rovinces oversea and to hasten
its achievement.

The first important efforts to profit by this situation were made by the
patriots in Chile. Both San Martin and O'Higgins had perceived that the
only effective way to eliminate the Peruvian wedge was to gain control
of its approaches by sea. The Chileans had already won some success
in this direction when the fiery and imperious Scotch sailor, Thomas
Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, appeared on the scene and offered to
organize a navy. At length a squadron was put under his command. With
upwards of four thousand troops in charge of San Martin the expedition
set sail for Peru late in August, 1820.

While Cochrane busied himself in destroying the Spanish blockade, 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