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Updated: June 7, 2025
Vainglorious, ignorant, incompetent, yet cheerful, generous, frank, kindly and open-hearted, and badly treated by Pizarro and his brothers, he possibly deserved a better fate. The Pizarro brothers affected to be overcome by the stern necessity which compelled poor Almagro's execution.
As he would not, therefore, try to conciliate Almagro's adherents, it was clearly the governor's policy to regard them as enemies, not the less so for being in disguise, and to take such measures as should disqualify them for doing mischief.
While thus employed, Almagro received intelligence that Holguin had left Cuzco with a force of near three hundred men, with which he was preparing to effect a junction with Alvarado in the north. It was important to Almagro's success that he should defeat this junction.
Destruction in every form, most shocking to morals or humanity, has depopulated the countries of the Loire; and republican Pizarro's and Almagro's seem to have rivalled each other in the invention and perpetration of crimes.
Looking at it only from the side of Almagro's own interests, he evidently committed in this a gross blunder, of which he was soon to repent; but if we consider, what we should never lose sight of, the interest of the country, he had already committed a capital crime in the acts of aggression of which he had been guilty, and in kindling civil war in face of an enemy quite ready to take advantage of it.
He had been detached several months previously for the relief of Cuzco; but had, most unaccountably, and, as it proved, most unfortunately for the Peruvian capital, remained at Xauxa with the alleged motive of protecting that settlement and the surrounding country against the insurgents.15 He now showed himself loyal to his commander; and, when Almagro's ambassadors reached his camp, he put them in irons, and sent advice of what had been done to the governor at Lima.
They came to the desperate resolution of assassinating Pizarro. The day named for this was Sunday, the twenty- sixth of June, 1541- The conspirators, eighteen or twenty in number, were to assemble in Almagro's house, which stood in the great square next to the cathedral, and, when the governor was returning from mass, they were to issue forth and fall on him in the street.
Before long Hernando brought him to trial and to death, thus ill requiting Almagro's treatment of him personally. Hernando, on his return to Spain, suffered twenty years' imprisonment for this deed, which outraged both public sentiment and sense of justice. Francisco Pizarro, though affecting to be shocked at the death of Almagro, cannot be acquitted of all share in it.
Almagro marched out with his army and defeated the superior force of Alvarado in the battle of Abancay, in July, 1537, in which, through the generalship of Orgonez, Alvarado's troops were captured with little or no loss in Almagro's army. Almagro had left Gonzalo Pizarro behind in Cuzco, but had taken Hernando, heavily guarded, with him. Orgonez had urged Almagro to put both of them to death.
He had given the capital up to pillage, and his followers found good booty in the quarters of Almagro's officers. But this did not suffice the more ambitious cavaliers; and they clamorously urged their services, and demanded to be placed in charge of some expedition, nothing doubting that it must prove a golden one. All were in quest of an El Dorado.
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