Bolivar now went vigorously to work to secure complete command of the river and soon had quite a fleet. His ascendancy over his officers increased daily, and when Piar conspired against him he was strong enough to have the negro hero arrested and shot as a traitor. Before the end of 1817 the patriots were in command of the whole line of the rivers except the fortress of San Fernando, near the junction of the Apure and Orinoco, and Morillo could do nothing against them because the plains were flooded. When the waters fell in early spring the royalists achieved some successes, but Bolivar joined Paez, established a blockade of San Fernando, and surprised Morillo himself near Calabozo. Against Paez's advice he now insisted on making a campaign for the recovery of Caracas, but was badly defeated by the marshal at La Puerta--a spot for the third time the scene of a patriot downfall. Though Paez had captured San Fernando his expedition into the mountain country was no more successful than Bolivar's, and the two retreated to the river to raise fresh troops. Morales followed the patriots to the Apure, but was in his turn repulsed by Paez, giving Bolivar a breathing spell. The Liberator's position was desperate; his infantry had been destroyed; his cavalry reduced in numbers; his men were nearly without arms; his ammunition exhausted. Ill-considered movements had turned the brilliant situation in which he had found patriot affairs a year before into the gloomiest sort of an outlook. On the other hand, a defensive campaign in the llanos could be kept up indefinitely, and though Morillo had twelve thousand men in the populous mountain provinces north of the plains, he also was without money, arms, and supplies. As he reported to the Peruvian viceroy: "Twelve pitched battles in which the best officers and troops of the enemy have fallen, have not lowered their pride or lessened the vigour of their attacks." With that indomitable energy which more than compensated for his inferiority as a strategist, Bolivar set to work to create a new army. Cavalry of the most admirable sort could be recruited in sufficient numbers among the llaneros, but bitter experience had convinced him that against Spanish regulars the native infantry stood little chance. The cessation of the Napoleonic wars had left thousands of European veterans without employment, and Bolivar contracted for a few thousand Britishers and Irishmen, paying a bounty of eighty dollars per man on enlistment and promising five hundred dollars at the conclusion of the war. Some of these troops arrived opportunely late in 1818, and, few as their numbers were, no soldiers in South America could stand against them.