"Queria spresurar su coronacion, y para ello despacho
cartas a todas las ciudades del Peru." (Montesinos, Annales, Ms.,
ano 1547.) But it is hardly probable he could have placed so
blind a confidence in the colonists at this crisis, as to have
meditated so rash a step. The loyal Castilian historians are not
slow to receive reports to the discredit of the rebel.]
Among the leaders most conspicuous on this occasion was Cepeda,
"who," in the words of a writer of his time, "had exchanged the
robe of the licentiate for the plumed casque and mailed harness
of the warrior." *12 But the cavalier to whom Pizarro confided
the chief care of organizing his battalions was the veteran
Carbajal, who had studied the art of war under the best captains
of Europe, and whose life of adventure had been a practical
commentary on their early lessons. It was on his arm that
Gonzalo most leaned in the hour of danger; and well had it been
for him, if he had profited by his counsels at an earlier period.
[Footnote 12: "El qual en este tiempo, oluidado de lo que
conuenia a sus letras, y profession, y officio de Oydor; salio en
calcas jubon, y cuera, de muchos recamados: y gorra con plumas."
Fernandez Hist. del Peru, Parte 1, lib. 2 cap. 62.]
It gives one some idea of the luxurious accommodations of
Pizarro's forces, that he endeavoured to provide each of his
musketeers with a horse. The expenses incurred by him were
enormous. The immediate cost of his preparations, we are told,
was not less than half a million of pesos de oro; and his pay to
the cavaliers, and, indeed, to the common soldiers, in his little
army, was on an extravagant scale, nowhere to be met with but on
the silver soil of Peru.
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