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 THE R E VOL UTIONAR Y PERIOD 1 37 must assist the patriots of the neighboring provinces of Chile and Peru to obtain their independence ; and for this undertaking, San Martin was the leader most naturally selected. While the struggle was going on in Buenos Ayres and in Chile and Peru, the northern provinces were in like manner fighting for their independence. Here' the war was waged by the royalists with even greater persistence and ferocity than in the south. Venezuela was the first to form an independent junta and throw off the Spanish yoke ; but there the royalists were, after a time, victorious, and terrible was their revenge. The people of Venezuela were proscribed, Caracas was turned into a vast prison. These brutal measures raised up young Marino with an army ; cruelty and extortion had, indeed, previously raised up a patriot army in Venezuela for General Miranda. The libera- tion of Venezuela and Colombia was finally achieved by Marino and Bolivar. The battles of Pantano de Bargas and Boyaca, in July and August, i8ig, and of Carabobo on June 24th, 1821, decided the fate of Spain in Colombia, after twelve years of savage warfare, hardly equalled in history for atrocious barbarity and cruelty. The fate of Quito was decided favorably by Bolivar and Sucre in the battle of Pinchincha, June 22d, 1822. The battle of Ayacucho, December gth, 1824, struck the fatal blow to the royalist power in Peru. Olaneta was defeated by General Sucre at Potosi in April, 1825, and the territories of Upper Peru, the theatre of the first and last acts in the bloody drama, were made free, and declared themselves the Republic of Bolivar. The battle of the Maypo, April 5th, 1818, decided the issue in Chile in favor of the patriots. This rapid glance at the rise and progress of the