In many instances the result of this extraordinary piece of strategy was mere slaughter, since the British troops, many of whom had been charged to use nothing beyond the bayonet and to refrain from firing, could adopt no retaliatory measures whatever.  In the circumstances total defeat was inevitable, and at the end of the engagement the General found himself a prisoner in the hands of the South Americans.  On this Whitelocke signed a treaty agreeing to evacuate the River Plate Provinces altogether, and within two months not a British soldier was left in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.  On his arrival home Whitelocke underwent a court-martial, and was cashiered with well deserved and bitter censure.

Apart from the extraordinary incompetence—­to call it by no worse name—­shown by General Whitelocke, there is some doubt as to whether the British would have succeeded in permanently retaining possession of the territory they had captured.  For one thing, their expectations that the colonials would join them were not realized.  The inherent loyalty of the South American to the motherland forbade any such move at the time.  Nevertheless, it is freely acknowledged that this English expedition played no small part in the ultimate liberation of South America, since it was owing to the invasion that the South Americans, deserted by their Viceroy, had only themselves on whom to rely for the expulsion of the expeditionary army.  From the force of no initiative of their own, they had been left to their own resources, and had found that their strength did not fail them.  Amid the doubts and hesitations of later days the knowledge of this played an important part.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NORTHERN COLONIES

It is, to a certain extent, difficult for one familiar with the South America of to-day to realize the New Granada of the Spanish colonial period.  From Guiana westward along the northern coast was an extensive and, for the most part, unexploited stretch of territory, devoid of such arbitrary boundaries as characterize it to-day, and limited only on the north and west by the sea, and on the south by the Portuguese colony of Brazil and the great Spanish territory of Peru.  Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and the sharply defined limits these names represent, are, of course, modern creations, comparatively speaking.  For centuries the landward boundaries of Spanish New Granada remained shadowy, indefinite limits.  There was a Viceroyalty of New Granada, so named from the resemblance between the plains around Bogota and the Vega of the Moorish capital, and there was a Captain-Generalship of Venezuela.  New Granada was estimated as comprising all the country between 60 deg. and 78 deg. west longitude, and between 6 deg. to 15 deg. north latitude.  In this was included Venezuela, under which name was comprised an extent of territory far less important than is at present the case.