In November a six months' armistice was arranged pending the despatch of peace commissioners to the mother-country, and Morillo resigned in favour of La Torre. Bolivar's lieutenants respected the armistice only where convenient, and shamelessly continued warlike operations, wresting the New Granadan coast from the Spaniards, beginning the siege of Cartagena, and encouraging a revolt in the province of Maracaibo. When La Torre declared the armistice at an end late in April, 1821, Bolivar had twenty thousand men in the field disposed in five armies. Montilla was besieging Cartagena with three thousand; one Granadan army held the valley of the Magdalena; another was operating against Ecuador; Bermudez with two thousand men threatened Caracas from the east; and Bolivar and Paez at the head of nine thousand men were ready to advance directly from the Orinoco on Valencia and Caracas. To these forces La Torre could only oppose nine thousand troops besides his garrisons. The moment the armistice was formally terminated Bolivar started straight for La Torre. The latter had made the fatal mistake of dividing his forces, and had only about three thousand men drawn up on the wide plain of Carabobo, at the northern foot of the passes which lead through the mountains from the llanos to the Valencia plateau. Bolivar's six thousand captured the passes, but he could not deploy his infantry on the flat ground in front except at the risk of having them cut to pieces. On June 23, 1821, he detached the British legion of one thousand men and fifteen hundred cavalry under Paez around to the left to take the Spaniards in flank. The charge of the llanero horse was driven back by the musket fire, but the pursuing Spaniards were checked by the steady Englishmen, who stood in their tracks and withstood the fire of the whole Spanish army. Their ammunition was soon exhausted; no help came from Bolivar; all seemed to be over with them; a second cavalry charge was as unsuccessful as the first; and the surviving Britishers made up their minds to carry the enemy's position or perish. Their commander had fallen; the colours changed bearers seven times; still they kept their formation as steadily as if on parade, and bayonet in hand rushed on the Spaniards, who outnumbered them four to one. For a brief time the struggle was fierce and the result doubtful, but cold steel in the hands of such a desperate, forlorn hope was too much for the Spaniards. They began to give ground and at last broke and fled. The llanero horse rode them down, and only a remnant escaped to the shelter of Puerto Cabello. Bolivar entered Caracas acclaimed--and this time justly--as the liberator of his country.