Jose de San Martin

Hola, my name is Jose de San Martin and I would like to tell my life story and accomplishments. I was born in the village of Yapeyu, in the Argentine province of Corrientes, on February 25th 1778. My father, Don Juan de San Martin, was a man of principle and held a political position in the province. My mother, Dona Greguria Matorras, was the niece of a conquistador. In 1786, I moved from my home country to Spain. This is where I got formal education and I studied in the Noble Seminary of Madrid. Three years later I decided to have a military career in the regiment of Murcia. I served the Spanish army during the Napoleonic wars and in 1808 I fought the Emperor's army itself at the Battle of Baylen. While I was in Spain I joined a lodge of South American officers promoting the independence of South American peoples. I felt the need to return to my home country, Argentina, and in 1812 I left Europe for the independently governed city of Buenos Aires. There I was recognized for my military degree and was told to set up a cavalry corps. With all this going on, I still found a way to love and I married my beautiful wife Maria Remedies de Escalada. With the inspiration to liberate South America from the Spanish I decided to create a lodge called theLautaro lodge. My first plan was to rid of some of the members of the Spanish government in South America. A peace option was made with the calling of an Assembly of Delegates from all the provinces to write a constitution. The Spanish mobilized against us and my army of mounted grenadiers held off and defeated them. In 1814, I took control of the North army and marched through the cities of Tucuman and Mendoza. I proposed a route through the Andes to get into Chile making it easier to conquer Lima, the capital of the Spanish government in South America. Accepting my proposal, the government of Buenos Aires told me to proceed with the dangerous crossing. With that I marched through the Andes and won a decisive victory at Chacabuco and then again at Maipu. I then defeated the Spranish, freeing Chile and Argentina. Marching north of Chile, I went for the jugular of the Spanish. I cornered and defeated them at a holding port and then marched to Lima in which I entered unopposed. I was named protector but had a short term in which I called off. After my lovely wife passed away, I moved back to Europe and lived in France until passing away in August 17, 1850.

I’m Protector of Peru!

I believed that the best way to liberate Peru was to get the Peruvian people to accept independence voluntarily. By 1820, royalist Peru was an isolated outpost of Spanish influence. I had liberated Chile and Argentina to the south, and Simon Bolivar and Antonio Jose de Sucre had freed Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela to the north, leaving only Peru and present-day Bolivia under Spanish rule. I had brought a printing press with me on the expedition, and I began bombarding citizens of Peru with pro-independence propaganda. I maintained a steady correspondence with Viceroys Joaquín de la Pezuela and José de la Serna in which I urged them to accept the inevitability of independence and surrender willingly in order to avoid bloodshed. My army was closing in on Lima; I captured Pisco on September 7 and Huacho on November 12. Viceroy La Serna responded by moving the royalist army from Lima to the defensible port of Collao in July of 1821, basically abandoning the city of Lima to me. The people of Lima, who feared an uprising by slaves and Indians more than they feared my army of Argentines and Chileans at their doorstep, invited me into the city. On July 12, 1821, I triumphantly entered Lima to the cheers of the populace. On July 28, 1821, Peru officially declared independence, and on August 3, I was named "Protector of Peru" and set about setting up a government. My brief rule was enlightened and marked by stabilizing the economy, freeing slaves, giving freedom to the Peruvian Indians and abolishing such hateful institutions as censorship and the Inquisition. The Spanish still had armies at the port of Collao and high in the mountains. I decided to starve out the garrison at Collao and wait for the Spanish army to attack me along the narrow, easily defended coastline leading to Lima in which they wisely declined, leaving a sort of stalemate. I was victorious and happy for my people and I resigned from my position of “Protector of Peru”.

We crush the Spanish at Chacabuco and Maipu

The idiotic Spanish soon realized they had been duped in the Andes and scrambled to keep my army out of Santiago. The Governor, Casimiro Marcó del Pont, sent all available forces out under the command of General Rafael Maroto with the purpose of delaying me until reinforcements could arrive from the south. They met at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12, 1817 and resulted was a huge patriot victory for myself and the independents. Maroto was completely routed, losing half his force, while my forces lost hardly any because of my principled maneuvering. The Spanish in Santiago fled, and I rode triumphantly into the city at the head of my army shouting “hoorah and for Chile and Argentina”. I still believed that for Argentina and Chile to be truly free, the Spanish needed to be removed from their stronghold in Peru. Still covered in glory from my triumph at Chacabuco, I returned to Buenos Aires to get funds and reinforcements. News from Chile saying Royalist and Spanish forces in southern Chile had joined with reinforcements and were threatening Santiago soon brought me hurrying back across the Andes. I took charge of the patriot forces once more and met the Spanish at the battle of Maipu on April 5, 1818. We crushed the Spanish army, killing some 2,000, capturing around 2,200 and seizing all of the Spanish artillery! The stunning victory at Maipu marked the definitive liberation of Chile and Spain would never again mount a serious threat to the area.

Marching through the Andes

My army of the Andes is one of a kind and I needed to make it perfect so I immediately began recruiting, outfitting and drilling the Army of the Andes. By the end of 1816 I had an army of some 5,000 men, including a healthy mix of infantry, cavalry, artillerymen and support forces. I recruited officers and accepted tough gauchos into my army, usually as horsemen. Chilean exiles were welcome and I needed as much men as I could get, and I appointed O'Higgins as my right hand man. There was even a regiment of British soldiers who I recruited for the war in Chile. I was obsessed with details, and my army was as well equipped and trained as I could make it. No detail was too trivial for me and the Army of the Andes, and my planning would pay off when my army crossed the Andes. In the January of 1817, my army set off for the crossing. The Spanish forces in Chile were expecting him and he knew it. Should the Spanish decide to defend the pass I chose, I could face a hard battle with weary troops, but I fooled the Spanish by mentioning an incorrect route to some Indian allies. As I had suspected, the Indians were playing both sides and sold the information to the Spanish. Therefore, the royalist armies were far to the south of where my army actually crossed. The crossing was arduous, as flatland soldiers and gauchos struggled with the freezing cold and high altitudes, but my meticulous planning paid off in the end and he lost relatively few men and animals. In February of 1817, my Army of the Andes entered Chile unopposed. Hoorah!

My Early Military Career

At the age of nineteen, I served with the Spanish navy, fighting the British on several occasions. At one point, my ship was captured, but I returned to Spain in a prisoner exchange. I fought in Portugal and at the blockade of Gibraltar, and rose swiftly in rank as I proved to be a skilled, loyal soldier. When France invaded Spain in 1806 I fought against them on several occasions, eventually rising to the rank of Adjutant-General. I commanded a regiment of dragoons, very skilled light cavalry. My accomplishments as a career soldier and war hero seemed the most unlikely of candidates to defect and join the insurgents in South America, but that's exactly what I did. In September of 1811, I boarded a British ship in Cadiz with the intention of returning to Argentina - where I had not been since the age of seven – and I joined the Independence movement there. My motives seemed unclear to many, a little part of it had to do with my ties to the Masons, many of whom were pro-Independence. I was the highest ranking Spanish officer to defect to the patriot side in all of Latin America. I arrived in Argentina in March of 1812 and at first I was greeted with suspicion by Argentine leaders because of my Spanish military career, but I soon proved my loyalty and ability. In January of 1813, I defeated a small Spanish force that had been harassing settlements on the Parana River. This victory - one of the first for me against the Spanish - captured the imagination of the patriots, and before long I was head of all of the armed forces in Buenos Aires.