Manuel Quimper - Retirement in Spain

Retirement in Spain

While Quimper was in Spain, his son Colonel Manuel Quimper, was fighting for the Spanish cause in Peru. He had been serving in Upper Peru until named the commander-in-chief of Spanish forces of the southern coast of Peru on February 9, 1820. The young Manuel Quimper suffered a major defeat while defending the city of Nazca and was forced to flee to the coast in October 1820.

Meanwhile in Madrid the senior Quimper received the military honor of La Cruz de San Hermenegildo in 1820. Quimper also began to receive recognition for his literary talent. In 1821 Imprenta Alvarez published his 180-page manuscript of Décima poetry entitled Laicas vivacidades de Quimper, antorcha peruana, acaecimientos del Perú en civiles guerras, promovidas por el Reino de Buenos-Ayres, desde el año 1809 hasta el de 1818, describing his personal observations of the civil wars in Peru from 1809 to 1818.

Still showing regret over the loss of the documents which had been destroyed at Puno, at the end of 1821 he solicited the endorsement of José Bustamante, the director-general of the National Armada, for the publication of a recounting of his experiences aboard the Atrevida in Manila Bay thirty years earlier. He apparently received no support from Bustamante. Nevertheless, in 1822 Quimper published in Madrid his book Islas Sandwich: Descripción sucinta de este archipiélago, which had been previously published in El Mercurio Peruano. In the "Introducción" to this book he attempted to explain himself and his return to Spain, citing his naval service to Spain since adolescence, and the fact that he had been treated as an American in Spain, and as a Spaniard in Peru.