his comrade in arms marched up to the very gates of Lima, the
capital, and everywhere aroused enthusiasm for emancipation. When
negotiations, which had been begun by the viceroy and continued
by a special commissioner from Spain, failed to swerve the
patriot leader from his demand for a recognition of independence,
the royalists decided to evacuate the town and to withdraw into
the mountainous region of the interior. San Martin, thereupon,
entered the capital at the head of his army of liberation and
summoned the inhabitants to a town meeting at which they might
determine for themselves what action should be taken. The result
was easily foreseen. On July 28, 1821, Peru was declared
independent, and a few days later San Martin was invested with
supreme command under the title of "Protector."

But the triumph of the new Protector did not last long. For some
reason he failed to understand that the withdrawal of the
royalists from the neighborhood of the coast was merely a
strategic retreat that made the occupation of the capital a more
or less empty performance. This blunder and a variety of other
mishaps proved destined to blight his military career.
Unfortunate in the choice of his subordinates and unable to
retain their confidence; accused of irresolution and even of
cowardice; abandoned by Cochrane, who sailed off to Chile and
left the army stranded; incapable of restraining his soldiers
from indulgence in the pleasures of Lima; now severe, now lax in
an administration that alienated the sympathies of the
influential class, San Martin was indeed an unhappy figure. It
soon became clear that he must abandon all hope of ever
conquering the citadel of Spanish power in South America unless
he could prevail upon Bolivar to help him.