at the Battle of Huaqui, and two successive triumvirates exercised executive power over the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. In 1814, the second triumvirate was replaced by the authority of the Supreme Director. Meanwhile, Martín Miguel de Güemes contained the royalist armies sent from the Viceroyalty of Peru at Salta, while San Martín advanced towards the royalist stronghold of Lima by sea, on a Chilean–Argentine campaign. The war for independence gradually shifted towards northern South America. From 1814, Argentina descended into civil war. Consequences According to historian Félix Luna's Breve historia de los Argentinos (), one of the most important societal consequences of the May Revolution was the shift in the way the people and its rulers related. Until then, the conception of the common good prevailed: while royal authority was fully respected, if an instruction from the crown of Spain was considered detrimental to the common good of the local population, it was half-met or simply ignored. With the revolution, the concept of common good gave way to that of popular sovereignty, as theorized by Moreno, Castelli and Monteagudo, among others. This idea held that, in the absence of a legitimate authority, the people had the right to appoint their own leaders. Over time, popular sovereignty would give way to the idea of majority rule. This maturation of ideas was gradual, taking many decades to crystallize into stable electoral and political systems, but it was what ultimately led to the adoption of the republican system as the form of government for Argentina. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento stated similar views in his Facundo, and noted that cities were more receptive to republican ideas, while rural areas were more resistant to them, which led to the surge of caudillos. Another consequence, also according to Luna, was the dissolution of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata into several different units. Most of the cities and provinces had distinctive populations, economies, attitudes, contexts, and interests. Until the revolution, all of these peoples were held together by the authority of the Spanish government, but with its disappearance, people from Montevideo, Paraguay and the Upper Peru began to distance themselves from Buenos Aires. The brief existence of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, which had lasted barely 38 years, impeded the consolidation of a patriotic feeling and failed to bring a sense of community to all of the population.