It was his destiny.
[Footnote 7: Pedro Pizarro bears testimony to Carbajal's
endeavours to leave the country, in which he was aided, though
ineffectually, by the chronicler, who was, at that time, in the
most friendly relations with him. Civil war parted these ancient
comrades; but Carbajal did not forget his obligations to Pedro
Pizarro, which he afterwards repaid by exempting him on two
different occasions from the general doom of the prisoners who
fell into his hands.]
The tumultuous life on which he now entered roused all the
slumbering passions of his soul, which lay there, perhaps
unconsciously to himself; cruelty, avarice, revenge. He found
ample exercise for them in the war with his countrymen; for civil
war is proverbially the most sanguinary and ferocious of all.
The atrocities recorded of Carbajal, in his new career, and the
number of his victims, are scarcely credible. For the honor of
humanity, we may trust the accounts are greatly exaggerated; but
that he should have given rise to them at all is sufficient to
consign his name to infamy. *8
[Footnote 8: Out of three hundred and forty executions, according
to Fernandez, three hundred were by Carbajal. (Hist. del Peru,
Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 91.) Zarate swells the number of these
executions to five hundred. (Conq. del Peru, lib. 7, cap. 1.) The
discrepancy shows how little we can confide in the accuracy of
such estimates.]
He even took a diabolical pleasure, it is said, in amusing
himself with the sufferings of his victims, and in the hour of
execution would give utterance to frightful jests, that made them
taste more keenly the bitterness of death! He had a sportive
vein, if such it could be called, which he freely indulged on
every occasion.
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