Bolivar was soon reduced to the possession of Caracas and its neighbouring valleys, with a feeble reserve at Valencia. Marino had thirty-five hundred men, and Bolivar finally agreed to recognise him as dictator of the eastern provinces as the price of his help. But their union only put off the evil day. Boves crushed Campo Elias at La Puerta and advanced on Caracas. Raging like a trapped wild beast, Bolivar ordered the wholesale assassination of eight hundred and sixty-six Spaniards confined at La Guaira. His desperation inspired his followers, and when Boves attacked the entrenchments outside Caracas and rushed the patriot magazine, the young Granadan who was in command, seeing that the place could not be held, ordered his men to fly, but when the loyalists triumphantly rushed into the building they found him in the act of throwing a match into the powder. In the explosion eight hundred of the assaulting column were blown into the air and the survivors desisted. Marino was coming by forced marches from the east along the plains, and Boves retired to cut him off, while Ceballos also abandoned the siege of Valencia. Marino eluded Boves and beat off one attack. If the Liberator had concentrated his forces and united with his colleague the patriots would have stood a chance, but he sent most of his own troops to recover the west, joining Marino with only a few men. At La Puerta on the 14th of June, 1814, the battle decisive of the second Venezuelan revolution was fought. The desperate charges of Boves's llanero horsemen overwhelmed the patriots, and more than half their number were left dead on the field. Bolivar fled to Caracas, gathered all the money and jewels, and, encumbered by a great multitude of fugitives, retreated east. But at Aragua the patriots were driven out of their trenches with terrific slaughter. The Liberator took ship at Barcelona with the intention of making a last stand near the mouth of the Orinoco, but his comrades had had enough of him. He was declared a traitor and Rivas put in command. The remaining patriots managed to repulse one attack of the royalists, but in a second they were defeated, and in a third Boves slaughtered them nearly to the last man, although he himself was killed in the melee. Only a few scattered bands on the plateaux of Barcelona and the plains of the upper Orinoco kept up a resistance. The detachment which Bolivar had so imprudently sent west before the battle of La Puerta escaped into New Granada, while the Liberator went by sea to that country and took service under its government.