The Repository Códice

The Defeat That Made San Martin Refuse to Fight

September 3, 2026 · Runtime 9:13 · Watch on YouTube

Manuel Belgrano loses his army twice in six weeks, hands what's left to the man replacing him, and stays on as his subordinate -- and that man's first order as commander is not a battle plan. It's a retreat.

Transcript

Let them all come down first 0:00

At dawn on November fourteenth, eighteen thirteen, Spanish troops were filing down a mountain trail above the plain of Ayohuma. They moved three men wide, unable to go any faster. One of Manuel Belgrano's officers begged him to attack right there. Belgrano refused. 'Let them all come down first,' he said, 'so none of them escapes.' Seven hours later, his army was gone.

A general who refuses to disappear 0:28

This episode is not really about that battle. It is about what came after it: a defeated general who refuses to disappear. And the man who inherits his ruined army, only to make his first command decision a retreat. Ten weeks after Ayohuma, at a relay station in the middle of nowhere, Belgrano hands what is left of the Army of the North to Jose de San Martin. He stays on, voluntarily, as his subordinate.

Not the first disaster 0:57

Ayohuma was not the first disaster. Six weeks earlier, on October first, Belgrano's army had already been broken once, at Vilcapugio. Three hundred men died on that field, and Spain captured nearly all of his artillery. He rebuilt what he could -- about three thousand four hundred men, most of them raw recruits. This time he marched north with only eight small guns.

Belgrano had not lost anything 1:24

Six months earlier, Belgrano had not lost anything. He beat the same royalist army at Tucuman in September of eighteen twelve, then again at Salta in February of eighteen thirteen. Buenos Aires ordered him to press the advantage, north into Upper Peru itself, toward Potosi's silver and the road to Lima. Vilcapugio and Ayohuma were the cost of chasing that order.

The man who beat him twice 1:51

The officer beating him twice in six weeks was Joaquin de la Pezuela, a career Spanish commander running the royalist defense of Upper Peru. Ayohuma was not his last win. Within three years he would be named Viceroy of Peru, the highest office Spain had left in South America.

Two ways out, and neither taken 2:10

Before the battle, Belgrano's own officers proposed two ways out: march to Potosi and wait for reinforcements. Or push north around the Spanish entirely. Belgrano rejected both. He chose to make a stand on open, flat ground -- terrain built for exactly the flanking maneuver Pezuela was about to run.

Seven hours on open ground 2:33

When Spanish troops began descending a narrow mountain trail in single file, Lieutenant Gregorio Araoz de la Madrid urged an immediate attack. Belgrano waited for all of them to come down first. That gave Pezuela time to organize his artillery and swing a column around the patriot flank. The fighting lasted seven hours.

The numbers, counted 2:56

The numbers were as lopsided as the tactics. Belgrano's side lost about two hundred killed, two hundred wounded, and five hundred captured -- out of thirty-four hundred. Pezuela's side lost about two hundred killed and three hundred wounded. Belgrano regrouped with roughly eight hundred men left under his command.

One flag, hidden in a church 3:17

One flag survived on purpose. Sergeant Major Marcos Estopinan carried it off the field and hid it inside a church in Macha. He kept it at his own house for years afterward. His descendants finally donated it to a museum in Jujuy in nineteen twelve -- nearly a century after the battle that nearly cost it.

The flag he designed himself 3:38

The flag was not a generic banner. Belgrano had designed it himself, blue and white, in February of eighteen twelve. He first raised it over Rosario months before he ever commanded this army. Losing it at Ayohuma would have meant losing something he had personally invented for the revolution.

Tending the wounded under fire 3:59

Among the captured was Maria Remedios del Valle, who had served with the army since the retreat from Buenos Aires in eighteen ten. At Ayohuma she was tending the wounded under fire, alongside two other women. She survived captivity. In eighteen twenty-seven, found begging outside a government building, she was granted a military pension and the title 'Mother of the Nation.'

Completely defeated 4:24

Belgrano wrote to the government himself: 'I have been completely defeated on the plains of Ayohuma.' He offered to keep serving, he said. Even as a common soldier, if that was what the cause required. It was not false modesty performed for a letter. Within months, he would actually mean it.

Three weeks for the news to arrive 4:45

Buenos Aires learned about Ayohuma on December second -- nearly three weeks after the battle. That was the normal delay for an overland courier crossing a continent with no faster way to send bad news. By then, Belgrano had already retreated hundreds of kilometers. The decision to replace him was effectively already made.

Six hundred kilometers back 5:08

Belgrano pulled the survivors back through Potosi, then Jujuy, covering roughly six hundred kilometers of retreat. The army that reached northern Argentina in the weeks after was smaller, poorer, and less equipped than the one that had marched north before it.

Two years of letters, one meeting 5:24

Belgrano and San Martin had corresponded for two years but never met face to face. That changed on January seventeenth, eighteen fourteen, at a relay station in Salta province. The formal handover of command followed at the same post, on the twenty-ninth or thirtieth of January -- sources differ on the exact day.

What San Martin actually inherited 5:47

What San Martin actually inherited was worse than the casualty count alone suggested. The soldiers were underfed, badly clothed, and had gone unpaid for months. Before he could plan any campaign, he spent the months that followed in Tucuman rebuilding an army from spare parts, not commanding one.

The general who stayed 6:07

What happened next is the part rank was not built to predict. Belgrano did not vanish in disgrace. He stayed in the Army of the North, and San Martin gave him command of one regiment inside it. A general who had just lost two battles in six weeks, now taking orders from the colonel who replaced him, by his own choice.

What the road south was worth 6:30

The stakes were not small. The Army of the North was the only real force standing between royalist Upper Peru and everything south of it -- Salta, Tucuman, Buenos Aires. Two defeats in six weeks did not just cost soldiers. They opened the road south, with almost nothing left to defend it.

Not a battle plan 6:51

San Martin's first decision as commander was not a battle plan. He looked at the road north into Upper Peru, the same road that had just destroyed two armies. He called it a war of attrition the revolution could not afford. His first order was to pull the entire army back to Tucuman instead.

Handed to the gauchos instead 7:11

San Martin did not abandon the frontier. He handed it to someone else -- Martin Miguel de Guemes, put in charge of the border along the Juramento river. Guemes commanded gaucho militia who knew every canyon and mountain pass better than any regular army could. That March, San Martin told the government those gauchos alone were fighting a war so effective it forced the enemy to pull an entire division. Just to gather mules and cattle.

The debt never paid 7:40

Belgrano never collected on his own loyalty. He died on June twentieth, eighteen twenty, owed thirteen thousand pesos in salary the government never paid. No newspaper printed a line about his death. His own doctor paid for the funeral, and the carpenter built the coffin for free. Today that date is a national holiday -- Flag Day, for the banner he designed and Ayohuma nearly lost.

Not the start of a legend 8:08

None of this looks like the start of a legend. A general handing off a broken army and asking to serve under his own replacement. A future Liberator whose first command decision was to walk away from the fight in front of him. But refusing that fight is exactly what let San Martin spend the next year building an army somewhere the war of attrition could not reach it.

Looking past the mountains 8:31

Even in Tucuman, San Martin was already looking past the northern front entirely. He believed Spanish power in South America would only fall with the loss of Lima. And Lima was easier to reach by sea, through Chile, than by marching through the same mountains that had just broken two armies.

The posting nobody else wanted 8:51

On August tenth, eighteen fourteen, San Martin asked for a posting nobody else wanted: governor of Cuyo. A quiet province, on the wrong side of the country from every battlefield in this war. It looked like he was stepping away from the fight for good. It was where he would build the army that crossed the Andes.

Description and sources

At dawn on November 14th, 1813, Manuel Belgrano's Army of the North was broken for the second time in six weeks, at Ayohuma -- roughly 200 killed, 200 wounded, and 500 captured out of 3,400 men, after refusing to attack Spanish troops while they were still filing down a narrow mountain trail. It followed an earlier defeat at Vilcapugio on October 1st, even though Belgrano had won twice before, at Tucuman and Salta, and Buenos Aires had ordered him to press the advantage north into Upper Peru.

Ten weeks later, at a relay station called Yatasto, Belgrano handed the remains of his army to Jose de San Martin -- and stayed in it, by his own choice, in command of a single regiment under the man who replaced him. San Martin's first decision as commander wasn't a plan to retake the ground Belgrano had lost. It was to pull the entire army back to Tucuman, leaving the actual frontier defense to Martin Miguel de Guemes and his gaucho militia, while he looked toward a completely different way into the war: not north through the mountains that had just broken two armies, but west, toward Chile and the sea route to Lima.

Belgrano never collected on his own loyalty. He died in 1820, owed thirteen thousand pesos in back pay the government never sent him, with no newspaper printing a line about his death. The date is now a national holiday, for the flag he personally designed and very nearly lost at Ayohuma.

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The Document Set, Vol. 01 — Cajamarca 1532 and Buenos Aires 1595-1680 — the documents at reading size, with author, date, archive and licence

https://therepository.gumroad.com/l/document-set

SOURCES — every image in this video is a public-domain document.

Each plate below is listed with its author, date, holding archive and licence.

Casimir Carbonnier — 1815 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Mariano Torrente (died 1856) | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Attributed to Jean Baptiste Madou — c. 1828 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Mariano Torrente (died 1856) | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Établissement géographique Erhard frères. Auteur du texte — 1880s | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Julián Jayo y Mariano Carrillo — between 1816 and 1821 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Attributed to Casimir Carbonnier — 19th century | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Attributed to Casimir Carbonnier | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Attributed to Casimir Carbonnier — 19th century | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Francois Casimir Carbonnier | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Manuel Francisco Yglesias (o Iglesias) — 1951 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
not stated — 1941 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Augusto Ballerini (1857 - 1897) — 1875 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Daniel Hernández Morillo — 1921 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Retrato más canónico de José de San Martín | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain