The honest citizens, who had fled Athens, enraged to see their country thus tricked out of her liberty, and groaning under the most ignominious servitude, determined to set her free, or perish in so glorious an attempt. The scheme was well concerted, and as boldly executed by Pelopidas, who entering the city with a small number of the most resolute of his party in disguise, destroyed Leontidas and his colleague Archias, with the most dangerous of his faction; and, by the assistance of Epaminondas and his friends,[186] with the additional aid of a large body of Athenians, recovered the citadel. The Spartans,[187] at the first news of this surprising event, entered the Theban territories with a powerful army to take vengeance of the authors of this rebellion, as they termed it, and to reduce Thebes to its former subjection. The Athenians, conscious of their own weakness, and the mighty power of Sparta, which they were by no means able to cope with, not only renounced all friendship with the Thebans, but proceeded with the utmost severity against such of their citizens as favoured that people. Thus the Thebans, deserted by their allies, and destitute of friends, appeared to the rest of Greece as devoted to inevitable destruction. In this desperate situation of affairs, the virtue and abilities of these two great men shone forth with greater lustre. They began by training their countrymen to the use of arms as well as the shortness of the time would permit, and inspiring them with a hatred of servitude, and the generous resolution of dying in defence of the liberty and glory of their country. As they judged it imprudent to hazard a decisive battle against the best troops in the world, with their new raised militia, they harrassed the Spartans with daily skirmishes to instruct their men in military discipline, and the trade of war. By this method they animated the minds of their people with the love of glory, and inured their bodies to the fatigues of war by exercise and labour, whilst they acquired experience and courage by those frequent encounters. Thus, as Plutarch remarks, when these able generals, by never engaging rashly, but watching every favourable opportunity, had fleshed the Thebans, like young stag-hounds, upon their enemies, and rendered them staunch by tasting the sweets of victory, and bringing them off in safety, they made them fond of the sport, and eager after the most arduous enterprises. By this able management they defeated the Spartans at Platea and Thespia,[188] where they killed Phæbidas who had before so treacherously surprised their citadel, and again routed them at Tenagra, the Spartan general himself falling by the hand of Pelopidas. Flushed with this success, the Thebans feared no enemy, however superior in number; and the battle of Tegyra soon after raised the reputation of their arms to a degree unknown before.[189] In this action the brave Pelopidas, with a small body of horse, and no more than three hundred