His first step was to
betray the viceroy whom he was sent to support; his next was to
betray the Audience with whom he should have acted; and lastly,
he betrayed the leader whom he most affected to serve. His whole
career was treachery to his own government. His life was one long
perfidy.
After his surrender, several of the cavaliers, disgusted at his
cold-blooded apostasy, would have persuaded Gasca to send him to
execution along with his commander; but the president refused, in
consideration of the signal service he had rendered the Crown by
his defection. He was put under arrest, however, and sent to
Castile. There he was arraigned for high-treason. He made a
plausible defence, and as he had friends at court, it is not
improbable he would have been acquitted; but, before the trial
was terminated, he died in prison. It was the retributive
justice not always to be found in the affairs of this world. *19
[Footnote 19: The cunning lawyer prepared so plausible an
argument in his own justification, that Yllescas, the celebrated
historian of the Popes, declares that no one who read the paper
attentively, but must rise from the perusal of it with an entire
conviction of the writer's innocence, and of his unshaken loyalty
to the Crown. See the passage quoted by Garcilasso Com. Real.,
Parte 2, lib. 6, cap. 10]
Indeed, it so happened, that several of those who had been most
forward to abandon the cause of Pizarro survived their commander
but a short time.
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