Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/337

Rh Carora was sacked, and many Patriots were shot without trial.

In the east of Venezuela, Spanish Guayana had declared against the revolution. Colonel Moreno marched with 1,400 men to rescue the Province from the Royalists, and being joined by various scattered detachments of the Patriots, collected a flotilla of twenty-eight gunboats on the Orinoco, and threatened the town of Angostura, which stands on the northern bank near to the mouth of that river.

On the 25th March, 1812, the Royalists, with nine schooners and eight gunboats, attacked the Patriot flotilla in the bay of Lorondo, and after two days' fighting completely destroyed it. Moreno retreated, and eventually fled, while the remnant of his force capitulated at the town of Maturin.

On the 26th March, 1812, in the afternoon of a calm day, a great roar was heard under the hills of Merida. The ground commenced to rock to and fro in violent oscillations. In less than a minute the cities of Merida, Barquisimeto, San Felipe, La Guayra, and Caracas were nothing more than heaps of ruins, under which 20,000 people lay entombed. In the capital almost all the garrison perished. At Barquisimeto the greater part of a division of 1,000 men which was on the march to arrest the progress of Monteverde, with a large amount of military stores, were buried. Under these ruins the first Republic of Venezuela found a grave.

This earthquake was felt only in territory occupied by the revolutionists; the Provinces of Coro, Maracaibo, and Guayana, which were faithful to the King, suffered nothing. The clergy, who were for the most part Royalists, made use of the fact, pointing to it as a chastisement of Heaven upon impious men and upon rebels. Fear entered into the hearts of the people, and dismay into those of the Patriots.

Monteverde dug seven guns and much war material from