174 DEFEAT OF PUMACAGUA. Chap. X. 



Piimacagua. The cacique asked tlie 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.^ 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.'' 



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 ,^ 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.^ 



The poet Mariano Melgar was taken prisoner, and imme- 

 diately 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 



* DocuTT.ento ii. Oficio de Fuma- very little boy. His father was after- 

 cagua a Ramirez. Marzo 6, 1815. ; wards shot in the plaza of Puno, by 



7 Bocumeiito iii. Ccmtestacim de j the Spaniards, and when the liberating 

 Ramirez a Pumacagua. Marzo 7, 1815. ' army arrived on tlie coast of Peru, in 



* Information from Gen. San Koman. 1822, the young San Koman hurried 

 ' Gen. San Roman, who gave me downi from his mountain home to join 



the account of tliis battle, was liimself their ranks. 

 present at it, Avith his father, when a 



