Paez resigned this dignity in favor of Bolivar in the following year, contenting himself with his great military command.  Surrounded by the body-guard we have seen, through all the years 1816, 1817, and 1818, now in Venezuela, now in New Granada, in the Plains to-day, in the mountains to-morrow, enduring every privation, braving odds apparently the most overwhelming, fighting pitched battles at midnight, and triumphantly effecting surprises in the open day, he maintained alive, in the midst of general discouragement, the cause he had espoused.  Bolivar, the Liberator, was meanwhile endeavoring to make head against the Spaniards elsewhere, and gathered a considerable force in the interior province of Guiana.  In 1818, the vanguard of the British legion—­troops browned by the sun of Spain, who had marched with Wellington from Lisbon to the Pyrenees, and who gladly accepted the offers of the Patriots when Waterloo had put an end to European strife—­sailed up the Orinoco, and effected a junction with the assembled Patriot forces.

At this time, not only the whole of New Granada, but the entire sea-coast of Venezuela and every important city in the Republic were possessed by Morillo.  Yet the Royalist cause made no progress.  Morillo’s dominion was like that famous Haarlem lake which occupied so large an extent of the lands of Holland; it might be great and threatening, but barriers insurmountable, though unpretending, forbade its expansion, and perseverance gradually succeeded in curtailing its limits.  Whatever the hand of Morillo covered, he possessed; but his authority ceased outside the range of his guns.  His men were growing weary of the struggle; few reinforcements came from Spain; and the troops suffered frightfully, through their constant fatigues and hardships.  The war had become that most terrible of all wars,—­a deliberate system of surprises and skirmishes.  Paez here, Bolivar there, Monagas, Piar, Urdaneta, and a score of other chieftains, at every vulnerable point, harassed, without ceasing, the common foe.

In 1819, Bolivar set out upon that marvellous expedition across the Andes in which, by marching one thousand miles and fighting three pitched battles in somewhat less than eleven weeks, he finally liberated New Granada, and secured a vast amount of Spanish treasure and munitions of war.  During his absence, Paez was left to keep Morillo in check on the east of the Cordillera.  His plan of operations was, to be everywhere, and to do everything with his lancers.  Venezuela clung with terrible tenacity to the idea of freedom; and the Republic was converted into two great camps, perpetually shifting their boundaries, yet ever presenting the same features.  Trade and commerce were at an end; the only business thought of was that of war unto death.  Death, everywhere; death, at all times; death, in every shape.  By the sword and the lance, by famine, by drowning, by fire, decimated by fever, worn out by fatigue, the Spaniards perished.