The Spanish monarch, three thousand miles away, could do nothing by force. He sent an able and devoted ecclesiastic, Gasca by name, clothing him with dictatorial powers, to see what he could do. Gasca arrived at Panama, cunningly and tactfully won the captains of Gonzalo's navy to his side, went to Peru, assembled a force, and although Centeno, one of his lieutenants, was badly defeated by Gonzalo and Carvajal on the 26th of October, 1547, at Huarina, the bloodiest battle ever fought in Peru, finally gained strength enough to march to Cuzco, where Gonzalo had command of a large and splendidly equipped army. Gasca, by promising that the obnoxious laws concerning the Indians should be repealed, and adroitly pointing out that those who adhered to Gonzalo were, in effect, in rebellion against their sovereign, had so undermined the allegiance of his men that Gonzalo, who had marched to the Valley of Xaquixaguana, found himself deserted on the eve of the battle by all but a handful of faithful retainers.
"What shall we do?" asked one of the devoted followers.
"Fall on them and die like Romans."
"I believe I should prefer to die like a Christian," said Gonzalo calmly.
Recognizing that it was all up with him, riding forward with Carvajal and the rest, he coolly surrendered himself to Gasca.
Carvajal was hung, drawn and quartered.
Gonzalo, the last of the brothers, was beheaded in the great square at Cuzco. He was magnificently arrayed as he rode to his death. His vast estates, including the mines of Potosi, had been confiscated and all his possessions were on his back. He met his fate with the courage of the family. Before he died he made a little address from the scaffold. Contrasting his present poverty with his former state, he asked those who had been his friends and who owed him anything, and also those who had been his enemies, to lay out some of the treasure they had gained through his family and himself in masses for the repose of his soul. Then he knelt down before a table bearing a crucifix, and prayed silently. At last he turned to the executioner and said:
"Do your duty with a steady hand!"
So he made a rather dramatic and picturesque exit there in the square at Cuzco, on that sunny morning in April, 1548. His head was exhibited at Lima with that of Carvajal. To it was attached this inscription:
"This is the head of the traitor, Gonzalo Pizarro, who rebelled in Peru against his sovereign and battled against the royal standard at the Valley of Xaquixaguana."