1.
Chilean War of Independence
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Traditionally, the beginning of the war is dated as September 18,1810. A declaration of independence was issued by Chile on February 12,1818 and formally recognized by Spain in 1844. The Chilean War of Independence was part of the more aroused Spanish American wars of independence, Independence did not have unanimous support among Chileans, who were divided between independentists and royalists. What started as a movement among elites against the colonial power. Traditionally, the process is divided into three stages, the Patria Vieja, 1810–1814, the Reconquista, 1814–1817, and the Patria Nueva, 1817–1823. In May 1808 the overthrow of Charles IV and Ferdinand VII, their replacement by Joseph Bonaparte, in the meantime, Chile was facing its own internal political problems. Governor Guzmán had suddenly died in February of that year and the crown had not been able to appoint a new governor before the invasion, since her father and brother were being held prisoners in France, she regarded herself as the heiress of her captured family. Allegedly among her plan was to send armies to occupy Buenos Aires and northern Argentina, brigadier García Carrasco was a man of crude and authoritarian manners, who managed in a very short time to alienate the criollo elites under his command. Already in Chile, as in most of Latin America, there had some independence agitation but minimal. In 1809, Governor García Carrasco himself was implicated in a flagrant case of corruption that managed to destroy remnants of moral authority he or his office had left. From that moment on the pressure for his removal began to build, in June 1810 news arrived from Buenos Aires that Napoleon Bonapartes forces had conquered Andalusia and laid siege to Cádiz, the last redoubt against the French on Spanish soil. Moreover, the Supreme Central Junta, which had governed the Empire for the past two years, had abolished itself in favor of a Regency Council, among those arrested were José Antonio de Rojas, Juan Antonio Ovalle and Bernardo de Vera y Pintado. Inspired by the May Revolution in Argentina, the movement had also propagated through the criollo elite. They resented the illegal arrests and, together with the news that Cádiz was all that was left of a free Spain, count Toro Zambrano was, by all standards, a very unorthodox selection. He was an old man already and moreover a criollo as opposed to a peninsular. Immediately after his appointment in July, the juntistas began to lobby him in order to obtain the formation of a junta. In August the Royal Appeals Court took a loyalty oath to the Regency Council in front of a massive audience. After vacillating for some time over which party to follow, Toro Zambrano finally agreed to hold an open Cabildo meeting in Santiago to discuss the issue, the date was set for September 18,1810 at 11 AM
2.
Argentine War of Independence
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On July 9,1816, an assembly met in San Miguel de Tucumán, declared full independence with provisions for a national constitution. The territory of modern Argentina was part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, with its city in Buenos Aires. Modern Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia were also part of the viceroyalty, the vast area of the territory and slow communications led most populated areas to become isolated from each other. The wealthiest regions of the viceroyalty were in Upper Peru, Salta and Córdoba had closer ties with Upper Peru than with Buenos Aires. Similarly, Mendoza in the west had closer ties with the Captaincy General of Chile, Paraguay was isolated from all other regions. This created a rivalry between the Criollos, people born in America, and the peninsulares, people arrived from Europe. The ideas of the American and French Revolutions, and the Age of Enlightenment, the full prohibition imposed by Spain to trade with other nations was also seen as damaging to the viceroyaltys economy. The population of Buenos Aires was highly militarized during the British invasions of the Río de la Plata, Buenos Aires was captured in 1806, and then liberated by Santiago de Liniers with forces from Montevideo. Fearing a counter-attack, all the population of Buenos Aires capable of bearing arms was arranged in military bodies, a new British attack in 1807 captured Montevideo, but was defeated in Buenos Aires, and forced to leave the viceroyalty. The transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil generated military concern and it was feared that the British would launch a third attack, this time allied with Portugal. However, no military conflict took place, as when the Peninsular War started Britain, Javier de Elío created a Junta in Montevideo and Martín de Álzaga sought to make a similar move by organizing a mutiny in Buenos Aires, but the local military forces intervened and thwarted it. Spain appointed a new viceroy, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, and Liniers handed the government to him without resistance, the military conflict in Spain worsened by 1810. The city of Seville had been invaded by French armies, which were already dominating most of the Iberian Peninsula, the Junta of Seville was disestablished, and several members fled to Cádiz, the last portion of Spain still resisting. They established a Council of Regency, with political tendencies closer to absolutism than the former Junta and this began the May Revolution in Buenos Aires, as soon as the news was known. The military gave their support to the request, forcing Cisneros to accept, the discussion ruled the removal of viceroy Cisneros and his replacement with a government junta, but the cabildo attempted to keep Cisneros in power by appointing him president of such junta. Further demonstrations ensued, and the Junta was forced to resign immediately and it was replaced by a new one, the Primera Junta. Buenos Aires requested the other cities in the viceroyalty to acknowledge the new Junta, the precise purpose of these deputies, join the Junta or create a congress, was unclear at the time and generated political disputes later. The Junta was initially resisted by all the locations around Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Montevideo, Paraguay
3.
Santiago
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Santiago de Chile, or simply Santiago, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chiles largest and the most densely populated conurbation, the city is entirely located in the countrys central valley, at an elevation of 520 m above mean sea level. Founded in 1541, Santiago has been the city of Chile since colonial times. The city has a core of 19th century neoclassical architecture and winding side-streets, dotted by art deco, neo-gothic. Santiagos cityscape is shaped by several hills and the fast-flowing Mapocho River. The Andes Mountains can be seen from most points in the city and these mountains contribute to a considerable smog problem, particularly during winter. The city outskirts are surrounded by vineyards and Santiago is within a few hours of both the mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Santiago is the cultural, political and financial center of Chile and is home to the regional headquarters of many multinational corporations. The Chilean executive and judiciary are located in Santiago, but Congress meets mostly in nearby Valparaíso, Santiago is named after the biblical figure St. James. In Chile, there are entities which bear the name of Santiago that are often confused. The Commune of Santiago, sometimes referred to as downtown or Central Santiago, is a division that comprises roughly the area occupied by the city during its colonial period. The city and regions demonym is santiaguinos and santiaguinas, according to certain archaeological investigations, it is believed that the first human groups of the X millennium settled in the Santiago basin. The groups were mainly nomadic hunter-gatherers, who traveled from the coast to the interior in search of guanacos during the time of the Andean snowmelt. The villages established in the belonging to picunches groups or promaucaes, were subject to the Inca Empire throughout the late fifteenth century. The Incas settled in the valley of mitimaes, the main installation settled in the center of the present city, with strengths as Huaca de Chena, the area would have served as a basis for the failed Inca expeditions southward road junction as the Inca Trail. Having been sent by Francisco Pizarro from Peru and having made the journey from Cuzco. The hosts of Valdivia camped by the river in the slopes of the Tupahue hill, the natives accepted and even recommended the foundation of the town on a small island between two branches of the river next to a small hill called Huelén. On 12 February 1541, Valdivia officially founded the city of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo in honor of St. James, patron saint of Spain, near the Huelén, renamed by the conqueror as St. Lucia. Following colonial rule, Valdivia entrusted the layout of the new town to master builder Pedro de Gamboa, in the center of the city, Gamboa designed a Plaza Mayor, around which various plots for the Cathedral and the governors house were selected
4.
Army of the Andes
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The Army of the Andes was a military force created by the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata and mustered by general José de San Martín in his campaign to free Chile from the Spanish Empire. In 1817, it crossed the Andes Mountains from the Argentine province of Cuyo, the exact number of the army varies between different sources, some have put the number as low as 3500, while others have it being as high as 6000 men. The army consisted of Argentines and Chileans, and included some 1200 auxiliaries to help in provisioning and supply, as well as a complement of artillery. While the army was made up of a less than experienced military force, San Martín intended to lead, with discipline and equipment. Because this second pass was more negotiable, the artillery was taken in the second column and these two divisions were the main body of the Army, but there were smaller detachments sent to the north and south as flanking wings. The smaller division to the north was composed of some 130 infantry as well as a group of Chilean expatriates, to the south was a group under the command of the Chilean Ramón Freire Serrano. After their 25-day journey across the Andes, the Army of the Andes successfully met royalist forces in the Battle of Chacabuco, after his refusal, OHiggins was finally elected. This new army fought the counterattack of royalist Army of Osorio at battles of Cancha Rayada, the number of black soldiers in the army of San Martin were numerous and grouped to form the majority of 7th, 8th and 11th Infantry Regiments. According to military doctrine of San Martin, colored soldiers would serve better in the infantry branch among the three arms of the army of the Andes, blacks represented two thirds of soldiers of the Army of the Andes. They were estimated at between 2,000 and 3,000 Argentine freedmen who crossed the Andes to Chile in 1817 with San Martin, black troops were mainly recruited from slaves which Lynch estimates a figure of 1,554 slaves. Of those 2,500 black soldiers who began the crossing of the Andes, in all of these black regiments commissioned officers should be white under Argentine law. But San Martin sought to change the rules so that at least the black soldiers reached grades corporals, later both regiments 7 and 8 will be unified in Peru in the black regiment of the Río de la Plata. Appleton and company Scheina, Robert, Latin America’s Wars, The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899, Brassey’s, ISBN 1-57488-450-6
5.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
6.
Royalist (Spanish American independence)
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The creation of juntas in Spanish America in 1810 was a direct reaction to developments in Spain during the previous two years. In 1808 Ferdinand VII had been convinced to abdicate by Napoleon in his favor, the Supreme Central Junta had led a resistance to Josephs government and the French occupation of Spain, but suffered a series of reverses resulting in the loss of the northern half of the country. On February 1,1810, French troops took Seville and gained control of most of Andalusia, the Supreme Junta retreated to Cadiz and dissolved itself in favor of a Regency Council of Spain and the Indies. As news of this arrived throughout Spanish America during the three weeks to nine months—depending on time it took goods and people to travel from Spain—political fault lines appeared. It is important to note that, at first, the claimed to carry out their actions in the name of the deposed king. Juntas were successfully established in Venezuela, Río de la Plata and New Granada, in the months following the establishment of the Regency, it became clear that Spain was not lost, and furthermore the government was effectively reconstituting itself. The Regency successfully convened the Cortes Generales, the parliament of the Spanish Monarchy. The Regency and Cortes began issuing orders to, and appointing and those who supported the new government came to be called royalists. Those that supported the idea of maintaining independent juntas called themselves patriots, as the Cortes instituted liberal reforms and worked on drafting a constitution, a new division appeared among royalists. Conservatives did not want to see any innovations in government, while liberals supported them and these differences would become more acute after the restoration of Ferdinand VII, because the king opted to support the conservative position. Regional rivalry also played an important role in the wars that broke out in Spanish America as a result of the juntas. The disappearance of a central, imperial authority—and in some cases of even a local, viceregal authority —initiated a prolonged period of balkanization in many regions of Spanish America. It was not clear which political units which should replace the empire, more often than not, juntas sought to maintain a provinces independence from the capital of the former viceroyalty or captaincy general, as much as from the Peninsula itself. Armed conflicts broke out between the provinces over the question of some provinces were to be subordinate to others in the manner that they had been under the crown. This phenomenon was particularly evident in New Granada and Río de la Plata and this rivalry also lead some regions to adopt the opposing political cause from their rivals. The creation of juntas in Río de la Plata allowed Peru to regain control of Upper Peru for the duration of the wars. Ferdinand justified his actions by stating that the Constitution and other changes had made by a Cortes assembled in his absence. He also declared all of the juntas and constitutions written in Spanish America invalid and restored the former law codes, most Spanish Americans were moderates who decided to wait and see what would come out of the restoration of normalcy
7.
Bernardo O'Higgins
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Bernardo OHiggins Riquelme was a Chilean independence leader who freed Chile from Spanish rule in the Chilean War of Independence. He was a landowner of Spanish and Irish ancestry. Although he was the second Supreme Director of Chile, he is considered one of Chiles founding fathers and his mother was Isabel Riquelme, a prominent local, the daughter of Don Simón Riquelme y Goycolea, a member of the Chillán Cabildo, or council. OHiggins spent his years with his mothers family in central-southern Chile, and later he lived with the Albano family. At age 15, OHiggins was sent to Lima by his father and he had a distant relationship with Ambrosio, who supported him financially and was concerned with his education, but the two never met in person. At the time of his sons birth, Ambrosio was only a military officer. Two years later, Isabel married Don Félix Rodríguez, a friend of her father, OHiggins used his mothers surname until the death of his father in 1801. Bernardos father continued his rise and became Viceroy of Peru. There, studying history and the arts, OHiggins became acquainted with American ideas of independence and he met Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan idealist and believer in independence, and joined a Masonic Lodge established by Miranda, dedicated to achieving the independence of Latin America. In 1798 OHiggins went to Spain from Great Britain, his return to the Americas delayed by the French Revolutionary Wars and his father died in 1801, leaving OHiggins a large piece of land, the Hacienda Las Canteras, near the Chilean city of Los Ángeles. OHiggins returned to Chile in 1802, adopted his fathers surname. In 1806, he was appointed to the cabildo as the representative of Laja, in 1808 Napoleon took control of Spain, triggering a sequence of events in South America. On 18 September 1810, OHiggins joined the revolt against the now French dominated Spanish government and this date is now recognized as Chiles Independence Day. OHiggins was a friend of Juan Martínez de Rozas, an old friend of his father. OHiggins strongly recommended that a national congress be created, and was elected a deputy to the first National Congress of Chile in 1811 as a representative of the Laja district. Tensions between the royalist and increasingly pro-independence factions, to which OHiggins remained attached as a junior member, the anti-Royalist camp in Chile was deeply split along lines of patronage and personality, by political beliefs, and by geography. José Miguel Carrera, the most prominent member of the Carrera family, enjoyed a power base in Santiago, that of de Rozas, and later OHiggins, lay in Concepción. As a result, OHiggins was to find himself increasingly in political and military competition with Carrera—although early on, de Rozas initially appointed OHiggins to a minor military position in 1812, possibly because of his illegitimate origins, poor health, or lack of military training
8.
Rafael Maroto
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Rafael Maroto Yserns was a Spanish general, known both for his involvement on the Spanish side in the wars of independence in South America and on the Carlist side in the First Carlist War. Maroto was born in the town of Lorca in the Region of Murcia, Spain, to Margarita Isern, a native of Barcelona, and Rafael Maroto, a native of Zamora. His father was a captain who held several important positions in civilian life. Maroto was baptized in the San Cristóbal parish church, where his baptismal certificate was preserved, during his childhood, he lived on the Calle Mayor of the Barrio de San Cristóbal, across from Plaza de la Estrella. He married Antonia Cortés García, a Chilean, in 1816, Antonia and two of his daughters died in a shipwreck in 1830 en route to Chile. At the age of 18, Maroto took part in the conflicts and campaigns of Manuel de Godoy and he also fought in the Spanish War of Independence, in which he was wounded and made a prisoner in Zaragoza. He then received a position in Peru and later fought in the war against the pro-independence Chileans, however, he was defeated by General José de San Martín in the Battle of Chacabuco. At the age of 11, Maroto left for Cartagena in the province of Murcia where he joined as a minor subordinate cadet in the Asturias Infantry Regiment in 1794 and he was promoted to second lieutenant on June 15,1798. The English had disembarked to the Heights of Grana and the campaigns ran from August 25 to August 26,1800, for the merit he demonstrated in these operations, Maroto was awarded a Shield of Honor. He continued on, adding two years in the Navy of the Department of Ferrol, and later he returned to the Asturias Regiment, on October 15,1806 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Maroto also fought as a soldier in the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleons army, the French attacked the plaza of Valencia on June 28,1808. Maroto defended the city with the batteries that he had at his position, in Santa Catalina, forced to surrender to the enemy after a heroic defense, he was recognized with distinction to the mother country and was awarded a Shield of Honor. On November 23 he took part in the Battle of Tudela in Navarre, on December 24, Monte Torrero and Casa Blanca—suburbs of Zaragoza—were attacked, and shortly after Maroto used bayonets in order to dislodge the enemy that had taken them. With the grade of captain, Maroto participated also in the Siege of Zaragoza in 1809 and he gained control of Pilar, the batteries of San José, Puerta Quemada and Tenerías. He made forays from these batteries, often receiving gunfire, when the city of Zaragoza was captured, Maroto was made a prisoner of war by the French, but managed to escape. For his heroic acts in Zaragoza he received a Shield of Distinction that held the motto Recompensa del valor y patriotismo and he was declared a benemérito de la patria en grado heroico y eminente, roughly Distinction of the Fatherland, in Heroic and Distinguished Degree. On March 9 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, in 1811 he was assigned to the Infantry Regiment of the line in Valencia. On October 24 and 25, he occupied the defense of the attacks against Puzol, Heights of Sagunto Castle, on October 25,1812, he defended the lines of Grao, Monte Olivet, Cuarte, the line of Valencia, and the square of the city
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