More than 300 had fallen at the hands of the monsters. Bodies and mutilated
members appeared everywhere, the best proof of how just had been Bolivar's
decree of War to Death. Among other things Ribas found a branding iron in
the shape of a _P_, with which Rosete had intended to mark the foreheads of
the patriots and those of their children.
Bolivar, who in spite of the frequent atrocities of the enemy, had had
his decree carried out very seldom and very reluctantly, now, with the
royalists in command of Boves, Rosete and Morales, found it necessary to
begin severe reprisals in earnest.
The prisoners taken by the independents were constantly plotting. When
Boves was threatening Caracas, the commander of La Guaira asked Bolivar
what he was to do with the Spaniards in the prisons of the city,
considering that they were numerous and the garrison very small. The
Liberator answered as follows:
"I command you to execute immediately all the Spaniards in the fortress
and in the hospital, without exception."
He gave a similar order to the authorities in Caracas. As a result of these
orders, 886 Spaniards and natives of the Canary Islands were executed.
This is the act for which Bolivar has been most severely criticised and his
conduct most generally condemned. But, if what we have already said is
not sufficient to prove the need of these reprisals, we can take into
consideration also the slow torture to which the sick independents in the
hospital had been subjected, the killing of a woman because she had been
accused of having embroidered a uniform for Bolivar, the destruction of the
innocent dwellers in the towns taken by the royalists.
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