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The ‘Revolution of the Sabanas.’ Popular Loyalism in the Estado de Cartagena, 1812.

Anthony McFarlane

University of Warwick.

The so-called ‘revolution of the sabanas’ took place between September and

November 1812 and was apparently aimed at overturning the newly-independent state

of Cartagena in 1812 and reinstating royal government in the coastal provinces. It is

perhaps best known for its association with the invasion of a small contingent of the

Spanish army sent in from the province of Santa Marta, and is thus usually regarded

as an episode in the wars between independent Cartagena and loyalist Santa Marta.

Indeed, historians are unsure whether the rebellion was sparked by the Spanish

invasion or vice versa. What is clear, however, is that the rebellion affected a large

space in the recently-independent state of Cartagena, stretching over the extensive

plains between the lower course of the River Magdalena beyond Lorica in the west,

over an area that encompassed the Sabanas del Tolú and the Valle del Sinú. At its

peak, the rebellion affected a region of some 30,000 people and mobilized up to 2,000

men for combat, divided roughly equally between the competing sides. It was a

serious challenge to the authority of the Cartagena’s new government not only

because the rebels rejected that government, but also because the rebellion seemed

part of a royalist resurgence on the coast. The first independent republic in Caracas

had fallen in July 1812, a putative viceroy of New Granada was installed in Panama,

and neighbouring Santa Marta seemed to readying itself for an assault on Cartagena..

The rebellion was, however, quite brief. Cartagena responded to the threat by sending

a military expedition into the Sabanas and after only a couple of months in the region,

the Spaniards retreated back across the River Magdalena. The state of Cartagena then

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turned from defending its rule within in its hinterland to extending the attack on

loyalism in the Lower Magdalena Valley and across the river into Santa Marta.

This rebellion remains a relatively little-known episode in Cartagena’s history. It is

sometimes, but not always, remarked by historians interested in the revolution on the

coast, and is occasionally mentioned in the historians of independence in New

Granada as a whole.1 It is perhaps best known to historians of warfare and the military

during the independence period because of its corollary: the invasion of Antonio

Fernández de Rebustillo with Spanish veteranos of the Albuera Regiment. However,

military historians tend to pass over the rebellion without much comment, treating it

as a minor episode in the larger war against Santa Marta and the Spanish Regency,

and without much concern with its political and social meaning.2

The reasons for this neglect are twofold. First, the rebellion was over quite quickly

and did not involve any great clash of arms. Second, rural rebellion within the

Cartagena region has been overshadowed by other events and issues. It came at a time

when the politics of the city was in turmoil and when the conflict east of the River

Magdalena was increasingly important. In this context, the rebellion of the Sabanas

has been easy to overlook in a period which is dominated by events in the Caribbean

region’s main cities of Cartagena and Mompós, Santa Marta and Riohacha. Nor does

it fit easily into the two main preoccupations of historians of independent Cartagena.

Traditionally, historians of the city during the period 1810-20 have focused on the

1 The rebellion is briedly mentioned in Aline Helg, Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770-1835, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004, p. 143. Roberto Tisnes makes passing mention of the military action in his book, La independencia en la Costa Atlántica, Bogotá: Ed. Kelly, 1976, p.92; 206. Adelaida Sourdis de la Vega, Cartagena de Indias durante la Primer República, 1800-1815, Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1988, concentrates on the city and its relations with Santa Marta and Mompós. There is no direct documentation of the rebellion in the major collections of documents from the period made by Manuel E. Corrales, (ed.) Documentos para la historia de la provincial de Cartagena de Indias, 2 vols., Bogotá: Imprenta de Medardo Rivas, 1883, and Efemérides y anales del Estado de Bolívar, 4 vols., Bogotá: Ed. J.J. Pérez, 1889. 2 Camilo Riaño, Historia Extensa de Colombia, vol. XVIII: Historia Militar, tomo 1, La independencia (1810-1815), pp. 201-2. In his history of the wars of independence in New Granada and Venezuela, Thibaud makes fuller reference to the rebellion but says little about its character or impact: Clément Thibaud, Repúblicas en armas: Los ejércitos bolivarianos en la guerra de independencia en Colombia y Venezuela, Bogotá: Ed. Planeta, 2003, p. 224.

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struggle for power among members of the city’s elites and their efforts to impose the

authority of Cartagena on its hinterland and neighbouring regions. More recently,

historians have increasingly focused on analysis of the social character of, and the

social actors in politics, and have paid particular attention to the political participation

of the gentes de color. This has tended to tighten the historiographical focus on urban

rather than rural politics, on the social and political history of cities rather than the

countryside.3

Nonetheless, the revolution of the sabanas is a subject worth exploring for a number

of reasons. First, it is an unusual episode in the history of Cartagena’s politics during

the first phase of Colombia’s movement towards independence. Most political

conflict within the cities and province of Cartagena was between those who favoured

one form of autonomy or another, whether under the overarching authority of Spain or

as a fully independent polity. Spanish loyalism was rarely overt, and the rebellion of

the Sabanas was the only popular armed rebellion that called directly for the

restoration of royal government. It was, moreover, taken very seriously by the

Cartagena government. Seen from a contemporary perspective, the combination of a

Spanish incursion and the rebellion of the pueblos of the Sabanas was a considerable

challenge to Cartagena. It affected a region with a population of some 30,000 people,

which was quite a substantial segment of the population when the city of Cartagena

had some 16,000 inhabitants and Mompós had about 7,000. The rebellion was,

moreover, decidedly dangerous. This was not a rebellion of the backlands that was

irrelevant to the state and could be left to run its course. On the contrary, it threatened

to cut off essential food supplies and, because it combined with Spanish forces,

presented the even worse prospect of becoming a platform for a royalist assault that

might overthrow Cartagena’s republican government and cut short the revolution on

the Caribbean coast.

3 Notably in Helg Liberty and Equality; Alfonso Múnera, El fracaso de la nación: Región, clase y raza en el Caribe colombiano (1777-1810), Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1998; Marixa Lasso, ‘Haiti as an Image of Popular Republicanism in Caribbean Colombia: Cartagena Province, 1811-1828’, in David P. Geggus, (ed.) The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina, 2001, and ‘Race and Nation in Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartagena, 1810-1832,’ American Historical Review, 111:3, 2006, pp.336-61.

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Another interesting aspect of the rebellion is its rural and popular character. As a

small rural uprising, it offers us a glimpse of the micro-history of Cartagena’s region

outside the urban centres which have dominated historical study. Because it was a

popular rebellion which recruited from the diminutive pueblos, caseríos and Indian

communities of an agrarian society, it provides a chance to see something of the

values and behaviour of common people who lived in the small agricultural

communities that were the basic cell of coastal society and are usually hidden from

view. Equally interesting is its loyalist character. As a rebellion undertaken in the

name of king Fernando VII, it may tell us more about popular loyalism in Colombia, a

phenomenon which historians usually associate with Santa Marta, Popayán, the Valle

del Patía, and especially to Pasto, with its very substantial Indian peasantry.4

The purpose of this paper is, then, to try to throw some new light on the rebellion as

an episode in the history of Colombia’s, and particularly Cartagena’s, movement to

independence. My first aim is to give a reasonably detailed account of the rebellion

and its context, and to examine the character of its participants. My primary questions

concern how and why the rebellion took place and who was involved, and I also aim

to relate it to the bigger picture of cartagenero politics in the first phase of

independence. Was this a rebellion against the city or an extension of its politics?

What were the ideas which moved it; what was the language for their expression;

what were the grievances stated and the solutions proposed? How do rural and urban

politics compare? What does the rebellion tell us about loyalism and its social roots?

What does contemporary discussion of the rebellion add to our understanding of the

the history of independence in Cartagena? Before considering these questions, we

need a clearer picture of what the rebellion was: when, where and how did it start and

develop?

The Revolution of the Sabanas: The First History

Telling the story of the rebellion is facilitated by a contemporary document that seems

to have been overlooked by historians of the region. This is the Memorias sobre la

4 On popular loyalism in Pasto and the Patía, see Rebecca A. Earle, Spain and the Independence of Colombia, 1810-1825, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000, pp.47-53. On Santa Marta, see Steinar A. Saether, Identidades e independencia en Santa Marta y Riohacha, 1750-1850, Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2005, pp.197-207.

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revolución de las Sabanas, written by Fr. Joaquin Escobar and published in Cartagena

de Indias in 1813.5 The Memorias are presented in the form of a pamphlet, although at

a length of 80 pages, divided into ten chapters, the document is closer to being a short

book. It is an intriguing text. The author presents his work as a history, written, as he

thought good history should be, not only to record the facts of the rebellion but also to

provide ‘un cuadro de instruccion, en que el hombre aprenda a precaber los males y a

poner los medios de evitarlos, a procurar el bien general e individual por el

conocimiento de todas las causas que pueden influir en el uno, y en el otro.’ His

didactic approach was, he argued, especially important in time of revolution, which is

usually ‘el resultado de un conjunto de causas muchas veces ocultas y quasi siempre

desconocidas’.6

Escobar informs the reader that his history will proceed through three stages: the first

addresses the causes of the rebellion; the second sets out the events of the rebellion;

the third examines its effects and consequences. This was an unashamedly

teleological strategy. Having told us the causes and commented on the rebellion’s

lamentable implications, the author then provides a narrative which confirms these

causes and draws the political lessons that stem from the author’s political position.

Here we see all the hallmarks of the Enlightenment view of history as a discipline

which, while based in a scientific etiology, also had pragmatic political and moral

purposes. This was a view that penetrated Spanish America during the later eighteenth

century and, of course, lent itself to the essentially Enlightenment project for social

and economic reform which Spanish American liberals inherited from the Bourbon

period and, after independence, bent to the purposes of a reformist republican states. 7

5 Memorias sobre la revolución de las Sabanas sucedida el año de 1812: sobre sus causas y sus principales efectos, escritas por Fr. Joaquin Escobar que se halló en ella, Cartagena de Indias, en la Imprenta del C. Diego Espinosa, Año de 1813. Archivo de la Real Academia de Historia, Madrid: Colección Pablo Morillo, Conde de Cartagena, Signatura 9/7649, fols. 225-70. In my references below, I use the original pagination of the Memorias. 6 Ibid., p.3. 7 Renan Silva, Los Ilustrados de Nueva Granada, 1760-1808: Genealogía de una comunidad de interpretación, Medellín: Banco de la República, 2002; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write a History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the eighteenth century Atlantic World, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

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The Memorias are, then, essentially a long political tract. They are the product of a

clearly-revealed political position; they have a clearly-stated political purpose and are

unashamedly ‘patriotic’ in its language and intent. The work is, indeed, an interesting

object for analysis in itself, as a palimpsest of the Enlightened, republican picture of

the world, on which Escobar inscribed the principles of the revolution in Cartagena.

My information on the author, Fr. Joaquin, is limited to what he reveals in his

Memorias. There he states that he was an eyewitness to the revolution of the Sabanas

because the Presidente de Cartagena had given him a ‘delicada comisión’ to fulfil in

that region. He does not reveal what the mission was. However, his comments suggest

that he was in the Sabanas in order to disseminate propaganda for the new regime in

Cartagena and to identify its opponents. Escobar was evidently a political activist and

was politically well-connected: he frequently refers to his correspondence with the

presidente, recounts his role as a leader of the armed forces sent to repress the

rebellion, and, at the end of the document, tells us that the presidente recalled him to

Cartagena in order to participate in the sessions of the legislature.8

Rebellion and the Spanish Invasion

Although we should not regard Escobar’s narrative as an objective, accurate account,

one of the valuable features of his Memorias is that they permit us to reconstruct a

picture of the rebellion and of the military activities that followed from it. He claimed

to give a true account because he was an eyewitness and participant in many of the

events reported, but his personal position, political commitment and his physical

location during the rebellion undoubtedly influenced his record of events, not to speak

of his interpretation of their meaning. Nonetheless, it is worth paying attention to his

chronicle of the rebellion because it gives us a sense of its timing, distribution and

8 The only additional datum that I have found on Escobar is a copy of a letter that he wrote from the Convento de San Francisco to the Presidente Governador del Estado de Cartagena in 1813, in which he provides a brief account of the contribution made by the pueblo del Carmen in the fight against the forces that invaded from Santa Marta. It is reproduced in Roberto Arrazola (ed.), Documentos para la Historia de Cartagena, 1815-1819, Cartagena: Ed. Hernández, 1965, pp.69-72. The appears as part of the correspondence of General Pablo Morillo, to whom it was sent in 1816 by Francisco Montalvo to, to advise him of the side taken by El Carmen during the past war. Montalvo wrongly names the author as Gregorio Escobar -who, he says, had died in Jamaica - despite the fact that it is plainly signed by Joaquin Escobar.

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scale, and the character of military activity in these early campaigns between royalists

and republicans, none of which are found in histories of the period.

Escobar tells us that the rebellion started in Sincelejo on 15 September 1812, when

the pueblo of Sincelejo, convoked at the sound of ‘un fututo,’ collectively swore

loyalty to the King and opposition to the government of Cartagena. This was imitated

shortly afterwards by the pueblos of Sampues, San Andrés and Chinú. Corozal, where

Escobar resided, was initially loyal to Cartagena and the sincelejanos soon threatened

to burn it down. Escobar left for El Carmen, apparently to raise forces to combat the

sincelejanos, but in his absence the alcalde of Corozal, ‘ciudadano’ José de Florez,

was forced out by a riot of 100 men who insisted that he swear loyalty to king or be

deposed from his office. Florez resigned and the community proceeded to elect two

new officials. Escobar noted the irony: here was a defence of the old system, which

had no such elections, using the methods of the new, which had recently introduced

them.9

Corozal became a centre for the rebellion. On 22 September 1812, rebel forces moved

in from other settlements and came together in a show of strength. Led by their self-

styled ‘generalísimo’ Padre Pedro Martir Vasquez, 500 Indians from the pueblos of

San Andrés y Sampues arrived first, carrying their leader in a hammock. They were

joined by 200 sincelejanos led by Pedro Paternina. Father Vasquez then entered the

church to proclaim a Te Deum which, after a raucous altercation with the parish

priest, was followed by festivities which involved drinking the contents of the local

estanco’s stores. On the following day, 23 September, the ‘exército del Chinú’ made a

‘solemn entry’ into Corozal, led by Manuel Betin.10

These four pueblos were, in Escobar’s account, the platform of the rebellion of the

Sabanas. Others within their vicinity remained loyal, at least for a time. When

Escobar went to El Carmen and neighbouring Oveja to raise forces to oppose the

rebels, he secured the cooperation of their officials and the support of their people.

Sincé was also loyal and when Escobar travelled between El Carmen and Barranca on

the River Magdalena, he found that none of the settlements along the route - San

Jacinto, San Juan, Guamo and Yucal - had joined the rebellion. Further west,

9 Memorias, pp.16-20.

10 Ibid., p.21-2.

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however, ‘el contagio de la rebellion habia comunicado con la velocidad de un rayo’

to all the pueblos de Sabanas; it passed from one to the other and ‘en un momento se

hizo general’. 11

Little more than a week after the rebellion started at Sincelejo, Spanish forces invaded

Cartagena’s territory. The rebels of Corozal, Chinú, Sincelejo and Sampues called on

the Spanish forces on the River Magdalena to support them, and on 24 September

1812, Antonio Fernández Rebustillo, the comandante de la vanguardia española at

Tenerife led 70 Spaniards of the Regimiento de Albuera, together with 10 creoles

from the militias of Santa Marta and Panama, into Cartagena’s territory. These troops

stopped first at Corozal, at the invitation of its people, and there they were joined by

the pueblos de Sampues, San Andrés, Chinú and Sincelejo, whose people went to

Corozal to meet the Spaniards and make common cause. The revolution of the

sabanas was, then, a combined operation. The rebel towns made the first move by

declaring for the king and removing officials who opposed them; they were then

joined by Spanish forces who, Escobar tell us, came at the invitation of the

sincelejanos.12

Spanish forces also made gains on the Magdalena. Yatí, a fortified point on the River

Magdalena was lost when Cartagena’s troops there heard that their pueblos in the las

Sabanas and Sinú had changed sides. Without supplies of food or money, they

deserted, leaving the comandante Manuel Guerrero to abandon Yatí after salvaging

only some of its artillery. San Juan, close to the Magdalena, was also lost to the

Spaniards, who took it on 28 September and carried its arms away to Tenerife. Shortly

afterwards, El Carmen also fell to the rebels, leaving open the route to the gates of

Cartagena. 13

With these gains, Rebustillo could feel more confident that he would not attacked

from the rear, and he turned his attention to reorganizing local government in the

Sabanas ‘conforme a las practicas de su sistema’.14 He received the priests who led

their pueblos to present themselves to Rebustillo at Corozal, made various

11 Memorias, p.28. 12 Ibid., pp.28-30. 13 Ibid., pp.35-6; 39; 43. 14 Ibid., p.32.

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appointments, including making parish priests into comandantes, and re-established

the cajas reales,. He also spent ten days inspecting his new domain. He started with

the sitios de Sampues y Chinú; then went to Sahagún and Ciénaga de Oro; then

returned on the Sinú river to Chima, Momil, La Concepción and Lorica. He was, we

are told, ‘recibido en todas estas poblaciones con repiques de campana, capas de coro

y Te-Deum Laudamus.’ From Lorica, he visited the fortaleza de Zispata, and from

there embarked for Tolú. At Tolú, he met with Pinzon, a Spaniard who had been

appointed comandante of that plaza by Cartagena, and agreed ‘las medidas de sangre

que se vieron despues en toda la costa.’ From Tolú, Rebustillo returned to Corozal, 12

leagues away, to what was now his headquarters.15

At this stage, Rebustillo -who had titled himself ‘Gobernador civil y militar de las

Sabanas y Sinú’ - apparently believed that he was in control of the Sabanas and that

Santa Marta would send further forces via Barranquilla and Soledad against

Cartagena. But his control of the Sabanas was soon challenged by forces which

arrived from Cartagena in mid-October, and Rebustillo was forced onto the defensive.

He called on his clerical commanders to exhort their parishioners to destroy the

‘insurgentes’, and lead their pueblos in preparations for war.16 When the republicans

sent word to the pueblo of Oveja to warn its people to change sides before they were

attacked, Rebustillo promptly moved his headquarters to Oveja and began to build up

its defences with stakes, stockades, barricades and covered positions for his men and

artillery. He had a substantial force at his disposal in Oveja, of some 1200 men. Of

these, some 200 had firearms – ‘escopetas y fusiles’- while the rest had machetes,

lanzas, hondas y flechas. 17

Rebustillo’s decision to dig in at Oveja was evidently determined by the advantages

that it offered as a defensive position on the route into the Sabanas, and it was thus

near Oveja, at Mancomojan, that the military encounter between the forces of Spain

and Cartagena took place. Throughout October, Escobar had been moving from place

to place, trying to organize resistance and to bring artillery pieces into the area. He did

not have sufficient forces to attack Rebustillo, however, and awaited the arrival of

15 Ibid., p.44. 16 Ibid., pp.45-6. 17 Ibid., pp.46-8.

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troops sent by the government of Cartagena. These finally arrived on 17 October,

under the command of Comandante Manuel Cortes y Campomanes, and encamped at

San Juan. Escobar does not state how many men Campomanes brought with him, but

notes that when they left San Juan, Campomanes had built up his forces with local

recruits, and had a ‘compañia de patriotas’ and two ‘companias de linea’ and some

cavalry. They also had artillery, in the form of two ‘cañones montados y armados en

violentos (one de a 6, one de a 4, and 2 de a 2 ‘que iban en hombros’). When they

arrived at El Carmen on 25 October, Escobar counted 300 infanteria and 20

caballeria. The main force then encamped at El Carmen for the two weeks from 25

October until 11 November, and more men were recruited from El Carmen and from

among the milicianos of San Juan and San Jacinto, making up a company of 130 men

which became the 4th company. ‘Mr Basen’ who had recently arrived was appointed

as Captain of the new company. A new cavalry company of 80 men was also added,

recruited among vecinos of El Carmen who brought their own horses.. Comandante

now turned attention to training these men, showing them to use their firearms, while

a teniente de dragones montados de Barlovento trained the cavalry which had

increased to 110 men.18 Two foreign officer, Captain Smith and the ‘Varon de

Samburg’, subsequently took command of the cavalry.19

Having put together a force of about 530 men, the republicans set out in military order

from El Carmen on 11 November with the object of attacking Rebustillo at Oveja.

Their march took almost two days, with a night spent at the Arroyo del Carbajal, 2.5

leguas from El Carmen. On 12 November, they reached the outskirts of El Carmen

and began to advance on the enemy’s forward position at Mancomojan. On the

following day, they moved on Oveja and found that the Spaniards had retreated, so

that there was little resistance. 20 When it came, the war for the Sabanas was, like

much of the conflict in New Granada in this first phase of independence, more a war

of words than actions.

From this point, the Spanish occupation of the Sabanas began to collapse. Rebustillo

left men in various positions to cover his retreat, but as soon as the Spaniards’

18 Ibid., pp. 52-5. 19 Ibid., p.55, p.65 for mention of the foreign officers. 20 Ibid., pp.55-8.

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withdrawal began public knowledge, the rebels surrendered. Sincelejo and Chinú, the

first to rebel, were now the first to change sides, asking for pardon. The Sinú, Lorica

and Tolú remained in rebellion, but seem to have given up without much violence

when Cortes’ forces arrived. The forteleza de Zispata was taken by another force,

brought in by sea from Cartagena by Miguel Carabaño. Rebustillo’s force did some

damage on its exit, firing the pueblo of Zambrano on its retreat to Tenerife, but by the

end of November, the whole region was back under Cartagena’s control and the war

moved into the Magdalena Valley and beyond. 21

The rebellion and its repression seem to have attracted little publicity. Fr. Escobar

observed that the commander of the expedition and the officers and soldiers who had

taken part ‘han tenido el dolor de no haber visto siquiera sus nombres en los papeles

publicos, y que no se haya hablado una palabra de una accion tan memorable.’22 He

acknowledged that the absence of public recognition was probably due to the larger

profile of other offensives that took place close to the same time. He is of course

referring to the two famous military campaigns that took place in late 1812 and early

1813, in which Cartagena not only took the war to its enemies but also expanded its

territory. One was Bolívar’s campaign on the River Magdalena, which removed

Spanish garrisons from Tenerife and forced the Spaniards to release the grip on

communications along the great river; the others was Labatut’s offensive in the

province of Santa Marta, which culminated in the capture of the city of Santa Marta

and the evacuation of royalists to Portobelo and Panama. Nonetheless, Escobar

suggests, the campaign in the Sabanas was an important moment in the history of

Cartagena’s first republic, for several reasons. First, because the other campaigns

could not have taken place without first clearing the Spaniards out of the Sabanas and

the Sinú; secondly, victory there restored to the State ‘una de las partes mas floridas

… de su territorio …el Sinú … que surte a esta Plaza de granos y carnes saladas; y las

Sabanas de ganados de cerda y bacunos’; thirdly, defeat in the Sabanas so discouraged

21 Ibid., pp. 70-6. 22 Ibid., p. 63.

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the enemy that he abandoned his fortified points on the Magdalena from Santa Ana to

Tenerife.23

Seen in a longer historical perspective, the rebellion in the Sabanas and Sinú also

remains of interest to the historians for what it might tell us about Cartagena’s

relationship to its hinterland, about the politics and political culture of this rural

society, and about the ways in which these rural communities were drawn into, and

affected by the larger processes of conflict and war among the provinces of the

Spanish empire. Who was involved in the rebellion; what were their motives and

beliefs; how did they mobilize and organize as an armed force; and what was their

impact of their armed challenge to the government of Cartagena?

Origins and Participants

The question of how many people engaged in the rebellion is difficult to answer.

Escobar gives the impression that support was very widespread. He recalled that the

rebellion spread through the Sabanas ‘con la velocidad de un rayo’, and he argues that

a small number of Spaniards could not have taken control in a region with a

population of some 30,000 people unless that population had mostly welcomed them.

Escobar also suggests that this support was active and supplied the main body of

Rebustillo forces. Rebustillo had entered with only about 80 men, but when at Oveja

had, by his own account, a force of about 1,000. This was not an insignificant number.

If we assume a population of about 30,000 in the Sabanas, of whom probably about a

third were males of an age eligible for fighting, then 1,000 men represents about 1 in

10 of the eligible male population. We don’t how precisely who these men were, but

it seems that Indians were disproportionately represented. According to Escobar, the

largest group which joined Rebustillo’s forces at Corozal were 500 Indians from

Sampues and San Andrés. The others were 200 sincelejanos and an unspecified

number from Chinú, most of whom were no doubt drawn from the populations of

libres who were the majorities in those settlements.24

The numbers who joined Rebustillo’s forces do not, of course, give a complete picture

of support for the rebellion. Escobar tells us that many pueblos, led by their priests,

came to Corozal to pledge support for the Spaniards, and he refers to the strong 23 Ibid., p.62 24 Memorias, pp.21-2.

13

support for the rebellion at Lorica and in the Valle del Sinú. The Cartagena authorities

evidently believed that support for the rebellion was widespread, as it later decreed

the suspension of all those who held military and administrative posts when

rebuilding Cartagena’s government after the rebellion. Escobar insists, moreover, that

contrary to the common belief that the Spaniard invasion was not the cause of the

rebellion but its result. The Spaniards were able to invade and occupy the territory and

bring it back under royal government because they were invited by the rebels and

enjoyed extensive regional support.

Escobar provides scant information on the body of people who actively joined the

rebellion. In defining the rebels, he focuses first on the pueblos and sitios with which

he was in closest contact and between which he travelled. His initial base in the

region, where he began his ‘delicada comisión,’ was Corozal and from there he

reported on the rebellion of Sincelejo until he moved to El Carmen, and from there

moved around the area between El Carmen and the River |Magdalena, organizing

resistance to the Spaniards and seeking to bring in men and artillery from the river. He

makes very few references to the ethnicity of these people, apart from his mention of

the ‘indios’ from Sampues, his assumption that Indians from other pueblos were

involved, and a very brief reference to a ‘piquete de palenqueros’ who joined

Cartagena’s offensive force after its victory at Mancomojan.25 Fortunately, the late

colonial census data provide some data on the communities of las Sabanas, and these

are set out in Table 1.

25 Ibid., p.70.

14

If we assume that these data are broadly indicative of the social composition of the

pueblos involved in the rebellion, then it seems likely that the rebellion drew from

from the libres de todos colores and Indians who made up the majority population in

the Sabanas.27 From what we can tell, communities acted together, behaving as

corporate bodies that confronted an external government rather than dividing into

class or racial groupings. What is clear, however, is that Sampues and San Andrés,

two pueblos that played a leading part at the start of the rebellion were Indian

settlements with very few whites or libres. .

26 AHNC, Censos de varios departamentos, vol. 6. “Padrón hecho en el año de 1778.. en esta Provincia...” Cartagena de Indias, November 26, 1778. 27 For a detailed breakdown of the 1779 and 1780 censuses, see Hermes Tovar et al., Convocatoria al poder del número: Censos y estadísticas de la Nueva Granada, 1750-1830, Bogotá: Archivo General de la Nación, 1994, pp.470-503.

Table 1: Population in the Sabanas Region26

Place Whites Indians Freemen of Slaves Total all colours Barranca 75 676 81 832 Yucal 1 247 5 253 Corozal 609 2,104 110 2,823 Tolú 232 1,254 189 1,675 Lorica 1,056 3,447 216 4,719 Momil 235 44 683 78 1,040 Sincelejo 382 983 19 1,384 Pinchorroy 371 750 3 1,124 San Carlos 2 487 489 San Tero 53 28 250 331 San Onofre 18 59 550 609 1,236 San Gerónimo 236 930 19 1,185 San Pelayo 343 1,343 38 1,724 San Bernardo 28 970 30 1,028 Ciénaga de Oro 27 805 20 852 San Antonio Abad 101 526 627 San Benito Abad 64 1,251 115 1,430 Caymito 91 537 221 849 Cince 281 1,316 103 1,701 Chinú 92 121 1,652 61 1,926 San Juan Sahagún 67 953 37 1,057 San Jacinto, San Carmen

& San Francisco 88 1,475 8 1,571 San Juan , San Cayetano

& San Agustín 70 1,090 21 1,181 San Andrés 16 3,407 11 3,434 Sampues 25 1,946 34 36 2,041 Tolú Viejo 1 1,118 1,119

15

To explain the popular mobilization against Cartagena, Escobar stresses the role of its

leaders, while giving the impression that such leaders were drawn from among men

who either held local authority or aspired to do so. He mentions three or four men as

the principal ‘cabezas’ of the rebellion: the priest Pedro Martir Vazquez (who gave

himself the title of Generalísimo), Pedro Paternina of Sincelejo, and Manuel Betín of

Chimý. Later, he names other individual priests who had been drawn into the

rebellion, and he depicts priests throughout the region as leaders of their pueblos. He

has less to say about the secular authorities. In some places, they were simply forced

out and replaced by new men. The alcalde of Sincelejo, for example, was displaced

the month before the rebellion started by a crowd of men who disliked his honest

administration of the estanco de aguardiente. Another example was alcalde Florez of

Corozal: when confronted by a mutinous crowd who demanded that he swear an oath

of loyalty to the King and against the government of Cartagena, Florez choose to

stand down from his post and left Corozal to take refuge elsewhere. However,

Escobar implies that most of the secular authorities turned against Cartagena, and that

the ‘jueces’ throughout the area were invariably involved with the rebellion once it

got started.

Most interesting is Escobar’s allegation that the parish priests of the region were key

leaders of the rebellion. Their ‘ignorancia y fanatismo’ was to blame. ‘Faltos de los

conocimientos elementares de nuestra religion y de los principios mas obvios del

derecho natural, creian que la libertad es incompatible con el cristianismo y que era lo

mismo no ser vasallos de un rey imaginario que no ser cristianos.’ They not only

preached against the government of Cartagena but put themselves at the head of

pueblos which had taken up arms:

‘Los Pueblos acostumbradas a creer todo lo que les enseñan sus Pastores

… no dudaron un momento de alistarse baxo las Vanderas de la rebellion

que veian enarboladas por manos de las mismas Curas, y los seguian a

todas partes con tanta mas confianza quanto que veian en ellos a un

mismo tiempo sus Comandantes y sus Párrocos.’ 28.

Worse still, according to Escobar, was that these priests acted not just from ignorance

but also from malice, for they falsely declared the constitution of Cartagena to be

28 Ibid., pp.7-8.

16

irreligious, telling their parishioners that the Constitution of Cartagena decreed that ‘la

fornicacion no es pecado, que el Bautismo no obliga hasta el uso de la razon, y que la

confesion Sacramental es una invencion de los eclesiasticos para saber los pecados de

sus penitentes.’29

While Escobar was ready to blame rejection of republican values on ignorant priests

and a credulous popular piety, these were not the only sources of sedition. He also

found other agents and issues underpinning the rebellion. First among these was the

determination of the people of Sincelejo to persist with their illegal trade in

aguardiente. The sincelejanos had dedicated themselves to the cultivation of sugar

cane, and ‘desde el tiempo inmemorial’ had distilled their own aguardiente. Since the

imposition of the estanco de aguardiente, this had become illegal and consequently

criminalized those who operated outside the estanco. People had thus become

accustomed to criminal activity and impunity, and whenever any measure was taken

against them, ‘echaban mano de las armas, y muchas veces resistieron con ellas a la

Justicia.’ Indeed, in the month before the rebellion, Sincelejo had tried to depose its

alcalde because he tried to curtail illegal distillation of aguardiente.30 The man who

sought to take his place, Pedro Martínez, was a member of the local faction led by

Pedro Paternina who, in September, rebelled against Cartagena in the name of the

king.

Here, then, we have evidence of popular political activity of a characteristically

colonial kind: ‘motines’ within the community to force local officials to apply the law

in ways that were acceptable to the local community, at the risk of expulsion or the

forfeit of their offices. Examples of such behaviour abound in eighteenth century New

Granada.31 Indeed, the pueblo of Chinú had seen a protest of this kind in 1798, when

the villagers banded together to resist an alcalde and capitan aguerra who tried to

make open a trail, expelled the alcalde’s delegate, and rioted when some of

community members were arrested. 32 Thus, when the sincelejanos rioted against

their alcalde in August and then forced him out in September, the primary concern of 29 Ibid., p.8. 30 Ibid., pp.4-5. 31 Anthony McFarlane, ‘Civil Disorders and Popular Protests in Late Colonial New Granada,’ Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 65, 1989, pp. 283-330. 32 Ibid., p.

17

many was with the issue of the estanco, rather than the broader question of who ruled

the Spanish empire, or for that matter, who ruled the province of Cartagena. The

rebels also seemed to have behaved with restraint, with their violence directed against

property rather than persons. Crowds and leaders bonded with the rituals of religion

and festivity frequently found in colonial riots and rebellions, reflecting the traditions

of a long-established political culture of extra-legal action. Thus, for example, when

the rebels from Sampues converged on Corozal, the priest Vasquez led them to the

church for a Te Deum and afterwards they celebrated with a general borrachera, using

aguardiente from the estanco.33 Neither here, nor in any of the other pueblos involved,

was there any suggestion of violence within the communities. Moreover, when the

rebels joined the Spaniards, they did so in an orderly fashion, marching out in their

communities. The only dispute was between the leaders, over who should take

precedence in the parade.34

The rebellion seems, then, to have been shaped by the traditional politics of the old

regime, in which opposition to the estancos had been a frecuent theme in local

politics, and where riots and small-scale local rebellions aimed to change local

officials or policies rather than the system of government. Indeed, it seems likely that

rejection of the estanco de aguardiente (which the Estado de Cartagena had kept in

place despite espousing economic liberalism) was the key political motive for

rebellion, rather than any sense of sympathy for the royalist regime. Opposition to the

estanco was, as Escobar points out, a useful way to engage the people in rebellion for

leaders who harboured the larger political design of overthrowing the government of

Cartagena and reinstalling Spanish rule.35

Political Contexts

What were the bases of Spanish loyalism in the province of Cartagena? Escobar

suggests two types of leader who stood in the first rank of the rebellion and actively

engaged in the armed uprising with the explicit aim of overthrowing the new state.

While he dismisses most priests as ignorant, misguided men, he identifies four clerics

as key leaders of the armed rebellion. They were Pedro Martír Vasquez, the parish

33 Memorias, p.22. 34 Ibid., p.31. 35 Ibid., p.13.

18

priest of Sampues, who took the title of ‘Generalísimo’ and was carried about in a

hammock by his Indians; Andrés Ruz, cura de Colosó, who took the title of

‘comandante de los pueblos unidos’; José Saturnino Sotomayor, the priest of La

Concepción, who called himself capellán del ejército real; and José de Murcia, a

capuchino who was appointed as the same army’s medico y cirujano.36

Another species of loyalist identified by Escobar were citizens who were in contact

with the loyalists of the province of Santa Marta. In particular, he accused several

soldiers who were in the pay of the government of Cartagena of making contact with

the enemy and aiding them in various ways. One of these men was José Guerrero

Cavero, the comandante de armas of the whole province. Guerrero had been loyal to

Cartagena when fighting against Mompós in 1811 and had been rewarded with

promotion, but during 1812 he came under suspicion of communicating with the

enemy. Indeed, it seems that Escobar’s ‘comision delicada,’ when it started in June

1812, involved the investigation and arrest of Guerrero for treason: Escobar states that

he knew from mid-June 1812 that Guerrero had agreed with the Spanish commander

at Tenerife to provide him with arms and men, and that when the Supremo Tribunal

de Justicia called Guerrero back to Cartagena, he simply accelerated his preparations

for a rebellion, visiting Chinú, Sampues and Corozal to plot with his accomplices. 37

Other soldiers changed sides after the rebellion began. Diego de Castro, appointed by

the Cartagena government as comandante del departamento de Lorica with

instructions to pacify the Sabanas, was one. Another was Pinzón, the Spanish

comandante of the plaza del Tolú, who, together with the soldiers of the forteleza de

Zispata, joined the Spanish side. Frias, the veteran sargento at San Juan, also

abandoned his post to the enemy, agreeing that he would allow a Spanish raiding

party from Tenerife and helping them to carry its arms back to their base. 38

Both these groups of men sought to overthrow Cartagena for reasons of personal

loyalty to Spain and desire to reinstate the old regime. In addition, there were

probably men at the lower level of the leadership whose political objections to the

Cartagena government related to issues within the internal politics of Cartagena and

36 Ibid., pp. 45-6. 37 Ibid., pp. 6-7. 38 Ibid., pp. 32; 37-8; 44.

19

Cartagena’s governance of the province. Escobar observes, for example, that one

cause of rebellion was ‘el odio quasi general’ in the Sabanas for the new Corregidor,

Ignacio Muñoz. Such dislike of officials imposed by provincial capitals, particularly

when they brought reform and change, was nothing new in the political life of

colonial New Granada. On the contrary, it was a frequent cause of riot and rebellion

during the eighteenth century. However, in this case there is reason to believe that

dislike of an intrusive corregidor had another dimension, linked to politics in the city

of Cartagena.

Ignacio Muñoz, historians tell us, was an important figure in Cartagena in these years.

A young lawyer from Corozal, he was the son-in-law of Pedro Romero, the rich

mulatto who played a key role as an intermediary between white radicals and the

pardos who supplied their power in the streets, and he was closely connected to the

piñerista party which controlled the city in 1812.39 Escobar evidently regarded him as

a political actor to be treated cautiously, for he explicitly refused to discuss Muñoz’s

conduct or explain why the pueblos hated him: such details would, he said, be better

done ‘en otro Pais o en otra epoca.’ Escobar nonetheless suggests that Muñoz’s had

made enemies in the Sabanas because he had played a key role in the revolution of 11

November 1811, which had overthrown José María García de Toledo, a person who

‘todos los habitantes de Sabanas amaban y respetaban’.40 Escobar thus implies that

the rebellion of the Sabanas owed something to the influence of supporters of the

toledistas, following the overthrow of García de Toledo by the piñerista party in late

1811.

Although Escobar does not attribute any direct responsibility for the rebellion to the

toledistas, the suspicion that the city’s factional politics might have influenced politics

in the countryside is reinforced by knowledge that García de Toledo had a residence

in Turbaco and an hacienda in Corozal, where he spend two years in a kind of internal

exile after the 9 November revolution in Cartagena and, like his supporters, engaged

in building an opposition movement.41 Years later García de Toledo, when seeking to

39 On Romero and his role in the politics of Cartagena, see Muñera, El fracaso de la nación, pp.173-215; on Muñoz, p.197. 40 Memorias., pp.8-9. 41 Helg, Liberty and equality, p.135.

20

display evidence of his innocence during his trial for treason, mentioned this

connection. Referring to the time when Rebustillo had invaded with troops from Santa

Marta, he stated that ‘se decía que aquellos habitantes yo los había conmovido porque

me estimaban, a causa de que por haber tenido en ellas una Hacienda había estado

algunos años en aquellos lugares…’42 Here, then, we have a hint that the politics of

urban Cartagena, where the faction of García de Toledo competed for power with the

independentistas led by the Gutíerrez de Piñeres brothers, reached out into the

countryside and interacted with grievances about the estanco to produce a rebellion

that was not just against the city but against the government at the time.

This attack on the city from the countryside needs some further explanation, however,

given that the majority population of the Sabanas counted by the colonial censuses

was made up of gente libre de todos colores. As these no doubt included a substantial

number of people of mixed African descent, we must ask why the free coloured

population sided with the royalists who failed to offer full political rights, rather than

joining with the republicans of Cartagena who had proclaimed equality for the castas.

Escobar is not helpful on this issue, since he treated the question of popular rebellion

against the new regime in a disingenuous manner. He observed that people in the

Sabanas had no reason to oppose the government of Cartagena, which had done them

no ill; on the contrary, Cartagena had given them political rights of the kind they had

never previously had. Nonetheless, ‘ellos renuncian todos estos privilegios, someten

de nuevo su cuello al pesado yugo del despotismo y en un instante restablecen el

antiguo sistema de opresion como por un instinto simultaneo.’ His explained this by

their ‘grocera ignorancia’, their opposition to the new, and above all their misguided

defence of religion, based on a deliberate tergiversation of the Constitution of

Cartagena by their priests.43

There are of course other possible and more plausible explanations. It might be, for

example, that those who rebelled against Cartagena were expressing their dislike for

any forms of outside interference and their preference for local self-government. They

might also have been expressing, in the different social context of the Sabanas, the

42 ‘Alegato del Señor García de Toledo’, 11 February 1816, in Roberto Arrozola, Los mártires responden, Cartagena: Ediciones Hernández, 1973, p.19. 43 Ibid., p.28-9.

21

racial tensions that fuelled politics in the city of Cartagena de Indias, where the pardos

backed republicans who promised equality. There is a parallel for such popular

loyalism among Indians, blacks and libres in the chrysalis of Colombia: in the Valle

del Patía, free blacks, slave runaways, ‘vagabundos’ and other social marginals

aligned themselves with the loyalists during these years; so, too, did the llaneros of

Venezuela, whose first rebellion was led by the Spaniard Boves on the side of Spanish

loyalism, and against the creole city and republic.

Escobar’s Memorias do not illuminate these issues, however, for nowhere does he

seek to explain the rebellion in terms of racial tensions, nor does he identify political

positions with racial status. In fact, Escobar makes no direct allusion to racial

identities apart from his references to the ‘Indians’ of specific communities. When he

refers to these Indians, he says nothing about what being ‘Indian’ meant in the context

of the society of Cartagena, but merely implies that Indians were simple people, easily

led astray by their priests and equally easily pacified. He does not ask whether the

Indians of the Sabanas might have had good cause to support the royalist cause, as

they did in neighbouring Santa Marta, because royal government offered a more

stable and protective relationship than an independent government that represented

those who encroached on their lands. There is also the possibility that the Indians

were aware that the Constitution of Cadiz offered them rights of citizenship that were

at least as good as those offered by the estado de Cartagena, a fact which Escobar

simply ignores.

These omissions perhaps tell us more about Escobar’s thinking than about the Indians

themselves, for, in treating Indians in this way, he employed a trope common to

republican literature of this period: that Indians were opposed to independence

because of their ignorance and their long-established subordination under Spanish

rule. Indeed, by ignoring reference to race more generally, his writing contributed to

the emerging republican discourse in which the cause of independence was

considered coterminous with notions of racial equality and racial harmony.44 Racial

difference and contention could not be admitted, since all men were now legally equal

and their duty was to unite in the republic’s defence.

44 Marixa Lasso, ‘Race and Nation in Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartegena, 1810-1832,’ American Historical Review, 111:3, 2006, pp.341-53.

22

Significance of the rebellion

In this paper, I have given a preliminary account of the rebellion of the Sabanas,

based on one contemporary source. Clearly, there are possibilities for further

exploration. There are, for example, other possible sources worth investigating in

Colombian archives: the press of Cartagena for 1812, the reports and correspondence

of administrative and military personnel of the Estado de Cartagena during the same

year. In addition, reports from the Spanish side might be located in the Archivo

General de Indias at Sevilla, or other Spanish archives. However, before further

investigation, we can draw some conclusions about the historical significance of the

rebellion and its relevance to the history of the revolution in New Granada and

Cartagena.

The significance of the rebellion is best seen within the broader context of the

political life of Cartagena’s first republic of 1811-1815. It was the first loyalist

uprising within the province and, though brief, exposed the new regime’s

unpopularity in its rural hinterland. Coming at a time of intensifying conflict within

the city and conflict with loyalist enemies outside the city, the rebellion of the

Sabanas helped to accentuate the militarization of Cartagena’s politics. In late March

1812, the piñerista party that had tried to tighten its control of government with the

election in the Convención General of Manuel Rodríguez Torices ‘con la plenitud de

facultades de un dictador para la salud de la Patria y con el título de Vice-Presidente

Dictador.’ 45 It was, however, the rebellion in the Sabanas which forced Rodríguez

Torres to take a harder line towards Cartagena’s royalist opponents, and his tougher

response was reinforced by the arrival of military men among the refugees who fled

Venezuela after its royalist reconquest and the collapse of Caracas’ republican

government in late July 1812.

In the context of royalist advance in Caracas and danger of royalist invasion from

Santa Marta, the rebellion of the Sabanas posed an unmistakable threat to the stability

of Cartagena’s government. It allowed royalists in Santa Marta to move into

cartagenero territory and thus to push forward the frontier of a war that had been

confined to skirmishes along the River Magdalena. The prospect of a royalist

occupation of the Sabanas was, moreover, a nightmare for Cartagena’s government:

45 Quoted by Tisnes, Independencia en la costa, p.92.

23

not only would it tighten the royalist grip on the River Magdalena and thus exacerbate

the city’s problems of communication with the interior, but it also threatened to

deprive the city of an important source of food supplies and raised the risk of a

military encirclement.

It is difficult to gauge how much economic damage the rebellion actually inflicted on

Cartagena. It has been suggested that the rebellion was instrumental in forcing

Cartagena to turn to the use of paper money, a policy which did nothing to enhance its

reputation.46 Escobar, on the other hand, suggests that the adoption of paper money

was a cause rather than a result of the rebellion. Whatever the case, the disruption to

trade and revenues among the towns and villages of such a large area of the province

was undoubtedly damaging to Cartagena, particularly in undermining government

income from the taxes that went unpaid and uncollected during the period of the

rebellion and its aftermath.

The rebellion was also significant in the countryside where it occurred, for it took war

into territory that had not yet suffered from the passage of arms and its consequences.

According to Escobar, the royalist forces inflicted considerable damage. Rebustillo,

Escobar tells us, deposed the administrador de aguardientes, put his agents in office

and began to demand supplies and money. He forced vecinos to bring maize and

women to make bollo for his soldiers; he seized their cotton and made them spin it in

mechas for his guns, all without payment; he forced vecinos to donate or accept low

prices for iron, and made blacksmiths manufacture it into lances and machetes; he

made demands for livestock and for money ‘a su capricho.’ Those who resisted were

harassed, imprisoned and threatened with whippings.47 However, it is unlikely that the

damage ended with the Spaniards’ expulsion; cartagenero troops remained within the

region and no doubt imposed similar demands on the pueblos.

In military terms, the rebellion and Spanish invasion did not create an important new

theatre of war on the coast. While there was a threat of encirclement, it was never

realized. Indeed, Rebustillo’s invasion, which lasted 53 days, was more a prolonged

raid than a serious occupation. His rapid retreat from cartagenero forces, scarcely

without a fight, suggests that he had little confidence in his ability to hold the

46 Helg, Liberty and Equality, p.143. 47 Memorias, pp.33-4.

24

province with the local forces available to him. This might have been because they

were insufficiently armed or because he judged them unreliable, or because Santa

Marta refused reinforcement. Whatever the case, the rebellion in the Sabanas

evaporated quickly after the evacuation of Rebustillo’s forces following the first

armed clash at Mancomojan, and did not last much longer further west at Lorica and

the Sinú. After its brief appearance in the lands west of the Magdalena, war moved

back across the river after November 1812, into the province of Santa Marta.

The rebellion was militarily significant, however, in an indirect way, because the

incursion from Santa Marta provoked the government of Cartagena into taking the

offensive against its royalist enemies on the River Magdalena and in the province of

Santa Marta. Indeed, the attack against Rebustillo can be seen as part of a three-

pronged counter-offensive against royalist Santa Marta that was driven by the needs

of Cartagena to strengthen its authority and facilitated by the arrival of experienced

military officers from Venezuela, forced by the fall of the First Republic in Caracas to

seek exile in Cartagena. The rebellion of the Sabanas was thus an episode in

Cartagena’s war with Santa Marta in 1812-13, when armed conflict was renewed in

offensives led by soldiers from Venezuela under the command of Cartagena. Manuel

Cortes Campomanes led Cartagena forces into the Sabanas; Simón Bolívar led them

on the Magdalena, where he regained Tenerife and other important fortified points on

the river; and Labutut led them into the province of Santa Marta in an attack that

culminated, early in 1813, with the fall of the city of Santa Marta. Here we see the

first military fruits of the partnership between republicans of Caracas and Cartagena,

and the adoption of a new, military tone in political life.

With the offensive east of the River Magdalena, the region of Sabanas receded from

the conflict and the region seems thereafter to have remained in peace, at least until

Morillo’s arrival in 1815. Power in the city of Cartagena moved definitively into the

hands of the independentistas, war on the coast shifted into a persistent conflict with

the royalists of Santa Marta, and war against Spain’s loyalists also moved into the

interior, where in 1813 Nariño, Presidente de Cundinamarca, launched an offensive

against Popayán and Pasto. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, war became increasingly

intense and bloody, as the conflict with the royalists moved to a climax even before

the arrival of General Morillo’s expedition for pacification.

25

However, while the rebellion of the Sabanas was obscured by the larger conflicts

within New Granada and in neighbouring Venezuela, it has one curious echo in

Colombia’s history, sounded in the lives of two army officers who figured

prominently in the campaign of the Sabanas. In 1812, Manuel Cortes Campomanes

from Venezuela was the commander of Cartagena’s force in the Sabanas, and José

Baron de Schambourg from Germany was one of his officers. In the following year,

both were employed in Antonio Nariño’s campaign in the south and here they re-

entered the historical record in less respectable circumstances. In the course of

Nariño’s campaign, they were accused of plotting to depose, possibly even to

assassinate Antonio Nariño. Schambourg aroused suspicion over their loyalty when,

after drinking a great deal of ponche and aguardiente, he publicly defamed Nariño as

a disastrous military leader and, in a spectacular bout of drunkenness, supposedly

divulged a plan to kill him. He implicated Cortes Campomanes and others, and they

duly arraigned in courts-martial. 48 It seems unlikely that there was a serious plot.

Several witnesses testify to Schambourg’s extreme state of drunkeness, and his

defence attorney described him as ‘un joven fogoso de fibra ardiente que con

cualquier trago de licor eleva sus fuegos hasta el extreme de batirse con un Ejército.’49

Having started his military career in Colombia by repressing a rebellion motivated by

the desire freely to produce aguardiente, Schambourg seems to have ended it because

of his excessive consumption of aguardiente. Indeed, in a final irony, it was probably

to defend the honour of these officers that Escobar wrote the Memorias which provide

us with the most complete contemporary history of the revolution of the Sabanas.50

48 Papers from the consejos de guerra are transcribed in Sergio Elías Ortíz, (ed.) Colección de documentos para la historia de Colombia (Epoca de la Independencia), Tercera Serie, Biblioteca de Historia Nacional vol. CVII, Bogotá: Ed. ABC, 1966, pp. 87-192. 49 Ibid., p.188: José Arce and José Baron de Schambourg, La Plata, 16 December 1813. 50 Escobar refers to the need to disipar las calumnias que se han imputado a este expedición, o por mejor decir al xefe que la dirigió y algunos de los oficiales que han servido a sus órdenes: Memorias, p.80.