Upon these tidings Bolívar left his retreat for Angostura, where, emboldened by Brion, he dissolved the congress and the triumvirate, to replace them by a "supreme council of the nation", with himself as the chief, Brion and Francisco Antonio Zea as the directors, the former of the military, the latter of the political section. However, Piar, the conqueror of Guiana, who once before had threatened to try him before a court-martial as a deserter, was not sparing of his sarcasms against the ""Napoleon of the retreat"", and Bolívar consequently accepted a plan for getting rid of him. On the false accusation of having conspired against the whites, plotted against Bolívar's life, and aspired to the supreme power, Piar was arraigned before a war council under the presidency of Brion, convicted, condemned to death, and shot, October 16, 1817. His death struck Marino with terror. Fully aware of loss when deprived of Piar, he, in an abject letter, publicly calumniated his murdered friend, deprecated his own attempts at rivalry with the liberator, and threw himself upon Bolívar's magnanimity.