San Martin was his superior as a successful fighter, and in the scope of his action as liberator; he was a continental figure. A great general, able to organise armies and lead them to victory, his mind was methodical and conservative; he disliked abstractions, and was concrete and positive in his plans. He delivered Chili and contributed to the independence of Peru. While others were drawing up political programmes he was winning battles. He recalls Washington by the disinterested nobility of his character; he refused power after liberating two nations, and condemned himself to exile, being surrounded by ambitious generals who quarrelled for the supreme power. In action he was simple and orderly, and progressive; he defeated the Spaniards at San Lorenzo in 1813, giving proof of admirable warlike qualities; he then led the army of the North which fought in Upper Peru, and became the intendant of an Argentine province, Cuyo, in 1814. There he formed an army, and proposed to cross the Andes to the aid of the Chilian patriots. According to a French military critic, M. Charles Malo, "the passage of the Andes was in no way surpassed by the more famous passage of the Alps by the French." The summits of the Cordilleras are over twelve thousand feet high; and it was across them that {68} the army of San Martin, decimated and heroic, victorious over cold and fatigue, made its way into Chili. From that time forward the Argentine leader was an American general. At the foot of the Cordilleras, on the flanks of Chacabuco, he gained a decisive battle over the Spaniards (1817). He dislodged them from the summits which they occupied and entered Santiago in triumph, and was there proclaimed supreme director of Chili. He accepted the command of the armies, and was thereafter victorious at Maipo (1818), where his artillery put the royalists to flight. Chilian independence once assured, he aspired to fresh victories in Peru. American autonomy was his unfaltering ambition.