Three days before the United States and Spain signed the Ceasefire Agreement, the Portuguese Expeditionary Force was locked in a bitter battle at El Picacho in western Venezuela. Four thousand soldiers under Silveira, the Portuguese vanguard commander, were repeatedly harassed by a New Granada National Guard force twice their size, leaving them miserable beyond words. Silveira could not even retreat—he had chosen a V-shaped river mouth to build his defensive position, and could barely hold back the enemy there. The moment they left, they might immediately find themselves surrounded on all sides.
More than ten days after he sent out his plea for aid, Viscount Laguna finally arrived with six thousand reinforcements.
Yet at that very moment, thirteen hundred soldiers of the Spanish Royal Army suddenly joined the battle—previously, the Spanish troops in New Granada had been occupied with suppressing the rebellion, but after the "Executor System" was implemented, the Creoles swiftly turned their spearheads toward the foreign invaders.
The original rebels merely changed their flag and became the National Guard, which was why New Granada had been able to rapidly raise an army of fifty thousand.
The Royal Army, which had previously been responsible for suppressing the rebellion, now fought shoulder to shoulder with the rebels instead.
Though the combat strength of Spain's regular forces in South America was rather ordinary, they were far stronger than the National Guard, which was made up of assorted irregulars, and a notch above Portugal's regular troops as well. After all, quite a few officers in their ranks had fought alongside the French in Europe.
Thus, after ending their war on the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal began the second half of their contest on the Orinoco River. At first, the fighting went back and forth, but in less than a month, the