In 1643 rumours ran through the western colonies that the Dutch were preparing to invade Chile. The prospect of this invasion induced the viceroy of Peru to send a body of three hundred soldiers to strengthen the military forces already in the southern colony. Jerónimo de Quiroga, then a youth of eighteen, was a member of this company, and arrived in Chile near the end of the year. He apparently remained there in the service, for a few years later, at the age of thirty-three, he married a young woman of a prominent family of Santiago, and not long afterwards he was advanced to the rank of captain of cavalry. During the next thirty-five or forty years he rendered important services to the state in both military and civil undertakings. One of his military commissions was the taking of three thousand arms from Mendoza over the Andes to Concepción. He was a life member of the ayuntamiento of Santiago by royal confirmation. He had general charge of the construction of the cathedral for a period, and contributed largely towards the work from his own funds. He directed the fortification of Valparaiso and Concepción, and repaired the more or less ruined fortifications of the southern frontier.[140] He held various military commands, particularly that of chief of the militia of Chile for a period of seventeen years, and the governor turned to him for a method of reducing the Indians of the frontier to civilization. At the close of his military career, during which, especially in the later years, he encountered opposition and intrigue, at the age of seventy he turned to the task of writing the history of his country down to the events of his own time. His life in Chile had covered a considerable part of this period, and for this reason his book was properly called _Memoria de las cosas de Chile_. Medina reports that only an extract of the first part has been preserved, and that this was published in the twenty-third volume of the _Semanario erudito_ of Madrid in 1788. This extract was called _Compendio histórico de los más principales sucesos de la conquista y guerras del reino de Chile hasta el año de 1656_. The critical judgment respecting Quiroga’s style—his rapidity of narration, conciseness of expression, and the harmony and facility of his phrases—indicates the degree of loss suffered in the disappearance of the complete work.[141] [Sidenote: Anello Oliva’s _Varones ilustres_]