Assembling his troops at San Mateo estate, Bolivar prepared to defend both Caracas and Valencia against Boves. During the evening, received the aid of Marino and an all-day battle ended with Boves' withdrawal but Campo Elias was killed.
In May Bolivar defended Valencia against General Cagigal and an army of 5,000 the patriots attacked the royalists on the plain of Carabobo. Bermudez nad Rivas marched again after the royalist, but Boves and Morales crushed them and scattered their forces. In this gloomy time for the patriots there was only one bright spot Boves was killed by a patriot lancer.
The death of Boves eliminated the patriots' most terrifying foe and at the same time left the llaneros leaderless and adrift. Neither he nor the llaneros had actually fought for Spain : They simply fought against the patriots, but they had destroyed The Second Republic.
The fate of The Second Republic had destroyed Bolivar's prestige. Marino and his two brilliant but undependable allies, Manuel Piar and Jose F Bermudez were reluctant to follow Bolivar's lead. He was to leave Venezuela a weeks latter, accused even by his uncle Jose Felix Rivas of being a traitor.
In 1.814, Venezuela seemed destroyed, it was nearly as dead as her Second Republic, but as that Second Republic rose from the ashes of first, so would a new Venezuela rise from the ashes of the old. Before 1.814, the revolution was a race war, a class war, a civil war. Afterwards, it became what its liberator had mantained it should be - a war of Venezuelans against Spaniards a War of Independence.See also (1)
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