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We thought that when the Spaniards had been driven out we should have had peace, but it is not so; we have had San Martin, and Bolivar, and Aguero, and Santa Cruz, and Sucre. Bolivar again finally defeated the Spaniards at Ayacucho. Rodil held possession of Callao castle, and defended it until January of this year.
The officer addressed left the room to fulfil the commands he had received; and Zumalacarregui, as if desirous to get rid of a painful subject, called Count Villabuena and some of his officers around him, and began discussing with them a proposed plan of operations against the division of one of the generals whom Rodil had left to follow up the Carlist chief during his own absence in Biscay.
He was the best personification of his own race, the Spanish race, which made him the brother of Morillo, Latorre and Rodil, a race which lives in twenty nations of the earth and in whose memory all names now stand equal, if they represent the same principles, whether they were written in Covadonga or Carabobo, by the sword of Pelayo or by the sword of Bolivar.
At the same time the General retained the whole of the liberating army, though had even a portion of these followed the retreating Spaniards, the greater part would have joined the patriot standard it being afterwards ascertained that Colonel Rodil who commanded them, had shot great numbers in the attempt to desert; even the patriot guerilla parties, unaided, had defeated those who were kept together; so that had a division of the liberating army been sent to co-operate with the guerillas, the entire Spanish force might have been annihilated, in place of forming the nucleus as they afterwards did of a force which, after my departure from Chili, threatened not only the independence of Peru, but even that of the Chilian Republic itself.
Laserna sent General Rodil, appointing him governor and military commander of the province of Lima, and placing him in full command of the fortress and the treacherous soldiers. This was a severe loss for the Republican cause. Congress at once suspended the constitution and the law and appointed Bolivar dictator, for it realized that he was the only man to cope with the situation.
These attacks, it was clear to him, would become more numerous, and even foreigners would take part in the abuses. But there does not now exist one document which warrants a single accusation against Bolivar for immoderate aspirations. When the War of Independence had practically come to a close Rodil was holding Callao, and Upper Peru was still in the hands of the Spanish.
This he did, by gaining a great victory at Ayacucho, which completely dispersed the Royalists, reducing their possessions in Peru to the Castles of Callao, which Rodil, after a little over a year's successful resistance, was compelled to surrender.
When Rodil, on the morrow of the skirmish with Zumalacarregui in the Lower Amezcoa, evacuated that valley, he proceeded to distribute a portion of his army amongst various garrisons; and then, with the remainder, marched to Biscay in pursuit of Don Carlos, who, having as yet no place of security from his enemies, was wandering about attended by a handful of followers.
The Spanish general, Rodil, immediately crossed the frontier. He met with no resistance, and on May 26 Miguel signed a convention at Evora, by which he accepted a pension, renounced his rights to the Portuguese throne, and agreed to quit the country.
The generals and officers promised not to fight any more in the War of Independence nor to go to any place occupied by royalists. Callao was included in the capitulation, but Rodil did not accept.
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