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
army with admirable skill. The result was a total defeat for the
royalists--the Waterloo of Spain in South America. The battle
thus won by ragged and hungry soldiers--whose countersign the
night before had been "bread and cheese"--threw off the yoke of
the mother country forever. The viceroy fell wounded into their
hands and Canterac surrendered. On receipt of the glorious news,
the people of Lima greeted Bolivar with wild enthusiasm. A
Congress prolonged his dictatorship amid adulations that bordered
on the grotesque.

Eastward of Peru in the vast mountainous region of Charcas, on
the very heights of South America, the royalists still found a
refuge. In January, 1825, a patriot general at the town of La Paz