The Repository Códice

Junin: The Battle Where Not a Shot Was Fired

November 1, 2026 · Runtime 11:00 · Watch on YouTube

On 6 August 1824, on the plain of Junin in the Peruvian Andes, Bolivar's cavalry broke in the first charge and he rode back believing all was lost. Forty-five minutes later the royalists had fled, and not a shot had been fired. The men who were there do not agree on who won it, and the poem that made the battle famous opens with thunder.

Transcript

Not a shot 0:00

Junin, August eighteen twenty-four: the battle where not a shot was fired. In the first charge, Bolivar's cavalry broke and ran. He rode back, believing all was lost. Forty-five minutes later, it was won. The papers do not agree on who won it.

Every account, both sides 0:20

We read every account of those forty-five minutes side by side, page by page, from both sides. Miller's memoirs, and the letter Miller wrote three days after. The Spanish general's report, and the patriot bulletin. Paz Soldan in Lima, Mitre in Buenos Aires. And the poem that made Junin famous. It opens with thunder.

The plain of Junin 0:45

This is the central highlands of Peru, filmed in the nineteen forties. We found no film of the plain of Junin itself. It lies further north and higher still, at the southern end of a great lake. This photograph of it was printed in Lima in nineteen twenty-five: a new column, on an empty plain.

Two armies in the mountains 1:06

In August eighteen twenty-four, both armies were in these mountains. The royalist general Jose de Canterac left Jauja on the first, Paz Soldan writes, with eight thousand men. Bolivar marched to cut him off, along the southern end of the lake. On the sixth, at two in the afternoon, the patriots saw the enemy from high ground, two leagues away.

Nine hundred 1:31

Bolivar sent his cavalry ahead, nine hundred men, Miller writes, and left his infantry a league behind. In front of them was the whole royalist army: eight thousand infantry and twelve hundred cavalry. Canterac saw his chance. He halted his cavalry, sent his infantry and his guns on, and formed his horsemen to charge.

Four o'clock, or five 1:54

Miller puts the moment at four in the afternoon. Paz Soldan, Mitre and the patriot bulletin put it at five. The Spanish account adds what went wrong on its own side. Canterac did not use his artillery, and the charge broke into a gallop from too far away.

The rout 2:13

The shock, Miller's memoirs say, was tremendous. The patriot cavalry was routed. Only a few Colombian grenadiers under Major Braun held. And one Peruvian squadron, a few hundred yards behind, was missed by the first blow. The rest turned and ran, with the royalists behind them.

Necochea 2:35

Their commander, the Argentine general Mariano Necochea, took seven wounds and was made prisoner. A royalist soldier spared his life. He had once served under Necochea, in the army of the Andes. He put the general on his horse, behind him, and was carrying him off when a Colombian party rescued Necochea. The man who saved him, the memoirs add, was killed before anyone knew what he had done.

Bolivar rides back 3:03

Bolivar had come through the pass and directed the first movements himself. When he saw his cavalry scatter, the memoirs say, he very properly galloped back to the infantry, a league behind. Miller's letter, written three days after, is less polite. Bolivar and his staff, it says, believed for a long time that all was lost.

A note in pencil 3:27

The first news Bolivar had of the victory, the letter says, was a note Miller sent him from the field, written in pencil. Mitre says the same: Bolivar gave everything up for lost. One of Bolivar's staff even gave the hour his anxiety ended: half past six in the evening.

One squadron 3:47

What happened in between was one squadron. The Peruvian squadron that the first blow had missed was commanded by an Argentine, Lieutenant Colonel Isidoro Suarez. The pursuit swept past it. Suarez advanced into the empty ground, got behind the royalists, and charged them from the rear.

The pursuers pursued 4:07

The pursuers became the pursued. Paz Soldan says a marsh had kept Suarez's men out of the first collision. Miller's letter says their charge gave the broken squadrons time to turn and form again. All was lost, he wrote, when the Peruvian cavalry, one may say, won the day.

A victory that was ours 4:27

Canterac's own report, written two days later, cannot explain it. At that very moment, he writes, without my being able to imagine the cause, our cavalry turned and fled shamefully. It gave the enemy, he says, a victory that was ours. In the same report he declares four patriot generals dead, Necochea among them, and Bolivar wounded in the hand. None of it was true.

Lance and sabre 4:55

The whole action, Miller's memoirs say, lasted about three quarters of an hour. Then the line that made Junin famous: not a shot was fired; the lance and the sabre alone were used. The Spanish account remembers a longer fight: the pursuit and the fighting man to man, it says, lasted more than two hours. What it confirms is the infantry. It had not yet fired a musket.

The count 5:23

Then the count. Miller's memoirs give nineteen royalist officers and three hundred and forty-five men killed, and eighty prisoners. Miller's letter, three days after the battle, says two hundred and fifty dead and sixty prisoners. Bolivar's secretary, the day after, wrote two hundred and thirty-five.

Miller against Miller 5:44

The memoirs were written up by Miller's brother John, and published in London five years later. Their numbers are not the letter's. They are the official bulletin's, line for line: nineteen officers, three hundred and forty-five men, eighty prisoners. And on the patriot side, the same forty-five dead and ninety-nine wounded.

The cold 6:07

The memoirs keep one line the bulletin does not have. The plain of Junin is so high, they say, that the cold at night was intense. Nearly all the wounded, on both sides, died.

The bulletin 6:21

The bulletin was written at Reyes on the seventh of August, and signed by General Andres de Santa Cruz. It praises Major Braun's Colombian grenadiers, the Colombian hussars, and the first regiment of Peru, under General Miller. In the text that the Spanish historian Garcia Camba printed, Suarez is not named.

Mitre's bulletin 6:43

Mitre read a bulletin that did name him. Bulletin number two, he writes, does justice to the squadron of Peru commanded by Suarez, which decided the action. Either Mitre saw another printing, or Camba's copy lost those lines. We could not find the original to settle it.

Hussars of Junin 7:03

The name stayed anyway. Bolivar ordered the hussars of Peru to take the title Hussars of Junin, the memoirs say. Mitre has him do it on the battlefield. Paz Soldan says it was in a general order. We found no copy of the order itself.

Razuri 7:22

A second story grew around that charge. In a footnote, Paz Soldan records a tradition about a squadron commander named Razuri. My colonel, Razuri tells Suarez, this is the moment: let us charge them from behind. Suarez, the footnote says, took the advice. Today it is told as a false order: Razuri sent to order a retreat, and saying charge instead. We could not find that version in any nineteenth-century book we opened.

Piura celebrates 7:53

The news travelled faster than the arguments. In Piura, on the far north coast of Peru, the town celebrated the victory on the twenty-ninth of August. The account they printed cheers Colombia and the brave of Junin. But the triumph it credits to one arm: the invincible arm of the immortal Bolivar.

Olmedo's thunder 8:14

The next year, the poet Jose Joaquin de Olmedo published the song that made the battle a monument: The Victory of Junin, a Song to Bolivar. This is the London printing of eighteen twenty-six. It opens with the horrendous thunder that bursts in its roar. And with the lightning that, at Junin, breaks and scatters the Spanish host.

You fire where no shot was fired 8:37

Bolivar read it in Cuzco, and wrote back on the twenty-seventh of June, eighteen twenty-five. You fire, he told the poet, where not a shot was fired. You make me a Jupiter, Necochea a Patroclus, Miller a Diomedes. If you were less a poet, he adds, I would think you meant a parody of the Iliad, with the heroes of our poor farce.

The talkative Inca 9:01

Two weeks later he wrote again. The real hero of the poem, he complained, seems to be the Inca Huayna Capac, and the Inca is a little talkative and muddled. The opening he called bombastic: the thunderbolt of Jupiter, sent down to thunder over the Andes. Forgive me, friend, he ended; the fault is yours, for making me a poet.

Mitre's verdict 9:25

Mitre, in eighteen ninety, was harder on the poem than Bolivar. Olmedo sings Bolivar like a hero of Homer, he writes, in a fight decided by chance and by the courage of the soldiers. Neither Bolivar's intelligence nor his person took part in it. The honour of the victory is still his, Mitre adds, as the general who gave the order to fight.

The painting, and Borges 9:49

In eighteen ninety-five, the Venezuelan painter Martin Tovar y Tovar painted Junin for the capitol in Caracas. Bolivar is in the centre, on a white horse, directing. Suarez's name lasted in other ways. His great-grandson, the writer Jorge Luis Borges, gave him a poem: Page to commemorate Colonel Suarez, victor at Junin.

Who won Junin? 10:15

So who won Junin? The bulletin gives it to everyone. Miller's letter gives it to the Peruvian cavalry, and his memoirs to Suarez and Braun. The poem and the painting give it to Bolivar. And Bolivar told the poet that he had fired where not a shot was fired.

Ayacucho 10:34

Four months later the two armies met again, at Ayacucho, on the ninth of December, eighteen twenty-four. The Hussars of Junin charged there too. And the general who had charged at Junin, Canterac, asked for the surrender of the Spanish army, and settled its terms on the field. Next episode: Ayacucho, and the surrender Canterac asked for.

Description and sources

This episode reads the forty-five minutes of Junin in every account we could open, from both sides: the Memoirs of General Miller, vol. II (London, 1829, pp. 159-167), and the letter Miller wrote to his brother from Tarma on 9 August 1824, printed by Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan in his Historia del Peru independiente (1822-1827), vol. II (Madrid edition, 1919, pp. 53-62); Bartolome Mitre's Historia de San Martin, vol. IV (1890, pp. 82-87); and the royalist side in the Memorias of Andres Garcia Camba, vol. II (Madrid edition, 1916), with the reports of Canterac, of Bolivar's secretary Heres and the patriot Bulletin no. 2 in its appendix. Then the poem: Jose Joaquin de Olmedo's La victoria de Junin. Canto a Bolivar (London reprint, 1826), and Bolivar's two letters to Olmedo from Cuzco (27 June and 12 July 1825).

The battle (Miller, pp. 161-165; Paz Soldan, pp. 56-59; Mitre, pp. 82-86): the patriots sight Canterac's army at 2 p.m. on 6 August. Nine hundred patriot horsemen against 8,000 infantry and 1,200 cavalry (Miller; 1,300 in Paz Soldan, Mitre and Camba). The charge at 4 p.m. (Miller) or 5 p.m. (Paz Soldan, Mitre, the Bulletin). The patriot cavalry is routed; Necochea is wounded seven times and taken; Lieutenant Colonel Isidoro Suarez's Peruvian squadron charges the pursuers from behind. Bolivar 'very properly galloped back' (the Memoirs); he and his staff 'believed for a long time that all was lost' (Miller's letter).

The count: 19 officers and 345 men killed and 80 prisoners (the Memoirs, identical to the Bulletin); 250 killed and 60 prisoners (Miller's letter); 235 (Heres). 'Not a shot was fired' (Miller, p. 164); the pursuit lasted 'more than two hours' (Camba, p. 257).

The Bulletin as Camba prints it does not name Suarez; Mitre says it does. The story of Razuri changing a retreat order into a charge: the oldest printed version we found (Paz Soldan, p. 57, note 1) is a piece of advice, recorded as tradition.

The poem and the reply: Bolivar to Olmedo, Cuzco, 27 June 1825: 'you fire where not a shot was fired' (Lecuna, Cartas del Libertador, 2nd ed., vol. IV, p. 355).

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

FILM — the moving images are public-domain films of the places, shot in the 1940s. They show where it happened, not what happened; the documents are the evidence.

Tarma, la ciudad florida de la sierra (newsreel) — Productora Huascarán — c. 1944-1948 | Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, via Wikimedia Commons | CC0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tarma,_la_ciudad_florida_de_la_sierra.webm
Visiones de la provincia de Huancayo (newsreel) — Ministerio de Gobierno del Perú / Perú Sono Film — 1940s | Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, via Wikimedia Commons | CC0 | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visiones_de_la_provincia_de_Huancayo.webm

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

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

Martín Tovar y Tovar (1827 - 1902) — 1895 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
John Miller — 1829 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
John Miller — 1829 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
John Miller — 1829 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan — 1919 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
John Miller — 1829 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan — 1919 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
John Miller — 1829 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Mariano Felipe Paz Soldan — 1919 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Andres Garcia Camba — 1916 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain
Andres Garcia Camba — 1916 | Internet Archive (scan) | Public domain

... and 42 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.