San Martín recognized at once the futility of pursuing the campaign and attacking the Royalists in the mountainous regions of Bolivia, with over a thousand miles of difficult roads between his army and base of supplies. He conceived, therefore, the idea of compelling Spain to defend her own bases at Lima and Callao, and to this end elaborated a plan for the invasion of Chile and capture of Valparaiso, and, from thence, a combined military and naval attack on the capital of Peru, the seat of Spain’s continental power. With this purpose in view, he repaired to the almost inaccessible town of Mendoza on the Argentine slope of the Andes, on about the same parallel with the Chilean capital, Santiago, and remained there two years, recruiting and training a strong force and accumulating equipment. Shortly after he had established his camp of instruction, the Chileans under General Bernardo O’Higgins had extorted from the Royalist General at Talca a truce whereby the protracted struggle to maintain the _junta_ government in Chile was for the moment suspended. This truce of Talca, however, was repudiated by the Viceroy at Lima, and General Ossorio was soon on his way south with another Royalist army, against which, weakened by local political dissensions, the Chilenos were unable to prevail, and were decisively beaten at Rancagua in October, 1814. As this meant a complete restoration of Spanish authority in Chile, O’Higgins and a few of his officers made their escape with the wreck of their army, crossed the Andes and placed themselves under the command of San Martín. In January, 1817, San Martín’s army, four thousand strong, was ready to move against the unsuspecting Spanish in Chile, who had been led by a stratagem to believe that he would enter the country through one of the more easily accessible of the Andean passes to the south. San Martín, however, chose the highest and most terrible of them all, one four thousand feet higher than St. Bernard, and which lay to the north instead of south of Aconcagua, and accomplished a feat which, in endurance and skill, is thought by the historians to have surpassed Napoleon’s famous crossing of the Alps. Descending the western slope, he fell upon the Spanish outpost at La Guardia on the 7th of February, and on the 12th, surprised and defeated Ossorio’s main force at Chacabuco. Two days later the liberating army entered Santiago. The patriot government was at once re-established and the directorship conferred on O’Higgins after San Martín, refusing to be diverted from his plans for the liberation of the entire continent, had declined the honor.