As the fighting continued, racist incidents became more acute. Spanish soldiers were openly hostile to Dominicans of color, and incidents of unprovoked violence against black Dominicans and migrants in the towns proliferated. Perhaps because of the fright that Spain would seek to make Santo Domingo an enslaved twin of Cuba, Dominicans were said to fight like "supernatural fiends" with a "desperate" intensity. By early 1864, the Spanish army, unable to contain guerrilla resistance, had suffered 1,000 killed in action and 9,000 dead from disease. Spanish colonial authorities encouraged Queen Isabella II to abandon the island, seeing the occupation as a nonsensical waste of troops and money. However, the rebels were in a state of political disarray and proved unable to present a cohesive set of demands. The first president of the provisional government, Pepillo Salcedo (allied with Báez) was deposed by General Gaspar Polanco in September 1864, who, in turn, was deposed by General Antonio Pimentel three months later. The rebels formalized their provisional rule by holding a national convention in February 1865, which enacted a new constitution, but the new government exerted little authority over the various regional guerrilla "caudillos", who were largely independent of one another.