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!