Christianity, until you became the terror of all the many enemies who had declared against you, reducing the greatest and most principal from a victorious conqueror to a truly starving prisoner. For the latter did not even have more than nor even as much as the balance of the cannon of the fort which he occupied, a limit set for his soldiers under pain of losing life if they went beyond it. [172] Thus did I redeem not only the relief and liberty of this most afflicted community and its environs, but what is more yet, its wealth and the most principal thing, the religion and the honor due your Majesty, which being so exposed seemed about to be entirely lost. I protest, Sire, that whatever I say in this my representation and advance in my treatise, is not for the purpose of injuring that venerable prelate whom I have ever regarded with the respect due the prince of the Church; and if I transgress in any way, and do not express myself with that moderation suitable, I protest that my words may not serve as an offense to his dignity, and that I have been actuated in this by only a real affection, with the desire that your Majesty may be informed of the acts of turbulence which have occurred in these domains, in order that you may better provide for the best government and relief of them. So far as I am concerned, I claim or desire no other satisfaction than what I have in this as I have desired to serve your Majesty, since the greatest satisfaction is for your royal piety to consider itself as well served by me if you find it consistent. [173] But if it should appear to your supreme comprehension that the so public excesses of your reverend archbishop, as appear from the said testimony, of which I shall enclose some here, merit satisfaction, this alone concerns your Majesty. I am unaware as to the motives of said prelate, that made him, although it had no bearing on the end, for which he despatched me from the fort, and so to the injury of your Majesty's interests, when finding himself a prisoner of war with my associates, order me in a letter of October 10, 62, among other things: "to observe faithfully the treaties which were being arranged with the British chiefs in Manila." Although I answered him from the province of Bulacan in the most courteous and fitting terms, this was not sufficient to restrain his pen, and on the twenty-sixth of the same month he wrote me pouring out instead of ink, blood and rage against my loyal procedure.