Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/371

Rh concurrence of the army of the East. Marino refused to combine operations with Bolívar until he was recognised as the supreme ruler of the territory he possessed. The Liberator modestly entreated him to march upon the plains, where Boves and Yañez were recruiting. Far from doing this, though such action was necessary to his own security, he even recalled his flotilla from Puerto Cabello, but Piar listened to the appeals of Bolívar, and continued the blockade. The result was that Bolívar, being unable to attend to the siege of Puerto Cabello and to the war upon the plains at the same time, Boves and Yañez were speedily in a position to assume the offensive. Boves, more especially, with that wonderful energy which hesitated at no means, however terrible they might be, to the end before him, again took the field, two months after his defeat by Campo Elias.

On the 1st November he summoned all able-bodied men to join him, proclaimed war to the knife against the Patriots, decreed that their goods should be distributed among his troops, and, finally, liberated all slaves who would enlist under the banners of the King. The Llaneros, irritated by the massacre of Calabozo, and eager for plunder, flocked in masses to his standard. From Guayana came 100 infantry and one gun. By the middle of December he had 3,000 cavalry, the blades of whose lances were forged from the spikes torn from the railings of windows.

With this horde he descended to the lower plains. On the 14th December he routed a division of 1,000 men at San Marcos, and occupied Calabozo, slaughtering without mercy, and enriching his troops with booty. He then overran the whole plain lying between the windward coast range and the Gulf of Paria. For further operations he needed infantry, and set to work to make some. At the same time Yañez, with some help from Guayana, organized a force of 2,000 men on the Apure, and captured the city of Barinas, while Cajigal and Ceballos raised another army on the leeward coast.