First Battle of Carabobo

Carabobo was fought twice on the same plain, and the article filed under this date describes the wrong one: the famous 1821 victory, not Bolívar's win seven years earlier.

28 May 1814, between San Carlos and Valencia

On 28 May 1814, republican forces of Venezuela's Second Republic under Simón Bolívar fought royalists commanded by Field Marshal Juan Manuel Cajigal y Niño on the plain of Carabobo.

Cajigal deployed in front of the Las Hermanas hills, artillery forward and an infantry regiment in reserve.

Bolívar advanced in two lines: three infantry divisions in the first, two divisions and most of the cavalry in the second.

Cavalry at the rear, answered by the second line

When the republican first line attacked, Cajigal sent cavalry against its rear. Bolívar committed his second line, the royalist front broke and Cajigal's army retreated.

Rafael Urdaneta pursued the withdrawing royalists while Bolívar returned to Valencia.

The Academia de la Historia del Estado Carabobo puts the armies at about 5,000 republicans against about 6,000 royalists with seven guns, the fighting at roughly five hours, and the losses at 300 royalists killed and 1,100 captured against 400 republicans killed or wounded.

The wrong battle attached to the date

The catalogue entry contradicts itself: its year points to the 1814 action, while its linked topic and the whole of its article narrate the second battle of 24 June 1821.

Miguel de la Torre, José Antonio Páez, the British Battalion, and the deaths of Pedro Camejo, Ambrosio Plaza and Manuel Cedeño all belong to 1821, as do the June 24 commemorations and Venezuelan Army Day.

The 1814 victory settled nothing: José Tomás Boves, who did not command at Carabobo, beat Bolívar at La Puerta on 15 June — eighteen days later — and the Second Republic collapsed.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at 1814-05-28.

What the sources leave uncertain

The catalog entry is internally ambiguous: its year, 1814, identifies the First Battle of Carabobo on May 28, but its linked Wikipedia topic and the entire current article describe the second battle of June 24, 1821.
Troop and casualty totals vary markedly among later accounts. The numbers retained here are explicitly attributed to the Academia de la Historia del Estado Carabobo and should not be presented as uncontested.
The event date itself is well supported; the disputed confidence reflects the catalog's conflation of two separate battles.