396 



SPANISH AMERICA. 



tained, and from the impossibility of his re- 

 ceiving reinforcements from Spain, adequate 

 to the purpose he had in view, obtained for 

 the cause of the royalists only a temporary 

 advantage ; and when he had apparently 

 conquered New Grenada and Venezuela, he 

 found it impossible to retain them under 

 the authority of the mother-country. It 

 appears from an intercepted letter of his, 

 dated Monpox, the 7th of March 1816, and 

 addressed to the minister of war in Spain, 

 that at the moment when he was obtaining, 

 what might seem to a superficial observer 

 the greatest advantages, he was himself de- 

 spairing of ultimate success. 



