CLICK HERE: O’Higgins- Chilean Hero Of The South for article as published in The Richmond Magazine
Bernardo O'Higgins: Liberator of Chile and first Head of State
In 1795, in the midst of turbulent times, a troubled young man with an odd
name arrived on English shores. For the next four years he lived and studied
in Richmond, and his experiences here would help to change the course of
South American history. This month, as Chile celebrates 200 years of
independence, its citizens will raise a glass to Bernardo O’Higgins:
Liberator of Chile and the nation’s first head of state.
The man who would acquire such a grand soubriquet was the illegitimate son
of Irish-born Don Ambrosio O’Higgins, who served the Spanish Crown as
Governor of Chile and Viceroy of Peru. Though he supported his son
financially, Ambrosio remained coldly aloof the two met just once, and it
was only upon his father’s death that Bernardo adopted the surname
O’Higgins. It was Bernardo’s Chilean mother, Isabel Riquelme, who raised him until, at the age of nine, he was sent to a Jesuit school in Peru.
Nevertheless, it was on the insistence of his father that Bernardo came to
England to lodge and study at a Catholic school in Clarence House, The
Vineyard. At the impressionable age of 17, Bernardo became immersed in a
strange new world with a political landscape radically different from the
one at home. The very fact that Catholic churches and schools were tolerated
by law in a Protestant country was for him a revelation in itself.
“Britain’s liberal spirit touched Bernardo deeply and left him very much
inspired,” explains Rodrigo Espinosa, Minister Counsellor for the Embassy of Chile in London. “His time in Richmond helped to sculpt his way of thinking, his tastes and his love for democracy and freedom, along with his passion for the sea. All this contributed to his political activities later on.”
With its parliament and Georgian model of liberalism, Britain provided an
appealing contrast to the absolutist Spanish regime which Bernardo had
previously known.
“The more I think and reflect upon the British Empire,” he wrote, “the more
I become convinced that Great Britain has been chosen by divine providence to be the efficient instrument that leads the human race to maximum progress and happiness.”
A colourful, if hyperbolic assessment, reinforced perhaps by observation of
the radical, bloodstained change under way at England’s door. For across the water, the French Revolution was raging on. Shortly before Bernardo’s
arrival in Richmond, The Terror had snatched the lives of up to 40,000
people, including the deposed Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette. The numerous French refugees who fled to Britain had brought tales of a world gone mad. O’Higgins would eventually embrace revolution as a means to more liberal ends, but he can scarcely have failed to note that it comes at a formidable price.
Meanwhile, the huge growth of Britain’s naval force held the young man in
thrall. Thoughts of the sea obsessed him and he yearned for his homeland to
be similarly expansive, free from Spanish oppression and open to
international trade. At Clarence House O’Higgins, finally sure of what
career to follow, took up his pen and sought counsel from his estranged
father.
“He had acquired an attachment to maritime culture and wanted to be a navy man”, says Rodrigo Espinosa. “It was a dream he never realised; perhaps financial difficulties prevented him. But he never forgot these aspirations, and years later, when he was Supreme Director of his homeland, he created the first Chilean navy, with British seaman Lord Thomas Cochrane as its first commander.”
Growing to manhood in a foreign land, barely knowing his parents or which
name was rightfully his, Bernardo took refuge in a network of fellow Latin
Americans, many of whom embraced the ideologies that would fuel
independence. And foremost among them was the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco De Miranda. Older than O’Higgins, he had taken part in the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, and had links with all the big players in the struggle for liberation from Spain.
As De Miranda railed against the evils and injustice of Spanish rule, the
young Bernardo finally resolved to turn against the imperial power: the very
thing his father had so diligently served.
For 18 months De Miranda waited, testing Bernardo’s dedication to the cause. Then, one day, he entrusted him with a document outlining his blueprint for action. O’Higgins sewed it into the lining of his clothes. When he finally set out for home, leaving Richmond behind for good, he was a revolutionary time bomb waiting to explode.
“He saw things he would never have seen had he stayed in rural Chile”,
reflects Rodrigo. “He discovered British freedom and tolerance and he wanted the same for his own people.”
Today, just up from the water’s edge on the Surrey side of Richmond Bridge,
O’Higgins Square bears proud testimony to Richmond’s role in shaping the
mind that shaped the free republic of Chile.
O'Higgins Square, Richmond
