The news came that Gonzalo Pizarro was at Cuzco assembling an armed force, and when the Viceroy heard it he was much disturbed in his mind. He could only say that Gonzalo Pizarro was a knight and a servant of the King, brother of the Marquis who discovered those provinces, and that he would not wish to merit the name of traitor. He desired that the Judges would arrive, that the court of justice might be established. Many times he came to the resolution of going at once to Cuzco accompanied only by his brother and his brother-in-law Diego Alvarez de Cueto, with a few citizens. There were so many inconveniences that the Cuzco expedition did not take place though, if he had been there, the disturbances would have ceased, and the war would not have commenced. But to speak of these things is to attempt divination: for God had determined to punish that kingdom, it even seems to me that the unusual lightning was a sign of it, and that it had to pass through more calamities and miseries. According to what Plutarch says in his life of Lucullus, referring to certain questions which the Cyreneans put to the divine Plato, there is nothing more arduous than to bring under special laws the men who possess great wealth, for they are like men intoxicated and beyond their ordinary senses, transported by the favours of prosperous fortune. The same Plutarch, on the other hand, says that there is nothing easier than to dominate the minds of similar men who are depressed by many reverses of fortune, because their reverses had crushed down all their pride and lofty thoughts. In truth it is a notable sentence. For at the time when the unfortunate Viceroy entered Peru, he found the minds of men, owing to their wealth, not only ready to protest against the laws, but to oppose them. Yet when the same tyrant’s proceedings had led them to disaster and misfortune, Gasca was able not only to enforce the laws but to enact others more heavy, and to carry out the will of the Emperor our lord who is now so powerful and so feared in these parts that his authority is not equalled in any other province in the world. I have said this, because it should be understood that his Majesty was able, as sovereign lord, to pardon when his commands had been obeyed, although there is, from Spain to Peru, more than four thousand leagues of land and sea. CHAPTER XXIX _How his Majesty sent a royal order to the Adelantado Sebastian de Belalcazar commanding him to execute the new laws and how the Procurators met in the city of Popayan and agreed to a supplication._