Einzug Piérolas in Lima durch das Cocharcas-Tor

In March 1895 Nicolas de Pierola led his mounted irregulars, the montoneras, into Lima, breaking through at the Cocharcas gate to overthrow the government of Andres Avelino Caceres. It ended two days of street fighting and a civil war that had followed hard on Peru's disastrous defeat by Chile in the War of the Pacific. Juan Lepiani, Peru's great painter of national history, set the scene right at that gate: horsemen pouring in under dust and gunsmoke, the wounded and the dead in the road, banners lifted over the crowd. He painted it around 1900, within living memory of the event, in the polished academic manner he had learned in Europe. Within months of the entry shown here, Pierola was president, and he would govern Peru for the next four years.