The enthusiasm of the Indians was so great that, notwithstanding the affair at Chillihua, which one authority describes as a retreat,[269] and another as a disastrous defeat,[270] they again flocked to the standard of the old cacique at Pucara, where he soon had another undisciplined half-armed force around him, numbering 40,000 men. Ramirez organized a force at Arequipa of 1200 men armed with muskets, and fifty dragoons; and, commencing his march on February 11th, 1815, he encamped round the town of Lampa on March 1st. On that day he received a letter from Vicente Angulo, protesting against the war being carried on in a savage and relentless spirit, representing that, when a whole people rises in arms, the insurgents ought to be granted belligerent rights; and urging the duty of concluding the war by negotiation, and not by bloodshed. "It is not fear," Angulo continues, "that induces me to write thus, but a feeling of humanity."[271] Ramirez answered that he would accept nothing but unconditional surrender. On March 4th he advanced to Ayaviri, on the Vilcañota range, which separates the Collao from the valley of the Vilcamayu. Here he received a letter from Pumacagua. The cacique asked the Spanish general for whom he was fighting, seeing that Ferdinand VII. had been sold to the French, and that no man knew where he had been taken to; he declared that there was now no other king but the caprice of Europeans, and that, therefore, he desired to establish a national Government; and he told him that he was ready to meet the Spanish army on the field of battle.[272] Ramirez replied that a general of the king's army would not waste words with vile and insolent rebels, and that his bayonets would soon make them alter their tone.[273] From the 6th to the 10th of March both armies marched in parallel lines, separated by the rivers Umachiri and Ayaviri. On the 10th Pumacagua drew up his army behind the river Cupi, which was much swollen by the rains. He had 30,000 men, of whom 800 only were armed with muskets, and forty field-pieces, said to have been cast at Cuzco by an Englishman named George ----,[274] some of them of very large calibre, with which he annoyed the Spaniards during the night before the battle. Ramirez had only 1300 men; but they were all disciplined and well-armed soldiers. He crossed the river Cupi, near Umachiri, in spite of opposition; charged and dispersed the Indians, killing a thousand men, and captured all their cannon. The rout was complete, and the chiefs of the patriot army sought safety in flight.[275] The poet Mariano Melgar was taken prisoner, and immediately shot on the field of battle. The fate of this young man was very melancholy: an unrequited passion led him to join the desperate cause of the insurgents, and he is now chiefly remembered by his melancholy love-songs and _despedidas_.[276]