When the Marquis was murdered in Lima by the Almagro party the news
came with extraordinary celerity to the ships which were about to
sail for Spain, and the Emperor Charles V received it at....[162] He
held that it was an evil service to him, on hearing that the Marquis
had been murdered with such cruelty and violence, considering the
great services he had rendered to his Majesty and the rich provinces
he had added to the Realm. His Majesty wished that the Marquis could
have enjoyed some repose in his old age, and that he had not died so
ignobly. At the same time, his Majesty had felt that he had also been
ill-served by the death inflicted by the Marquis's brother on the
Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro in a former year. Taking counsel with
his grandson, and with others who attended him for that purpose, and
seeing how remote those kingdoms were from Spain, that in the time
of the governors there had been great outrages and robberies, and
that cruel deaths had been inflicted on not a few lords and principal
people, it was resolved that they should be so justly ruled that
God our Lord and the Royal Crown should not suffer displeasure. His
Majesty therefore decided to send out learned men as judges to form
a Court of Justice or _Audiencia_, and also a Royal Chancellery, in
order that causes might be determined and that in all things there
might be right decisions so needful in such a free country where
all men are prone to commit evil. In order that justice might have
greater force, it was also resolved that there should be a Viceroy,
whose duty it would be to see that the natives were well treated by
the Spaniards. The councillors then considered at several sittings
whom should be entrusted with so important a service. His Majesty had
been informed by many people, and from various directions, of the
great oppression the Indians suffered from the Spaniards, and how
the latter, in order to extort gold from them, had burned them and
thrown them to the dogs; also how they seized the natives' wives and
daughters for their own uses, and committed other atrocities. Above
all, there was very great remissness about their conversion; no one
caring for the souls of the poor natives. As a Christian prince,
fearing God, the Emperor was very anxious to find a remedy for these
great evils. He felt that, as universal pastor, he was responsible
to God. Nevertheless, his Majesty's repeated absences from Spain,
so important for the worship of God and for his own service, had
interfered with the mature consideration of what should be done to
avoid these great evils, and of what laws ought to be made for the
protection of the Indians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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