Miguel and Nicolas Davila hastily assembled a body of troops,
and prepared for a final struggle. While the two armies were in presence
of each other, a commissioner from Mendoza endeavored to effect a
peaceable arrangement between their chiefs. Passing from one camp to the
other with propositions and conditions, he inspired the soldiers of the
Davilas with a fatal security. Quiroga, falling suddenly upon them in the
midst of the negotiations, routed them with ease, and slew their general,
who, with a small body of devoted followers, made a fierce onslaught upon
him personally, and succeeded in inflicting upon him a severe wound before
he was shot down. Thenceforth,--from the year 1823,--Quiroga was despot
of La Rioja.
His government was simple enough. His two engrossing objects--if objects,
indeed, he may be said to have possessed--were extortion and the
uprooting of the last vestiges of civilization and law; his instruments,
the dagger and the lash; his amusement, the torture of unwitting
offenders; his serious occupation, the shuffling of cards. For gambling
the man had an insatiable thirst; he played once for forty hours without
intermission; it was death to refuse a game with him; no one might cease
playing without his express commands; no one durst win the stakes; and as
a consequence, he accumulated at cards in a few years almost all the
coined money then existing in the province.
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