within twenty leagues of Caracas, where he was met by Spanish
commissioners, who sued for, and obtained, a capitulation. The conqueror
entered his native city in triumph. But this did not put an end to the war.
The Spaniards were faithless in the observance of the capitulation, and
Monteverde, from within the walls of Puerto Cabello, fomented the discord
which prevailed in the interior provinces. About this time a strong
reinforcement arrived from Spain. Bolivar was obliged to evacuate Caracas;
but the royalists were beaten at Viguirima, Barbula, and Las Trincheras.
However, the Spanish general Cevallos had time to raise four thousand
recruits in the province of Coro, which had always shown itself inimical to
the cause of independence. Bolivar next gained the important battle of
Araure, and repossessed himself of Caracas. On the 2nd of January, 1814, he
assembled the public authorities of the city, and resigned to them the
supreme authority he had exercised, and with which his triumphs had
invested him. They, however, refused to admit his resignation; conferred
upon him the title of LIBERATOR OF VENEZUELA; and named him dictator.

About this period a Spaniard, Don José Tomas Boves, succeeded in bringing
about a counter-revolution in the Llanos, an immense tract of level
country, which traverses the centre of Venezuela, and extends to the
confines of New Granada. Boves organized a force, which consisted of men
mostly chosen for their desperate character, whom he led on by promises of
indiscriminate plunder, and by lavishing the greatest rewards upon the
perpetrators of the most revolting atrocities. The track of these ruffians,
to Calabozo, was every where marked with the blood of the aged and the
defenceless. Bolivar, who had detached a part of his force in pursuit of
Cevallos, had not above two thousand men left to make head against Boves,
who, with nearly five times that number, had possessed himself of the
fertile valleys of Aragua, and destroyed some patriot divisions sent to
check his progress. Bolivar took up a position at San Mateo, in order to