a representative of the Spanish Crown to New Granada, and the people of Santa Fe de Bogotá used his arrival as an excuse to start their own revolt, known as the Florero de Llorente, which culminated in a proclamation of independence from Spain. After this incident Villavicencio resigned his office and joined the cause of independence. He was later captured and became the first martyr executed during the reign of terror of the Spanish general Pablo Morillo. A Supreme Governing Junta, chaired by the merchant José María García de Toledo, was established on August 13. On February 4, 1811, the royalists tried a counterattack in Cartagena but failed. By mid-1811, the patriots were already being undermined by internal divisions; they had formed two parties that argued furiously, and the general mood was contentious. Several major skirmishes between them, both military and political, delayed by several months the declaration of independence. At last a constitutional convention met to establish a sovereign state, and on November 11, 1811, declared the Estado Libre de Cartagena (the Free State of Cartagena). Reconquest and independence During 1812 the people of the Caribbean provinces in New Granada remained mostly royalist. Those in the Santa Marta region had built strongholds at Tenerife and Chiriguana on the Magdalena River, leading the revolutionaries of Cartagena to burn the towns. On August 14, 1813, insurgent forces from Cartagena attacked Santa Marta itself, but were repulsed by a flank of royalist defenders near the city. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 and the return of Ferdinand VII to the throne, the Spanish authorities, at the behest of the king, decided to send troops to the Americas to reclaim the territories that had proclaimed themselves independent. From the point of view of the criollos, the king was ignoring the loyalty the American provinces had shown when he was in exile in France, and now he was asserting his right to govern as an absolute ruler. The capture of Gen. Antonio Nariño by royalist troops at Pasto in May 1814 inflamed the civil war in New Granada. Simón Bolívar returned from exile and took command of the army of the United Provinces. On December 11, he defeated the rebel Centralist troops of Cundinamarca, and then marched on royalist Santa Marta. The patriots of Cartagena were suspicious of Bolívar's motives and declined to send him reinforcements, so he attacked that city on March