The fate of these poor Indians, the remaining descendants of those Incas of Peru whose remarkable civilization, and great power and wealth, became a proverb during the sixteenth century, will not fail to be interesting to those who have become acquainted, through the pages of Robertson, Prescott, or Helps, with the history of the Spanish conquest of Peru. The sufferings and death of Tupac Amaru and his family form a very sad story, yet they did not suffer and die in vain: and it must be recorded of them that, unlike other dispossessed families, they sacrificed themselves, not for their own selfish ends, but in the hope of serving their people. They did not die in vain, for in their fall they shook the colonial power of Spain to its foundation. Not only was the system of _repartos_ at once abolished, and the _mitas_ considerably modified, but in 1795 the hated office of corregidors was replaced by that of intendentes, and from the cruel death of the last of the Incas may be dated the rise of that feeling which ended in the expulsion of the Spaniards from Peru. The rebellion which broke out in Cuzco, thirty-four years after the death of Tupac Amaru, is historically important, not on account of the patriotism of its leaders, for they were almost all men of small weight and selfish ends, but because the great body of the Indians rose as one man at the first signal, in the hope of freeing their country from a foreign yoke. In 1809 the people of Upper Peru had formed an independent government, which they called an "Institucion de Gobierno," and the viceroy sent General Goyeneche against them with 5000 men from Cuzco. The rebels, ill-provided with arms, were defeated at Huaqui, near lake Titicaca, and slaughtered without mercy;[264] but General Pezuela, who succeeded Goyeneche in the command, had to face a patriot army from Buenos Ayres under Belgrano, which kept him fully employed. Then it was that the opportunity was seized of commencing a rebellion at Cuzco; and this enemy in the rear of the royal army placed Pezuela in a most critical position.