Bolivar in New Granada

Bolívar's campaign to liberate New Granada

Paso del ejército del Libertador por el Páramo de Pisba. Francisco Antonio Cano (1922). Bolívar, his staff and llanero soldiers tend to a dying comrade on the Moorlands of Pisba. (Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá).

Date	1819–1820
Location	Viceroyalty of New Granada
Result	Liberation of New Granada by Independentists

Belligerents

Republic of New Granada

Kingdom of Spain

Commanders and leaders

Simón Bolívar
José Antonio Páez
Francisco de Paula Santander

Juan José de Sámano y Uribarri

Strength

2,200 (1819)

4,500 (1819)

Bolívar's campaign to liberate New Granada of 1819-1820 was part of the Colombian and Venezuelan wars of independence and was one of the many military campaigns Simón Bolívar fought in them. Bolívar's victory in New Granada (today, Colombia) secured the eventual independence of northern South America. It provided Bolívar with the economic and human resources to complete his victory over the Spanish in Venezuela and Colombia. Bolívar's attack on New Granada is considered one of the most daring in military history, compared by contemporaries and some historians to Napoleon's crossing of the Alps in 1800 and José San Martín's Crossing of the Andes in 1817.

During the years 1815 and 1816, Spain had reconquered most of New Granada after five years of de facto and official independence. By 1817, Bolívar had set up his headquarters in the Orinoco region in southern Venezuela. It was an area from which the Spaniards could not easily oust him. There he engaged the services of several thousand foreign soldiers and officers, mostly British and Irish, set up his capital at Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar) and established liaisons with the revolutionary forces of the Llanos, including one group of Venezuelan llaneros (cowboys) led by José Antonio Páez and another group of New Granadan exiles led by Francisco de Paula Santander.

By 1819, José María Barreiro, who was in charge of the royalist troops in Nueva Granda, counted with at least 4,500 trained soldiers at his command (without including the troops scattered throughout the region). Bolivar was able to round up merely 2,200 able men, which he distributed into four battalions, three regiments, one squadron, and an artillery company that lacked cannons. In the most part, Bolivar's soldiers were non-Spanish men, many of them recruited from the Venezuelan plains. Simon Bolivar's plan consisted of mobilizing his army from Venezuela to Casanare, in Nueva Granada, to unite forces with Francisco de Paula Santander and his men, and infiltrate the territory through Tunja to combat the troops of Viceroy Juán de Sámano.

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