Venezuelan War of Independence - Spanish Reconquest of New Granada (1815 - 1816)

1816)

In Spain, anti-French forces had liberated the country, and the restored Ferdinand VII sent a large expeditionary force to Venezuela and New Granada under Pablo Morillo, who had distinguished himself during Spain's War of Independence. The traditional image of the Venezuelan llanos swarming with caudillos like Boves exaggerates the situation. Boves was the only significant pro-Spain caudillo and he was acting in concert with Francisco Tomás Morales, who was a regular officer of Spain. In the Battle of Urica, Boves was killed and Morales took command and carried out mopping up operations against the remaining patriot resistance, which included the capture and execution of Ribas. As was still common in the early 19th century, Morales had his head boiled in oil (to preserve it) and sent to Caracas. (See the Execution of Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico.) Morillo arrived in Venezuela and began operations with Morales.

Royalist forces under Morillo and Morales captured Cartagena and Bogotá in 1816. Before leaving for New Granada Morillo had decommissioned most of the irregular forces that had fought under Boves, except those that he took to New Granada. With little prospects, some pardos and llaneros began to join the rebellions that were breaking out against Spanish rule in the broad plains of southern Venezuela. In the meantime, Bolívar chose to sail to Jamaica to enlist British aid, which was refused. From there, he went to Haiti, which had been the first Latin American republic to become independent. With the support of the Haitian president Alexandre Pétion and with the naval aid of Luis Brión, another émigré, who was a merchant from Curaçao, Bolívar returned to Margarita Island, a secure republican redoubt, but his command of the republican forces was still not firm. Mariño, who had come back with Bolívar from Haiti, headed his own expeditions and succeeded in temporarily capturing Cumaná in 1817. With Brión supplying a small fleet, Bolívar sailed west along the Venezuelan coast to Ocumare de la Costa (the Expedition of Los Cayos), where, in fulfillment of Pétion's request, he officially proclaimed the end of slavery (although this went unheeded). Morales, back in Venezuela after subduing New Granada, attacked the republican expeditionary force with an army that vastly outnumbered the republicans. Bolívar fled, sailing once again to Haiti with Brión. However, Piar and Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish soldier of fortune, who had previously been active in New Granada, managed to escape with their forces into the interior of the country, defeating Moreles at El Juncal in September 1816 before moving south to Guayana.

Boves's locally-raised Llanero army was replaced in 1815 by a formal expedition sent from Spain under the leadership of Pablo Morillo. It was the largest expedition the Spanish had ever sent to the Americas. Venezuela's proximity to Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spain made it the first target of the royalist counterattack. The Llaneros were either demobilized or incorporated into the expeditionary units. The republican patriots found themselves once more dispersed, and again the war took a local character. Different patriot guerrilla bands formed, but could not agree on a united leadership, much less a united strategy. One group of patriots launched an expedition to eastern Venezuela that ended in failure. Bolívar thereafter sought to join forces with Manuel Piar, another patriot leader but differences between them prevented a united republican front. Bolívar then went to the Llanos where he joined forces with José Antonio Páez, but a failed attack on central Venezuela forced Bolivar to retreat back to Apure. Morillo counterattacked successfully but was defeated at the Battle of Las Queseras del Medio. A long-term stalemate ensued in which the royalists controlled the highly-populated, urban north and the republicans the vast, under-populated plains of the south.