Venezuela's conditions during colonial times produced a people possessing in the clearest and most accentuated form the characteristics distinctive of the Spanish Creole. Not more than one per cent. of the total population of over eight hundred thousand were native Spaniards; fifteen per cent. were Creoles of pure European descent; sixty per cent. were Indian, two-thirds of whom had an admixture of white blood; and three-fourths of the twenty-five per cent. of negroes and mulattoes were free. The majority did not consist of docile, inert, pure-bred natives as in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, though the white element was not so large that the Creoles had ceased to occupy the position of a governing and property-owning caste who lived upon the labour of the half-breeds, Indians, and negroes. They regarded themselves as a superior class, entitled by birth to exemption from manual labour, and even considered commercial pursuits unworthy a gentleman.

The Spanish government had concerned itself little with this purely agricultural colony, and its hand was felt only in the collection of taxes. The officials were comparatively few, the number of resident Spaniards small, and neither mutual commercial interests nor a solid administration existed to strengthen the flimsy ties that bound Venezuela to the mother-country. So little had the interference of the Spanish government been felt since the abolishment of the Guipuzcoa Company that no well-defined and widespread sentiment in favour of separation existed. There was a vague feeling of dissatisfaction among the masses, but their ignorance prevented them from forming any rational plans for the betterment of their condition. However, the Venezuelan coast is so accessible that the fertilising and disturbing currents of trade and ideas had really profoundly modified the people, and the leaven of unrest was at work. The wealthier Creoles had imbibed radical notions and were ambitious of trying their hands at governing. By heredity, social custom, and environment indisposed to industry and commerce, their unemployed activities naturally flowed into the channel of politics, intrigue, and fighting.

The first outbreak owed its origin to events in Spain. In 1796 a republican conspiracy was brought to light on the Peninsula, and several of its leaders were exiled to La Guaira. In their prison they were visited by many prominent Creoles, into whose minds they inculcated their republican principles, and it was not long before the existence of an extensive republican plot among the Creoles of La Guaira and Caracas was denounced to the captain-general. Many persons were arrested, and of the two principals, EspaÑa expiated his treason on the scaffold, while the other, Gual, escaped into exile. But the seed of revolution had been planted, and many leading Creoles entered into correspondence with the British authorities on Trinidad, who promised aid in arms, munitions, and ships. Francisco Miranda, a native of Caracas, who had fought under Washington, and distinguished himself at Valmy and Jemappes as a soldier of the French republic, planned an invasion with the avowed purpose of achieving Venezuelan separation from Spain. With three ships manned by American filibusters he sailed from New York early in 1806, and attempted to land at Ocumare, near Puerto Cabello. But the Spanish authorities had been warned and he was beaten in a sea-fight where he lost sixty prisoners. Ten North Americans were condemned by court-martial and shot in Puerto Cabello, and their names are inscribed on a monument recently erected in the principal square of the town. The captain-general offered thirty thousand dollars for Miranda's head, but the latter retired to Jamaica, where, with the help of the British authorities, he organised a force of five hundred foreigners. Three months later he made a descent on Coro, effected a landing, and took the city. But the population remained inert, and the indifferent or hostile attitude of the region forced him to withdraw.

Though the western provinces received Miranda so coldly, among the Creoles of the upper classes at Caracas aspirations for constitutional government, autonomy, and even for independence had made headway in the ten years since the suppression of the conspiracy of Gual and EspaÑa. In 1808 French commissioners arrived bringing the news of Ferdinand's expulsion. They were empowered to receive the allegiance of the colony for Joseph Bonaparte, but the captain-general hesitated and asked the advice of leading citizens, who proved unanimous against recognising the French rÉgime. The captain-general's vacillation gave the Creoles of the cabildo a predominance in governmental councils. Although in the middle of the following year it was decided to recognise the Seville junta as supreme, pending Ferdinand's return, this decision was reached only after many debates, and a numerous party among the Creoles saw no reason why Venezuela should not establish a junta of her own. The news of the frightful cruelties perpetrated by Goyeneche in suppressing the junta at La Paz excited great indignation among Creoles; the anti-Spanish feeling grew rapidly; and when, on the 19th of April, 1810, the captain-general summoned an open cabildo to receive the news that the French armies had overrun nearly the whole of Spain and that only Cadiz remained faithful to Ferdinand, the electors had no sooner met than, excited by suggestions of ambitious persons, they turned into a mob howling for the resignation of the captain-general and the establishment of a Caracas junta. Accordingly a junta was named which exiled the Spanish functionaries and sent messages to the provincial capitals demanding their adhesion. The cities of the mountain strip extending from CumanÁ to the Colombian Andes responded favourably and sent delegates to Caracas, while Maracaibo, Coro, and Guiana refused. As a matter of fact the masses as yet took little interest. The Caracas revolution was effected by a few determined spirits, and the adhesion of the mountain provinces was given by Creole municipal authorities who saw in the change an opportunity to better their personal fortunes. Nor was the resistance of Coro and Maracaibo so much inspired by love of Spain as by the presence of the resolute, clear-headed JosÉ Ceballos, who gathered troops and sent emissaries into the revolted provinces. The Caracas junta responded by raising an army which marched toward Coro, and the civil war was on.

The news of the massacre of the Ecuadorean revolutionists at Quito in August, 1810, warned the junta Creoles that they had engaged in no child's play. A commission went to London to solicit the intervention of the British government in reaching an accommodation with the patriot authorities in Spain, but the Seville junta declared the Caracas revolutionists traitors. The commissioners fell under Miranda's influence and he convinced them that an open declaration of independence was the only course left. Meanwhile the troops sent to conquer Coro had been defeated by Ceballos. Threatened by the royalist arms, unable to count on the support of any considerable proportion of the rural population of even their own provinces, the Creoles of the ruling coterie proceeded to extreme measures. A congress met in March and on the 5th of July, 1811, adopted a declaration of independence, proclaiming the seven provinces of CumanÁ, Barcelona, Caracas, Barinas, Trujillo, Merida, and Margarita free and sovereign states. Venezuela was, therefore, the first independent republic in Spanish America. Congress adopted a Constitution full of the most radical reforms and advanced ideas, and a handful of political theorists and advanced radicals took the direction of affairs, and imposed their crude theories on a bewildered and reluctant population. The ruling clique issued fiat money in immense quantities, and the resulting disorganisation of business increased discontent.

Miranda, who had come from Europe to take command of military operations, warned them that the fabric was not strong enough to withstand the shock of battle, but the eager young reformers persisted. The clergy and the native Spaniards were the first to react. Though an outbreak of the Spaniards in Caracas was bloodily suppressed, the priests stirred up the people of Valencia, and that city—the second in the republic—declared against the Caracas government. Miranda succeeded in reducing the place only after costly fighting. The ruling clique did what they could to raise and equip troops to meet the approaching attacks from Coro and the West Indies, but their efforts were hampered by loyalist risings. In February, 1812, Monteverde, a Spanish leader, marched with a small detachment south from Coro, and northern Trujillo welcomed him. Defeating the patriot forces wherever he met them and refusing quarter to his prisoners, he prepared to advance eastward on the centre of the revolution. The junta was already trembling, when, on the 26th of March, a terrific earthquake devastated the revolted provinces. The solid ground rocked with such violent oscillations that in less than a minute the cities of Caracas, Barquisimeto, and Merida were mere heaps of ruins. Twelve thousand persons perished in Caracas alone. The loyalist provinces escaped injury, and the priests preached that the earthquake was a punishment sent by God upon impious rebellion. The people of Barquisimeto joined Monteverde, and he marched east, slaughtering the raw recruits with which the patriot leaders tried to block his way. Merida, Trujillo, and Barinas declared for the king, and an expedition sent from Caracas to the lower Orinoco was destroyed. Monteverde entered Valencia unopposed and only the coast from Caracas east to CumanÁ remained to the republic. In despair the politicians made Miranda dictator, but, though the army numbered five thousand, he had no confidence in his men. He signed a capitulation and tried to fly while his army dispersed or joined the loyalist forces. On the 30th of July Monteverde entered Caracas and the first Venezuelan revolution ceased to exist.

Among the volunteer officers who had been entrusted with positions of confidence by Miranda was a young Creole, named Simon Bolivar. Heir to some of the largest estates in Venezuela he had been left an orphan at three years of age, and was educated by a tutor who filled his marvellously impressible mind with a crude political philosophy, and under whose teachings he evolved original theories of government which all the wars, debates, and revolutions of his stormy life failed to modify. Preoccupied with his own ideas, he gave no heed to the counsels of others, took no thought of obstacles, and, victor or vanquished, stubbornly followed his own way, always confident of infallibility and persevering in the face of difficulties that would have appalled a rational man. From his earliest childhood a little feudal lord, owing obedience to no parent, with hundreds of slaves at his orders, his precocious intelligence the object of that ruinous admiration with which thoughtless strangers and servants spoil a rich and lonely child, his naturally strong will uncurbed by any discipline, he grew into manhood—arrogant, uncompromising, solitary, suspicious, a deep thinker, wildly ambitious, marvellously brilliant, though lacking steady common-sense, blindly confident of his own moral and intellectual infallibility, firmly convinced that he was destined for vague great things, inordinately fond of honours and praise, and absolutely unable to distinguish his desires of gratifying selfish ambitions, and his yeasty notions of regenerating mankind. At sixteen he went to Spain to complete his education; his wealth procured him an entrance into the aristocratic families of Madrid; and he even penetrated the precincts of the ceremonious court and had the honour of playing ball with the lad who afterwards became Ferdinand VII. When only eighteen he married a beautiful girl, who died shortly after he brought her back to Caracas. For the rest of his life he remained without family ties. Again he went to Europe and wandered through England, France, and Italy, falling more and more under the spell of the mighty spirit of Napoleon the Great. At the age of twenty-three Bolivar returned to his native country and took up his life as a rich slave-owner. When the revolution broke out in 1810 he took no part until the junta requested him to go to England on the embassy previously mentioned. There he became acquainted with Miranda, and, appreciating that the South American revolution must be decided by arms, made up his mind that only as a soldier could he put himself at the head of affairs in Venezuela. His first essays in the military art were not successful, and it was he who lost Puerto Cabello, giving the first revolution its coup de grÂce. But a situation in which others saw no hope he regarded as an opportunity, and he resolved to devote his life to South American independence.

Bolivar went to Cartagena in Colombia and offered his sword to the patriot junta which ruled that city. Given a small military command on the Magdalena River, he embodied a few militia and surprised two posts which were obstructing the navigation of the river. Delighted at these successes, the Cartagena junta sent him reinforcements, with which he captured Ocana, an important city lying east of the Magdalena and not far from Pamplona and the Venezuelan border. The loyalists had collected a considerable force in the Venezuelan province of Barinas, with which they proposed to advance into Pamplona. The patriot chief of this Colombian province appealed to Bolivar and this suggested to him the Napoleonic plan of relieving Pamplona and reconquering Venezuela. On his own responsibility he dashed with only four hundred men over the Andes in front of Ocana, descended into the plain north of Lake Maracaibo, took the royalists on their march to Pamplona by surprise, and routed them. Joined by the patriots from Pamplona, he received formal authorisation to drive the Spaniards from the Venezuelan provinces of Merida and Trujillo. His movements among the mountain valleys were like lightning flashes, and though the Spanish forces were more numerous their commanders were demoralised by his attacks made in defiance of all the rules of prudent warfare. Within fifty days there was not an enemy left in the two provinces, and Bolivar's army had been trebled by enlistments. The New Granadan government ordered him to pause, but he paid no heed. Issuing a proclamation that no quarter would be given, he crossed the mountains south-west into the province of Barinas, annihilated the Spanish forces there, and rushing to the east caught another army of a thousand men near Valencia and destroyed it. Monteverde had no time to concentrate his scattered forces, and the news of this last defeat caused him to flee to the protection of the fortifications of Puerto Cabello. Bolivar occupied Valencia and Caracas without resistance. In a campaign of ninety days, with a handful of New Granadans and mountaineers from western Venezuela, he had defeated and dispersed over four thousand royalists, and conquered the country from the Andes to the capital.

Only the lower plains of the Orinoco and the coast provinces of Maracaibo and Coro remained royalist, for while Bolivar had been overrunning the west, another young Creole, MariÑo, had led a small expedition from the island of Margarita, captured Maturin just east of the mouth of the Orinoco, and with the military stores found there armed the inhabitants of CumanÁ province, made ripe for revolt by the cruelties of Monteverde. The Spanish attempts to recover Maturin by assault were repulsed with great slaughter, and MariÑo followed up his success by besieging CumanÁ. By the time Bolivar reached Caracas the place was in the last extremities of starvation, and Monteverde's flight was a signal for its surrender. There were therefore two dictators in Venezuela, and MariÑo sent to Bolivar to treat about the form of government, but the latter had determined on a centralised administration with himself supreme. MariÑo refused to agree, and only the activity of the loyalists prevented a war between him and Bolivar.

Monteverde held out in Puerto Cabello, and when reinforcements arrived from Spain resumed the offensive. Though Bolivar won a victory at Las Trincheiras, and was greeted on his return to Caracas with the title of "Liberator," reaction had in fact begun. Reports of loyalist movements came from all sides; Bolivar's power was confined to the towns; the terrible Boves roused the llaneros and gathered the nucleus of a formidable army of horsemen. Ceballos sallied out from Coro and captured Barquisimeto, utterly defeating Bolivar when the latter attacked him. Difficulties, however, only stimulated this remarkable man to fresh exertions. The patriot leader, Campo Elias, overthrew Boves's horsemen near Calabozo on the llanos south of Caracas, killing the prisoners and butchering every man in the town because it had helped the loyalists. This cruel deed decided the llaneros for the Spanish side, and though Bolivar, with the assistance of Campo Elias's troops, won the pitched battle of Araure from Ceballos, Boves had escaped to the plains there to recruit another army of llaneros, which was destined to expel the Liberator.

Bolivar was soon reduced to the possession of Caracas and its neighbouring valleys, with a feeble reserve at Valencia. MariÑo had thirty-five hundred men, and Bolivar finally agreed to recognise him as dictator of the eastern provinces as the price of his help. But their union only put off the evil day. Boves crushed Campo Elias at La Puerta and advanced on Caracas. Raging like a trapped wild beast, Bolivar ordered the wholesale assassination of eight hundred and sixty-six Spaniards confined at La Guaira. His desperation inspired his followers, and when Boves attacked the entrenchments outside Caracas and rushed the patriot magazine, the young Granadan who was in command, seeing that the place could not be held, ordered his men to fly, but when the loyalists triumphantly rushed into the building they found him in the act of throwing a match into the powder. In the explosion eight hundred of the assaulting column were blown into the air and the survivors desisted. MariÑo was coming by forced marches from the east along the plains, and Boves retired to cut him off, while Ceballos also abandoned the siege of Valencia. MariÑo eluded Boves and beat off one attack. If the Liberator had concentrated his forces and united with his colleague the patriots would have stood a chance, but he sent most of his own troops to recover the west, joining MariÑo with only a few men. At La Puerta on the 14th of June, 1814, the battle decisive of the second Venezuelan revolution was fought. The desperate charges of Boves's llanero horsemen overwhelmed the patriots, and more than half their number were left dead on the field. Bolivar fled to Caracas, gathered all the money and jewels, and, encumbered by a great multitude of fugitives, retreated east. But at Aragua the patriots were driven out of their trenches with terrific slaughter. The Liberator took ship at Barcelona with the intention of making a last stand near the mouth of the Orinoco, but his comrades had had enough of him. He was declared a traitor and Rivas put in command. The remaining patriots managed to repulse one attack of the royalists, but in a second they were defeated, and in a third Boves slaughtered them nearly to the last man, although he himself was killed in the mÊlÉe. Only a few scattered bands on the plateaux of Barcelona and the plains of the upper Orinoco kept up a resistance. The detachment which Bolivar had so imprudently sent west before the battle of La Puerta escaped into New Granada, while the Liberator went by sea to that country and took service under its government.

The revolution headed by Bolivar and MariÑo had been crushed by Boves, Morales, and Ceballos with troops recruited in Venezuela itself. Monteverde's defeat and Boves's death left Morales master of Venezuela, and virtually independent of outside control. But by 1815 Ferdinand was securely on the throne of Spain, and absolutism had replaced the Constitution established by the popular leaders of 1812. The Spanish government determined to suppress the revolutionists who still maintained themselves in New Granada and the Argentine, and to reduce the semi-independent royalist chiefs to a more exact obedience. In April, Morillo, Spain's ablest general, arrived near CumanÁ at the head of ten thousand veteran regulars. Morales sailed out to meet the Marshal and place his troops at his orders, but the regular officers gazed in astonishment at the dark-skinned llaneros, wearing only a hat and a waist-cloth, who were the pillars of royal authority in Venezuela. At first the Spaniards accepted the aid of these half-savage allies, but Morillo lost no time in establishing a military despotism in which the llanero chiefs had no place. Even more unpopular was his leaving three thousand Spaniards to garrison Venezuela while he impressed an equal number of native troops to accompany him on his expedition against New Granada. Nearly a third of the latter deserted rather than embark, and the attitude of the Spanish officers who were left behind to rule the country roused the native instinct for independence.

Meanwhile the scattered bands of patriot guerillas on the western headwaters of the Orinoco, near the Granadan border, had been uniting and increasing in strength. JosÉ Antonio Paez, a mixed-blood, only twenty-six years old, who could neither read nor write, but of herculean strength and skill in the use of lance and sword, proved the leader for the occasion. A small corps in which he was a simple captain was threatened by the Spanish governor of Barinas at the head of fourteen hundred men. His own commander wished to retreat, but Paez persuaded five hundred reckless fellows to follow him in a night assault. Leading his men in a furious charge he bore down the enemy with a rush, killing four hundred and taking many prisoners, whom he treated so well that they all joined him. The fame of his success spread through the llanos and the rough plainsmen, dissatisfied with the discipline and routine of the regular Spanish officers, flocked to the banner of this new chieftain, and he began the organisation of the army of the ApurÉ, destined to be the principal instrument in the redemption of Venezuela.

Meanwhile the guerilla chiefs farther down the Orinoco made headway against the Spaniards, and the whole plain turned to the patriot side. Hearing of these successes, Bolivar resolved to return to Venezuela. He landed near the mouth of the Orinoco, but was soon driven thence and took ship for Ocumare, near Puerto Cabello. From this point he sent a small expedition inland towards Valencia under the command of MacGregor, who achieved some successes against isolated bodies of loyalists, was joined by many llaneros, and finally made his way to the plains of Barcelona, while Bolivar was compelled to re-embark and flee to Hayti. MacGregor took the city of Barcelona, and then with the assistance of the negro chief, Piar, who had been besieging CumanÁ, repulsed Morales himself at the battle of Juncal. By the end of 1816 the patriots had gained so many advantages that Morillo thought himself obliged to return to Venezuela at the head of huge reinforcements. However, the patriot cause needed a head. The chieftains were rude and ignorant men with a talent for fighting and nothing more, while Bolivar was a man of wide and varied accomplishments. In spite of his failures he retained great prestige among the Creole officers. He was agreed upon as general-in-chief, and in December landed at Barcelona. But Piar had led his victorious army over to the Orinoco, and notwithstanding Bolivar's entreaties the llaneros persisted in their refusal to return to a country where cavalry could not manoeuvre to advantage. When Bolivar arrived at Piar's headquarters near Angostura he appreciated that the true theatre for a successful war had been found. In those plains the llanero cavalry, which formed the bulk of the patriot force, was invincible. Morillo also realised that the coast would not long remain tenable if the line of the Orinoco were in the hands of the patriots, and he sent a regular force of three thousand men under La Torre down the ApurÉ and Orinoco to Angostura, while he himself quickly made an end of the few insurrectionists who stubbornly refused to retire from the coast to the llanos. During one of Bolivar's absences, La Torre offered Piar battle, and at San Felix, in April, 1817, the plainsmen annihilated the Spanish infantry.

Bolivar now went vigorously to work to secure complete command of the river and soon had quite a fleet. His ascendancy over his officers increased daily, and when Piar conspired against him he was strong enough to have the negro hero arrested and shot as a traitor. Before the end of 1817 the patriots were in command of the whole line of the rivers except the fortress of San Fernando, near the junction of the ApurÉ and Orinoco, and Morillo could do nothing against them because the plains were flooded. When the waters fell in early spring the royalists achieved some successes, but Bolivar joined Paez, established a blockade of San Fernando, and surprised Morillo himself near Calabozo. Against Paez's advice he now insisted on making a campaign for the recovery of Caracas, but was badly defeated by the marshal at La Puerta—a spot for the third time the scene of a patriot downfall. Though Paez had captured San Fernando his expedition into the mountain country was no more successful than Bolivar's, and the two retreated to the river to raise fresh troops. Morales followed the patriots to the ApurÉ, but was in his turn repulsed by Paez, giving Bolivar a breathing spell.

The Liberator's position was desperate; his infantry had been destroyed; his cavalry reduced in numbers; his men were nearly without arms; his ammunition exhausted. Ill-considered movements had turned the brilliant situation in which he had found patriot affairs a year before into the gloomiest sort of an outlook. On the other hand, a defensive campaign in the llanos could be kept up indefinitely, and though Morillo had twelve thousand men in the populous mountain provinces north of the plains, he also was without money, arms, and supplies. As he reported to the Peruvian viceroy: "Twelve pitched battles in which the best officers and troops of the enemy have fallen, have not lowered their pride or lessened the vigour of their attacks." With that indomitable energy which more than compensated for his inferiority as a strategist, Bolivar set to work to create a new army. Cavalry of the most admirable sort could be recruited in sufficient numbers among the llaneros, but bitter experience had convinced him that against Spanish regulars the native infantry stood little chance. The cessation of the Napoleonic wars had left thousands of European veterans without employment, and Bolivar contracted for a few thousand Britishers and Irishmen, paying a bounty of eighty dollars per man on enlistment and promising five hundred dollars at the conclusion of the war. Some of these troops arrived opportunely late in 1818, and, few as their numbers were, no soldiers in South America could stand against them.

In October Bolivar issued a proclamation foreshadowing the union of Venezuela and New Granada. In the midst of defeat, with all of both countries except the thinly populated Orinoco plains in possession of the Spaniards, he was confidently planning the creation of a great empire. Morillo opened the campaign of 1819 by advancing with over six thousand men against Paez on the upper Orinoco. The Creole's four thousand were mostly cavalry, and he had learned better than to risk a pitched battle. The Spanish columns were harassed beyond endurance by his light horsemen, and after weeks of heartbreaking marches Morillo had to retire, having accomplished nothing.

From Bolivar's erratic genius now emanated a great stroke of strategy. West of the plains of the ApurÉ and Casanare, tributaries of the upper Orinoco, rises the giant range of the Cordillera and on its top lay the fertile plateaux of Socorro, Tunja, and BogotÁ, the populous heart of New Granada. For three years the Spaniards had been in secure possession and all except three thousand troops had been drafted for service in Venezuela and Peru. A small Spanish force came down from Tunja to attack the patriot guerillas in Casanare, and was repulsed. Where the enemy could go he could follow, reasoned Bolivar. Paez's cavalry had proved itself amply able to hold the llanos, so no risk to Venezuela would be incurred by temporarily withdrawing part of the infantry. With two thousand natives and five hundred British the Liberator followed up the Orinoco, Meta, and Casanare to the latter's sources at the foot of the Paya pass, which leads directly into the fertile valley of Sagamoso, the heart of Tunja province. This pass is high and very difficult, although the distance to be traversed was only eighty miles. The road was a mere track leading along precipices, crossing and recrossing mountain torrents, and the rain fell incessantly as the patriots struggled up the slippery path. When they reached the higher regions a hundred men perished with the cold, and not a horse survived. The army arrived at Sagamoso in a pitiable condition, but without seeing an enemy except an outpost, which was easily dislodged.

Not knowing Bolivar's numbers, Barreiro, the Spanish commander, dared not attack, and the Liberator thus obtained a much-needed opportunity to rest his men and gather horses for his dismounted cavalry. As soon as he got his army in hand he outmanoeuvred Barreiro and by a rapid march captured the city of Tunja, where he found a good store of arms and material. This movement also placed the patriot army between the Spaniards and BogotÁ. Barreiro, seeing himself cut off from his base, made a desperate dash for the capital, but Bolivar knew the enemy's route and took up a position directly across his path on the right bank of the small river BoyacÁ. Though the patriots were only slightly superior in numbers, the Spaniards had to attack at a disadvantage, and fled completely defeated after losing a hundred men. Practically their whole force was dispersed or made prisoners. Small as were the numbers engaged and easily as it was won, BoyacÁ was the most important battle fought in northern Spanish America. Central New Granada, the wealthiest and most populous part of the country, fell into Bolivar's hands without a further blow. Its revenues relieved his financial difficulties and among its sturdy inhabitants he recruited a new army. Morillo, now isolated in Venezuela, must expect an attack from the llaneros, reinforced by the Granadan mountaineers.

During the Liberator's absence from Venezuela he had been branded as a traitor for abandoning his country without the authorisation of congress, and MariÑo made commander-in-chief. But the news of BoyacÁ fell like a thunderbolt among the disaffected, and his return in December quelled them utterly. No opposition was made when he announced that Venezuela and New Granada were united into a single republic, the United States of Colombia, with himself as president and military dictator. The year 1820 passed without any decisive campaign. Bolivar occupied himself principally in recruiting and refitting his armies. Twelve hundred Irish mercenaries arrived and were incorporated with an army which was sent by sea to threaten the Spaniards in Cartagena, and co-operate with the New Granadans on the lower Magdalena. A strong division of Venezuelans was sent against Quito. Paez with the main army of the ApurÉ was, however, repulsed in an advance into Barinas. In spite of this success Morillo could only lie inactive south of Caracas. His forces were not numerous enough both to retake New Granada and to hold northern Venezuela. But word came that Ferdinand was preparing an army of twenty thousand men which would shortly sail from Cadiz for America, and with this reinforcement the marshal believed he could destroy all the patriot armies. The revolution which broke out in Spain in 1820 against Ferdinand's absolute government overturned his hopes. The expedition never sailed, and the new liberal government showed itself disposed to make terms with the revolted colonies. In November a six months' armistice was arranged pending the despatch of peace commissioners to the mother-country, and Morillo resigned in favour of La Torre.

Bolivar's lieutenants respected the armistice only where convenient, and shamelessly continued warlike operations, wresting the New Granadan coast from the Spaniards, beginning the siege of Cartagena, and encouraging a revolt in the province of Maracaibo. When La Torre declared the armistice at an end late in April, 1821, Bolivar had twenty thousand men in the field disposed in five armies. Montilla was besieging Cartagena with three thousand; one Granadan army held the valley of the Magdalena; another was operating against Ecuador; Bermudez with two thousand men threatened Caracas from the east; and Bolivar and Paez at the head of nine thousand men were ready to advance directly from the Orinoco on Valencia and Caracas. To these forces La Torre could only oppose nine thousand troops besides his garrisons. The moment the armistice was formally terminated Bolivar started straight for La Torre. The latter had made the fatal mistake of dividing his forces, and had only about three thousand men drawn up on the wide plain of Carabobo, at the northern foot of the passes which lead through the mountains from the llanos to the Valencia plateau. Bolivar's six thousand captured the passes, but he could not deploy his infantry on the flat ground in front except at the risk of having them cut to pieces. On June 23, 1821, he detached the British legion of one thousand men and fifteen hundred cavalry under Paez around to the left to take the Spaniards in flank. The charge of the llanero horse was driven back by the musket fire, but the pursuing Spaniards were checked by the steady Englishmen, who stood in their tracks and withstood the fire of the whole Spanish army. Their ammunition was soon exhausted; no help came from Bolivar; all seemed to be over with them; a second cavalry charge was as unsuccessful as the first; and the surviving Britishers made up their minds to carry the enemy's position or perish. Their commander had fallen; the colours changed bearers seven times; still they kept their formation as steadily as if on parade, and bayonet in hand rushed on the Spaniards, who outnumbered them four to one. For a brief time the struggle was fierce and the result doubtful, but cold steel in the hands of such a desperate, forlorn hope was too much for the Spaniards. They began to give ground and at last broke and fled. The llanero horse rode them down, and only a remnant escaped to the shelter of Puerto Cabello. Bolivar entered Caracas acclaimed—and this time justly—as the liberator of his country.

Meanwhile the constituent congress of the new republic of Colombia had met at CucutÁ, a town near the limits of Venezuela and New Granada. It was composed entirely of civilians and lawyers and proved to be radically republican and opposed to Bolivar's anti-democratic theories. Though a centralised government was adopted, congress rejected the life presidency and hereditary senate, and abolished the military dictatorship by providing that the commander-in-chief, when on active service, should leave his political functions in the hands of the vice-president. Bolivar made a pretence of declining the presidency, but yielded to the importunities of congress and continued in command of the army on the terms proposed, stipulating, however, that he be allowed to organise as he saw fit the provinces he might conquer in the rest of South America.

The Spaniards now held only Puerto Cabello and CumanÁ, but no progress was made toward driving them out of these positions during the remainder of 1821, nor until after Bolivar had, early in 1822, left for the south to co-operate with SucrÉ in the conquest of Quito. In October CumanÁ surrendered to Bermudez, but from Puerto Cabello Morales led an expedition which reconquered Maracaibo and Coro. He was unable to hold them and the defeat of his squadron on Lake Maracaibo in July, 1823, forced him to surrender. On the 8th of November Puerto Cabello was taken by assault and the long war for Venezuela's independence was over.