some were sentenced to death, others to penal servitude. The indignant populace attacked and captured one of the barracks, but were promptly driven out again by the soldiery and dispersed. The soldiers then proceeded to the public gaol, where the prisoners were confined, and killed twenty-five of them; after which they spread about the streets, and killed eighty citizens, among the victims being three women and three children. The butchery was only stopped by the intercession of the Bishop.
Castillo, horrified at these excesses, hastily convened an assembly of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities and of leading citizens. With their concurrence he proclaimed a general pardon, and sent the Peruvian troops, who had taken the lead in the massacres, back to Lima.
Word of these atrocities reached New Granada at the same time that news arrived of the revolution in Venezuela, and produced an immediate effervescence throughout the country.
In New Granada, according to one of their own writers, "all the races of the world had come together to mingle their blood, their traditions, their strength, and their character, and united in the work of civilization."
Two-thirds of the population were white, residing mostly in the towns and cities, hence the revolution took here a civic form, and was greatly hampered by local jealousies and by divergencies of opinion among the leaders.
The first revolutionary movement occurred at Cartagena, where the people, headed by their Cabildo, demanded a Junta. With the intervention of an agent of the Regency of Cadiz, then in the city, a Junta of three was appointed, of whom the actual governor was one; but as he openly showed his dissatisfaction with this arrangement, he was banished to Havana on the nth June, 1810.
To the east of the most easterly range of the Cordillera lie the wide plains of Casanare; here two youths raised the standard of insurrection. They were joined by some small groups of the country people, which were dispersed
