Bolivar was supreme from the Caribbean to Potosi. As president of the United States of Colombia he ruled Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador, he himself was dictator of Peru, and his faithful lieutenant exercised supreme power in Bolivia. The realisation of his cherished plan for the union of all South America into one great confederacy, with himself as life-president, seemed near at hand. But successful soldier though he was--heroic, resourceful, and unwavering in reverse--his statecraft was short-sighted and impracticable. The moment of his apogee marked the beginning of his decline. He failed to appreciate that the spirit of South America was profoundly democratic and local, and that the war of independence owed its beginning and successful prosecution to a deeply rooted impulse toward division, liberty, and anarchy among the Creoles. To build a tower out of sand would have been easier than to create a stable union between the recently liberated provinces of Spanish America. Viewed in the light of subsequent events the wonder is that territorial disintegration stopped where it did, and that South America did not split into twenty instead of nine separate countries. Bolivar's partisans in Colombia were unsuccessful in their intrigues to replace the Constitution of Cucuta with one drawn up after the plan their chief had imposed upon Bolivia and Peru. Neither leaders nor people, army nor professional classes, showed any disposition to concede him greater powers. His attempts to interfere in the affairs of Argentine and Chile were repulsed, Peru became restless under his dictatorship, Bolivia only waited a favourable opportunity to expel Sucre, the very troops he had brought from Colombia to Peru became mutinous, his pan-American congress at Panama turned out a fiasco. He remained two years in Peru, until the news of a great uprising in Venezuela made it necessary for him to hurry to the north. Hardly had he left Lima than the military chiefs in Peru virtually disavowed his authority. Under the leadership of their officers the Colombian troops in Lima revolted, and the Peruvians, delighted to be rid of these embarrassing guests, paid their pecuniary demands, and to the number of over three thousand despatched them in ships for the north. They disembarked in Ecuador, where one division took possession of Guayaquil and another of Cuenca. Bolivar was so occupied with the troubles in Venezuela that he could personally take no measures against this defection, but General Flores, a Venezuelan whom he had appointed commander of the military forces of the three southern provinces of the old Quito presidency,--Guayaquil, Cuenca, and Quito,--proved energetic and fortunate. His intrigues sowed discord among the officers of the revolting troops. A counter-revolution occurred in his favour at Cuenca, and after a short period of virtual independence Guayaquil also returned to its old connection with Quito.