The professional soldier, trained for two decades in the Spanish army, who returned to South America in 1812 to fight for its independence, led an army across high Andean passes to surprise the Spanish, helped secure the River Plate revolution and liberated Chile with Bernardo O’Higgins, took Lima by sea and declared Peruvian independence as its Protector — and then, after a private 1822 meeting at Guayaquil with his rival Simón Bolívar, resigned his command, withdrew from war and politics entirely, and sailed into a quiet European exile, dying in modest exile in France in 1850, asking nothing for himself.
At the height of his power, José de San Martín gave it all away. He had helped secure the southern revolution, led an army over the towering Andes to liberate Chile, and entered Lima, the royalist capital in Peru, declaring himself its Protector. Then in 1822 he met the other great Liberator, Simón Bolívar, behind closed doors in the port of Guayaquil. No reliable record of what passed between them survives. Whatever was said, San Martín emerged and made a choice almost no victorious general makes. He resigned his command, handed the unfinished war to Bolívar, and left South America for good. He died in 1850 in a rented house in France, far from the nations he had helped create. Why he walked away is still debated. Some say he wished to avoid a civil war between liberators. Some say he was disillusioned. He himself said almost nothing.