In the Indian war Rosas was successful, penetrating as far as the Rio Negro and destroying, according to his own computation, twenty thousand of the enemy. It is not necessary to describe the manoeuvres and hesitations which preceded his return to nominal as well as real power. In 1835 he accepted the title of Governor and Captain-General, and henceforth ruled as a military Dictator. Never was there a more ruthless tyrant. The two most prominent soldiers and possible rivals left in Buenos Aires were Quiroga and Lopez. Quiroga had seen the elevation of Rosas with ill-concealed disgust, and the new Dictator resolved to make away with him. Rosas, therefore, commissioned him to go to pacify Salta and Tucuman, and on his way thither caused him and his suite to be assassinated. Shortly afterwards Lopez died, and it is only necessary to say that his physician was handsomely rewarded by Rosas. He established a reign of terror, and formed a club of ruffians called the Massorca, whose business it was to murder his enemies. One Maza attempted a Parliamentary resistance to him, and the crafty Dictator, after the plan had failed, first lulled him into security by vague promises of safety and then sent four men to stab him to death. His death was followed by an extensive proscription; in fact, the history at this period is distinctly Tacitean. The power of Rosas was the greater because he had the help of a skilful general named Urquiza, against whom none of the Dictator's many enemies could make head. For a long time his power was unassailable, for the poignards of the Massorca were ready to repress any opposition, and even the Church was powerless against him. He expelled the Jesuits, paying a tribute at the same time to "their Christian and moral virtues," but declaring that they were opposed to the principles of government. Undoubtedly they were to the principles of his Government. One of the main features of his policy was jealousy of foreign influence. He decided that all children born in Argentina were _ipso facto_ citizens and liable to military service, and this decision remains in force at the present day. It led, however, to endless trouble with France. It is probable that if he had been able Rosas would have closed the country to all foreign nations, as his brother-tyrant, Francia, did in Paraguay.