started
southward to complete the work of emancipation which had been begun by
San Martin.

The patriots of Peru, indeed, had fallen into straits so desperate that
an appeal to the Liberator offered the only hope of salvation. While the
royalists under their able and vigilant leader, Jose Canterac, continued
to strengthen their grasp upon the interior of the country and to uphold
the power of the viceroy, the President chosen by the Congress had been
driven by the enemy from Lima. A number of the legislators in wrath
thereupon declared the President deposed. Not to be outdone, that
functionary on his part declared the Congress dissolved. The malcontents
immediately proceeded to elect a new chief magistrate, thus bringing
two Presidents into the field and inaugurating a spectacle destined to
become all too common in the subsequent annals of Spanish America.

When Bolivar arrived at Callao, the seaport of Lima, in September, 1823,
he acted with prompt vigor. He expelled one President, converted the
other into a passive instrument of his will, declined to promulgate a
constitution that the Congress had prepared, and, after obtaining from
that body an appointment to supreme command, dissolved the Congress
without further ado. Unfortunately none of these radical measures had
any perceptible effect upon the military situation. Though Bolivar
gathered together an army made up of Colombians, Peruvians, and remnants
of San Martin's force, many months elapsed before he could venture upon
a serious campaign. Then events in Spain played into his hands. The
reaction that had followed the restoration of Ferdinand VII to absolute
power crossed the ocean and split the royalists into opposing factions.
Quick to seize the chance thus afforded, Bolivar marched over the
Andes to the plain of Junin. There, on August 6, 1824, he repelled an
onslaught by Canterac and drove that leader back in headlong flight.
Believing, however, that the position he held was too perilous to risk
an offensive, he entrusted the military command to Sucre and returned to
headquarters.

The royalists had now come to realize that only a supreme effort could
save them. They must overwhelm Sucre before reinforcements could reach
him, and to this end an army of upwards of ten thousand was assembled.
On the 9th of December it encountered Sucre and his six thousand
soldiers in the valley of Ayacucho, or "Corner of Death," where the
patriot general had entrenched his