Canto resolved to give him no time for any further concentration, but to fall upon the Valparaiso army before the railroad could be repaired and, by destroying Balmaceda's largest force, end the war. A forced march across country brought him to the old carriage road which comes into Valparaiso from the south. By the 27th his army had covered the incredible distance of forty miles and was within six miles of the government forces, who occupied a strong position between the congressionalists and Valparaiso. Tired though the congressionalists were, they were forced to attack without delay. The only provisions which they could count on were the rations that they had brought in their haversacks; and Balmaceda might at any moment receive reinforcements from Santiago. So they advanced resolutely to the assault. The Balmacedists fought with little enthusiasm or hope; the desertion of part of their cavalry and the inactivity of the rest discouraged the infantry and artillery, but at first they met the charges with the steadiness characteristic of the race. The battle was decided by a flank movement executed by Koerner, who turned the Balmacedist left, while the cavalry charged recklessly up the hill. Thrown into confusion, the government troops were simply swept out of existence by furious volleys and determined charges. Some had stood steady long enough to kill and wound a sixth of the enemy who charged up the hill, but more than a quarter of their own numbers perished in the battle and the pursuit. The fight was over at half-past ten in the morning, but the news of the utter ruin of all his hopes did not reach Balmaceda until half-past seven. It was his wife's saint's day and friends were coming to dine at his house. Characteristically he did not recall the invitations, and not until the dinner party was over did he arrange to turn over the government of the city to General Baquedano. Then he quietly walked to the Argentine legation and received asylum. Vicuna, the recently elected president, who would have succeeded Balmaceda on the 18th of September, was in Valparaiso and fled to a foreign warship followed by the principal Balmacedist chiefs. No further resistance was made and the congressionalist junta, with Jorge Montt at its head, assumed the supreme direction of affairs. Balmaceda's fall was followed by some riots, but the arrival of the responsible chiefs of the victorious party ensured the re-establishment of order. Like the Anglo-Saxon, the Chilean fights desperately on the field of battle, and when his blood is up he is relentless, but when beaten he phlegmatically accepts the consequences, and when victorious he is not cruel. The Chileans resemble their prototypes of the northern hemisphere in lacking the vivid imagination which makes the inhabitants of warmer climates vengeful. Slow, silent, serious, practical-minded, hard to themselves as well as to others, they turned at once to the work of reconstruction.