Page:Decisive Battles Since Waterloo.djvu/486

444 military forces of Peru, decided upon a line of defences along the sandy hills at the edge of the desert, extending from the Morro Solar and Chorillos to the mountains on the east, and about ten miles from Lima. The line was fully six miles long, and broken by barren hills and gullies. Breastworks were hastily thrown up, ditches dug, and guns mounted, but in many places the obstructions to an advance of the enemy were of little consequence owing to the shallowness of the ditches and the insufficiency of the breastworks.

A second line about four miles long and six miles from Lima was prepared just outside Miraflores. Behind the defences, as the Chilian army approached, General Pierola assembled his forces, which consisted of the hastily assembled people of the capital, raw recruits from the interior, and the few soldiers he had been able to gather from the remnants of the armies defeated at Tarapaca and Tacna. Many of the guns that were mounted in the defences were actually unserviceable, and some of the newest of those made at Lima had not been sighted.

The first division of the Chilian army which landed at Pisco marched northward on the 13th December to unite with the force that disembarked at Curayaco, as already stated. Their advance was unopposed until the 23d, when they encountered some Peruvian cavalry, by which they were harassed for two or three days, as the road offered concealment in the shape of trees and bushes. The second division reached Curayaco on the 22d, and the landing occupied two days. The cavalry was sent forward to occupy the valley of the Lurin, and on the 27th it surprised and captured a Peruvian cavalry detachment, the same that had impeded the march of the Chilian first division. This was a serious disaster for the Peruvians, as their whole cavalry force defending Lima did not exceed 600 men.

The valley of the Lurin was devastated by the Chilians