LINIERS DEFEATED NEAR CORDOVA. 109

vanced by many volunteers; and as the expedition approached Cordova, Liniers and the other royalist chiefs saw more and more clearly that the people at large were against them, and that their situation was critical in the extreme. In fact, the leaders of the insurrection against Buenos Ayres saw safety for themselves only in flight, and accordingly, on the 1st of August, Liniers, the Governor of Cordova, the Bishop Orellana, the Minister, Assessor, and many officers of rank, fled with a force of about three hundred men (which gradually deserted from them) towards Peru. On the 5th a detachment of three hundred men of the patriot army entered Cordova, and General Ocampo, who commanded it, on hearing of the flight of the royalist leaders, set off instantly at the head of seventy-five men in pursuit of them. His forced marches were so rapid that, on the afternoon of the third day, he got to the post-house, whence the hotly-pressed fugitives had set off in the morning: they had abandoned their carriages and dispersed by different roads. Ocampo followed them up, and at midnight, perceiving a glimmering light in a wood, he made for it, and there, seizing some servants of Liniers, he made them confess that their master was in a cottage hard by, whither a few men were

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DEATH OF LINIERS.

immediately sent to apprehend him: they approached in silence and darkness, broke suddenly into the hovel, and secured the unhappy chief, together with a canon of the cathedral of Cordova. That same night all the others were taken in another cottage, and the bishop was secured the following day.

Liniers, and the other heads of the insurrection, already named, were summarily tried by military law, which means by no law,-found guilty of treason, and,—it was the first good blood shed in the revolution, they were all shot. Colonel Allende, one of them, was a creole belonging to one of the first families in Cordova, and whose nephew soon after received a colonel's commission in the patriot army. The bishop very narrowly escaped sharing the fate of his companions.

The execution of these high functionaries caused a great sensation. In truth, the right of the patriots to execute them at all was highly equivocal; but the patriots were glad to see, at any rate, energetic proceedings on the part of the Junta, even where their legality was more than dubious; and the body accordingly began to come into high favour with the people.

The progress of the forces of the Junta, after the

BATTLE OF SUIPACHA.

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overthrow of Liniers and of the Spanish party in Cordova, continued up to the end of the year to be one of almost uninterrupted success. General Don Antonio Balcarce was sent to supersede Ocampo in the command of their troops. As they advanced towards Upper Peru, one important place and province after another joined the popular cause; and as they hied onwards, the forces which opposed them fell back upon Potosi. The patriots were now commanded by General Balcarce just named, a brave and good officer; and, to strengthen the cause, the Junta, in September, sent off to the headquarters of the army Dr. Casteli, the energetic member of the Junta already mentioned, in the quality of High Commissioner, to whose orders the Commander-in-Chief was subject.

In October the patriots occupied Suipacha: on the 23rd of that month they suffered a repulse without dishonour at Cotagaita; but this slight misfortune was amply repaid on the 7th of November by the action which they gained at Suipacha, and which opened up the whole of Upper Peru to their victorious arms.

"The provinces," says Dr. Casteli,*" of the

* In a dispatch to the Junta, dated 28th November.

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OBEDIENCE OF THE PROVINCES.

Royal Audience of Las Charcas, viz. Potosi, La Plata, Cochabamba, and La Paz, even to the boundary of the viceroyalty of Lima, are in perfect tranquillity, concord, acknowledgment of and obedience to the governing Junta of the capital of the River Plate. La Paz, after the rout of Colonel Pierola between Oruro and Sicasica, recovered its energy and took the oaths of obedience to the Junta. We have obliged General Goyeneche, commanding the army of the viceroy of Lima, to keep within his boundary of the Desaguadero, under a promise of not advancing on our territory; though, for greater security, our own troops occupy the banks on this side of the lake."

When we consider the vastness of the continent,* its rugged features, its mountains, its deserts, its total want of resources, certainly these were mighty doings for a young and inexperienced republic to achieve in five months from the day of its springing into life, or dreaming of such chivalrous undertakings.

From the other provinces, which fell into the republican lap of the fostering mother of the revo

* The Desaguadero is about one thousand and eighty miles from Buenos Ayres.

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lution, we must select Cochabamba, as distinguished by one of those singular events which revolutions only can call into existence.

When the Cochabambinos rose up against the Spanish authorities, many of the women followed their husbands to the field of Sicasica, and there, combating by their side, died in a hard-fought and bloody engagement with an army of superior force led by Goyeneche. In commemoration of so heroic an action, and to inflame the spirit of patriotism, the adjutant of each corps, during the campaign, called at the evening muster "The women of Cochabamba," as if they were present; to which a sergeant made reply, "They died in the field of honour."

At Buenos Ayres the question of the legality of the blockade kept up by General Vigodet against the loving vassals of Ferdinand VII., in the metropolis, was warmly discussed, and the Junta was extremely anxious, and so were all the British merchants resident in the capital, that the English Government should declare the blockade to be illegal. But the British naval commander then on the station, Captain Elliot, was inimical to the patriots, and on terms of personal friendship with the governor of Monte Video, Vigodet; and, stu