Salaverry, a chief only thirty years old and remarkable for his dash and energy, succeeded in establishing himself pretty firmly at Lima, while Gamarra held Cuzco. Orbegoso, who had received a majority of votes in congress, entered into negotiations with Santa Cruz, the strong dictator of Bolivia, agreeing to everything to get help against Salaverry and Gamarra. The wily Bolivian had planned to divide Peru and unite the fragments with Bolivia into a confederation. At the head of five thousand men he advanced on Cuzco and wiped out Gamarra. The fiery Salaverry did not wait to be trapped at Lima, but left the capital with his whole force and hastened south. Not daring to attack Santa Cruz's vastly superior army, he slipped around to Arequipa, laying that unhappy town under contribution and impressing its citizens into his army. The Bolivians followed; he evacuated Arequipa, and evaded them for a time, but they finally caught him as he was making a daring attempt to cut their line of communication. His army was dispersed and destroyed and he and his principal officers were taken prisoners and mercilessly shot.
It seemed as if Peru might now, under the strong rule of Santa Cruz, enjoy the peace and order with which he had blessed Bolivia. The country was partitioned, Orbegoso becoming sub-president of North Peru, which included Lima, and General Herrera of South Peru. Santa Cruz was proclaimed protector of the Peru-Bolivian confederation and the new government formally inaugurated in the fall of 1836. He was an able and laborious administrator, zealous for economy and purity in public affairs, a friend of orderly government, a ruler who knew how to organise an efficient army while maintaining it in due subordination. But from the beginning it was evident that he held supremacy by a very uncertain tenure. The Peruvian military classes, so long and so absolutely dominant, were unanimously against him and his methods. The mercantile, professional, and moneyed classes were bound by a hundred ties to the officers, and the agricultural peasantry, composed of Indians and negroes, took no part in public affairs. Sooner or later he must have come again into conflict with men of the Gamarra-Salaverry type, but the immediate peril was from Chile, whose power and energy--great even then, but so far unknown and underestimated--were thrown into the balance against him. The civil war of 1831 had resulted in the defeat of the Chilean liberals, and Freire, their leader, had fled to Peru and there received aid and comfort. The Chilean remonstrances remained unnoticed, and Santa Cruz's commercial policy was adverse. The defeated Peruvian generals swarmed into Chile and promised to aid an invasion.