It is generally supposed that he never again returned to his native country.  This, however, was not the case, since he once again sailed back from France with the idea of watching the progress of the land he loved so dearly.  Perceiving, to his sorrow, that the country was temporarily lost in complete anarchy, he sailed to France again without having descended from the deck of the ship which had borne him out.

The remaining embers of the war had now become localized, and it was obvious that Spain was at her last gasp.  Bolivar came down with his armies from Quito to Peru to complete the task of the destruction of the Spanish garrisons.  In 1824 the Battle of Junin was fought, which resulted in a striking victory for the South Americans.  The patriot forces on this occasion made a particularly gallant fight, and the brilliant cavalry charge made by Suarez is said to have been largely responsible for the victory.

Bolivar then gave over the command of the army to General Sucre, who on December 9, 1824, fought the Battle of Ayacucho, completely defeating the Royalist forces.  This proved to be the final action of the war; the last shred of Spanish authority had been torn from the Continent, the last of the Spanish garrisons were now ploughing their sombre course back to Europe, and it was left to Spanish America to shape its own destiny.

CHAPTER XVIII

BRAZIL:  FROM COLONY TO EMPIRE

Until the period of Napoleonic chaos which overwhelmed the two westernmost countries of Europe, the South American colonies of Spain and Portugal had continued their existence on similar lines.  Both had been entirely subservient to the Mother Country.  The laws which governed Brazil and the Spanish colonies were framed on the same model, and the disadvantages under which the colonists of either nation had laboured from the start had been practically identical.

With the upheaval which occurred at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a new order came into being, so far as the Spaniards and Portuguese were concerned.  The parting of the ways was now marked.  It is, indeed, curious to notice that, while Spanish South America was strenuously engaged in transforming itself from the status of a royal colony to that of a group of independent republics, an operation was being carried out in Brazil, the effect of which was precisely the reverse.

Brazil, in fact, in place of the neglect of centuries from which she had suffered, now underwent a sudden, dazzling, and altogether unexpected shower of honours and distinctions.  That this did not come about spontaneously affected the colony but little; the fact remained that she was destined in a remarkably short space of time to rise from a colony to a kingdom, and from a kingdom to an empire.  The circumstances which led to this transformation were sufficiently dramatic in themselves.