José de San Martín
José de San Martín died on the 17th of August 1850, in a small house in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a northern French city far from the continent he had spent his life fighting to free. He was nearly blind, worn down by age and illness, but still reading letters from South America until the end. His nickname said it simply: the Liberator of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Three nations. One man. The question worth asking is how a Spanish-born officer who spent his formative years fighting for the Spanish Crown came to turn that same military training against his king. And what kind of soldier resigns at the moment of total victory, walks away from the governments he created, and spends his final decades in European exile, corresponding with the very strongman his former allies despised? What follows is the story of a general who never lost a major engagement, helped free half a continent, and then refused every throne he was offered.
Juan de San Martín, José's father, was born in Cervatos de la Cueza in the province of Palencia, Spain, and served as lieutenant governor of the Yapeyú Department in what is now Argentina, part of the Government of the Guaraní Missions. His mother, Gregoria Matorras del Ser, was also from Palencia, born in 1738 in Paredes de Nava, only a few kilometres from Juan's birthplace. José himself was born in Yapeyú in 1778, in a Guaraní reduction, a settlement established to administer indigenous communities after the expulsion of the Jesuits.
The family left for Buenos Aires in 1781 and then for Spain in 1783, when José was only three or four years old. They settled first in Madrid, then moved to Málaga. By 1785, José was enrolled in Málaga's school of temporalities. He almost certainly never finished the six-year elementary course. By 1789, at the required age of eleven, he joined the Regiment of Murcia as a cadet. His formal education ended where his military career began.
By 1793, at fifteen, he had already fought in North Africa against the Moors in Melilla and Oran, and been raised to Sub-Lieutenant. The Spanish navy then pulled him into a different kind of conflict. During the War of the Second Coalition, his ship the Santa Dorotea was captured by the Royal Navy, and he was held as a prisoner of war. He fought afterwards near Cádiz and Gibraltar, then in the War of the Oranges against Portugal in 1801, and was promoted to captain in 1804. During those Cádiz years, he absorbed the ideas of the Spanish Enlightenment, a current of thought that would later give ideological coherence to the wars he would wage on the other side of the world.
At the outbreak of the Peninsular War in 1808, San Martín was named adjutant of Francisco Solano, the 2nd Marquis de Socorro. The political violence was immediate: Solano was suspected of sympathizing with France and was killed by a popular uprising that overran the barracks and dragged his corpse through the streets. San Martín survived, led a battalion of volunteers, and on the 19th of July 1808 fought at the battle of Bailén, a Spanish victory significant enough to allow the Army of Andalusia to take Madrid. For his actions at Bailén, he received a gold medal and was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
By May 1811 he was fighting at Albuera under the British general William Carr Beresford. That same year, 1811, he was initiated into the Lodge of Rational Knights. The lodge met at the house of Carlos María de Alvear; among its members were criollos, American-born Spaniards committed to returning home and joining their local independence movements. The lodge held a gathering at the London home of Venezuelan general Francisco de Miranda at 27 Grafton Street in Bloomsbury, a building that today carries a blue plaque with Miranda's name.
Historians still debate why San Martín resigned from the Spanish army. Three explanations have circulated: that he felt drawn back to his homeland; that the British, who stood to benefit from South American independence, had positioned him to deliver it; or that both wars shared the same ideological core, pitting Enlightenment ideas against absolutism, and San Martín simply followed that current wherever it led. None of the three has been definitively settled. On the 9th of March 1812, he arrived in Buenos Aires aboard the British ship George Canning, alongside Alvear, Francisco José de Vera, Matías Zapiola, Francisco Chilavert, and Eduardo Kailitz, to serve under the First Triumvirate.
Within days of arriving in Buenos Aires in 1812, San Martín was appointed lieutenant colonel of cavalry and tasked with creating a cavalry unit from scratch, because the city had none worth the name. He began organizing the Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers with Alvear and Zapiola. He was also entrusted with the broader protection of the city, a responsibility typically held by several officers.
In September 1812, San Martín married María de los Remedios de Escalada, a fourteen-year-old from one of the city's wealthy families. That same autumn, the lodge he helped establish organized the Revolution of the 8th of October 1812, which dissolved the First Triumvirate and replaced it with the Second Triumvirate of Juan José Paso, Nicolás Rodríguez Peña and Antonio Álvarez Jonte. The new government promoted San Martín to colonel.
His first real test came along the Paraná River shore. Montevideo, still a royalist stronghold, was under siege by the Argentine general José Rondeau, but the Montevidean navy kept breaking through and pillaging the coast. San Martín shadowed the ships with his regiment, concealing them in the San Carlos Convent in San Lorenzo, Santa Fe. When royalists disembarked at dawn to pillage, he deployed a pincer movement. His horse was killed beneath him and his leg was trapped under the animal's body. A royalist, likely a man named Zabala, wounded him with a saber to the face and a bullet in the arm before two soldiers from his regiment, Juan Bautista Cabral and Juan Bautista Baigorria, pulled him free. Cabral was mortally wounded and died shortly after the battle.
The battle of San Lorenzo did not alter the course of the war. But by 1816, after San Martín took over as governor of Cuyo Province, he had built the Army of the Andes to 5,000 men, 10,000 mules and 1,500 horses. He drafted citizens who could bear arms, extended the emancipation of slaves to those between the ages of sixteen and thirty, ran a war economy that produced gunpowder, artillery, mules, food, and military clothing, and organized a factory of 700 men headed by Father José Luis Beltrán to manufacture rifles and horseshoes. He also ran military intelligence and disinformation operations to mislead royalist forces about his intended crossing routes.
The crossing of the Andes in January 1817 was not the first military expedition to cross the mountains, but its scale and the demand that the army be combat-ready immediately afterward set it apart from anything before it. San Martín divided the force into six columns, each taking a different pass. Colonel Francisco Zelada moved from La Rioja through the Come-Caballos pass toward Copiapó. Juan Manuel Cabot went from San Juan toward Coquimbo. Ramón Freire and José León Lemos led southern columns. San Martín himself, along with Soler and Bernardo O'Higgins, crossed through the Los Patos pass, while Juan Gregorio de Las Heras took the Uspallata Pass.
The operation took nearly a month. Soldiers ate dried food and fodder for the horses, and consumed garlic and onions to manage altitude sickness. The losses among the animals were severe: of the 10,000 mules and 1,500 horses that set out, only 4,300 mules and 511 horses survived the crossing, less than half the original complement.
Before the main columns arrived, Manuel Rodríguez had slipped back into Chile to wage guerrilla warfare in Santiago de Chile and the surrounding countryside, attacking Melipilla and San Fernando to demoralize royalist forces. His actions were a deliberate element of San Martín's strategy, designed to weaken the enemy before the columns converged.
At Chacabuco, royalist commander Rafael Maroto had 2,450 men and 5 pieces of artillery against San Martín's 3,600 men and 9 pieces. San Martín organized another pincer movement: Soler from the west, O'Higgins from the east. O'Higgins, determined to avenge his defeat at Rancagua, rushed his column without coordinating with Soler, giving the royalists a brief advantage. San Martín ordered Soler to press the attack immediately. The combined assault worked. When it was over, 600 royalists were dead and 500 were prisoners. The Army of the Andes lost 12 men, with 120 wounded. Governor Francisco Marcó del Pont tried to flee to Valparaíso and was captured on the 22nd of February and returned to Santiago.
Three deputies from Coquimbo, Santiago, and Concepción offered San Martín the position of Supreme Director of Chile. He refused and proposed O'Higgins instead, reasoning that the leader of Chile should be Chilean. San Martín's own objective was already fixed on Peru.
The path there ran through setbacks. At Cancha Rayada in 1818, a spy warned San Martín that the viceroy's general Mariano Osorio intended a night attack, but the army could not be prepared in time. One thousand soldiers fled, 120 died, and San Martín's assistant was killed. O'Higgins, wounded in the arm, could only partially resist before retreating. Las Heras pulled his 3,500 men out in order, preventing a rout. The patriot army regrouped outside Santiago.
At the subsequent battle of Maipú, fought on the 5th of April 1818, San Martín noticed flaws in the royalist disposition during a reconnaissance and reportedly said: "Osorio is clumsier than I thought. Today's triumph is ours. The sun as witness!" The battle began at 11:00 am. Manuel Escalada's mounted grenadiers seized the royalist artillery and turned it against its former owners. The regiment of Burgos inflicted heavy losses on the patriot left wing, largely composed of emancipated slaves, taking 400 lives. San Martín sent Hilarión de la Quintana's mounted grenadiers to break Burgos. When the regiment's line collapsed, the royalists scattered. At the hacienda Lo Espejo, 500 royalists made a final stand; Ordóñez died there. O'Higgins rode in still carrying his wound from Cancha Rayada, arriving for the last minutes of fighting. He called out "Glory to the savior of Chile!" to San Martín, and they embraced on horseback in what became known as the "Embrace of Maipú."
The Chilean independence declaration had been issued on the 18th of February 1818, one year after Chacabuco. Maipú sealed it. All royalist military leaders except Osorio, who escaped with around 200 cavalry, were captured. All their artillery, weapons, military hospitals, money, and resources were taken.
Peru presented a different kind of challenge. Royalist forces there numbered nearly 23,000, against San Martín's 4,000 soldiers and Cochrane's naval crew of 1,600. San Martín chose to avoid pitched battles wherever possible. He tried to fragment royalist forces geographically, encourage internal rebellion, and promise freedom to any enslaved person who deserted their Peruvian master and joined his army.
The navy sailed from Chile on the 20th of August 1820, eight warships, eleven gunboats, 247 cannons, twelve frigates, and the 4,000 soldiers of the Army of the Andes. They landed near Pisco on the 7th of September. San Martín sent Juan Antonio Álvarez de Arenales inland to promote uprisings among the native population and moved the army north of Lima by sea. Andrés de Santa Cruz was among the more than 300 royalists who switched sides. Cochrane captured the royalist ship Esmeralda.
On the 12th of July 1821, San Martín was appointed Protector of Peru after seizing partial control of Lima. Independence was formally declared on the 28th of July. He abolished the mita and yanaconazgo forms of servitude, granted citizenship to the indigenous population, abolished the Inquisition and corporal punishment, and enacted freedom of speech. He declared "freedom of wombs," emancipating the children of enslaved people, rather than abolishing slavery outright, because Peru had roughly 40,000 slaveowners.
The Guayaquil conference with Simón Bolívar on the 26th of July 1822 produced no public record. No witnesses were present, no minutes were kept. What is known is that San Martín resigned as Protector of Peru shortly after and returned to Valparaíso. The factors behind the resignation were real: his military discipline was fraying, Buenos Aires had cut off support, Cochrane had taken the navy, O'Higgins was about to be deposed in Chile, and San Martín believed that only an authority far stronger than the one he was willing to wield could hold the newly free nations together. He was not willing to rule as a dictator. Bolívar took over the completion of Peru's liberation.
María de los Remedios de Escalada, San Martín's wife, died in 1823. He returned to Buenos Aires, collected their daughter Mercedes Tomasa from the family home, and sailed for Europe. He settled eventually in Brussels with the intention of staying until Mercedes finished her education, then returning to Argentina.
Argentina did not make that easy. When he learned that the unitarian Juan Lavalle had deposed the federal leader Manuel Dorrego and then captured and executed him, San Martín stayed on his ship in Buenos Aires harbor rather than disembark, and returned to Montevideo. Lavalle offered San Martín the government; San Martín declined.
The Belgian Revolution and the cholera epidemic of 1831 drove him from Brussels to Paris, where he and Mercedes both fell ill. A man named Mariano Balcarce helped them through it. Mariano later married Mercedes, and they had a daughter, María Mercedes. In 1837, when France blockaded the Río de la Plata against Juan Manuel de Rosas, San Martín offered his military services to Rosas and condemned the unitarians who had allied with France against their own country. He bequeathed his curved saber to Rosas for the defense he had mounted. The Anglo-French blockade drew similar condemnation.
During the French revolution of 1848, San Martín moved from Paris to Boulogne-sur-Mer. He was nearly blind and continued to write letters and follow South American news until the end. Shortly after receiving word of Argentina's victory over the Anglo-French blockade, he died at three o'clock on the 17th of August 1850. He had asked in his will to be buried without ceremony and later moved to Buenos Aires. His remains were repatriated on the 29th of May 1880, during the presidency of Nicolás Avellaneda, and placed in a mausoleum in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral. Because San Martín was suspected of being a freemason, the mausoleum was installed in an expanded wing of the building, set apart from the main structure.
Common questions
Who was José de San Martín and why is he important?
José de San Martín was an Argentine general born on the 25th of February 1778, nicknamed "the Liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru." He led the military campaigns that freed Argentina, Chile, and Peru from Spanish rule, and served as the Protector of Peru after declaring its independence on the 28th of July 1821. He is regarded as a national hero in all three countries.
Where was José de San Martín born?
San Martín was born in Yapeyú, Corrientes, in present-day Argentina, a Guaraní reduction established to administer indigenous communities after the expulsion of the Jesuits. The exact year of his birth is disputed due to missing baptismal records, with most documents pointing to either 1777 or 1778.
What was the Crossing of the Andes and how did San Martín accomplish it?
The Crossing of the Andes was a military operation in early 1817 in which San Martín led the Army of the Andes across the mountain range to liberate Chile from royalist rule. He divided the force into six columns taking different passes, with the army carrying dried food and consuming garlic and onions against altitude sickness. Of the 10,000 mules and 1,500 horses that set out, only 4,300 mules and 511 horses survived the crossing.
What happened at the Guayaquil conference between San Martín and Simón Bolívar?
The Guayaquil conference took place on the 26th of July 1822. San Martín and Bolívar held two private meetings with no witnesses and no written minutes, so the content of their discussions can only be inferred from later actions and letters. Shortly after the meeting, San Martín resigned as Protector of Peru and returned to Valparaíso, leaving Bolívar to complete the liberation of Peru.
Why did San Martín resign as Protector of Peru?
San Martín resigned because of several converging pressures: his army's military discipline was deteriorating, Buenos Aires had cut off support, Admiral Cochrane had taken the navy, O'Higgins was about to be deposed in Chile, and the joint command with Bolívar posed political difficulties for both sides. San Martín also refused to rule as a dictator, which he believed was the only form of authority strong enough to prevent the new nations from fragmenting.
Where did José de San Martín die and where are his remains?
San Martín died at three o'clock on the 17th of August 1850, in his house in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. His remains were temporarily buried in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Boulogne and repatriated to Argentina on the 29th of May 1880, during the presidency of Nicolás Avellaneda. They are now held in a mausoleum inside the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral.
All sources
13 references cited across the entry
- 3journalThe Social Reforms of San MartinWilliam H. Gray — 1950
- 4webFrancisco de Miranda Blue Plaquelondonremembers.com
- 5webDeath Registry of Boulogne-sur-MerConseil départemental du Pas-de-Calais — 1844–1852
- 10webCentral Park Monuments – General Jose de San Martin : NYC ParksNew York City Department of Parks & Recreation
- 11newsJosé de San Martín : histoire d'un monumentAndré Verley — 21 October 2009
- 12web8c Jose de San Martin singleSmithsonian National Postal Museum
- 14webOf conquistadores and libertadores: the case of Intramuros monumentsKarl Aguilar — The Urban Roamer — 22 July 2012