The victory of Tarapacá didn't change the strategic results of the invasion, and the Peruvians, because of several circumstances, were under the imperious necessity of undertaking a retreat towards the city of Arica. The difficult march over hot and arid deserts would last twenty days, but finally, on December 18th, 1879, they arrived to their destination. General Buendía, for a series of mistakes made during the campaign, was stripped of his command and following superior orders, Rear Admiral Montero took control of all the Peruvian forces in the South.
After those events, the Chilean army undertook the next phase of the war, which will be known as the Tacna Campaign. It would develop within a vast scenario that embraced the limits of the rivers Ilo and Moquegua for the North and the rivers Azapa and Sulfur for the South. The Peruvians controlled the region through the Ist and the IInd Army of the South, divided between Arica and Arequipa, while the Bolivians garnished the department of Tacna. However, the allies, lacking armament and provisions, were not capable to sustain such a difficult campaign as which approached. The Chileans, on the contrary, had been revitalized with reinforcements and with the supplies provided by their fleet.
In January of 1880 the Chilean military command approved a new plan of operations for its expeditionary forces. The army, now calculated in twenty thousand men, was placed under orders of Ceneral Manuel Baquedano. The civilian political authority was under the Minister of war in Campaign, Rafael Sotomayor. The Chilean plan contemplated to invade the territories to the North of Pisagua, that is to say the towns of Ilo, Pacocha and Islay, first, in order to isolate Tacna from the rest of Peru, and next, to attack and occupy that department.
The plan, studied until the last detail, ignored the existence of an intermediate but crucial position at the moment: Arica.
In April of 1879, short after the declaration of war, the Peruvian President, Mariano I. Prado, decided under strategic reasons to convert Arica, a prosperous southern city of 3,000 inhabitants, in the second protected port of Peru, near as it was to Chilean territory. The port, located 65 kilometers South of Tacna, become this way the President's headquarters. When Prado left the theater of operations of the South, the control of the plaza relapsed in Rear Admiral Montero. The defensive works were commended to a civilian, the engineer Teodóro Elmore.
The Peruvian military Command and the Ist Army of the South remained near four months in Arica. However, during the first days of April, 1880, Rear Admiral Montero, informed about the Chilean plans, decided to move his troops further to the North to unite with the Bolivian forces in Tacna, a place that presented itself as the new front of war. The enemy now was controling the city of Moquegua as well as the strategic step of Los Angeles, a position located between Moquegua and Torata.
Montero left in Arica a small garrison of national guards under a naval officer, but as he was forced to resign his post for illness reasons, the command relapsed in an old retired military officer, addict to the ordinance and very patriot, whose name, in those moments, didn't say much: Francisco Bolognesi, a 64 year-old artillery Colonel, son of an Italian inmigrant. Bolognesi was an old fashion, solemn soldier. The tensions of the conflict had decreased his physique; marked eyerings, gray hair and white beard, become the frame of a tired but enthusiast man of combative spirit, who had participated courageously in the battles of San Francisco and Tarapacá.
Bolognesi was born in Lima in 1816, and in 1853 he joined the army. In 1856, as a Lieutenant's Colonel, he was appointed Commander of an Artillery Regiment. In 1860, as a full Colonel, he traveled to Europe to purchase heavy artillery. He returned to the country with several dozens British made Blakely canyons that would be used in the May 1866 combat between the Peruvian defenses of the Callao port and the Spanish squadron of the Pacific. In 1864 he returned to Europe in a new mission, where he acquired for the army French canyons as well as modern Belgian Comblain rifles. After exercising other missions and positions as General Commander of Artillery, he went into retirement.
Soon after the declaration of the war, Bolognesi requested and obtained his reincorporation into the active army. He was transferred to the theater of operations in the South, and received the Command of the Third Division, conformed by the battalions Second of Ayacucho and Guards of Arequipa, participating all the campaign.
After receiving the command of Arica, Bolgnesi intensify the defensive works of the military plaza, because in spite of the fact that the place was of particular strategic importance, it still persisted the problem that it had not been equipped to face the very viable scenario of a land attack. Arica never ended up being the unassailable fortress that the Chilean historians have presented, but neither it was a dismantled position as some Peruvian historians think. It was not a solid military position, but thanks to the works carried out by Bolognesi it showed some important dissuasive devices. By sea, it was impenetrable and if during the beginning of the war the defenses had been guided especially to resist an attack of naval artillery, in the subsequent months they were adapted to contain an eventual infantry assault, always keeping in mind the difficult conditions of the land and the great extension of the areas to protect.
In the summit of that natural 10,000 square meters plaza, the Peruvians had built fragile barracks and placed nine guns to defend the advance of the Chilean squadron. These were known as the Morro Batteries, divided into High Batteries and Low Batteries. The first had one 250 mm Vavasseur gun, two 100 mm Parrot guns and two 70 mm Voruz guns. The second had four 70 mm Voruz canyons.
Also, to defend the bay, three batteries were placed in the North, a place considered the lowest flank in the square. The batteries, a 150mm Parrot and two 250mm Vavasseurs were protected by the forts Santa Rosa, San José and Dos de Mayo, respectively. These canyons had a maximum reach of five kilometers.
The eastern sector of Arica, that is to say, the second defense flank, was located in the high and sharp part of the area, had a total of seven batteries and was defended by two outposts, called Fort East and Fort Citadel. They were square havens, with walls built on sand bags solidified by grass and humidity. The Citadel defense was constituted by three canyons -two 100mm Parrots and one 70mm Voruz, as well as a a group of bunkers surrounded by electric mines. Fort East on the other hand, was located 800 meters to the South-East of the Citadel and had four Voruz guns -two 100 mm’s and two 70 mm’s. All of them were static, and according to the orientation they could shoot well towards the sea or towards the valley of the Azapa.
Behind the forts a total of 18 havens and trenches rose to each other. Behind them was located Cerro Gordo, and after it, the city of Arica.
In total the square was protected by nineteen guns. It also had two potent 500 pound Armstrong guns belonging to the Canonicus class monitor Manco Capac, which was immobilized for over a year at the bay of the port. Beside the batteries, the considerable quantity of dynamite and the electric system of mines, were considered the main obstacle to contain an assault.
Over the paper, the defensive force of Arica, including the crews of the Manco Capac and the torpedo-boat Alliance, represented about 1,900 men. However, excluding the navy, only about 1,650 soldiers, most of them novel national guards, were in capacity of facing a land attack. The troop were divided in two small divisions. The Eighth Division was hardly composed by two battalions: The Iquique, with 310 men and the Tarapacá, with 219, a total of 529. Their members were veterans of combat having participated in the campaign of the south. Their mission was to defend the North Forts, a place that was considered as the most probable for an enemy attack. The Seventh Division on the other hand, more numerous although conformed in its majority by volunteers, had three battalions: The Grenadiers of Tacna and the Cazadores de Piérola, about 580 men, responsibles for the defense of the Fort Citadel, and the Artisans of Tacna, with 380 soldiers with the mission to defend Fort East. In total, 960 troops. The rest of soldiers, including an endowment of marines of the armored frigate Independence, which sunk at Punta Gruesa, around 200 men, served as gunners at the Batteries. The endowment of the monitor Manco Capac and of torpedo-boat Alliance was about 157 men.
The troop, was armed indistinctly with Peabody, Remingtons and Chassepots rifles. It also possessed carbines Evans, Winchisters, old Chassepots, Comblains and the reformed Chassepot, known as the “Peruvian rifle”. They didn't have an unified type of rifle, what hindered the ammunition distribution, and make it difficult for the officers to instruct the troop on an uniform handling.
Several of the officicers belonged to the regular army -some as Colonel Bolognesi were already retired -, but a good number were civilians assimilated voluntarily to whom brevet military rank had been granted. Colonel José Joaquín Inclán, Commander of the Seventh Division, was a veteran military professional, while Colonels Alfonso Ugarte, Commander of the Eighth Division, Ramón Zavala, head of the battalion Tarapacá, Ricardo O'Donovan, Chief of Staff of the Seventh Division, and the Argentinean citizen Roque Saénz Peña, head of the Iquique battalion, were civilians, most of them young, some of them rich, who had incorporated voluntarily to the army. Ricardo O'Donovan for example was a lawyer, while Alfonso Ugarte and Ramón Zavala were wealthy capitalists that armed and equipped their battalions with own resources.
On May 26th, 1880, at the outskirts of Tacna, around the hills of the Intiorco, the biggest and most transcendent battle of the war, known as the “Alto de la Alianza”, was fought. About nine thousand Peruvian and Bolivian troops faced twenty thousand Chilean soldiers, in which would be, until then, the biggest battle of the war. The victory, this time decisive from the strategic point of view, corresponded to Chile, whose victorious troops proceeded immediately to occupy the city of Tacna. This way the Chilean army fulfilled the objective layout, it achieved a territorial continuity between its country and the Peruvian department of Moquegua, and virtually consolidated the occupation of the whole South of the Peru, from the river Moquegua and Tarata.
However, a reef still persisted, the one that only after the battle was shown in its true magnitude: Arica, where the garrisson under Bolognesi sustained the position that had become the last Peruvian haven in that region. Arica constituted this way a solitary enclave the interrupted the geographical continuity between the conquered territory and Chile and impeded the necessary communications among the army and the squadron that was blocking that Peruvian port.
That same day, the Chilean Minister of War in Campaign sent from Iquique a communication to the Minister of War in in Santiago, informing him about the situation after the battle of the Alto de la Alianza. In his telegram, Vergara said:
“ ... If Campero and Montero reorganize in the cordillera where they have almost unassailable positions, and if, as Colonel Urrutia had informed me, there are in Moquegua 1,500 men, while we don't take Arica our situation becomes critical because with the possession of Tacna we don't gain so much, and our provisionings from Ilo and Ite may get in risk.
“... The resistance of Arica depends on the integrity of the Commander of the plaza, and if he it is of good temper, it can resist for many days. According to recent reports they have some men and from sea some cavalry has been seen...”
Consolidated the occupation of Tacna, the Chilean high command considered fundamental to obtain a necessary exit toward the coast -Arica was the natural port of that region -, separate as they were for dozens of kilometers of desert, lacking food and with the troops spread over several villages and towns. The idea was to occupy that port immediately with the purpose of dominating the whole southern theater of operations and to evict the Peruvians of their last position in the region. An exit to the sea from Arica became indispensable to recover the line of communications and to advance towards the North the base of operations of Pisagua, breaking the connection among the allied forces. Before these circumstances, the Chilean command prepared the march to Arica.
The scenario in the Peruvian side was the most devastating. After the catastrophic military setback of the Alto de la Alianza, Peruvian regular army ceased to exist as an operative force, the demoralized Bolivian troops retired forever toward their highlands and the garrisson of Arica become isolated and surrounded by land and sea.
After knowing about the Tacna defeat, Colonel Bolognesi and his officers thought wisely that the following movement of the Chilean army would be to attack them. However they ignored that they had been left alone and without possibility of reinforcements, because the troops of Reard Admiral Montero went towards Arequipa to be reorganized, instead of returning to Arica like apparently it had been previously agreed. Everything indicates that at the beginning the officialdom of Arica didn't understood the real magnitude of the defeat of Tacna. Neither they had knowledge about the dispersion of the Peruvian army neither of the desertion of the Bolivians, which is explained by the fact that all the communications requesting information never were answered and that the only available data came from dispersed soldiers unable to give a real panorama of the situation. Even so, under such preys of uncertainty, the officers were conscious that they should maintain that position to which they assigned a great strategic value.
The content of the first of the telegrams of the Commander of Arica, subscribed by its Chief of Staff, Colonel Manuel Carmen la Torre sustains this theory:
“Arica, May 26. Mr. general Montero, Pachía. - Colonel says Bolognesi that we will succumb all before giving up Arica. Send us orders and news about the army and the troops in Moquegua.”
Under those not very clear circumstances Bolognesi and his men glimpsed two possible scenarios to face in next days. The first one suggested a plan of operations by means of which the Chilean army would advance from Tacna toward Arica in whose process Rear Admiral Montero or the II Army of the South would harass them from the flanks. This would force the Chileans to be beaten in retreat, meeting with the garrisson of Arica, where they would be defeated. The second, could be based on the following hypothesis: The Chilean army would siege the plaza or it would attack it; the garrisson would resist with all its strenght, causing casualties and draining to the enemy and Peruvian troops in advance on Arica would surprise to the decimated Chilean army. The idea, in consequence, was to try to maintain the position until the forces that with so much insistence Bolognesi would request in his several next messages arrives.
The possible strategy of forming a triangle of Peruvian forces would fail. As Rear Admira Montero never thought of returning to Arica, and considered the port as lost, it was impossible that he could flank the enemy as it was supposed by the first hypothesis. The destruction of the telegraph of Tacna prevented him to inform Bolognesi of his decision. In any event, both scenarios sustain the reason why Bolognesi deployed his efforts in reinforcing the northern defenses, placing there the more disciplined Eighth Division, when considering that the Chileans would appear on that place before the expected incursion of the Peruvian troops.
In the morning of May 27, Bolognesi dispatched to Colonel Second Leiva, Commander of the II Army of the South, the first message of a series that never would be answered.
“All effort useless, Tacna occupied by the enemy. Nothing official received. Arica will sustain many days and will survive, losing the enemy if Leiva overflanks, approaching to Sama and unites with us.”
Under this difficult situation, before lack of precise instructions, but keeping in mind orders imparted by Montero two days before the battle of Tacna, on the night of May 28 the Peruvians celebrated a war council, in which all the officicers agreed to resist until the last consequences and approved the defense plan. Each one of them resolved to the sacrifice.
Byr that date, the garrisson had already been completely isolated from the remainders of the Peruvian army, but still maintained communications via telegraph with the prefecture of Arequipa, and still was possible a fold to other areas. In order of braking the foregone Chilean advance, Bolognesi ordered engineer Teodóro Elmore to destroy the Chacalluta and Molle bridges, as well as the train station of Hospicio and the railroads between Arica and Tacna.
Arica was also suffering a naval blockade from the Chileans ships Cochrane, Covadonga, Magellan and Lautaro. However, after the combat of February 27th, 1880, when a grenade from the monitor Manco Capac hit the ironclad Huáscar and killed her new commander, Manuel Thomson, there were no more crossfire between the Chilean squadron and the defenses of the port. That event confirmed that Arica was impenetrable by sea, and that the warships could only isolate communications from sea and give artillery support before an attack of their armies.
The same day May 28th, General Baquedano, ordered an outpost of cavalry recognition on Arica composed by 50 men from the regimen Carabineros de Yungay, which arrived to the station of Hospicio and occupied it. He also ordered that a battalion of military engineers took possession of all the destroyed railroad stations and repair them as well as the Molle and Chacalluta bridges. Both got repaired by first of June.
On the 2nd of June, in coordination with the Minister of War in Campaign, General Baquedano ordered the reserve troops that did not combat at the Alto de la Alianza plus some elite battalions to march towards Arica to capture it. That force was composed by the regiments Buin, Tercero de Linea, Lautaro, Cuarto de Linea, the battalion Bulnes, a brigade of artillery, a mountain battery, two squadrons of the cavalry regiment Carabineros de Yungay, the regiment Cazadores del Desierto, and a squadron of the Granaderos a Caballo, an approximate of 6,000 men, including sappers and auxiliar detachment. These regiments were composed mainly of former mining workers that were anxious of entering into combat and whose physical strength was notorious.
The drama was closing.
To continue on the next chapter