It was he, the “Great Silent One,” who had won the greatest and most momentous battle of modern times. It had taken Frederick the Great seven long years to humble the pride of Austria; it took William the Victorious, with Moltke as his “battle-thinker,” but seven short days to achieve the same result. The Prussian soldier preferred to call the battle which he had just helped to win, Königgrätz, because this name sounded to his ears as but a pun on the words “_Dem König geräth’s_” (“The King will win”). But the King had only won by acting on the sage advice of his all-calculating Moltke, whose motto was “_Erst wägen, dann wagen_”--that is, “First weigh, then away!” [Illustration: AYACUCHO By W. B. ROBERTSON] That war whereby the power of Spain was broken in South America, is known as the South American War of Independence. On the one side was the imperial power of Spain fighting for supremacy; on the other side were her colonists--creoles, American natives of Spanish blood--fighting for freedom. The first pitched battle was fought in Mexico near Aculco, in 1810; the last, on the plain of Ayacucho, in Peru, on December 9th, 1824. Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador had already thrown off the Spanish yoke when General Bolivar, towards the end of 1823, arrived with his victorious army in Peru. He was hailed as “The Deliverer,” and addressed the National Congress at Lima in these words:-- “The soldiers who have come from the Plate, the Maule, the Magdalena, and the Orinoco as the deliverers of Peru will not return to their native country till they are covered with laurels, till they can pass under triumphal arches, nor till they can carry off as trophies the standards of Castille. They will conquer and leave Peru free, or they will die. This I promise.” These words spoken, it remained to make them actualities; and how this was done will form our story. In June of the following year Bolivar took the field with 10,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. His cantonments were at Truxillo, and from there he began to move southwards to meet the enemy. The Spanish troops comprised 3,500 at Cuzco under the Viceroy of Peru, Laserna; 6,500 at Arequipa and Jauja under Canterac, and 1,000 away in the remote south under General Valdez, who was soon to be recalled to assist his companions in arms. The Spanish force nearest to Bolivar was thus General Canterac’s. This force was remarkably efficient and in the highest state of discipline. Its equipments were superior and complete; its artillery and cavalry particularly well appointed; and, what was not always the case with the liberating army, the troops were paid with the greatest regularity--a strong conducive to good discipline and order.