iously
challenged. For the present, and without prejudice to the future,
command of the sea was held by Montt's squadron (January). The rank and
file of the army remained faithful to the executive, and thus in the
early part of the war the "Gobernistas," speaking broadly, possessed an
army without a fleet, the congress a fleet without an army. Balmaceda
hoped to create a navy; the congress took steps to recruit an army by
taking its sympathizers on board the fleet. The first shot was fired, on
the 16th of January, by the "Blanco" at the Valparaiso batteries, and
landing parties from the warships engaged small parties of government
troops at various places during January and February. The dictator's
principal forces were stationed in and about Iquique, Coquirabo,
Valparaiso, Santiago and Concepcion. The troops at Iquique and Coquimbo
were necessarily isolated from the rest and from each other, and
military operations began, as in the campaign of 1879 in this quarter,
with a naval descent upon Pisagua followed by an advance inland to
Dolores. The Congressional forces failed at first to make good their
footing (16th-23rd of January), but, though defeated in two or three
actions, they brought off many recruits and a quantity of munitions of
war. On the 26th they retook Pisagua, and on the 15th of February the
Balmacedist commander, Eulojio Robles, who offered battle in the
expectation of receiving reinforcements from Tacna, was completely
defeated on the old battlefield of San Francisco. Robles fell back along
the railway, called up troops from Iquique, and beat the invaders at
Haura on the 17th, but Iquique in the meanwhile fell to the
Congressional fleet on the 16th. The Pisagua line of operations was at
once abandoned, and the military forces of the congress were moved by
sea to Iquique, whence, under the command of Colonel Estanislao Del
Canto, they started inland. The battle of Pozo Almonte, fought on the
7th of March, was desperately contested, but Del Canto was superior in
numbers, and Robles was himself killed and his army dispersed. After
this the other Balmacedist troops in the north gave up the struggle.
Some were driven into Peru, others into Bolivia, and one column made a
laborious retreat from Calama to Santiago, in the course of which it
twice crossed the main chain of the Andes.

The Congressional _Junta de Gobierno_ now established in Iquique
prosecuted the war vigorously, and by the end of April the whole