utterly. The battle proved decisive not of the fortunes of Chile
alone but of those of all Spanish South America. As a viceroy of
Peru later confessed, "it marked the moment when the cause of
Spain in the Indies began to recede."

Named supreme director by the people of Santiago, O'Higgins
fought vigorously though ineffectually to drive out the royalists
who, reinforced from Peru, held the region south of the capital.
That he failed did not deter him from having a vote taken under
military auspices, on the strength of which, on February 12,
1818, he declared Chile an independent nation, the date of the
proclamation being changed to the 1st of January, so as to make
the inauguration of the new era coincident with the entry of the
new year. San Martin, meanwhile, had been collecting
reinforcements with which to strike the final blow. On the 5th of
April, the Battle of Maipo gave him the victory he desired.
Except for a few isolated points to the southward, the power of
Spain had fallen.

Until the fall of Napoleon in 1815 it had been the native
loyalists who had supported the cause of the mother country in
the Spanish dominions. Henceforth, free from the menace of the
European dictator, Spain could look to her affairs in America,
and during the next three years dispatched twenty-five thousand
men to bring the eolonies to obedience. These soldiers began
their task in the northern part of South America, and there they
ended it--in failure. To this failure the defection of native
royalists contributed, for they were alienated not so much by the
presence of the Spanish troops as by the often merciless severity
that marked their conduct. The atrocities may have been provoked