Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/397

Rh in command proposed to retreat. Paez requested permission to remain with one squadron to defend the town. Most of the other officers present approved of the proposition, on which the commander said angrily,

"Then let Paez command you, and those who choose may follow me to Casanare."

Paez, left with 500 men, marched out to meet the enemy, whom he found on the 16th February, 1816, near to the sources of the Apure. Paez, advancing alone to reconnoitre the position, had his horse killed under him by a musket-ball. It was near nightfall; some advised him to wait for daylight.

"It is as dark for them as it is for us," said Paez, and shouted to his men, "Comrades, they have killed my horse. If you will not revenge his death I will revenge him alone, and will die in the enemy's ranks."

The men shouted back that they would go wherever he would lead them. He formed them in two lines and led them on under a heavy fire. Such was the fury of the charge that two-thirds of the Royalist cavalry were driven in confusion from the field. As he led an attack upon their second line his horse was wounded, and burst the girths of the saddle with his plunges. The attack was beaten off. Springing on to the first horse he could catch, Paez rallied his men and again charged at full speed upon the rest of the Royalist cavalry, and bore them down in the rush. While the Patriots pursued the broken cavalry the Spanish infantry retreated through the woods. Four hundred killed and two hundred prisoners were the trophies of the day. Paez treated his prisoners so well that they all voluntarily took service with him.

This brilliant affair attracted the attention of the Llaneros, who were weary of the brutal rule of Boves and Morales, and won them over to the cause of independence.

Paez became at once the first general of cavalry in America. He was the bond of union between the Llaneros and the Patriots. He was proclaimed the chieftain of the plains, and from the recruits who poured in to join his