Battle of Ayacucho

On 9 December 1824, on the plain of Quinua near Ayacucho in the Peruvian Andes, a patriot army of Peruvian and Gran Colombian troops under Antonio José de Sucre defeated the last major royalist army in South America and captured the Spanish viceroy, José de la Serna. The capitulation that followed effectively secured the independence of Peru, and the battle is widely regarded as the close of the Spanish American wars of independence, although royalist garrisons held out at Callao and Chiloé until 1826.

The Viceroyalty of Peru had long been the bastion of the Spanish Empire in South America, holding back the independence movements. A liberal revolt in Spain in 1820 stopped reinforcements from crossing the Atlantic, but the royalist army in Peru, under La Serna, who took power in a coup against the previous viceroy in January 1821, won a string of victories in 1822 and 1823. Patriot politics were in disarray, and in February 1824 mutineers handed the fortresses of Callao to the royalists, who then occupied Lima.

The royalists were weakened from within. When King Ferdinand VII restored absolute rule in Spain in 1823, the royalist commander in Upper Peru, Pedro Antonio Olañeta, rebelled against the liberal viceroy, and months of fighting between the two royalist factions drained both. Simón Bolívar seized the opening, moving against José de Canterac and beating him at Junín on 6 August 1824. In October he handed field command to Sucre and returned to Lima to raise money and troops.

La Serna tried to cut Sucre off by marching and countermarching through the mountains. On 3 December his army mauled the patriot rearguard at Corpahuaico, inflicting more than 500 casualties, but Sucre kept his army together. Both sides suffered from disease and desertion. By early December the royalists held the heights of Condorcunca with food for fewer than five days, and Colombian reinforcements were on their way to Sucre, so they chose to attack.

Estimates of the forces vary; on the day there were perhaps about 5,800 patriots against about 6,900 royalists. Canterac's plan was for one division to outflank the patriot left while the main body came down the slope to strike Sucre's centre. As the royalists descended in disorder, José María Córdova's division, backed by William Miller's cavalry, attacked before they could form up. Their left gave way, a royalist cavalry charge was shot to pieces, and the reserve, made up largely of raw recruits, broke almost at once. By about one o'clock the wounded viceroy was a prisoner. Sucre reported 370 of his men killed and 609 wounded; royalist losses were around 1,800 dead and 700 wounded, with thousands more captured.

With La Serna injured, Canterac negotiated with Sucre. Under the capitulation the royalist army ended hostilities, and Peru agreed to repay the states that had supplied troops for its liberation. The Spanish historian Juan Carlos Losada has argued that liberal-minded royalist commanders arranged the outcome in advance, though he concedes the case rests on speculation.

Sucre moved into Upper Peru in February 1825, where royalist units deserted Olañeta, who was killed at Tumusla on 2 April. On 6 August 1825 an assembly declared Upper Peru independent, naming the new republic after Bolívar; it became Bolivia, with Sucre as its first president. Peru's congress honoured him as Grand Marshal of Ayacucho, and Bolívar praised the battle as the summit of American glory.

Our 1815 map shows the Viceroyalty of Peru still in Spanish hands, and our 1878 map shows the independent republics of Peru and Bolivia that emerged after the battle.