Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
Arriving at Seville, he was immediately thrown into prison for a debt
incurred at Darien. But he was released by order of the emperor,
Charles V., who received him graciously at Toledo, heard the wondrous
story of his wanderings, which Pizarro knew how to tell, and saw the
vessels of gold and silver, the fine fabrics, the llamas, and other
evidences of the Peruvian civilization, which were displayed before
his royal eyes. He was also, no doubt influenced by the recent
achievements of Cortes, who was then at court, and who perhaps spoke
for his kinsman a friendly word.
The monarch turned over Pizarro and his enterprise, with his
recommendation, to the Council of the Indies. Yet a year passed, and
nothing was done. Pizarro was fast sinking into obscurity, and he
would likewise have sunk into despair, if he had been less stout of
heart. Then, as Queen Isabella had aided Columbus, so the queen of
Charles V. came to the assistance of Pizarro, and caused to be
executed the extraordinary instrument which bestowed on him, with the
rights of discovery and conquest, the titles of Governor and
Captain-General of New Castile, as Peru was then called, and a salary
of 725,000 maravedis, to be drawn however from the conquered country.
Almagro and Luque were also provided for, but in a more modest way,
which proved the beginning of a long, bitter, and deadly feud between
Almagro and his chief. Nor did the instrument fail to make the usual
provision for the conversion to Christianity of the nations to be
subjugated and plundered.
In mustering his recruits Pizarro had the satisfaction of revisiting
his native town of Truxillo, where he had lived in degradation, and to
which he now returned a renowned discoverer and soldier, and a titled
magnate. There he found his three brothers, the Pizarros, all poor and
proud and eager for adventure; and a fourth brother, on his mother's
side. With these and other followers, hardly exceeding one hundred, he
sailed from Seville, in January, 1530; and a year later, namely, in
January, 1531, after a solemn consecration of his enterprise in the
cathedral of Panama, he put forth from that port with one hundred and
eighty men and twenty-seven horses, on his fourth, last, and finally
successful expedition, to overthrow a populous empire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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