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Stealing silently to the side of the sleeper, the assassin plunged his knife into his breast, then turned and fled. Fortunately for American independence he had slain the wrong man. The one whom he had been hired to kill was Simon Bolivar, the great leader of the patriots of Spanish America. But on that night Bolivar’s secretary occupied his hammock, and the "Liberator" escaped.
The strength of Bolivar’s generalship lay in rapid and unexpected movements like this. The Spanish leaders, bound in the shackles of military routine, were astonished and dismayed by the forced marches of their enemies over roads that seemed unfit for the passage of an army.
As a result, the actions of the patriot commander in the field seemed less impressive than those of less notable generals, but the sum of effects was far superior. Bolivar’s occupation of Tunja took the Spaniards by surprise.
Barreiro, finding himself unexpectedly cut off from his centre of supplies, fell back upon Venta Quemada, where he was soon followed by his foe, anxious to deal a decisive blow before the royal forces could concentrate. Boyacá, the site now occupied by the hostile armies, was a wooded and mountainous country and one well suited to Bolivar’s characteristic tactics.
Born of Indian parents of low extraction, and quite illiterate, Paez proved himself so daring as a soldier that he became in time general-in-chief of the armies of Venezuela and the neighboring republics, and was Bolivar’s most trusted lieutenant during the war for independence.
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