subject to court martial for the duration of the war. The opposition to the Prieto administration immediately accused Portales of tyranny, and started a heated press campaign against him personally and against the unpopular war in general. Political and public opposition to the war immediately affected the army, fresh from the purges of the civil war of 1830. On June 4, 1837, Colonel José Antonio Vidaurre, commander of the Maipo regiment, captured and imprisoned Portales while he was reviewing troops at the army barracks in Quillota. He immediately proceeded to attack Valparaíso on the mistaken belief that public opinion opposed to the war would support him and topple the government. Admiral Manuel Blanco Encalada, in charge of the defense of Valparaíso, defeated him right outside the port. Captain Santiago Florín, who was in charge of Portales, had him shot when he heard the news, on June 6, 1837. Most of the conspirators were subsequently captured and executed. This murder was perceived as having been orchestrated by Marshal Santa Cruz and it turned the tide of public opinion. The war became a holy cause and Portales its martyr. Invasion and dissolution Invested with considerable powers, Santa Cruz endeavored to establish in Peru the same type of authoritarian order he had imposed in Bolivia. He issued a Civil Code, a Penal Code, a Trade Regulation and a Customs Regulation, and reorganized tax collection procedures to allow an increase in state revenues while restraining expenditures. The first Chilean military expedition against Santa Cruz, led by Vice Admiral Manuel Blanco Encalada, failed and had to submit to the signature of the Treaty of Paucarpata, on November 17, 1837. The Chilean government then organized a second expedition, which defeated the Supreme Protector at the Battle of Yungay on January 20, 1839, and forced the dissolution of the Confederation. On August 25, 1839, General Agustín Gamarra, after assuming the presidency of Peru, officially declared the dissolution of the Confederation and the merging of the North and South Peruvian Republics into one to be called again Peru, separate from Bolivia. The Confederate defeat led to the exile of Santa Cruz, first to Guayaquil, in Ecuador, then to Chile, and finally to Europe, where he died. See also War of the Confederation Republic of Great Colombia – Bolívar's Federation Federal Republic of Central America – another federal state on the American continent that underwent a similar fate. Notes