Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/437

Rh had succeeded Valdez in command, was forced by Garcia to shut himself up in Popayán. He afterwards marched with 1,800 men upon Pasto, but suffered such heavy losses by sickness and desertion, that he was compelled to retreat, and in August he abandoned Popayán.

The Royalists of Patia and Pasto, aided from Quito, might have prolonged the war indefinitely but that the operations of San Martin and Cochrane threw their base open to attack, and the revolution of Guayaquil cut off all communication between Quito and the Pacific. Bolívar saw this, and as Quito was not included in the armistice of Trujillo, determined to attack from the South as well as from the North, and at the same time open for himself a road to the Pacific. Looking about for an officer to whom he could entrust the undertaking, he chose General Sucre, who was at that time Minister of War of the Republic of Columbia.

Sucre was a native of Cumaná, had received a scientific education, and had served from his early youth in all the campaigns of the revolution of Venezuela, under Miranda, Piar, and Bolívar. Bolívar said of him:—

"Sucre has the best organized head in all Columbia." San Martin, who never met him, wrote of him in after years, that he was one of the most noteworthy men produced by the Republic of Columbia, and of greater military skill than even Bolívar himself.

The mission confided to Sucre was both political and military. He was to aid the new State of Guayaquil against the Royalists, and was to induce her to join the Republic of Columbia. At Popayán he collected a thousand of the dispersed troops, and reached Guayaquil by sea in May, 1821. He found that the majority of the people were in favour of union with Peru, and that they had already suffered defeat in their first brush with the Royalists.

At this juncture the flotilla and a battalion of native troops revolted in the name of the King. Sucre put down the movement, and thus became master of the situation, and commander-in-chief of all the forces.