The Grito de Dolores was a revolutionary call to arms given to the people of Dolores, Guanajuato by the Mexican Roman Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla on 16 September 1810, triggering the Mexican War of Independence. Following the Bourbon reforms in Spain, which granted the Spanish elite more power and diminished that of the church, resentment grew among the rural Mexican population, and the arrival in the Americas of the news of Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest of Spain led to the spread of revolutionary sentiment in Mexico. Father Miguel Hidalgo and his brother freed 80 pro-independence inmates from the jail in the rural town of Dolores, and, at 2:30 AM, Hidalgo ordered the church bells to be rung and gathered his congregation. Flanked by Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, he addressed the people in front of his church, "My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once... Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government! Death to the Gachupines!" The Grito ("Cry") of Dolores rallied the Mexican patriots against the Spanish elite in Mexico, initiating Mexico's war of independence.