Before the new viceroyalty was in good running order, a great Indian insurrection broke out which involved a large proportion of the Indians of the plateau. Tupac Amaru, the legitimate heir of the Inca emperors, and a wealthy and influential cacique in one of the valleys between Cuzco and the Bolivian border, had received a good Spanish education and possessed many friends among the whites. But his heart went out to his own people, and he had the courage to protest against the intolerable oppressions of the corregidors. Failing to obtain redress after repeated prayers to the Spanish authorities at least to enforce their own laws honestly, he resolved to appeal to arms, and in 1780 he captured and killed a particularly demoniacal corregidor, his own immediate superior, and summoned the Indians of southern Peru to fight for their rights under his banner. Tupac had secured some firearms and out of the vast multitudes which assembled at his call he equipped three thousand men. The Spaniards advanced from Cuzco with a force of twelve hundred men, but Tupac defeated them and hastened across the range to arouse the population around Titicaca. At every village he addressed the people from the church steps, saying that he was come to abolish abuses and punish the corregidors, and the Indians responded with acclamations for the Inca and redeemer. Meanwhile the Spanish officials were assembling a large force in Cuzco which, strange as it may seem, was mostly composed of Indians. The race possessed little instinctive capacity for organisation, was deficient in initiative, moral courage, and independence, and had not the resolution to refuse to follow the Spanish officers. There were only a few like Tupac who possessed the mental energy and originality to plan and to fight on their own account. Receiving news of the Spanish preparations, the Inca hurried back to his home province and attempted to negotiate. He recounted to the Spanish authorities his own earnest endeavours to obtain a measure of justice for his people, the habitual violation of Spanish law by Spanish officials, and the intolerable oppression of the system of impressment. He proposed a negotiation by which reforms might be attained without further bloodshed. Tupac's fame as an enlightened and unselfish patriot rests securely on the contents of the noble and able despatch which, on this occasion, he sent to the Spanish authorities. But the latter refused all compromise and ordered an advance on Tupac's position. He was surrounded, his army destroyed, and he himself sentenced to be torn in pieces by horses after witnessing with his own eyes the fearful tortures and death of his innocent and harmless wife and children.