easure, required to "provide new guards for their security." But so
totally unprepared were the colonists for a political revolution that
instead of these events being regarded as auspicious to their welfare,
they only served to prove the strength of their loyalty and attachment to
Spain. Notwithstanding that the viceroys and captain-generals, excepting
the viceroy of New Spain, manifested a readiness to acquiesce in the
cessions of Bayonne, to yield to the new order of things, and to sacrifice
their king, provided they could retain their places, in which they were
confirmed by the new king, the news of the occurrences in Spain filled the
people with indignation; they publicly burnt the proclamations sent out
by King Joseph, expelled his agents, and such was their rage that all
Frenchmen in the colonies became objects of insult and execration. In
their zeal, not for their own but for Spanish independence, the colonists,
up to the year 1810, supplied not less than ninety millions of dollars to
Spain to assist in carrying on the war against France.

* * *

At length, about the year 1809, the people of the several provinces began
to form juntas of their own, not with the object of throwing off the
Spanish yoke, but the better to protect themselves, should the French
succeed in establishing their power in the peninsula. The Spanish
viceroys, alarmed for their own authority, met the movement with
unsparing hostility. In the city of Quito the popular junta was
suppressed by an armed force, and hundreds of persons were massacred and
the city plundered by the Spanish troops. Notwithstanding these cruelties
the people remained faithful to the crown of Spain, and the junta of
Caracas, having deposed the colonial officers, and organized a new
administration, still acted in the name of Ferdinand the Seventh, and
offered to aid in the prosecution of the war against France. The impotent
Council of Regency, which pretended to represent the ancient government
in Spain, treated the position taken by the colonists as a declaration of
independence, and sent troops to dragoon the Americans into submission.
Thus the Spanish-Americans were compelled to assume an independence of
the mother country which they had neither sought nor desired, and on July
5, 1811, Venezuela took the lead in formally casting off allegiance to
Spain.

The war which followed was of the most sanguinary character. The patriot