But a knight in Hernando's suite also wore the same
colors, it appears, which led Orgonez into error.]
There was no longer order, and scarcely resistance, among the
followers of Almagro. They fled, making the best of their way to
Cuzco, and happy was the man who obtained quarter when he asked
it. Almagro himself, too feeble to sit so long on his horse,
reclined on a litter, and from a neighbouring eminence surveyed
the battle, watching its fluctuations with all the interest of
one who felt that honor, fortune, life itself, hung on the issue.
With agony not to be described, he had seen his faithful
followers, after their hard struggle, borne down by their
opponents, till, convinced that all was lost, he succeeded in
mounting a mule, and rode off for a temporary refuge to the
fortress of Cuzco. Thither he was speedily followed, taken, and
brought in triumph to the capital, where, ill as he was, he was
thrown into irons, and confined in the same in the same apartment
of the stone building in which he had imprisoned the Pizarros.
The action lasted not quite two hours. The number of killed,
variously stated, was probably not less than a hundred and fifty,
- one of the combatants calls it two hundred, *13 - a great
number, considering the shortness of the time, and the small
amount of forces engaged. No account is given of the wounded.
Wounds were the portion of the cavalier. Pedro de Lerma is said
to have received seventeen, and yet was taken alive from the
field! The loss fell chiefly on the followers of Almagro But the
slaughter was not confined to the heat of the action.
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