Battle of Vilcapugio The Battle of Vilcapugio ( ) was an action fought on October 1 , 1813 during the second Campaign of Upper Peru in the Argentine War of Independence , where the republican forces led by General Manuel Belgrano were defeated by a royalist army , led by Joaquin de la Pezuela . Second Upper Peru campaign . After the Army of the North ' s victories during the Battles of Tucumán and Salta , the campaign against the royalists in Upper Peru was restarted upon the insistence of the government in Buenos Aires . Despite being ill with malaria and having to command a company of new conscripts with insufficient artillery , Belgrano accepted the commanding post . Belgrano ' s army was supported from Oruro province by Colonel Baltasar Cárdenas and the 2 , 000 poorly organized natives under his command , and Colonel Cornelio Zelaya with forces from Cochabamba . Both colonels had orders to raise the aboriginal populations against the Spanish authorities . Knowing that the royalist army did not have enough mules to move its artillery and provisions , Belgrano planned to use a pincer movement to attack , confidently believing that Pezuela ' s lack of mobility would be a decisive factor . The battle . At the end of September 1813 , most of Belgrano ' s army arrived to the plain of Vilcapugio , a plateau surrounded by high mountains several miles north of Potosí . The royalist troops were encamped further west at Condo - Condo under the orders of Pazuela and Major Saturnino Castro , which allowed them to take by surprise and utterly defeat Cárdenas ' native troops at Ancacato , 23 km north of Belgrano ' s headquarters . Castro also obtained documents from Cárdenas giving instructions to Belgrano . With these documents Pezuela was able to interrupt Belgrano ' s plans and began his advance on the mountains on 1 October , long before Zelaya ' s cavalry from Cochabamba could join the republican army at Vilcapugio . Belgrano ' s army veterans from the North contained the left flank and center column of the royalist army and forced them to back down to the point that Pezuela had in mind , by a moment , to send a message to the Viceroy of Peru intimating that the battle had been lost . His own left flank , however , remained in action and defeated Belgrano ' s right column . Had the Northern army continued to persist in pursuing the Spanish troops , victory would have been secured , but the arrival of the royalist cavalry commanded by Saturnino Castro made the rebels panic , causing them to disperse . The royalist army reorganized itself and appropriated all of its artillery , continuously shelling the few soldiers left in Belgrano ' s encampment . As result of the battle , 350 rebels and some 200 royalists were killed . Aftermath . Belgrano and Eustaquio Díaz Vélez had decided that Vélez would march to the south to Potosí to reunite with the dispersed troops , while Belgrano would gathered the remains of his army near the town of Macha , some 65 km to the east . Díaz Vélez took command over the troops in Potosí after Vilcapugio with the rest of the army on the left flank of the enemy . At this point the troops reorganized themselves to pursue the Campaign of Alto Perú according to the orders from the government of Buenos Aires .