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176 A HISTORY OF CHILE taining designs against the government of O'Higgins. He was sentenced to banishment, and while on his way to Valparaiso under guard, was shot by a villain named Navarro, who commanded the escort. The authorities, whether conniving at this plot or not, were suspected, and did not escape censure. The patriots, it would seem, were not slow in adopt- ing Marco del Ponte's methods of raising revenues, both before and after the battle of Maypo. Many of the old Spanish families were robbed and their property de- livered up to the public use. Just before the battle of Maypo, it is said that more than five millions of dollars worth of readily convertible property was seized by the patriot government to keep up the military organization, and that subsequent to the battle three millions of dol- lars worth was taken in the same way and for the same purpose. In these revolutionary times it is not to be wondered at that the chiefs resorted to this manner of supporting the army from the resources of their ene- mies at home. After the defeat of the royalists at Maypo, Colonel Sanchez remained in the south with a force of 1,500 men; other forces which were stationed in Chilian and Concepcion made their way to Peru, embarking at Tal- cahuano. O'Higgins soon dispatched a division against Sanchez (1819) under command of Antonio Gonzalez Balcarce,the Argentine officer who had fought at Maypo. Colonel Ramon Freire occupied Concepcion with the vanguard while Balcarce compelled Sanchez to retreat to Los Angeles, where his force hotly pressed, was dis- persed though the Araucanian country. Sanchez after- ward embarked at Valdivia and made his way to Peru. Freire was made intendente of Concepcion and soon established the authority of the patriots in all thefron-