After the complete destruction of the allied army by the Tacna campaign in March, 1880, the government, confident that a treaty of peace would soon be signed, delayed further aggressive operations for several months. But the Peruvians were obstinate and later in the year it was resolved to carry the war to the centre of the enemy's country. Lima fell on the 17th of January, 1881, and the glorious news was received while the liberals were contending over whom they should select as a candidate to succeed Pinto. There was much striving among the rival chiefs and one convention had already adjourned without coming to any agreement. Pinto ventured to interfere in a more decided way than any previous president had done and his influence was sufficiently powerful to induce the liberal party to unite on his personal choice, Santa Maria. The opposition tried to rally around the candidacy of General Baquedano, the greatest general of the war, but the prestige of the administration was too powerful. Although his nomination had been bitterly opposed by many prominent liberals, once in office Santa Maria found means to unite in his support a great majority of congress. The members who took their seats in 1882 were divided into three factions: the liberals proper, as the moderates were called, the radicals, and the nationals--few in number but counting in their ranks some of the ablest and wealthiest aristocrats in Chile. The conservatives, no longer an important factor, had abandoned their opposition to the civil reforms which the liberals pressed forward, concentrating their efforts on a hopeless but desperate resistance to religious innovations. Santa Maria was in full accord with his party, and his message of 1883 proclaimed that the time had come for the realisation of the oldest and dearest aspirations of Chilean liberals--civil marriage and registry, entire liberty of conscience, and the secularisation of the cemeteries. In the fierce discussion which followed, the eloquent prime minister, Balmaceda, took the lead. Although educated for the priesthood he had developed into an intransigent radical, a passionate advocate of the completest separation of Church and State.