By the end of October the Chilean army embarked at Antofagasta ten thousand strong and well provided with cavalry and the most modern artillery. Of Iquique and Pisagua, the two principal ports of the Peruvian nitrate country, the latter, which lies forty miles north of the former, was chosen as the less likely to be defended in force. Only a thousand men were found, who, in spite of a gallant resistance from their two small batteries and their rifle pits, were unable to prevent the landing of the Chileans protected by a tremendous fire from the fleet. Driven from the town the Peruvians could not even hold the top of the precipitous bluff until the arrival of reinforcements from Iquique. The Chileans relentlessly pushed their advantage and soon were in possession of the railroad for fifty miles into the interior and had six thousand men entrenched on a hill called San Francisco. Abundantly supplied with provisions and water they could afford to wait, while the allies, cut off from communications, must either attack at once or abandon the province. The Peruvian general chose the former alternative, but his troops arrived in front of San Francisco exhausted and thirsty after a twenty-miles' march across the dry desert. Only a small part of the army took part in the assault, and it was easily repulsed. Disheartened the allies fell back to the foot of the giant range which inexorably barred their way to the east, and after a few days of suffering from hunger and thirst, took their way north among the barren foothills. The enemy sent a detachment to harass their march, but they turned on their pursuers and defeated them, and reached Tacna province hungry, ragged, half-armed, and generally demoralised.
Not only was the great nitrate province, the treasury of Peru, irretrievably lost, but every point on the coast, including Lima itself, laid open to attack. President Prado left the army at Tacna, went to Lima, and thence sailed for Europe, announcing that he was going to buy iron-clads. Hardly was he on board ship when a revolution broke out in the capital, and the restless Pierola, who had headed the latest attempts at insurrection, declared himself supreme chief. The Bolivians also deposed their unsuccessful president. Peru's revolutionary government, rushed into power on a wave of wounded national pride, embodied the more than Spanish haughtiness of the Creole aristocracy, and refused all concessions. The allies still had a large army at Tacna, not too demoralised to make a creditable resistance, although it was cut off from easy communication with the rest of Peru and Bolivia, and stood badly in need of arms, clothing, and ammunition. The Chilean ships blockaded Arica, the Tacna port, but the fast _Union_ again showed her heels to the enemy's whole fleet, ran the blockade, and landed stores which put the allied army on a fighting footing.