On 20 February 1813 the Army of the North under General Manuel Belgrano defeated the royalist army of General Pío Tristán at Salta, in what is now northern Argentina. After a march through the hills around Tristán's defenses, Belgrano attacked from the north, drove the royalists into the city and accepted their surrender the same afternoon.
After Tucumán
The revolutionary government in Buenos Aires had been fighting the royalist forces of Upper Peru, today Bolivia, since 1810. In September 1812 Belgrano had beaten Tristán at Tucumán, and in early 1813 he marched north toward Salta.1
On the way, on the banks of the Pasaje river, the army swore loyalty to the new Assembly in Buenos Aires and to the blue and white flag Belgrano had given it, each soldier kissing the cross formed by the general's sword and the flagstaff. Belgrano renamed the river the Juramento, the river of the Oath. Mitre and La Gaceta date the oath to 13 February.2
Around the pass
Tristán expected the attack through the Portezuelos, the gaps in San Bernardo hill east of the city that were thought to be the only way into the valley, and fortified them. A local officer, Captain Apolinario Saravia, told Belgrano of a little-known track farther north. On 18 February, in pouring rain, the army crossed the hills by the Chachapoyas ravine, and it came down on the Saravia family's estate of Castañares, north of Salta, astride the road to Jujuy. The move cut Tristán off from his line of retreat.3
Tristán had to turn his whole army around to face north. According to Mitre and La Gaceta, when he was told the patriots were behind him he refused to believe it unless they were birds. Belgrano had about 3,000 men. Tristán's army numbered between about 3,400 and 3,500 men, 3,388 by La Gaceta's count and close to 3,500 by Mitre's, with ten guns in its front line.4
The fight for the city
On the morning of 20 February Belgrano advanced with his infantry in five columns, cavalry on both wings and a reserve. The first attack, by Manuel Dorrego against the royalist left, was thrown back, but with the help of the cavalry it was renewed and the royalist left broke and fled into the city. The center gave way next, and the patriot infantry fought its way into the streets of Salta and took the church of La Merced. The royalist right held out longest on the slopes of San Bernardo hill, until Belgrano came up with the reserve and its men scattered or surrendered.5
The rest of the royalists were trapped in and around the barricaded main square, and Tristán sent an envoy, Colonel Felipe de la Hera, to ask for terms. That afternoon it was agreed that the royalist army would march out the next day with the honors of war and hand over its guns, arms and flags, and that its men would go free after swearing not to fight the revolution again. Belgrano and Tristán were old acquaintances.6
Victors and vanquished
Mitre, working from the returns attached to Belgrano's dispatch, gives 481 royalist dead and 114 wounded, and 2,776 officers and men who surrendered, and the same figures appear in La Gaceta. The patriots lost 103 dead and 433 wounded. The dead were buried in a common grave on the field of Castañares under a large wooden cross reading “Aquí yacen los vencedores y vencidos el 20 de febrero de 1813,” here lie the victors and the vanquished.7
The parole did not hold. Churchmen in Upper Peru, among them the Bishop of La Paz, released the men from their oath, and many took up arms again. Belgrano pushed north but was beaten later in 1813 at Vilcapugio and Ayohuma. The Assembly voted him a prize of 40,000 pesos for his victories, and he gave it to found four schools in Tarija, Jujuy, Tucumán and Santiago del Estero. A generation later, Chile fought Peru and Bolivia, as told on our page on Casma, 1839.8
