The Repository Códice

The Farewell San Martin's Biographer Called a Disguise

October 11, 2026 · Runtime 10:13 · Watch on YouTube

On 20 September 1822 San Martin resigned his power in Lima and left the Peruvians a farewell of five short paragraphs. It became his most quoted text. Its most famous line echoes something Bolivar had said eight years earlier, and the historian who built his legend called the whole farewell a disguise.

Transcript

Five short paragraphs 0:00

On the twentieth of September, eighteen twenty-two, San Martin gave up his power in Lima. He left the Peruvians a farewell of five short paragraphs. Its most quoted line repeats an idea that Bolivar had spoken eight years earlier. That same night, San Martin rode to the coast and sailed, and he never came back. And the historian who built his legend called that farewell a disguise.

The farewell names its judges 0:27

The farewell tells you how to read it. His countrymen, it says, will divide their opinions, and their children will give the true verdict. So this is the farewell, line by line, against the letters, the will, and the historian who gave that verdict. Most of it holds. One line was not new, one object was not what he called it, and one warning came true within six months.

The sash 0:54

On the twentieth, Peru's first Congress met in Lima. San Martin took off the two-colored sash that marked him as Protector, in front of the deputies. From this moment, he told them, the Congress is installed, and the people take back power in all its parts. Then he laid six sealed papers on the table and walked out to cheering. One of them was his resignation, irrevocable, of any command in the future.

Founder of the Liberty of Peru 1:22

The Congress answered at once. It named him generalissimo of its armies, with a pension of twelve thousand pesos a year. He accepted the title and the pension, and refused the command. His presence in Peru, he wrote, was inconsistent with a sovereign Congress. That night the deputies added more. Founder of the Liberty of Peru, captain general, a pension like Washington's, and a statue on a column.

Pueblo Libre 1:52

From his country house at Magdalena, a village he had renamed Pueblo Libre, he sent the Peruvians his farewell. It fills less than a page. Bartolome Mitre, whose history is still the standard life of San Martin, prints it whole. He says it stayed in the memory of the Americas for its carved, lapidary style. And then he says it has to be read again, in a different light.

Pizarro's standard 2:18

The first lines are a list of what he had done. He had witnessed the independence of Chile and of Peru declared. In Peru's case he proclaimed it himself, in Lima, in July of eighteen twenty-one. Then the same sentence goes on. The standard that Pizarro brought to enslave the empire of the Incas is in my possession, and I have stopped being a public man.

What he carried out 2:43

The standard was real. The city council of Lima had given it to him, as a token of public gratitude. A French sea captain who wrote to San Martin in exile, Gabriel Lafond, says it was the only thing he carried out of Peru. Mitre is more exact. One hundred and twenty ounces of gold in his pocket, the standard, and a small gold bell from the Inquisition of Lima.

Palma: a piece of nonsense 3:09

But was it Pizarro's? Ricardo Palma, the Peruvian writer who ran his country's National Library, says it was not. He calls the story a paparrucha, a piece of nonsense. The banner the council gave away, he writes, was the city's own standard, carried on feast days by its royal ensign. Pizarro's war banner, Palma says, was taken out of Cuzco by Marshal Sucre, and it is in Caracas.

The patches 3:38

Palma prints a description by someone who held the city standard in eighteen forty-four. Faded yellow silk, more than three meters long. A large shield, red and blue, with the seal of the city of Lima. And patches everywhere, of newer yellow satin. Each year the new mayors carried it, and a woman of the household sewed on a square with the year and a name. Palma copies the last six, from eighteen fifteen to eighteen twenty.

The will, 1844 4:09

San Martin kept the standard for twenty-two years. In his will, written in Paris in January eighteen forty-four, he signs as Generalissimo of Peru, and Founder of its Liberty. Those are the titles from the night he resigned. And he adds one article. The standard that Pizarro waved in the conquest is to go back to Peru, although it is his property. On one condition.

On one condition 4:37

Provided, he writes, that its governments have paid the rewards and honors its first Congress voted him. The farewell gave the standard as a trophy. The will turns it into a receipt. It was handed to Peru's envoy in France in November eighteen sixty-one. Palma says it sat for years in a wooden box in a ministry, until it vanished in one of the riots against the old palace.

The famous line 5:02

Now the famous line. The presence of a fortunate soldier, however unselfish, is fearsome to states that are just being built. Mitre quotes it in his own verdict, and stops. This, he writes, is a repetition of what Bolivar had said before.

Caracas, 1814 5:21

Caracas, January eighteen fourteen. Bolivar stands before an assembly and asks to be relieved of his dictatorship. A fortunate soldier, he says, acquires no right to rule his country. He is not the arbiter of the laws, or of the government. Choose your representatives, your magistrates, a just government. The assembly proclaims him dictator unanimously, and votes him a statue. He accepts.

Same idea, opposite exits 5:52

Mitre dates that assembly to eighteen thirteen on one page, and eighteen fourteen on the page before. It met on the second of January, eighteen fourteen. The idea is the same, eight years apart. Bolivar said it and kept the power. San Martin said it and left that night.

Tired of hearing 'sovereign' 6:13

The next line. I am tired of hearing that I want to make myself sovereign. That rumor had a basis. Months earlier, his government had sent two envoys to Europe, and one of their tasks was to find a prince for a throne in Peru. And Bolivar, writing from Guayaquil that July, says San Martin told him the same. He did not want to be king himself. He wanted a European prince to reign.

Their children will judge 6:41

Then the line that names its own judges. On my public conduct, my countrymen will divide their opinions. Their children will give the true verdict. Bartolome Mitre was born in eighteen twenty-one. He is exactly that generation of children. And in his history of San Martin, he gave the verdict.

Mitre's verdict 7:04

If San Martin had resigned for the reasons in his farewell, Mitre writes, he would be unworthy of his fame. If he left because he was tired of hearing he wanted a crown, it was a fit of childish anger. And if the line about the fortunate soldier really moved him, he would be a paper hero. The farewell, Mitre concludes, was either a disguise to cover his retreat, or a cloak of tinsel he let others throw on him.

The letter of 29 August 7:31

Mitre's real reason is in a letter. San Martin to Bolivar, Lima, the twenty-ninth of August, eighteen twenty-two. I have called the Congress, and the day after it opens I will sail for Chile. I am certain that my presence is the only obstacle keeping you from coming to Peru with your army. That letter is the ground under Mitre's verdict.

Printed in French 7:55

It was not printed until eighteen forty-four. It appeared in Paris, in a travel book by the same Gabriel Lafond. And it appeared in French. Lafond writes, I translate it literally. In nineteen forty-five, Vicente Lecuna, the editor of Bolivar's letters, published a book calling it a forgery. Historians in Argentina defend it. The verdict on the farewell rests on a letter that is still on trial itself.

The last night 8:26

Mitre has one more witness: General Tomas Guido, who spent that last night with him. At nine, San Martin invited him to tea, and asked what he should take to Guido's wife in Chile. The passenger is me, he said, my horses are ready. Guido's account has him say it plainly: Bolivar and I do not both fit in Peru. At ten, he embraced Guido, mounted, and was lost in the dark.

Anarchy will devour you 8:55

One line is left. Peruvians, I leave you the national representation. If you trust it entirely, sing the triumph. If not, anarchy will devour you. On the twenty-seventh of February, eighteen twenty-three, army officers met at a hacienda called Balconcillo. They demanded a president, and the next day the Congress named Riva-Aguero. It was the first coup in the history of Peru.

An open question 9:24

So here is the question this episode cannot settle. Mitre says the farewell hid the real reason. But the farewell says, in plain words, that a victorious general is a danger to a new state. And then the general leaves. Is a public reason a disguise, if the man who gives it acts on it? Mitre thought so. The record does not decide.

The army he left behind 9:50

Before he left, San Martin planned one last campaign: an army of four thousand three hundred men, sent south by sea. He wrote to O'Higgins that it was impossible to have a bad outcome. Next episode: what happened to that army, at Torata and Moquegua, in January eighteen twenty-three.

Description and sources

This episode reads the farewell line by line, in the text Bartolome Mitre prints in his Historia de San Martin (vol. III, pp. 665-666), against the letters, the will, and Mitre's own verdict.

The resignation itself (Mitre, p. 663): San Martin took off the two-colored sash in front of Peru's first Congress, said the people took back power in all its parts, and left six sealed papers on the table. The Congress named him generalissimo with 12,000 pesos a year; he accepted the title and the pension and refused the command. That night it added Founder of the Liberty of Peru, captain general, a pension like Washington's and a statue.

The standard 'that Pizarro brought to enslave the empire of the Incas': the Cabildo of Lima gave it to him, and Gabriel Lafond (Voyages autour du monde, vol. II, 1844, p. 138) says it was the only thing he took out of Peru; Mitre adds 120 ounces of gold and a gold bell from the Inquisition. Ricardo Palma (Tradiciones peruanas, vol. IV, 1893, pp. 127-132) calls the Pizarro story 'una paparrucha': it was the city's own standard, patched every year by the new mayors, and Pizarro's war banner went to Caracas with Sucre. San Martin's will (Paris, 23 January 1844) returns it to Peru 'provided its governments have paid the rewards and honors its first Congress voted me'; it was handed over in 1861, and Palma says it later vanished in a riot against the old palace.

The famous line -- 'the presence of a fortunate soldier, however unselfish, is fearsome to states that are just being built' -- is, Mitre writes (p. 673), a repetition of what Bolivar had said before. At Caracas in January 1814 Bolivar told an assembly that 'a fortunate soldier acquires no right to rule his country'; the assembly made him dictator by acclamation, and he accepted (Mitre, p. 370, who dates it 1813 on p. 369 and 1814 on p. 368).

The verdict: Mitre, born in 1821 -- one of the 'children' the farewell names as its judges -- writes that if San Martin had resigned for the farewell's reasons he would be unworthy of his fame, a 'paper hero', and that the farewell was either 'a disguise of circumstance' or 'a cloak of tinsel' (pp. 673-674). His real reason is San Martin's letter to Bolivar of 29 August 1822 ('my presence is the only obstacle'), first printed in 1844, in French, by Lafond, who says he translated it literally; Vicente Lecuna called it a forgery in 1945, and historians in Argentina defend it. Mitre's other witness is General Guido's account of the last night ('Bolivar and I do not both fit in Peru', p. 668).

The last line -- 'if not, anarchy will devour you' -- met the Balconcillo mutiny of 27 February 1823, Peru's first coup.

PRINT-READY, FROM THIS CHANNEL

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.

Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
José Gil de Castro — 1825 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Attributed to Jean Baptiste Madou — c. 1828 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Engraved plan of Lima — 1870 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
View of Lima from the Plaza de Toros — c. 1800 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Bartolome Mitre — 1890 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain

... and 19 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.