Meanwhile the Katipunan was organizing its forces for struggle. On the 26th of August, one thousand insurgents attacked Caloocan, and four days later a pitched battle was fought at San Juan del Monte. In this last fight the insurgents suffered great loss, their leader, Valenzuela, was captured and, with three companions, shot on the Campo de Bagumbayan. The rising continued, however, and the provinces of Pampanga, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija were soon in full rebellion. The center of revolt, however, proved to be Cavite, This province was almost immediately cleared of Spaniards, except the long neck of land containing the town of Cavite and protected by the fleet. Here the insurgents received some organization under a young man, who had been prominent in the Katipunan--Emilio Aguinaldo. The governor-general, Blanco, a humane man, who afterwards for a short time commanded in Cuba, was recalled, and General Polavieja replaced him. The Spanish army at the beginning of the revolt had consisted of but fifteen hundred troops, but so serious was the revolt regarded that Spain, although straining every energy at the moment to end the rebellion in Cuba, strengthened the forces in the Philippines, until Polavieja had an army of twenty-eight thousand Spaniards assisted by several loyal Filipino regiments. With this army a fierce campaign in Cavite province was conducted, which after fifty-two days' hard fighting ended in the defeat of the insurgents and the scattering of their forces. Death of Dr. Rizal.--For the moment it looked as though the rebellion might pass. Then the Spanish government of Polavieja disgraced itself by an act as wanton and cruel as it was inhuman and impolitic. Four years Dr. Rizal had spent in exile at Dapitan. He had lived quietly and under surveillance, and it was impossible that he could have had any share in this rebellion of 1898. Wearied, however, with his inactivity, he solicited permission to go as an army doctor to the dreadful Spanish hospitals in Cuba. This request was granted in July, and Rizal had the misfortune to arrive in Manila at the very moment of discovery of the rebellion in August. Governor Blanco hastened to send him to Spain with a most kindly letter to the minister of war, in which he vouched for his independence of the events which were taking place in Manila. His enemies, however, could not see him escape. Their persecution followed him to the Peninsula, and, upon his arrival in Spain, Rizal was at once arrested and sent back to Manila a prisoner. His friend Blanco had gone. Polavieja, the friend and tool of the reactionary party, was busy punishing by imprisonment, banishment or death all Filipinos who could be shown to have the slightest part or association in the movement for reform. And by this clique Dr. Rizal was sentenced to execution. He was shot early on the morning of December 30, 1896. [94] At his death the insurrection flamed out afresh. It now spread to Pangasinan, Zambales, and Ilocos.