The perpetration of such atrocities goaded even the dull and stoical Indians into a fury. They rose everywhere on the plateau and the Spaniards in northern Bolivia fled for refuge to La Paz and Puno. The Spanish army which had overcome Tupac advanced into the Titicaca basin, but was compelled to retreat before overwhelming numbers. Puno was evacuated and in 1781 the Spaniards had lost all foothold in northern Bolivia. But the habit of obedience was too strong; their first fury over, the Indians listened to promises of fair treatment and offers of compromise. Tupac's cousin, who had been made chief of the insurrection after the former's murder, was persuaded to submit on the promise of pardon, only to be arrested, tried, and executed as soon as his followers had laid down their arms. The family of the Inca was extirpated, ninety of its members, including women and children, being sent on foot, loaded with chains, over the hundreds of miles of mountain road to Lima and thence conveyed to Spain, where they rotted away in prison. Many of the reforms to secure which Tupac had lost his own life and devoted his kin to destruction, were voluntarily put into effect by the Spanish government a few years later. The office of corregidor was abolished, and the district governors were made directly responsible to the governor of the province, who was in turn responsible to the viceroy and audiencia. Courts were established to protect the rights of the Indians and the higher authorities made a sincere effort to secure the enforcement of the laws. However, the reforms did not materially change the condition of the country, and the Indians apparently settled back into the same apathetic obedience to the whites. The anti-Spanish feeling took no active form for the present, but the events had proved that the Indian population had become a field well prepared for the springing up of a crop of bloody insurrections. CHAPTER III THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE The South American war of independence began and ended on the plateau of Upper Peru. On Bolivia's soil the first blood of the great revolt was spilt and there the last Spanish soldiers laid down their arms. Lying on the great route from Lima to Buenos Aires, her territory inevitably became the battle-ground for the hardest and most continuous fighting on the continent, and her population, having been the most oppressed by Spanish misrule, showed itself the most tenacious in efforts to drive out the Spanish authorities.