Conquer or Die!: Wellington’s Veterans and the Liberation of the New World

by Ben Hughes

In 1815, just after the battle of Waterloo, over 6,000 British volunteers sailed across the Atlantic to aid Simon Bolivar in his liberation of Gran Columbia from her Spanish oppressors. The expeditions were plagued with disaster from the start, when one ship sank shortly after leaving Portsmouth with the loss of almost 200 lives. Those who reached the New World faced disease, wild animals, mutiny and desertion. Conditions on campaign were appalling, massacres were commonplace, rations crude, pay infrequent and supplies insufficient. Nevertheless, those who endured made key contributions to Bolivar's success.

This book tells the fast-paced and entertaining story of the British volunteers from the raising of the regiments in Britain to the perils of campaigning to their defiant stand at the battle of Carabobo. Drawing on the volunteers' memoirs, letters and journals, supported by unpublished documents and newspaper reports, Conquer or Die! is the result of research across two continents. It is the first narrative on the subject for over eighty years.

Genres: History, Military Fiction, Military History, World History

392 pages, Hardcover

First published August 24, 2010

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that looks at a little known episode in history, the recruitment of almost 7,000 British and Irish soldiers to the armies of Símon Bolívar during the South American wars of independence from Spain. The author explains that the contribution of these volunteers is very much played down in modern Colombia and Venezuela, and that this process started as early as the 1840s. On the other hand, he cautions that this book can create the opposite impression. By focusing on the volunteers, the book can lead the reader to believe they won the independence struggle single-handed. The bulk of the struggle was of course fought by South Americans themselves.

The recruitment began after the Battle of Waterloo brought more than two decades of war in Europe to an end. Britain’s economy went into recession with the end of the hothouse conditions of a war economy, and around 40,000 men were paid off from the country’s military forces. Bolívar spotted an opportunity to boost his army with battle hardened Napoleonic War veterans, and instructed his London representative to begin recruiting.

There’s little doubt that money was the primary motivating factor for most of the recruits, who were promised generous pay and signing-on bonuses (though many never saw either). A high proportion were Irish, reflecting that country’s extreme poverty. In terms of the officers, the money promised seems to have attracted some dubious characters, who were often trying to escape debts. In the patriots’ temporary capital of Angostura (today Ciudad Bolívar in Venezuela) a Major Farrar was appointed as commandant of the British troops. He wrote an open letter to The Times commenting;

“you can form no conception of what a set of scoundrels I have had to deal with…fellows with forged commissions from the British service, and guilty of such acts of blackguardism, that even the soldiers under their command are far superior to them. I have however, determined to bring everyone of them to a public trial."

The patriot armies faced many reverses before gradually getting the better of their foes. At times conditions were so bad that the soldiers marched barefoot and wearing just a few rags. However the author gives high praise to the professionalism and fortitude of the British and Irish troops. Conditions gradually improved as the patriots captured more territory. Disease took a heavy toll, particularly yellow fever. Unused to the tropical environment, the British and Irish lacked natural or acquired immunity, and suffered disproportionately. Dysentery and typhus also accounted for many. The campaigns they took part in are described in detail but I would have to say I found this part of the book a bit dry, the descriptions rather flat. The book covers only the campaigns of Bolívar in “Gran Colombia” – today Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, and doesn’t consider the activities of Britons elsewhere on the continent, such as the exploits of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, in Chile and later Brazil.

Around 3,300, just under half, of the troops died in South America, roughly evenly split between battle casualties and victims of disease. Most of the survivors returned to Europe but around 500 settled in South America. The author provides a very well-written epilogue, paying tribute to their legacy.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A screen adaptation of Conquer Or Die! would rival or surpass movies like Saving Private Ryan. The absolute, frequent executions, constant death, disease, deception, and resulting madness is its own profound drama.
Author Ben Hughes put himself into this effort: reading, traveling, visiting sites and sources to produce this book from an obscure and unique piece of American and European history. But it remains grossly overlooked thanks to the events of a quickening world after the 13-year war ended in 1821. Too many people zip past these events for more overplayed events following a few years after.
The U.S. Civil War stole much of the show in that century along with westward expansion. Other events like the Greek uprising against the Ottoman Turks, the Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, and the Spanish-American War in 1898 took more headlines and attention.
One passage, in particular, caught my attention, capturing the scope and depth of this long struggle for a final break from Spain. It notes a distinction, separating, and uniting this conflict from and with the too many others.
"...the Liberator, a 16-gun brig-of-war crewed by 100 sailors of all colours and all nations."
The rebel cause also had a navy, another overlooked aspect even in some good works about Simon Bolivar and the war for independence. The rebels, including the volunteers from Britain and Ireland, were seldom paid. They got some of their pay looting royalist sympathizers' households.
Bolivar's most decisive victory at Boyaca prompted royalist leaders to flee Bogota de Santa Fe without taking all of their money, too. Portuguese royals, while moving their capital temporarily to Brazil ahead of Napoleon, lost a ship full of luxurious goods to the rebel navy.
Spain's commanding General Pablo Morillo was slowed considerably when run through by a lance wound. Spain's war efforts were run through from behind by deadly revolt at home and in the army there.
Some 500 of the British Legion eventually settled in South America, mostly in Bogota and Caracas. Several of their headstones are still visible.

[Jwduke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I choose to read this book because I never knew the British were involved with South American wars. This is a very indepth case study of the British volunteers (they were not officially supported) role in the wars agianst the Spanish. Personally, I could have done without as much detial. However, the book did cover what I was looking for; why the British were involved in a war I did not know occured.

The depth and personality studies did keep me engaged, and particularly there were two personalities I did like, Rooke and Vowell. This book has caused me to take an interest in Bolivar, a man I knew nothing about.

[James Rooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had picked up this book because, having read Hasbrouck's Foreign Legions in the Spanish American Wars of Independence, I was excited to find something more up to date.

I should begin by stating that this book, like Hasbrouck's (for the most part), focuses on the wars in the northern part of South America, particularly around the Cordillera of Colombia and Venezuela, in the valley of the Magdalena and the vast plains of the Orinoco.

I feel like the two-volume work by Moises Rodriguez, Freedom's Mercenaries, is the definitive work in English on this subject, and the second volume is concerned with the war in the southern part of the continent. Unfortunately that work is difficult to find and can be very expensive.

That said, this entry is a fine addition to our libraries on this subject. It has always fascinated me that in the years after Waterloo the British were eager to volunteer their services across the world in these budding liberal movements.

There was a British Legion that fought in Spain during the Carliest Wars, and many British Philhellenes volunteered to fight in the Greek War of Independence. Lord Byron famously expired during the siege of Missolonghi.

This book goes some way in encapsulating the spirit of that era, a mysterious zeitgeist that perhaps was inspired by the defeat of Napoleon and the great hopes the British had for the new world that was to emerge from the ruins of war.

If so they were to be disappointed. Reading this book reminded me that I had meant to read Desmond Gregory's Brute New World, which I shall read next. The reason it did was because the British found that the both the Patriots and the Royalists were ruthless and callous, both sides held life to be very cheap.

British volunteers to Greece had a similarly shocking revelation, as recounted by William St. Clair in the work That Greece Might Still Be Free. In that book St. Clair notes that the British set sail for Greece believing in the old nobility and heroism of the Ancients, but found both the Turks and the Greeks to be brutally savage in their treatment for each other. St. Clair wryly notes that perhaps they were closer to the Ancients than the Victorians realized.

In much the same way the British who set sail for South America were led to believe that the Patriots were noble freedom fighters and the Royalists were tyrannical oppressors, representing the dead hand of Spain's inept rule. The reality was that the Patriots were just as inhuman and barbaric as anyone.

The atrocities never end in this book, there is an endless litany of raping, pillaging, massacring, executions (often for trivial reasons), and the like. The British and Irish who sailed to South America faced these horrors and more.

I was interested to find out that the countryside was much the same as when the Spanish first found it, and was surprised to find out that men were often killed by jaguars and crocodiles in the rainforests.

This pristine landscape, largely untouched and untamed, was considered to be of great beauty by some, but for others it was, understandably, a tropical nightmare. There was endless rain, though the men tried to keep spirits up by recalling that it had often rained before Wellington's battles, and said it was an omen for victory.

I felt that there were not enough maps in this book, which is a common deficiency in works of this nature. There are maps of many of the battles described (e.g. Boyaca, Calabozo), and some general maps of Colombia and Venezuela which gave the reader some anchor to fasten on to, but the narrative is all over the place.

The book describes the adventures of these men in various places and at various times, starting with the first arrivals and continuing on to Devereaux's Irish Legion which is described as the third wave of volunteers.

We also learn of the notorious Gregor MacGregor, and his cowardly conduct at Portobello and Rio Hacha. The latter was a particularly unfortunate place because it afterwards suffered incineration during the rebellion of the Irish Legion.

Hughes goes into very great detail about many individual volunteers, their origins, their lives before volunteering, when and where they were killed, their duels, their romances, their trials and tribulations.

This makes the work much more of a personal history rather than a military study. We often lose focus of the military operations and, especially, their relation to the wider conflict between Spain and her colonies.

Much is still said about this, but it it not very well-structured so it's in bits and pieces. We learn some scant information about the Cortes at Cadiz, the Cadiz Constitution, the reign of Ferdinand VII, the rebellion of Riego, and so forth, but without a stronger background on the era it would be difficult to place these events in their proper context.

As Hughes also warns, since this book is primarily dealing with the British and Irish, one has to be careful not to attribute too much to their influence. The South Americans won their independence primarily by their own exertions, though it is a shame that the British contribution has been largely forgotten, or even deliberately omitted by nationalist historians in Latin America.

I was greatly appreciative of the author's decision to include a section on dramatis personae, so that we might keep track of all of the characters dancing across our pages, and he does provide some interesting insights into the personalities of the Patriots and Royalists. He has high praise of Morillo, for example, and short shrift for Brion, who is considered a coward.

True to form I was sad that more wasn't touched upon Brion and the operations at sea, but as this was not a work on seapower it is not much to be regretted.

If one is looking for a general history on these wars, this book is not it. But if one is looking to examine the experiences and adventures of the British and Irish volunteers you cannot do better than to start here. Hughes succeeds in humanizing them and getting us to feel sympathy for them, at times he horrifies us with the savagery of the time, but we see that these men were like us. They fought for ideals, for money, for women, it is a very human and very personal story.

[Byron Farrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping account of the British volunteers in the armies of Simon Bolivar.

I first bought this book in hardback over ten years ago. However, on a recent trip to Colombia, while visiting the site of the Battle of Vargas, I wanted to consult it so bought the kindle version.

So happy I did. I ended up re-reading the whole thing over two days. It still reads very well and is an excellent account of the campaigns of 1817-1821 both in general as well as the specifics of the British Legion and other volunteer units.

One positive note. There is a bit more recognition of the British legion these days. The small museum at Vargas has a large painting of Rooke and a description and the guides tell the story of his leadership in the battle. Also the recent (2018) Colombian TV adaptation on the life of Bolivar, available worldwide on Netflix, features Rooke, O'Leary and Dr Tovey as significant characters (although the background is a little ahistorical).

[Simon Binning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book. I was aware that there were a few British individuals involved in the liberation of much of South America from Spanish rule - Cochrane being probably the most well known - but perhaps assumed that it was a few hand picked experienced officers who the rebels felt would be able to add expertise that they lacked. This book put me right. Whilst there were many officers involved, there were far more rank and file - numbering, eventually, in the thousands.
This is not a history of the liberation of South America; it is specifically a history of those British (and at the time, this very much included Irish) soldiers who fought alongside Bolivar. It is a complicated story too.
Taking place at a time just after the Napoleonic wars ended, there were thousands of ex-soldiers, and hundreds of ex-officers with nothing to do, and little to look forward to. As always, many were looking for a new adventure, and they found it in South America. Although a simplification, the officers were largely motivated by a desire to make a name for themselves, the rank and file largely because they had nothing else to do. It is the officer class who largely come out of the story badly. With a few very notable exceptions, most were of the type who couldn't exist in civilian life. Some were martinets, some charlatans, others verging on insane. But for both officers and men, the reality was not far short of hell. Attracted by promises of wealth and a future in a new world paradise, they met disease, hunger, brutality and poverty.
That the liberation eventually succeeded was in no small part due to the efforts of the British and Irish volunteers, and many stayed on in the countries that they helped liberate, and some achieved high office and recognition for their efforts. The story has been downplayed by history in those countries, perhaps understandably, to ensure that the efforts of their own ancestors took priority over the efforts of what were effectively foreign mercenaries.
The book is well written, at a good pace, with plenty of firsthand accounts, and perhaps more personal detail than might be expected. Several veterans returned home and wrote books about their experiences. Anyone at all interested in South American history will find this book interesting, and it has spurred me to look for other works about the liberation and also about Bolivar.

[Al Mcphee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very likely the only detailed history of this niche about the South American wars of liberation.

With the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, Great Britain quickly began a major reduction in its armed forces. In the post-war economic slump, there was little work for the soldiers, both officers and enlisted. But starting in 1817, there was a major increase in the revolutionary activity that Simon Bolivar was leading in South America, including a recruiting drive among the laid-off veterans in Britain. Of the 6,800 volunteers who sailed to South America between 1817 and 1820, less than half ever saw there homelands again. About 1,000, upon seeing the conditions, immediately returned to Europe while the rest left after the war had finished. Roughly 3,300 died during the conflict, half while on campaign and the other half from disease. Only 500 of the survivors stayed to settle in South America.

A well-written book, mostly based on primary sources.

[Relstuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry but a fascinating time where thousands of British men traveled to South American to help free them from Spanish rule. Some prospered and did very well for themselves. Some tried to make money off the opportunity. More died or were impoverished. Their impact as infantry units was massive as they fought Spanish regiments sent from Spain and beat them. They played key roles in many of the campaigns.

Looking back perhaps the saddest part of the story is how in the countries they helped free the people who were most helped have forgotten them as they have been written out of their history books.


Behold with price you hallowed isle
Where freedom's root has thriven
Your march is sanctioned by her smile,
And cheer'ed by that of heaven
To plant the tree
Of Liberty
Is ever hail'd on high:
Then falter none
But sally on
To conquer or to die.

-George Chesterton in 1818. Written on the way to fight the Spanish with Bolivar and sung by British volunteers.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on a little known history