Ayacucho 1824: Starving Royalists Charge Downhill and Spain Loses Peru

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On December 9, 1824, about 7,000 royalist troops holding the heights of Condorcunca in the Peruvian Andes had less than five days of food and word that Colombian reinforcements were coming. They descended to attack roughly 5,780 patriots under Antonio José de Sucre on the Pampa de Ayacucho. The royalists were weakened long before the battle. In 1820 the mutiny of General Rafael Riego at Cádiz kept 20,000 Spanish reinforcements from sailing and forced Ferdinand VII to restore the 1812 constitution. In Peru the liberal Viceroy José de la Serna then faced a revolt by the absolutist Pedro Antonio Olañeta in Upper Peru, which drained 5,000 veterans. On the patriot side, Simón Bolívar fell ill on New Year's Day 1824 and in February unpaid troops at Callao locked up their officers and handed the fortress to Spain.

At Ayacucho, Colonel Rubín de Celis dragged his guns onto the plain ahead of their infantry screen, and General José María Córdova ordered his division forward at the pace of victors and overran them. The royalist left collapsed, General Monet was wounded crossing a ravine, and La Serna's raw reserves fled. La Serna was wounded and captured, and by 1 p.m. General Canterac signed a capitulation. In Spain, returning officers were branded Ayacuchos and accused of a Masonic defeat. Olañeta was killed by his own mutineers at Tumusla in April 1825, and Upper Peru declared independence that August.

• Days earlier at Corpahuaico the royalists inflicted over 500 casualties while losing barely 30, and Sucre retreated through quinoa fields.
• Asked his plan after the Callao mutiny, Bolívar answered with one word: triumph.
• The patriot ranks included British and Irish veterans of the Peninsular War and Carlos Sowersby, who had fought at Borodino.
• Royalist losses were about 1,800 dead and 700 wounded against roughly 370 patriots killed.
• Deputy Manuel Martín Cruz argued that as Rome came from Romulus, the new nation should be Bolivia, and Bolívar passed the presidency to Sucre.