“Thus perished by the sword this great man of blood. The measure he had meted out to Atahualpa and Almagro was measured to him again. He who had shamelessly broken his oath times without number to gain his own high ends was slain by treacherous, cowardly assault. But his great vices should not blind us to his greater virtues. Courageous, indomitable, far-sighted, patriotic, large-minded, public-spirited, possessing a God-given instinct to see straight into the center of a problem and the energy to strike at the psychological moment, he was equally great as an explorer, a soldier, a general, a diplomatist, and an administrator. Even his shocking moral delinquencies lose something of their turpitude when we consider the greatness of his aims and the baseness of his origin.... But that his real nature was magnanimous, generous, and truthful is proven by the many instances in which he forgave his enemies and kept his word to his serious loss, and that his ambition was not too sordid is shown by his self-sacrificing devotion to the public good during the later years of his life. Formed in nature’s grandest mold, circumstances and environment had much deformed his character, but the original lineaments are plain.”

Pizarro thus disposed of, young Almagro assumed the governorship and transferred his headquarters to Cuzco, where his father’s party was stronger than at Lima, and the Royal Commissioner, appointed Governor by the King, sailed from Panama, got together an army with the help of Pizarro’s friends, and proceeded to Guamanga, to which point the usurper was advancing with his forces from Cuzco. The battle that ensued was more hotly contested than any that had theretofore been fought. Of the twelve hundred Spaniards engaged, less than five hundred escaped death or wounds. Almagro’s troops were practically annihilated. Two days afterward those of the Adelantado’s murderers who had survived were executed in the public square and young Almagro himself, who had succeeded in making his escape, was recaptured and put to death. Then for the time being Vaca de Castro administered the office without further opposition.

Before this, the great-hearted Padre Bartolomé de las Casas, the Indians’ indefatigable champion and friend, had written his famous book exposing the horrors of their treatment and had so successfully appealed to the King in their behalf that it had been decided to abolish native slavery and gradually do away with the system of repartimientos and encomiendas (allotments of land and Indians); and, since manifestly such a course would result in trouble with the Conquistadores, it seemed best to appoint a viceroy who would not be subject to their influence and invest him with absolute power. This dangerous office was bestowed upon Blasco Nuñez de Vela, whose integrity, piety, and rigid obedience to the King had already gained for him high positions. Arriving in Peru early in 1544, he promulgated the new laws abolishing personal service by the Indians, providing that encomiendas might not be sold or descend by inheritance, and, worst of all, that those granted to participants in the war between Pizarro and Almagro should lapse. To set the example, in his journey down the coast, the Viceroy sternly insisted that no Indian be compelled to carry a burden against his will.

To the Spaniards this seemed an outrageous violation of the natural order of things. The whole fabric of their fortunes was based on enforced Indian labor. Without it how could they work their mines and estates or transport their goods? In the general dismay, armed resistance was decided on, and Gonzalo Pizarro was called from his estate in southern Bolivia and induced to take the lead. He seized the artillery and stores at Cuzco and was soon at the head of some four hundred desperate men, well armed and provided. “The Viceroy retreated north beyond Quito to Popayan,” says Dawson—

“But, being joined by more recruits, rashly returned to the neighborhood of Quito to offer battle. He was defeated and killed. Pizarro went back to Lima, while his lieutenant, Carbajal, hunted down and put to death every loyalist who remained under arms in southern Peru. Gonzalo’s administration lasted three years. They were golden ones to the Spanish adventurers. The marvelous silver mines of Potosí and the gold washings of southern Ecuador were discovered. Encomiendas were lavishly granted; the Indians were sent back to their fields; the mining industry began that marvelous development which soon made Peru the treasure box of the world and Potosí the synonym for limitless wealth. But the dazzling sunlight of prosperity was dimmed by the shadow of Pizarro’s scaffold slowly creeping across the Atlantic and down the coast. His chief lieutenants, knowing that they had sinned past forgiveness, urged him to declare himself King of Peru, but he was at once too proud and too patriotic to fling away his right to die a loyal Spaniard. Philip, the leaden-eyed, close-mouthed despot, was regent of Spain. Bitterly chagrined that the stream of Peruvian gold had ceased to flow into the royal treasury, his vindictive heart had no mercy for the gallant soldier whose sword had helped win the riches now temporarily diverted. He selected a man after his own heart—Pedro de la Gasca, an ugly, deformed little priest, hypocritically humble, though astute and untiring, whose success as an inquisitor was a guarantee that he would be as pitiless and cruel as even Philip could wish.”

This man, says Hawthorne, was—

“A real diplomatist, with a tongue capable of making the worse appear the better reason and of winning support from the ranks of the enemy. He was endowed with official powers, but chiefly with brains and with the tongue aforesaid. His first step was to repeal such parts of the abolition laws as were hardest upon the colonists, and thereby he won their favor. Not until after these good news had been promulgated did Gasca venture to leave Panama for Peru. The captains of Pizarro’s fleet had been despatched to Panama to meet and watch the new emissary and either stop or bribe him, as might seem most expedient. But allowance had not been made for that tongue. Gasca wagged it with such good effect that they thought perhaps they were not Pizarro’s captains after all; at all events they put their fleet at his disposal and to Peru he came, landing at Tumbez in June, 1547.... Captain Diego de Centeno, acting for Gasca, captured Cuzco, but was defeated in the battle of Huarina. Hereupon Pizarro pressed on, nothing doubting—and indeed one can hardly blame him for his confidence, since it lay not in human foresight to anticipate the magical seductiveness of this Gasca’s conversation. The armies met, but Gasca did but open his mouth and Pizarro’s soldiers began deserting by troops. The thing was inexplicable; it was uncanny. We would call him a magnetic man nowadays, and Pizarro’s men were the iron filings. Even those who stood by him could not be induced to fight. By great efforts fifteen men contrived to get themselves slain, and then Pizarro, losing patience, got on his horse, rode over to Gasca’s camp, and gave himself up.”

With his execution, Spain’s conquest of Peru was complete.

IX

In 1525, at the foot of the great outlying mass of mountains on the peninsula that lies between the Gulfs of Maracaibo and Darien, and not far from where the Magdalena River empties into the Caribbean Sea, the town of Santa Marta had been founded—the first Spanish settlement in Colombia beyond the Isthmus. It was nothing more than a slave station for a time, from whence kidnaping parties made raids into the country round about and captured natives to sell to the gold miners in Española. Real attempts at colonization were not begun until Pedro de Heredia founded Cartagena, farther west, in 1533; but it was from these points that the explorations were undertaken that led to the discovery of the next great stores of gold and also to fresh, and this time seemingly trustworthy, affirmations of the truth of the story told by the Indians of the Isthmus, of the king the Spaniards called El Dorado (the Gilded Man), in whose country the rivers were said to run over sands of silver, where the palaces were of gold, with doors and columns studded with precious stones and the king bathed in aromatic essences and covered his body with gold dust.