History of the Conquest of PeruPrescott, William Hickling
History
History of the Conquest of Peru
Prescott, William Hickling
Incas; Peru -- History -- Conquest, 1522-1548
After the Conquest, our author still remained attached to the fortunes of
his commander, and stood by him through all the troubles which ensued;
and on the assassination of that chief, he withdrew to Arequipa, to enjoy
in quiet the repartimiento of lands and Indians, which had been bestowed
on him as the recompense of his services. He was there on the breaking
out of the great rebellion under Gonzalo Pizarro. But he was true to his
allegiance, and chose rather, as he tells us, to be false to his name and his
lineage than to his loyalty. Gonzalo, in retaliation, seized his estates, and
would have proceeded to still further extremities against him, when
Pedro Pizarro had fallen into his hands at Lima, but for the interposition
of his lieutenant, the famous Francisco de Carbajal, to whom the
chronicler had once the good fortune to render an important service.
This, Carbajal requited by sparing his life on two occasions,--but on the
second coolly remarked, "No man has a right to a brace of lives; and if
you fall into my hands a third time, God only can grant you another."
Happily, Pizarro did not find occasion to put this menace to the test.
After the pacification of the country, he again retired to Arequipa; but,
from the querulous tone of his remarks, it would seem he was not fully
reinstated in the possessions he had sacrificed by his loyal devotion to
government. The last we hear of him is in 1571, the date which he
assigns as that of the completion of his history.
Pedro Pizarro's narrative covers the whole ground of the Conquest, from
the date of the first expedition that sallied out from Panama, to the
troubles that ensued on the departure of President Gasca. The first part
of the work was gathered from the testimony of others, and, of course,
cannot claim the distinction of rising to the highest class of evidence.
But all that follows the return of Francis Pizarro from Castile, all, in
short, which constitutes the conquest of the country, may be said to be
reported on his own observation, as an eyewitness and an actor. This
gives to his narrative a value to which it could have no pretensions on the
score of its literary execution. Pizarro was a soldier, with as little
education, probably, as usually falls to those who have been trained from
youth in this rough school,--the most unpropitious in the world to both
mental and moral progress. He had the good sense, moreover, not to
aspire to an excellence which he could not reach. There is no ambition
of fine writing in his chronicle; there are none of those affectations of
ornament which only make more glaring the beggarly condition of him
who assumes them. His object was simply to tell the story of the
Conquest, as he had seen it. He was to deal with facts, not with words,
which he wisely left to those who came into the field after the laborers
had quitted it, to garner up what they could at second hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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