page_title: Battle of Carabobo
section_title: The battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Carabobo / The battle
caption_attribution_description: Oleo sobre tela de la Batalla de Carabobo, mural ubicado en el Capitolio Nacional de Venezuela.
context_page_description: The Battle of Carabobo, on 24 June 1821, was fought between independence fighters, led by Venezuelan General Simón Bolívar, and the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre. Bolívar's decisive victory at Carabobo led to the independence of Venezuela and establishment of the Republic of Gran Colombia.
context_section_description: The Royalists occupied the road leading from Valencia to Puerto Cabello. As Bolívar's force of 6,500 or 8,000 (which included 340 or 350 men of the British Rangers battalion, the great majority of them of Anglophone origin of the so-called "British Legions") approached the Royalist position, Bolívar divided his force and sent half on a flanking maneuver through rough terrain and dense foliage. Bolívar led the attack through the center while Gen. José Antonio Páez went around to the right flank. But before they could do it, the two Spanish field guns fired on the lines.
  Gen. Miguel de la Torre, commander of the Spanish, also split his force and sent half to deal with this flank attack.  Hitting the Patriots, led by the Apure Braves Battalion, with musket fire, the Royalists initially held back the assault. Though the Venezuelan infantry failed in their attack and retreated, the men of the British battalion, commanded by Colonel Thomas Ilderton Ferrier and including many former members of the famed King's German Legion, fought hard and eventually succeeded in taking the hills. Though greatly outnumbered and low on supplies, the legion soldiers managed to maintain control of the tactically critical hills. By the battle's end, the legionary force had suffered 119 deaths, of which 11 were officers. Col. Ferrier was among the dead. Bolívar later praised the Legion troops and called them the "Saviors of my Fatherland", noting that they had distinguished themselves among other armies.
  As the Legion gained the top, the Apure Braves and 2 companies of the Tiralleurs Battalion (2nd Division) reinforced them, and pushed the enemy off, just as Pedro Camejo, lance in hand, was trying to rally the formations, only to be killed due to two shots to the chest from enemy gunfire, in front of General Páez. Páez, watching him in retreat, told him that he was a coward, to which, with his dying breath, Camejo responded: No, I am not! My general, I have to tell you goodbye, because now I am dead!
  The cavalry militia of royalist "Llanero" fled from battlefield as the Patriot infantry fought hard, and the patriot cavalry led by Colonel Munoz eventually broke through the Royalist lines on the center, and marched towards the rear of de La Torre's force. The Spanish infantry formed squares and fought to the end under the attack of the Patriot cavalry, but one battalion retreated in the face of the enemy. The rout was so bad that only some 400 of one infantry regiment managed to reach safety at Puerto Cabello. With the main Royalist force in Venezuela crushed, independence was ensured. Subsequent battles included a key naval victory for the independence forces on 24 July 1823 at the Battle of Lake Maracaibo and in November 1823 José Antonio Páez occupied Puerto Cabello, the last Royalist stronghold in Venezuela.
  The victory was a hard-won one for the independence forces. Both Ambrosio Plaza and Manuel Cedeno, commanders of the 2nd and 3rd Divisions, were killed in the battle by the enemy.
caption: Painting by Martín Tovar y Tovar
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