Events

Five thousand men, 10,000 mules, 1,600 horses, and 600 head of cattle climbed into the Andes in January 1817, crossing passes as high as 12,500 feet through freezing temperatures and thin air, in what military historians rank alongside Hannibal’s Alpine crossing as one of the greatest mountain marches in the history of warfare. Jose de San Martin’s Army of the Andes descended into Chile and destroyed the Spanish royalist forces at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12, 1817, liberating the country in a single afternoon. San Martin had been planning the crossing for two years from his base in Mendoza, Argentina. He understood what other revolutionary leaders had not: Spain could not be defeated by fighting in each colony separately. His strategy was continental — cross the Andes into Chile, liberate it, then sail north to attack the royalist stronghold in Peru. He spent months gathering intelligence, spreading disinformation to confuse the Spanish about which pass he would use, and training his army for mountain warfare. The crossing itself was brutal. San Martin divided his forces into six columns entering through different passes to prevent the Spanish from concentrating their defense. The main columns crossed in six days, losing hundreds of men, a third of the horses, and half the mules to altitude sickness, cold, and exhaustion. The soldiers chewed garlic and onions to combat the thin air. When the army emerged from the mountains, the Spanish garrison at Chacabuco was caught off guard. The battle lasted less than two hours. Royalist casualties exceeded 500 killed and 600 captured, against fewer than 150 patriot losses. San Martin entered Santiago to cheering crowds and installed Bernardo O’Higgins as Supreme Director of Chile. The crossing of the Andes turned South American independence from a series of local revolts into a coordinated continental war that Spain could not win.

The illegitimate son of an Irish-born Viceroy of Peru signed his name to a declaration that shattered Spanish authority in South America’s most geographically isolated nation. Bernardo O’Higgins proclaimed Chile’s independence on February 12, 1818, near the city of Concepcion, formalizing a break from Spain that had been fought over in blood for eight years. Chile’s independence movement began in 1810, when a local junta took advantage of Napoleon’s occupation of Spain to assert self-governance. But the Spanish Crown fought back. Royalist forces crushed the Chilean patriots at the Battle of Rancagua in 1814, sending O’Higgins and thousands of rebels fleeing across the Andes to Argentina. For three years, Chile returned to direct Spanish rule. The liberation came from Argentina. Jose de San Martin, the Argentine general who conceived a continental strategy to defeat Spain, crossed the Andes with O’Higgins and an army of 5,000 men in January 1817. They defeated the royalists decisively at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12, 1817, and O’Higgins was installed as Supreme Director. Exactly one year later, he signed the formal declaration of independence, though fighting would continue until the royalists were crushed at the Battle of Maipu in April 1818. O’Higgins governed for six years, abolishing noble titles, establishing public schools, and building roads. His reforms alienated the conservative landholding class, and he was forced into exile in Peru in 1823, where he died in 1842 without returning to the country he had freed. Chile’s independence was won not by a popular uprising but by a coordinated military campaign spanning two nations and the highest mountain range in the Western Hemisphere.