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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
In 1814 the royalist forces, based in Peru, took
advantage of
internal dissensions among the various factions of the
nationalist
movement in Chile to mount an invasion. The 5,000-man
royalist army
defeated the 1,800-man nationalist force, led by Bernardo
O'Higgins
Riquelme and Juan José Carrera, in the Battle of Rancagua
on
October 2, and the remnants of the routed army (300 men)
fled to
Mendoza in present-day western Argentina.
The leaders of the United Provinces of the Río de la
Plata, a
short-lived (1813-26) federation of the provinces that had
made up
the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, realized that
their
position remained insecure following independence in 1816
so long
as Chile and Peru remained bastions of Spanish power. It
was
decided, therefore, to send an expeditionary force, named
the Army
of the Andes, across the mountains to confront the
royalists. The
combined Argentine-Chilean Army of the Andes, under the
joint
command of O'Higgins and José de San Martín, set out from
San Juan
in northern Argentina on January 12, 1817. The army
consisted of
2,795 infantry, 742 cavalry, and 241 artillerymen, who
carried with
them twenty-one guns and sufficient arms to equip a force
of
15,000. Crossing the Andes at Paso de Uspallata and Paso
de los
Patos, this sizable army took the royalist forces in Chile
completely by surprise. With only half of the total
royalist
strength of approximately 4,000 available to meet the
invaders (the
other 2,000 were deployed mainly in defense of the
southern
frontier), the royalists suffered a decisive defeat at
Chacabuco,
northeast of Santiago, on February 12, 1817. By the end of
1817,
the Chilean Army (Ejército de Chile), consisting of 5,000
soldiers
and officers, had been established. Despite reverses at
Talcahuano
on December 16, 1817, and at Cancha Rayada on March 19,
1818, the
allied army swept to final victory at Maipú on April 5,
1818. Peru,
however, remained a royalist stronghold, separated from
Chile by
the Atacama Desert and approachable only by sea
(see Wars
of Independence, 1810-18
, ch. 1).
Chile had first attempted to form a navy in 1813, when
the
United States-built frigate Perla and the
brigantine
Potrillo were acquired to break the Spanish
blockade of
Valparaíso. However, royalist elements succeeded in
bribing the
mercenary crew of the Perla, with the result that
both
vessels fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The official
history
of the Chilean Navy (Armada de Chile) dates from February
26, 1817,
when the brigantine Águila was acquired by the
nationalists.
Armed with sixteen guns, the Águila was
commissioned as the
first naval vessel of the Republic of Chile, under the
command of
Raimundo Morris, an Irish mercenary and former lieutenant
in the
British Royal Navy. Under the overall command of Manuel
Blanco
Encalada, the first rear admiral of the Chilean Navy, the
tiny
fleet rapidly tripled in size with the capture of the
Spanish
merchant vessel San Miguel and the recapture of the
Perla. Additional vessels were added by purchase,
the arming
of merchant ships, and further captures from the enemy.
With those
acquisitions, the revolutionary fleet consisted of a small
ship of
the line, two large frigates, and four corvettes. In 1818
the Naval
School (Escuela Naval) was established, later named the
Arturo Prat
Naval School (Escuela Naval Arturo Prat), after Arturo
Prat Chacon,
naval hero of the War of the Pacific. Then, on November
28, 1818,
the famous British admiral Thomas Alexander Cochrane (Lord
Dundonald), who had been forced to resign from the Royal
Navy
following a financial scandal, assumed command of the
revolutionary
fleet from Blanco Encalada. Within two years, Cochrane's
fleet had
established control of the sea, and it was then possible
to prepare
for an amphibious invasion of Peru. With the help of the
Chilean
fleet, the allied army, headed by San Martín, liberated
Lima on
July 9, 1821, and the independence of Peru was declared on
July 28.
When Cochrane left Chile in 1823, Blanco Encalada
reassumed
command of the navy, which was reequipped in 1824. The
allies--now
joined by a substantial force from a republic known as
Gran
Colombia (consisting of present-day Colombia, Panama, and
Venezuela) and led by Simón Bolívar Palacios and Antonio
José de
Sucre--scored successive victories at Junín and Ayacucho
in August
and December 1824, respectively. That year Blanco Encalada
fought
in Callao, Peru, under Bolívar's command. Meanwhile,
despite their
defeats on the Chilean mainland and in Peru, the royalists
had
continued to hold out on the Isla de Chiloé, off the
southern
Chilean coast, and were only finally defeated in 1826
after two
amphibious campaigns by Blanco Encalada and several
nationalist
reverses.
Diego Portales Palazuelos, Chile's main political
strongman
from 1830 to 1837, reorganized and streamlined the army,
putting it
on a firm basis with three infantry battalions, two
regiments of
cavalry, a squadron of hussars, and a regiment of
artillery. The
General Bernardo O'Higgins Military Academy (Escuela
Militar
"General Bernardo O'Higgins"), founded by O'Higgins on
March 16,
1817, was also reorganized. It provided an uninterrupted
flow of
professional officers from 1832 onward. Portales also
reestablished
the civic militias, which were important elements in the
defense of
cities and towns during the colonial period. Over the next
decades,
these militias, whose officers were appointed and removed
by the
ministers of interior, proved to be a significant
countervailing
power to that of the army. They thus contributed to the
stability
of the constitutional government. During the civil wars of
1851 and
1859, the authorities relied on the combination of civic
militas
and some army units to defeat the insurrectionists.
Data as of March 1994
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