Viceroyalty of Peru on July 21, 1821. The independence of Peru was proclaimed on July 28, 1821. Viceroy José de la Serna e Hinojosa, still in command of a sizable military force, retired to Jauja, and later to Cusco. On July 26, 1822, San Martín and Simón Bolívar met in Guayaquil to define a strategy for the liberation of the rest of Peru. The meeting was secret, and exactly what occurred is not known. However, afterwards San Martín returned to Argentina while Bolívar prepared to launch an offensive against the remaining royalist forces in Peru and Upper Peru (Bolivia). In September 1823 Bolívar
First Upper Peru campaign decline, mainly due to the favourable treatment of natives and the determined opposition of the church, which attacked Castelli through his secretary Bernardo Monteagudo and his public atheism. Both royalists in Lima and Saavedra in Buenos Aires compared them both with Maximilien Robespierre, leader of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. Castelli also abolished the mita in Upper Peru, a project that was shared by Mariano Moreno, but Moreno had been removed from the Junta by this point. Without Castelli being in Buenos Aires to mediate between them, the disputes between Moreno and Saavedra had worsened. The Junta