The burial of Pizarro was attended by none of the pomp and ceremony usually observed in the obsequies of a great hero; on the contrary, the interment was hasty and stealthy, performed in fear and trembling lest it should be interrupted and the corpse dragged to the market place. Not until more than half a century later were the bones of the discoverer and conqueror of Peru removed to their present resting place in the Cathedral of Lima. With the death of Francisco Pizarro the period of the Conquest ends, as the pretensions of the younger Almagro, who caused himself to be proclaimed Governor and Captain-General of Peru after the assassination of the Conqueror, were not recognized by the King of Spain, who sent Vaca de Castro to coöperate with Pizarro in establishing peace in Peru, with authorization to take the reins of government in his own hands in case of Pizarro’s death. As soon as Vaca de Castro arrived, he assumed the position of governor and captain-general, and, gathering under his command the soldiers who remained loyal to the king, he at once marched against Almagro, whom he defeated on the plains of Chupas, near Ayacucho, in September, 1542. Almagro escaped from the battlefield and fled to Cuzco, where he was taken prisoner and, by the governor’s order, was beheaded. About the same time, Bishop Valverde was assassinated by the Indians of Puná while on his way to Panamá. Thus the leading spirits in the invasion and conquest of Peru met with a violent death; Hernando Pizarro languished in a Spanish prison for twenty years, and Hernando de Soto died in the wilds of the Mississippi forests. [Illustration: COAT-OF-ARMS GRANTED PIZARRO BY CHARLES V. AFTER THE CONQUEST OF CUZCO.] [Illustration: FAÇADE OF SAN AGUSTIN CHURCH, LIMA, SHOWING ELABORATE CARVING OF COLONIAL DAYS.] CHAPTER VI THE REIGN OF THE VICEROYS [Illustration: THE FIRST COAT-OF-ARMS BESTOWED ON LIMA BY CHARLES V.] After the Conquest, all the Spanish dominions in the New World were divided under two governments, one of which was subject to the Viceroy of Mexico and the other to the Viceroy of Peru. As representatives of His Catholic Majesty, and directly appointed by him, the viceroys were chosen from the noblest families of Spain, especially distinguished for their services to the Church and the army. These proud grandees established their court in the colonial capitals on a scale of magnificence hardly excelled by that of their royal master; and the City of the Kings grew even to rival Madrid in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a metropolis of Spanish fashion and culture.