At length, about the year 1809, the people of the several provinces began to form juntas of their own, not with the object of throwing off the Spanish yoke, but the better to protect themselves, should the French succeed in establishing their power in the peninsula. The Spanish viceroys, alarmed for their own authority, met the movement with unsparing hostility. In the city of Quito the popular junta was suppressed by an armed force, and hundreds of persons were massacred and the city plundered by the Spanish troops. Notwithstanding these cruelties the people remained faithful to the crown of Spain, and the junta of Caracas, having deposed the colonial officers, and organized a new administration, still acted in the name of Ferdinand the Seventh, and offered to aid in the prosecution of the war against France. The impotent Council of Regency, which pretended to represent the ancient government in Spain, treated the position taken by the colonists as a declaration of independence, and sent troops to dragoon the Americans into submission. Thus the Spanish-Americans were compelled to assume an independence of the mother country which they had neither sought nor desired, and on July 5, 1811, Venezuela took the lead in formally casting off allegiance to Spain. The war which followed was of the most sanguinary character. The patriots of South America were denounced as rebels and traitors, and the vengeance of the State, and the anathemas of the Church, directed against them. That a contest commenced under such auspices should have become a war of extermination, and in its progress have exhibited horrid scenes of cruelty, desolation, and deliberate bloodshed; that all offers of accommodation were repelled with insult and outrage; capitulations violated, public faith disregarded, prisoners of war cruelly massacred, and the inhabitants persecuted, imprisoned, and put to death, cannot occasion surprise, however much it may excite indignation. As violence and cruelty always tend to provoke recrimination and revenge, the outrages of the Spaniards exasperated the Americans, and led to retaliation, which rendered the contest a war of death, as it was often called, characterized by a ferocious and savage spirit, scarcely surpassed by that of Cortes and Pizarro. The violent measures of the Spanish rulers, and the furious and cruel conduct of their agents in America, toward the patriots, produced an effect directly contrary to what was expected; but which nevertheless might have been foreseen, had the Spaniards taken counsel from experience instead of from their mortified pride and exasperated feelings. Arbitrary measures, enforced with vigor and cruelty, instead of extinguishing the spirit of independence, only served to enliven its latent sparks and blow them into flame. Miranda died in chains, and Hidalgo, the patriot priest of Mexico, was put to death by his cruel captors, but Bolivar and Paez, Sucre and