The emancipation of the Spanish-Americans, especially in the viceroyalty of Peru, was not the result of a development out of a condition of dependence; it came about rather in consequence of a disillusion, which turned them from the unquestioning allegiance they had always shown their sovereigns, and led them to demand a recognition to which they had long been entitled. With the enormous wealth which they had held in their possession from the time of the Conquest, the heirs to the Inca’s treasures could have established their independence centuries earlier; but the same sentiment that made Gonzalo Pizarro’s followers flock to the standard of Pedro de la Gasca, when he arrived in the simple garb of a priest, with the king’s pardon in his hand, kept them blindly obedient to the monarchy for three centuries, until the march of civilization drew them away from the worship of aristocratic ideals and their attention became directed to the existence of new conditions which were already shaping the destiny of modern empires. Since the accession of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne, when there were “no longer any Pyrenees between France and Spain,” the influence of less conservative neighbors had increased within the hitherto exclusive circles of the proudest aristocracy of Europe. The ideas of the French liberals had penetrated even into its universities, in spite of the Inquisition, and had crossed the seas to the colonies of America. There was something in the atmosphere of the New World which fostered the growth of liberal sentiments. News of the independence of the North American colonies, as well as echoes of the French revolution, stirred the imagination of patriotic Spanish-Americans, and aroused in the hearts of a few determined souls an unquenchable desire to lead their compatriots out of the bondage of monarchical rule, that their country might enjoy the blessings of national independence. For years before their purpose became generally known, it was nourished in secret, and when the opportunity arose to proclaim it, the plans of campaign were quickly matured and put in operation in Alto Peru and Quito, throughout the viceroyalties of Santa Fé and Buenos Aires, and in Chile, the patriotic armies finally concentrating their forces in Peru itself, the first and last stronghold of viceregal authority in South America.