The definitive liberation of New Granada comes from the direction of Venezuela under the leadership of Bolivar, who, by October 1817, has returned from the West Indies and occupied most of the Orinoco basin, an area encompassing one-fourth of Colombia and four- fifths of Venezuela.
However, Bolivar has little success against Spanish units entrenched in Caracas and the Venezuelan Andes.
In mid-1819, he therefore turns west toward New Granada, joins forces with Santander and other New Granadans who have taken refuge on the plains, and invades the central highlands over one of the most difficult of Andean paths.
On August 7, he defeats the Spanish in the Battle of Boyacá, which frees central New Granada, and three days later he enters Santa Fe, soon renamed Santa Fe de Bogotá.
The battle had involved little more than two thousand men on either side and was of short duration, but it had destroyed the main Spanish force in New Granada and sorely damaged royalist morale.
By the end of the year, patriot columns fan out and occupy most of the rest of New Granada except the Caribbean coast and far southwest.
Bolivar organizes a provisional patriot government at Bogota, naming Santander to head it.
Then, in December 1819, he is in Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolivar), temporary capital of patriot Venezuela, where at his behest the Venezuelan Congress (with the addition of a few New Granadan members) proclaims the creation of the Republic of Great Colombia, comprising all the former Viceroyalty of New Granada.
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