In 1822, at all events, optimism was the watchword and the total exclusion of Spain from South America the goal of Bolivar and his lieutenants, as they started southward to complete the work of emancipation which had been begun by San Martin.
The patriots of Peru, indeed, had fallen into straits so desperate that an appeal to the Liberator offered the only hope of salvation.

While the royalists under their able and vigilant leader, Jose Canterac, continued to strengthen their grasp upon the interior of the country and to uphold the power of the viceroy, the President chosen by the Congress had been driven by the enemy from Lima.

A number of the legislators in wrath thereupon declared the President deposed.

Not to be outdone, that functionary on his part declared the Congress dissolved.

The malcontents immediately proceeded to elect a new chief magistrate, thus bringing two Presidents into the field and inaugurating a spectacle destined to become all too common in the subsequent annals of Spanish America.
When Bolivar arrived at Callao, the seaport of Lima, in September, 1823, he acted with prompt vigor.