Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/264

234 Neither party would consent to any modification of the terms proposed by them, so the conference came to an end on the 1st October. In a private interview with the Viceroy the Chilian commissioners had insisted upon the independence of Peru as a preliminary step to any arrangement, but had expressed their willingness to accept a Prince of the Royal House of Spain as monarch of Spanish America.

The Viceroy and his commissioners threw the blame of the rupture of the negotiations upon San Martin, which accusation he answered in a dignified address to the Peruvian people.

The armistice came to an end on the 5th October, and on the same day Arenales left the encampment in the valley of Chincha, at the head of a strong detachment of the Patriot army, for the Highlands, while San Martin masked the movement by manœuvring with the rest of his army on the road to Lima.

On the 24th October, San Martin issued a decree establishing the flag and escutcheon of the new Republic of Peru, the flag white and scarlet, the escutcheon a sun rising over mountains with a tranquil sea at their feet. On the following day he re-embarked his army and sailed off for the North, apparently leaving Arenales behind him, but in reality going off to meet him.

Cochrane in his Memoirs severely criticises the disembarkation and delay at Pisco, but Camba, who was better able to judge, speaks of this measure as the first step in the destruction of the military power of Peru. The same opinion was expressed by Pezuela in his report to Government. Cochrane seems to have been anxious only to conquer the country; the object of San Martin was to revolutionize it by winning the confidence of the Peruvian people, and so securing their concurrence in founding a republic of their own, which concurrence as yet only a minority of them were prepared to give.