But in a short time, it was discovered that these precautions were unnecessary, as Acosta soon retreated with his three hundred men, on seeing the greatly superior force of the royalists. The president remained two or three days in the position he had taken on the summit of the mountain, waiting for his artillery and the rest of his army. While at that place, Gonzalo sent him a message by a priest, demanding that he should dismiss his army, and refrain from making war against him till he should receive new orders from his majesty. On this occasion, the bishop of Cuzco, who was along with the president, ordered the priest into confinement. A little time before this, Gonzalo had dispatched another priest, to endeavour to gain over Hinojosa and Alvarado to his party, But that messenger, being resolved to desert the party of the insurgents, had taken measures in concert with his brother to go off in company with all their effects, in which they succeeded. At this time likewise the president wrote to Gonzalo, as he had repeatedly done during his march, earnestly entreating him to submit to the orders of his majesty, and sending him at the same time a copy of the amnesty. The usual manner in which these dispatches was forwarded to Gonzalo, was by means of the scouts of the army, who had orders to give them to those belonging to Gonzalo when they chanced to meet. When it was known at Cuzco that the president had crossed the river Apurimac with all his army, and had taken possession of the pass in the high mountain, Gonzalo Pizarro immediately marched out from that city with his army and encamped at Xaquixaguana, about five leagues from Cuzco, in a plain through which the road passed by which the royalists would have to march on their way from the mountain towards Cuzco. His army at this time consisted of five hundred and fifty musqueteers, with six pieces of cannon, and three hundred and fifty cavalry and pikemen. Gonzalo established his camp in a very strong position, as it was only accessible in front by means of a very narrow defile, one flank being secured by a river and morass, the other flank by the mountain, and the rear by precipitous rocks. During two or three days, that the two armies remained near each other before the battle, Gonzalo sometimes detached a hundred and sometimes two hundred men to skirmish with similar parties of the enemy. As the royalist army was now encamped only at a short distance from the insurgents, Gonzalo was afraid his troops might lose courage by noticing the vast superiority of the enemy in number, and that many of his men might abandon him; for which reason he always drew up his men under cover of a rising ground near his camp, pretending that he did so to induce the president to attack him in his present advantageous post, confiding in his numbers and believing the insurgents much fewer than they really were.