. It's a retrospectively very important. Anthony.

I think to think about the Jamaica letter, you need to mention, first of all, a previous writing of his, which is when he's in exile in 1812 in Cartagena de Indias, which is the port of Cartagena in modern Colombia, and there he produces a manifesto which sets out the basis of what's going to become. His political thinking about how government should be constructed, and part of it is repeated in the Jamaica letter. But the Cartagena manifesto does have a political impact in the countries

in which he, between which he's moving, that's to say Colombia and Venezuela. And it's a great condemnation of the evils of federalism. He sees the first republic to have been the victim of political ideals that it simply could not sustain, that it adopted a kind of confederal system that made central government weak. It made it unable to resist Spanish forces. It produced no popularity whatsoever. It was seen as a government of a small, a small, creole minority without popular support. And he condemns that outright and repeats it in the Jamaica letter.

So out of the sort of creaking breakdown of the Spanish Empire, which is beginning and stopping because the cracks are papered over and not everybody agrees with it, but some people do. Out of that creaking ship, Bolivar slowly begins to put his own project together

using, as Catherine pointed out ideas which came from there, as well as an appreciation of the situation. So he goes back, though, let's start with John, I'd like to dwell on this a little bit, and begins to put together armies, which then from 1815 onwards into the 1820s, have defeats and victories, but on the whole, astounding victories.

Now, how does he put these forces together, and what size are they and who are they against, and what's really going on when he gets to do the battles? John Fisher. Well, his third major expedition to Venezuela, which is, after he's written a Jamaican letter, takes a different strategy. Instead of trying to attack the coastal cities,

he goes up the river Orinoco and establishes his head. headquarters in the hinterland of Venezuela. And there he joins up with some many semi-professional, rather uneducated local groups. His own strategy at that time is to win people over by his personal magnetism, but also to shoot people who won't accept his authority. There's a famous incident where one of his subordinates is shot because he doesn't believe Bolivia's forming the right tactics. He's able to survive in nearly a lot of...

They're supposed to have been quite a lot of atrocities. Are you going to read from... The atrocities go back to the second campaign when he declared the so-called war to the death against those who would not support the revolution. And we're dealing here with a fairly small society and one in which I guess most people wanted to keep their heads down, but they were suffering atrocities from both the Royalist forces.

In particular, the Royalists recruited many slaves and gave him their freedom, gave them the chance to attack the elite. Boniva responds by declaring the war to the death against those who will not support him. and many individuals who probably don't want to be fighting at all are suffering. But going back to the Orinoka campaign, Bongivas survives there because he is isolated from the main Spanish forces.

So with hindsight, strategically it's a brilliant move. I still haven't got a grip, John, and maybe you can all pile in here, and what numbers are involved, how he gets them together. I mean, getting all this, even when you said 9,000 compared to the ponies under 50,000, still a heck of a thing to get 9,000 soldiers together up the Orinoco River or wherever to face him in the right direction and to overcome established forces. Anthony, you have to take over here.

Well, it's an extraordinary feat, you're quite right. And I think that one has to appreciate in order to see the nature of the feat is the character of the wars that are taking place before, because the wars that take place before 1815 are really minor affairs in which there are really wars of cities against one another in which the idea is to amass forces

in order to intimidate your opponent rather than to annihilate him. Now that changes, as John was saying in 1812, with the War to the Declaration of the War to the Death, which was an attempt to create a kind of nationalist movement to get Americans to identify as Americans against Spaniards. Bolivar's achievement, though, from the Aeronoco is a quite remarkable one because not merely does he bring recruits together from within Venezuela,

but he's also able to link up with guerrillas in Colombia, and he's able to draw together the main regional chieftains within Venezuela, the two most prominent of whom are called Paez and Marino. And he's able to establish a unified command. And on the basis of that unified command, he undertakes the expedition from Venezuela across the Andes, in order to take the Spaniards by surprise, and he defeats the Spanish army and ejects the viceroy

from neighboring Nuguanada, which is modern Colombia. It's very important to just emphasise that before he does this, before he crosses the Andes, he's reinforced by about 4,000 foreign volunteers, most of them British, some are idealists, some are mercenaries, some are adventurers, some quite, we don't know quite why they're there. In fact, a number of them are so disappointed with conditions. They go off to the Caribbean to become indentured servants. But he has this hard core of experienced veterans of Napoleonic wars,

mainly British, who give a professionalism to his army. And there are decisive importance in the battles which then occur in 1818 onwards. And some of them go through with him on the way to Bolivia. But just for me to be, I'm sorry to be so pedantically persistent, but we're talking about 9,000-ish size of the army. And is he facing armies of a similar size when he's taking them on? Because we're going to talk about country after country after country falling to this man marching across extraordinary terrain,

stretches of terrain and nature of terrain, aren't we? Yes, well, occasionally he encounters the Battle of Boyokar, the key battle in New Granada, or what becomes the centre of Colombia, he's facing a slightly superior army. They're not hugely superior. Later, in battles in Peru, he used to face bigger armies. But I don't think a royalist army ever exceeded

about 12 to 16,000, 16,000 absolute maximum. So one's talking about quite small armies on both sides. Admittedly, these are within small populations. We've been talking about men, but Catherine, it is accurate to say and important the role that women played in the armies and in the campaigns in this movement. Yes, it is interesting.

And it's just to, I mean, I'm coming at this as a literary specialist, not as a military historian. But just my take on it is that because this is a civil war, because the garrisons of what was the Imperial Army, a lot of those forces are going over to the other side. And because the population, involved massively, as it was in the Peninsula Ward, it has to be said, where a lot of the recruits are recruited from the ordinary people, as it were.

Then the populations involved, and of course the population's 50% women. So the women are bound to be involved in that respect. And they're involved in all different ways. You have the camp followers, which you tended to get anyway, in big campaigns, which were women who either sold things to the soldiers or often were family members, the mothers and the sisters and the wives would follow their husbands on the campaign.

So there were those. And then there were women who worked actively on behalf of the independence movement as, for example, spies and informers. And in fact, their activities were recognised by San Martín, who was the... liberated the protector of the south of the continent. At the moment we're only talking about the north of the continent,

he set up the order of the sun to recognise the worth of prominent activists in the independence movements, and about half of them were women. So they were working on that level. A lot of the aristocratic ladies, or rather well-heeled ladies, were selling their jewels, which we might just sneer at it.

But if you think of the silver and the emeralds and so on, those jewels must be. have been worth quite a lot of money. So he was getting financed, as it were, from the big, rich families. And then there were women who actually fought on the front, as it were, as well. And some of them dressed as male soldiers, as you find right across, I think, the Americas at the time,

especially in the American War of Independence, you got women fighting dressed as soldiers. But some of them didn't. And the most interesting ones are the ones that were dressed as soldiers but were obviously women. They had long, loose hair and so on. And they rode, they were very good horse women. And they rode out into battle with,

usually at the side of their husbands. So, I mean, there are a couple of, Frances de Thubiagas, one, who was a mother of five children, but she rode out with her husband up in, what today is Bolivia. And then Juan de Azul Dui was another who was very famous at the time.

And she was the wife of, Manuel Padilla, who were all working under the command of Belgrano at the time. So she too fought in battle and was wounded, and her husband was killed, in fact. So they were kind of iconic figures, and there's some lovely portraits of the engravings, which you can see. You can see them on the British Library websites, actually, in their online gallery. Of these intrepid women, I mean, Juan de Athorudu, he had had a bodyguard of 25 women which she called Las Amazona,

so the Amazons. So they're working on that whole tradition, you know, of Amazon fighting warrior women. As Catherine pointed out there, John, in en passant almost, we're talking about the north at this present time, let's say the early 1820s and the south. They've got this very fine warrior and soldier of San Martin. They closed together, and they came together.

San Martin had come up from Chile and so on. And after St. Martin walked away and Bolivar sort of took the whole pot. Now, how did that come about? Well, San Martin had taken an army to Peru towards the end of 1820 to invade Peru. He'd emancipated Chile from Spanish rule. And in collaboration with the first president of Chile, Bernardo Higgins, there's an interesting story there, but perhaps not time for it. he'd taken an army to Peru of about 5,000 men

carried by an uniformed Chimian navy headed by a remarkable Scottish figure called Thomas Cochrane. The Brits seem to be everywhere at this. Yes, yes. Cochrane is an interesting figure. I'd like to stop with Bernardo Higgings, but we just don't have time. Some Martin runs on the coast of Peru

towards the end of 1820, and there is a bit of a standoff between him and the Vice-regal forces. It is partly because a new liberal government in Spain is sending out Peace Commissioner to those parts of America which it still believes are in its control to seek to negotiate with the insurgents.

San Martin believes that Chile and what is now Argentina cannot be safe as long as there's a strong royalist army in Peru. And just a footnote here, most of the royalist army in Peru consists of Peruvians rather than peninsular Spaniards. Eventually, San Martin realizes,

by mid-1822, that he cannot win the war in Peru without outside support. He was able to occupy the capital of Peru, the city of Lima, because the last viceroy of Peru took the Royalist army to the highlands. San Martin goes north in 1822 to meet Bongiwar for the one and only time at what is now the Ecuadorian port of Huayakil. It's the famous Huayakil meeting.

There are various versions of what happens. We know that Simon Bongivar says to San Martin, as he stepped off his ship, welcome to the soil of Colombia. although really Hawaii Kiel was Peruvian. Bongiwa also says to San Martin a toast to the two greatest men in history, General San Martin

and myself. Basically, San Martin does a deal with Bonnevar. Sam Martine wants Peru to have a monarchy. Bolivar is steadfastly opposed to that. They do a deal. Sam Martine goes back to Lima, he resigns his command, goes back to Chimmy, and eventually settles it in Europe.

Can you give us an idea Anthony McFarne, at this stage when Bolivar's, as it were, made an alliance with the south, they're going into country after country, is winning battle after battle. What's his vision, briefly, what's his vision for the continent? He was a man given to visions from Rome onwards. He was indeed a man of great vision, and that's perhaps something that separates him from the other great liberator figure to enter history San Martin.

Bolivar is a man of continental vision, and he moves through these countries partly out of, of Realpolitik in order to protect the Republic of Colombia, he realizes he has to shift the Spaniards out of the rest of South America as well. And he has his vision for a grand vision of the whole of the Americas, even when he calls a conference at Panama that doesn't work, but he wants the North America's, the South America's, the whole theme to come to.

It fails, but it's part of his vision. Towards the end of his life, or near the end of his life, he falls out of favor. He's thought of as a mere dictator when there isn't a big enemy anymore, enemy anymore. He dies at the fairly early age of 47 and I've read from your notes is sort of mostly unmoaned, briefly

I'm afraid. How did he become a neglected for quite a few decades after that? How did he become the extraordinary figure in history that he is now in that part of the world? First of all you, Catherine. Well, because he represented for the new republics, the new nation states that

were being gradually set up because it took time, I mean, Argentina's not the Argentina we know today until the 1860s. And so that whole process of actually setting up new nation states as a long and difficult one anyway. There are lots of rivalries. There are those who thought Bolivia was a good thing and those who didn't.

I mean, if you think of Colombia, the Colombian liberals in Bogotad didn't like Bolivia one bit. I can found. You're absolutely right that Bolivar is a neglected figure and indeed a hated figure in the last years of his life in Colombia and really not nobody in Venezuela is taking much notice of him either. Ironically it's one of his enemies, erstwhile comrade in arms, erstwhile friend and enemy Pius

who some years later begins the cult of Bolivar because he sees Bolivar as a way of pulling together of Venezuela that's beginning to fragment. So he looks back to the memory of this now gloriously dead liberator who can be called upon to act as a centre for nationalism. Finally, I'm sorry, John, briefly. What's his status now? Well, he's the inspirer, if we believe President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela,

of the Bongavaruan Republic of Venezuela. Chavez rode through the streets of Caracas carrying Bonneva's sword. He's also admired or was admired by Fidel Castro. There's something in Bongiva for everybody. Thank you very much. Anthony McFarlane, John Fisher, Catherine Davis. Thank you for listening. Next week, Aristotle's politics.

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