Having thus made way with the polemarchs, the conspirators surprised Leontiades in his own house and slew him. They then liberated and armed the prisoners whom they found in confinement and sent heralds through the city to proclaim the freedom of Thebes. A general rally of the citizens followed promptly. The party of the oppression was totally crushed and its prominent members put to death. The Spartan garrison in the Cadmea capitulated and was suffered to march out without molestation. The government of Thebes was reorganized on a more popular basis, and with a view to restoring the Bœotian League, in a perfected state, with Thebes for its head. See THEBES: B. C. 378. In the war with Sparta which followed, Athens was soon involved, and the Spartans were driven from all their footholds in the Bœotian towns. Then Athens and Thebes quarreled afresh, and the Spartans, to take advantage of the isolation of the latter, invaded her territory once more. But Thebes, under the training of her great statesman and soldier, Epaminondas, had become strong enough to face her Lacedæmonian enemy without help, and in the momentous battle of Leuctra, fought July 6, B. C. 371, on a plain not far from Platæa, the domineering power of Sparta was broken forever. "It was the most important of all the battles ever fought between Greeks. On this day Thebes became an independent power in Greece, and a return of Spartan despotism was henceforth impossible for all times." _E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 6, chapter 1 (volume 4)._ ALSO IN: _Plutarch, Pelopidas_. _G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapters 77-78._ _C. Sankey, The Spartan and Theban Supremacies, chapters 10-11._ GREECE: B. C. 378-357. The new Athenian Confederacy. The Social War. See ATHENS: B. C. 378-357. GREECE: B. C. 371. The Arcadian union. Restoration of Mantinea. Building of Megalopolis.