NOTE TO CHAPTER VII GENERAL SAN MARTIN'S PASSAGE OF THE ANDES

The passage of the Andes by the army of San Martin has been pronounced by military historians of authority to have been one of the most remarkable operations ever accomplished in mountain warfare. The forces which he led were no doubt small compared to those which Suvarof and Macdonald commanded in their famous Swiss campaigns, and small also when compared to those which Hannibal and Napoleon carried across the Alps. But the valleys which the two detachments of San Martin's army had to traverse lay in an arid and practically uninhabited region, and the passes to be crossed were much higher. This added immensely to the hardships and difficulties of the march, yet few men were lost.

San Martin divided his army into two parts. The smaller, in charge of Colonel Las Heras, consisted of eight hundred men, including two field guns and a few cavalry. It proceeded by the Uspallata Pass, over the Cumbre, while the larger, under San Martin himself, moved by the much longer and colder though not quite so lofty route over the pass of Los Patos to the north of Aconcagua. The rendezvous was successfully effected at the exact point chosen by San Martin, where the two lines of march down the two valleys on the Chilean side of the Cordillera converge a little below the village of Santa Rosa de los Andes, now the terminus of the Trans-Andine railway. San Martin, screened by the Andes, had from his position at Mendoza so skilfully contrived to deceive and perplex the commander of the Spanish army in Chile as to induce him to scatter his greatly superior force over much too long a line, so as to guard the various passes, all very difficult, which lie to the south of the Uspallata. Thus when San Martin, having effected his own concentration near Santa Rosa, marched straight upon Santiago, he was able to overpower the Spanish army, still somewhat larger than his own, when it tried to bar his path at Chacabuco. The Spanish general fled to the coast, and though some time had yet to pass before San Martin won his decisive victory at Maipo, and before Lord Cochrane drove the Spaniards out of their last maritime strongholds at Corral, the crossing of the Andes was not only the most brilliant operation of the whole war, but was also that which most contributed to the liberation of Chile and Peru.

The best account I have been able to find of this campaign is in Mitre's elaborate Historia de San Martin, with the accompanying volumes of Documentos. The description there given of the crossing of the passes is, however, sadly wanting in topographical details.

José de San Martin, a strong and silent man, whose character and achievements have been little known or appreciated outside his own country, had learnt war under the Duke of Wellington in Spain. He comes nearer than any one else to being the George Washington of Spanish America.