29. 1815, and fought in several skirmishes against its anti-royalist defenders until May 8, when the Liberador suddenly resigned his commission and went into exile in Jamaica. Soon thereafter news arrived in Cartagena of the landing of Gen. Pablo Morillo in Venezuela on March 27 with a detachment of 10,500 Spanish soldiers, sent to restore the rule of the viceroyalty. Morillo advanced to Cartagena, and on August 15 began a siege of the city that continued for three months, inflicting hunger, disease and high mortality on the insurgents. The desperate rebels decided to fight the Spaniards to the death. As a result of this episode, the city would receive the title of "Heroic City". Morillo entered Cartagena on December 6, 1815, two days after the city swore allegiance to Ferdinand VII. Geography Boundaries The boundaries of the province were not stable over the period of Spanish rule in the region. Limited knowledge of the territory's geography and its incomplete exploration did not permit the certain demarcation of borders between the governorates, except in the case of identifiable natural topographical features, such as the Magdalena River, which defined the border with the province of Santa Marta. The colonial province of Cartagena included the territories of the present-day Colombian departments of Bolivar, Atlántico, Sucre and Córdoba, and after 1808, the island departments of San Andrés and Providencia, as well as the Mosquito Coast and the Mangrove Islands of present-day Nicaragua. With the proclamation of independence in 1811, Cartagena was surrounded by the following provinces (in clockwise order on the map): Santa Marta , Socorro and Antioquia. The boundaries between the provinces were not entirely clear, since they were never explicitly defined. Topography The Province of Cartagena occupied much of what is now the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The territory of the province was amorphous in shape, with borders that followed an undulating line edged by the foothills of the Andes mountains to the south, consisting of the Abibe, San Lucas, Ayapel and San Jerónimo mountains, running west along the Serrania del Darien and east along the Magdalena River. The land was crossed by a number of rivers, creeks and streams. These bodies of water supported various economic activities and were used for communication and trade with other regions, the Cauca and Magdalena rivers being of special significance, with much of the goods produced by the interior of New Granada transported to Cartagena