“At noon, on Sunday, the 26th of June, 1541, Pizarro was sitting at dinner in his house with twenty gentlemen, among them his half-brother Francisco Alcantara, and several of the most illustrious knights who had taken part in the conquest. The great door into the public square was lying wide open. The conspirators, to the number of a score, had assembled in a house opposite. All of a sudden they rushed into the square fully armed and carrying their swords naked in their hands. A young page standing in front of the Governor’s house saw them and ran back shouting: ‘To arms! All the men of Chile are coming to kill the Marquis, our lord.’ The guests rose in alarm from the table and all but half a dozen fled to the windows and dropped into the garden. Pizarro threw off his gown and snatched up a sword, while the valiant Francisco Chaves stepped forward through the ante-room to dispute the passage at the staircase. The ferocious crowd of murderers rushed up and laid him dead on the stairs. Alcantara checked them for a few moments with his single sword, but was soon forced back into the dining-room and fell pierced with many thrusts. The old lion shouted from the inside: ‘What shameful thing is this! Why do you wish to kill me?’ and, with a cloak wrapped round one arm and his sword grasped in the other hand, he rushed forward to meet his assassins and strike a blow to avenge his brother before he himself should fall. Only two faithful young pages remained at his side. Though over seventy years of age, his practiced sword laid two of the crowd dead before he was surrounded. The two boys were butchered, and, in the mêlée, Pizarro received a mortal wound in his throat, and, falling to the floor, made the sign of the cross on the boards” (with his blood) “and kissed it. One of the ruffians had snatched up an earthen water jar and with this pounded out the old man’s brains as he lay prostrate, disdaining to ask for mercy.