Beginning in February 1814, royalist commander José Tomás Boves began a campaign to retake Venezuelan territory captured by revolutionaries, beginning the decline of the Second Republic of Venezuela. Following the Second Battle of La Puerta on 15 June 1814 which resulted in a royalist victory for Boves, Bolívar, his revolutionaries and more than twenty-thousand civilians fled Caracas during the Emigration to the East beginning on 7 July 1814.[7][8] Following the royalist victory in the Fifth Battle of Maturín on 11 December 1814, the republic came to an end and Bolívar left to Jamaica.