Matters remained virtually at a standstill until the summer of 1822. San Martin had been unable to make his position stable enough to justify his devoting himself to military operations, nor had he succeeded in gathering and equipping an army with which he was willing to undertake a decisive campaign. Canterac even took the offensive, although he made no effort to re-occupy permanently the coast plain. Outside help was necessary, and San Martin, despairing of obtaining it from Chile or the Argentine, turned his eyes to the north. Bolivar's battles of Boyacá and Carabobo had redeemed northern Granada and Venezuela in 1819 and 1821, and he was now advancing toward Quito to complete the expulsion of the Spaniards from that viceroyalty. With a force of Colombians Sucré went to Guayaquil by sea and climbed to the Ecuador plateau. Defeated and driven back on his first attempt, he was reinforced by a division sent by San Martin, and renewed the effort with better success. Although Bolivar had in the meantime been checked in his southward march on Quito by the loyalists of southern Colombia, Sucré alone destroyed the Spanish army which had held Ecuador for so many years. The battle of Pichincha, fought in May, 1822, left Bolivar and Sucré free to employ their numerous and well-disciplined troops in completing the liberation of Peru and Bolivia.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO IN LIMA.]
Bolivar joined his victorious lieutenant at Quito, incorporated Ecuador with his new republic of Colombia, and proceeded overland to Guayaquil, where San Martin lost no time in going to meet him for a conference. The Argentine expected to find as unselfish a patriot as himself, but the "liberator" was not single-minded. He had formed plans for his own glory and aggrandisement to the accomplishment of which San Martin might be an obstacle. When the latter broached the subject of a joint campaign against the Spaniards in Peru and Bolivia, Bolivar gave him no satisfaction, and evaded the Argentine's noble offer to serve in a subordinate capacity. The silent soldier made no protest and uttered no reproaches. Confiding not even in his closest friends, he calmly considered his plight on his way back to Lima. His situation in Peru, bad already, would be made ten times worse by Bolivar's intrigues. Seeing that he could be of no further service to the cause of South American independence, he formally resigned his authority to a national congress, deliberately sacrificing his own future for the cause he loved, but leaving behind him a name untarnished by any suspicion of self-seeking or personal ambition.