Battle of Clarines: Patriot forces faced the onslaught of royalist troops

After arriving from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Liberator Simon Bolivar was preparing to march on Caracas, supported by a contingent of 700 islanders and 100 volunteers, when on January 9, 1817, they were surprised by the realistic forces under Colonel Francisco Jiménez, who were entrenched along the line of the Unare River, near the town of Clarines.

During this fierce battle, the royalist army composed mostly of indigenous people from the missions of Puerto Píritu under the command of Lieutenant Colonel José María Charuán, chief of Clarines, managed to ambush the patriots who were mostly massacred, with only Bolivar, General Juan Bautista Arismendi and no more than five officers surviving.

This defeat was the trigger for the Liberator to go to Guiana and from there to reorganize the patriot army to undertake a long day of important triumphs on the battlefield, which made it possible to achieve not only the independence of Venezuela, but of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.

Mazo News Team