[Illustration: VILLAGE OF CHICLAY ON THE OROYA RAILWAY, 12,200 FEET ABOVE THE SEA.] Encouraged by this success, La Mar determined to wrest Guayaquil and Cuenca from Colombia. Bolivar, already furious over the defection of Peru and Bolivia, made a formal declaration of war, although he was too much occupied with his own troubles in New Granada and Venezuela to go in person to the frontier. General Flores, whom he had put in charge of Ecuador, made preparations to resist La Mar, Sucre came to direct the operations, a Peruvian naval expedition captured Guayaquil, and La Mar's main army of four thousand men occupied the province of Loja and penetrated within forty miles of Cuenca, only to be defeated. The Peruvian president signed a treaty giving up his conquests, but he was no sooner safe in his own country than he repudiated it and refused to surrender Guayaquil. His defeat had, however, cost him his prestige at home, and one of his generals, Gamarra, revolted and declared himself dictator. Gamarra had been chief of staff at Ayacucho; he was a good soldier, but, like most of his companions, had no conception of constitutional government, and thought the men whose bravery had redeemed Peru from the Spaniards' _ipso facto_ entitled to govern. Force was the only method he knew to secure obedience, and under his administration taxes were arbitrarily increased, citizens exiled without trial, and the country virtually governed by martial law. Until the last year of his administration Gamarra held the country fairly quiet, but as the end of his legal term in 1833 approached, the question of the succession plunged Peru into an indescribable anarchy. Gamarra's enemies got control of the assembly called to frame a permanent Constitution and illegally named a president, while Gamarra proclaimed one of his own partisans. Every military chief who could command the support of a few soldiers acted on his own responsibility. Dictators and _soi-disant_ presidents were put up and pulled down one after another in a bewildering succession. Orbegoso, La Fuente, Vista Florida, Nieto, San Roman, Vidal, Gamarra, and Salaverry were each proclaimed supreme within the next year. Combinations of the different chiefs formed, dissolved, and re-formed with perplexing rapidity. Two bands would fight a bloody battle one day and the next would fall into each other's arms and swear eternal friendship.