The revolution against Spain had momentous consequences for the racial future of Latin America. In the beginning, to be sure, it was a white civil war--a revolt of the Creoles against European oppression and discrimination. The heroes of the revolution--Bolívar, Miranda, San Martín, and the rest--were aristocrats of pure-white blood. But the revolution presently developed new features. To begin with, the struggle was very long. Commencing in 1809, it lasted almost twenty years. The whites were decimated by fratricidal fury, and when the Spanish cause was finally lost, multitudes of loyalists mainly of the superior social classes left the country. Meanwhile, the half-castes, who had rallied wholesale to the revolutionary banner, were demanding their reward. The Creoles wished to close the revolutionary cycle and establish a new society based, like the old, upon white supremacy, with themselves substituted for the Spaniards. Bolívar planned a limited monarchy and a white electoral oligarchy. But this was far from suiting the half-castes. For them the revolution had just begun. Raising the cry of "democracy," then become fashionable through the North American and French revolutions, they proclaimed the doctrine of "equality" regardless of skin. Disillusioned and full of foreboding, Bolívar, the master-spirit of the revolution, disappeared from the scene, and his lieutenants, like the generals of Alexander, quarrelled among themselves, split Latin America into jarring fragments, and waged a long series of internecine wars. The flood-gates of anarchy were opened, the result being a steady weakening of the whites and a corresponding rise of the half-castes in the political and social scale. Everywhere ambitious soldiers led the mongrel mob against the white aristocracy, breaking its power and making themselves dictators. These "caudillos" were apostles of equality and miscegenation. Says Garcia-Calderon: "Tyrants found democracies; they lean on the support of the people, the half-breeds and negroes, against the oligarchies; they dominate the colonial nobility, favor the crossing of races, and free the slaves."[59] The consequences of all this were lamentable in the extreme. Latin America's level of civilization fell far below that of colonial days. Spanish rule, though narrow and tyrannical, had maintained peace and social stability. Now all was a hideous chaos wherein frenzied castes and colors grappled to the death. Ignorant mestizos and brutal negroes trampled the fine flowers of culture under foot, while as by a malignant inverse selection the most intelligent and the most cultivated perished.