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22. Hence arose disputes between the Creoles and the Spaniards, and between the Audiencia and the Viceroy, which at the end of 1809 changed the movement into a conspiracy for independence.

In Quito the commotion assumed more definite forms. The colonial authorities were overturned and a governing Junta was set up, which took to itself the attributes of sovereignty and raised troops for its own defence. They exhorted the peoples of America by a proclamation to follow the example, announcing that "law has resumed its authority under the equator," and that "the rights of man were, by the disappearance of despotism, no longer at the mercy of arbitrary power." The authors of this premature revolution were overcome and put to death in prison.

In Upper Peru, the city of Chuquisaca was the first to move. In May, 1809, the Creoles, at the instigation of the Audiencia, tumultuously deposed the constituted authorities, and set up an independent government. In July the city of La Paz followed the example. Under the name of the Junta Tuitiva, an independent government composed exclusively of Americans was established, which raised an army, and hung on a gallows those who denied its authority. Both these revolts were suppressed by the combined arms of the neighbouring Viceroyalties of Peru and La Plata. The leaders of the insurrection of La Paz died either on the field of battle or on the gallows. One of the latter before being thrown off cried out:—"The fire which I have lighted shall never be quenched." Their heads and limbs were nailed to the posts which mark out the public roads in that country, but before they had rotted away the fire was again burning in Upper Peru.

By the quelling of these conspiracies it was thought that the danger was averted, but as was said by the Viceroy of Peru fifty years before, on the first revolt of the Comuneros of Paraguay, "it was but a covering up of the fire with ashes."