The Golden Empire: Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America

by Hugh Thomas

  The Spanish miners with chains of gold round their necks would spend their new wealth on “fountains in which flowed the best European wines and on dark mestizo girls in silk shoes and pearls for laces, their hair kept in place by rubies … and the streets would be covered by silver.” Every kind of embroidery, brocade, silk, gold, tapestries, looking glasses from Venice, and pearls from Panama could soon be bought.12

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  Gonzalo and La Gasca

  No one can foresee the future, which is known only to God. Cowards may weep over tomorrow’s misfortunes, but you know better than I that brave knights may still gain victory’s crown of glory.

  Tirant lo Blanc

  Gonzalo Pizarro had Peru at his feet. That was certain. But what should he do with it? His chief adviser was a curious and talented if dangerous individual, Francisco de Carvajal, an experienced conquistador who had become known in his old age as “the devil of the Andes.” He was apparently born Francisco López Gascón and took the name of Carvajal since he had been a protégé of the cardinal of that name in Italy—or he had wanted to be.1 He was born in 1464 at Rágama, a bleak village in old Castile between Peñaranda de Bracamonte and Madrigal de las Altas Torres. In the early years of the sixteenth century, he went to Italy to fight under the command of “El Gran Capitán,” Fernando’s most successful commander, Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Carvajal was said to have been at Pavia in 1525—but then so many who went to the Indies were rumored to have been present at that legendary combat. Then he went to New Spain. After a few years there, he was among those sent by Viceroy Mendoza to help the Pizarros in Peru against Manco Capac. He seems to have conducted himself well and had risen to be a magistrate in Cuzco by 1541. He later fought effectively for Vaca de Castro as captain of the pikemen at Chupas and, as we have just seen, for Gonzalo Pizarro at Quito. By then he was well into his seventies.

  Carvajal had a formidable reputation as a witty, cruelly courteous, and competent soldier who was never shocked by his own or other men’s brutality. He killed men pitilessly but accompanied his actions with jests and humorous sallies. On one occasion, he said that since a doomed man was so rich, Carvajal would allow him to choose from which branch of a tree he would like to be hanged. Referring to the citizens of Lima who had fled from him, Gonzalo Pizarro once asked him to “calm these people down.” Carvajal replied, “I promise your lordship that I’ll quieten these men down so effectively that they will come out to meet you.” Their bodies were soon hanging on poles on the road into Lima.2 Carvajal dressed always in a purple Moorish burnous, and a hat of black taffeta.

  Now in 1546, after the death of the Viceroy Núñez Vela, Carvajal is said to have addressed Gonzalo Pizarro in Lima along the following Shakespearean lines:

  Sir, when a viceroy is killed in battle and his head is cut off and placed on a gibbet and the battle is fought against the royal standard, there is no pardon to be hoped for and no compromise to be made, even though your lordship may make ample excuses and shows himself more innocent than a suckling or a babe. Nor can you trust their words or promises, whatever assurances they give, unless you declare yourself to be king and take the government on yourself without waiting for another to give it to you and put a crown on your head and allocate whatever land is unoccupied among your friends and supporters. And as what the King gives is adequate for two lives, you should give it as a perpetual title and make dukes, marquesses and counts and set up military orders, with similar names and titles to those in Spain, and name other saints and patrons and insignia, as you think fit. Give the knights of the new orders incomes and pensions to keep themselves and to let them live at ease. With this approach, your Lordship will attract to your service all the Spanish nobility and chivalry in this empire, fully rewarding those who have conquered it and who have served your lordship. And, to attract the Indians, and make them so devoted that they will die for your lordship, as they would have done for their Inca monarchs, take one of their princesses to wife and send ambassadors to the forest where the heir of the Incas lives and bid him come forth and recover his lost majesty and state, asking him to offer you as your wife any sister or daughter whom he may have. You know how much this prince will esteem kinship and friendship with you and you will gain the universal love of all the Indians by restoring their Inca and, at the same time, make them genuinely willing to do whatever their king orders them on your behalf, such as bringing supplies, etc.

  In short, all the Indians will be on your side and, if they do not help your enemies with supplies and porters, no one can prevail against you in Peru … The Inca will govern his Indians in peace as his ancestors did in the past, whilst your Lordship and your officials and captains will govern the Spaniards, and have charge of military affairs, requiring the Inca to tell the Indians to do whatever you command. Your Lordship will receive all the gold and silver which the Indians produce in this empire, for they do not regard it as wealth … With all the gold and silver which they are reputed to have, your lordship can buy the entire world if you want to. And pay no attention if they say you are a traitor to the King of Spain. You are not. For no king can be a traitor. This land belongs to the Incas, its natural lords and, if it is not restored to them, you have more right to it than the King of Castile, for you and your brothers conquered it at your own expense and risk. Now by restoring it to the Inca, you are simply doing what you should have by natural law [ley natural] and in seeking to govern it yourself as its conqueror and not as a vassal and subject of another, you are doing what you owe to your reputation, for anyone who can become a king by the strength of his arm should not remain a serf. It all depends on the first step and the first declaration.

  I beg your lordship to consider the import of what I have said about ruling the empire in perpetuity so that those who live and shall live will follow you. Finally I urge you, whatever may happen, to crown yourself and call yourself king, for no other name befits one who has won an empire by his strength and courage. Die a king and not a vassal.3

  This was the speech of Carvajal as reported by Garcilaso. It may owe much to imagination. But it was perhaps the approximate truth.

  Carvajal was supported in this appeal by three men high in Gonzalo Pizarro’s favor at the time: Pedro de Puelles, Hernando Bachicao, and Diego de Cepeda. We have learned of them earlier, but now was their hour.

  These three are said to have repeated the theme of Carvajal’s speech: Won at their own expense, the land of Peru was theirs to share. They would ally with the Turks if Gonzalo was not given the governorship of Peru and Hernando Pizarro not released from his prison in the Castillo de la Mota, in Medina del Campo.

  Gonzalo himself was tempted by the ideas of Carvajal, but he still hoped that Charles the Emperor would make him governor of Peru.

  In these months, he seemed to have no enemies in Peru; he treated everybody so kindly, referring to all his captains as “brother.” He called Carvajal “father.” He ate at a long table always laid for a hundred people, with two empty places always beside himself so that he could summon whoever he wished to dine with him.4

  Yet time was not on Gonzalo’s side. His rebellion against the Viceroy disturbed Charles, who was distressed by what seemed an imperial setback.5 In Spain, they were considering the dispatch of someone new, a clever man ready for everything, “to put Peru in order.” In the Council of the Indies, the name that appealed to everyone was Antonio de Mendoza. But that could not be. Mendoza was still fully occupied in his current post as Viceroy of New Spain. In the council, the Duke of Alba supported the idea of pursuing the rebels without quarter. The Duke and Dr. Guevara thought it essential to send some gentleman to Peru in whom the King would have personal confidence because of his family and blood. A Velasco or a Mendoza would be ideal. But the majority of the council thought a letrado, a man of the pen and one of learning, was the right person.6 The latter argument won the day. At the end of May 1545, the council decided in favor of sending to Peru Pedro de la Gasca, a lawyer who was at that
time visitor-general of public officials in the kingdom of Valencia, where he was concerned with the incursions of Muslim pirates from the north of Africa. He had successfully defended Valencia against the Turkish admiral Barbarossa. He was known as a hard man, and he had political experience. He was a protégé of the powerful secretary Cobos and had always been favored by Cardinal Tavera. He was already in his late fifties and would celebrate his sixtieth birthday before he reached Peru.

  La Gasca was a typical bureaucrat of the age of Charles the Emperor, for like so many, he derived from a family of public servants. He took his name from his mother’s family, his maternal grandfather having been corregidor of Congosto (León). Until he agreed to go to Peru, Pedro de la Gasca’s career was also a characteristic one. He had attended Cisneros’s famous university of Alcalá de Henares and had taken part in the war of the comuneros on the royalist side. He had been taught by the great grammarian Lebrija. In 1528, he became rector of the University of Salamanca but he was there for a short time only, because of some mysterious controversy, which turned out to be less an ideological matter than an affair of personalities. He had several other lucrative assignments before becoming in 1540 judge of the Council of the Inquisition in Valencia.7 In Valencia, he had shown the qualities of efficiency and leadership that were to serve him well in Peru.

  La Gasca, to look at, was a person of no importance. But Garcilaso rightly wrote of him that he was “a man of much better understanding than his appearance suggested.”8

  La Gasca studied Peru carefully before he agreed to accept the commission. He made unusual requests, which were, unusually, granted. He wanted full powers, including the right to grant life and impose death. He wanted to be free to name new men for the right places. He wanted to be able to concede encomiendas.9 He wanted no salary but insisted all his expenses had to be paid.

  He set off, visiting on the way his brother Abbot Francisco Jiménez de Ávila, his mother in El Barco de Ávila, then his brother Juan, the corregidor in Málaga. He took with him a suite of thirty, including two new judges, Licenciado Andrés Cianca of Peñafiel, Valladolid, and Íñigo de Rentería. The first would become La Gasca’s chief legal adviser; the second was an old friend, having been with him in the 1520s in Salamanca. There were also Alonso de Alvarado, whom we met earlier as a captain of the Pizarros against Almagro, and Pascual de Andagoya, the first Spaniard to go to Peru, even before Pizarro became interested. He had been a long time recovering from his near drowning in 1522 and in the interim had performed other tasks, such as being deputy governor in Panama.10 Also with La Gasca was Francisco Maldonado, who had gone back to Spain on Gonzalo Pizarro’s behalf to explain what he had done or was doing and seems then to have changed sides. La Gasca was likely to be well advised once he got to Peru.

  La Gasca’s party left Sanlúcar on May 26, touched at La Gomera in the Canaries, as was then usual for America-bound ships, and made landfall at Santa Marta, where they were all well received by the governor of New Granada, Miguel Díaz de Armendariz. They then went on to Nombre de Dios, where they arrived on July 27 with little display, crossing the isthmus to reach Panama on August 13, where they learned for the first time of the death of the Viceroy. One of Gonzalo’s captains, Hernán Mejía, offered to bring many of his colleagues over to him.11 But La Gasca also met a small delegation of high-placed churchmen and others who were on their way to Spain to request the Emperor to make Gonzalo governor. They, too, changed sides, after meeting the new royal emissary, who, despite his feeble appearance, clearly had nerves of iron and real qualities of leadership.

  These churchmen were important. Fray Jerónimo de Loaisa had been archbishop of Lima since 1545 and was the brother of the new archbishop of Seville, the inquisidor general and sometime president of the Council of the Indies; Fray Tomás de San Martín was the provincial of the Dominicans in Lima and had already once been acting governor of Peru; and Lorenzo de Aldana had accomplished much since he, with so many other grand captains, had arrived in Peru in 1534 with Alvarado. Gonzalo had made him governor in Lima in his absence in the north. La Gasca shortly thereafter made him commander of his navy. Another churchman with them who made this act of royal loyalty was Martín de Calatayud, bishop of Santa Marta, near Cartagena. Finally, among these eminent turncoats was Gómez de Solís, who had been majordomo to Gonzalo.12 These men were influenced by La Gasca’s decision to declare a general pardon and his undertaking to delay implementation of the New Laws; thus they deserted the leader “who had raised them up,” in Garcilaso’s words.13

  One of those who came with La Gasca was Pedro Hernández Paniagua Loaisa, a cousin of both Cardinal Loaisa in Spain and of the archbishop of Lima. He had been on the municipal council of Plasencia in Castile and now was sent by La Gasca to take a letter to Gonzalo Pizarro. This missive explained that he had heard of the late viceroy’s intractability over the New Laws. He also said, “We are assured that neither you, nor any who has followed you, has any inclination to be disloyal to us.”14 In another letter, La Gasca told Gonzalo that he was certain that it would be impossible for him to resist the attack of a powerful army formed in the name of the Emperor. Another clever letter from La Gasca to Gonzalo declared, “His Majesty and the rest of us in Spain have never regarded what you have done as rebellious or disloyal to the King but simply as a defence of your just rights.” Henceforward, though, Gonzalo should fulfill His Majesty’s demands, “thereby performing what was due also to God.”15

  Gonzalo discussed these missives with Francisco de Carvajal and with Cepeda. Carvajal thought the letters excellent and thus became in favor of collaboration with La Gasca. Cepeda thought that they were deceitful documents, being a way of securing Gonzalo’s surrender without the use of force: Thereafter, trials and executions could begin.

  Gonzalo was foolishly in favor of Cepeda’s view. All the same, he thought it right to have a meeting of eighty settlers, a majority of whom supported Carvajal. One or two told Hernández Paniagua that they would now support La Gasca in any discussion or dispute. Hernández Paniagua thought that La Gasca would have confirmed Gonzalo in the governorship of Peru if he had had real evidence that the majority of settlers wanted it. But there were difficulties: One of La Gasca’s representatives, Fray Francisco de San Miguel, was detained at Tumbes by Gonzalo’s men. These men told the friar that the King was bankrupt and needed their money. Paniagua spiritedly replied, “The city of Naples alone is worth more than three Perus.”16 He left Lima with a bland reply from Gonzalo to La Gasca in which the former pledged anew his loyalty to the emperor Charles and described how “for sixteen years he and his brothers had worked for the royal crown of Spain to whose glory they had added so much.”17 At the same time, sixty Spanish residents wrote to La Gasca suggesting that he go home because, they said, they had no need of his presence; nor did they need any royal pardon from him since they had done nothing wrong.18

  La Gasca could now see that the surrender of Gonzalo would be a complex matter. He set about organizing the skeleton of an army and, on April 10, 1547, set off for Peru from Panama with 820 soldiers in eighteen ships and a galliot. Despite bad weather and heavy winds, the new army reached Manta on May 31 and went on to Tumbes on June 30. Several groups of settlers in nearby towns proclaimed their loyalty to the Crown and told La Gasca so. After waiting a month at Tumbes, La Gasca wrote to Charles the Emperor suggesting that a new viceroy immediately be named. He again proposed Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy in New Spain.19 Then La Gasca continued down the coast as far as the mouth of the river Santa before starting into the mountains.

  He was all this time accompanied by both Alonso de Alvarado and Bishop Loaisa, who knew the land so well by now. La Gasca had before that named Pedro de Hinojosa as the commander of his forces. Hinojosa came from a notable family from Trujillo; he had been among those recruited by Francisco Pizarro in 1529 and had been for a time Gonzalo Pizarro’s naval commander.

  On July 20, Gonzalo Pizarro wrote to the Emperor saying that if there
were any fighting, the fault would be all La Gasca’s, not his, because Gonzalo would never do anything that His Majesty would dislike as a disservice.20 But now Gonzalo had begun to find that his position was falling apart. As soon as they heard that La Gasca had at least delayed if not canceled the New Laws in Peru and had proclaimed a pardon, many of Pizarro’s leading supporters made it evident that they would repudiate the leadership of Gonzalo.

  Still, the latter arranged his army. Carvajal was the overall commander, to whom a company of arquebusiers was attached. His captain of cavalry was the ex-judge Cepeda. His standard was borne by Antonio de Altamirano, a member of a famous family in Mérida and related to the great Cortés. Some captains had chosen as their heraldic devices Gonzalo’s name surmounted by a crown. Carvajal insisted that each soldier should have a badge indicating to what company he belonged. Cepeda drew up a document insisting that Pedro de Hinojosa had committed treason in giving Gonzalo’s ships to La Gasca, and La Gasca was accused of the same for having received them. He announced that both would be hanged, drawn, and quartered when they were captured.

  As this army took shape, there were some terrible moments for Gonzalo. Thus the standard-bearer, Altamirano, was killed by Carvajal personally on suspicion of desertion. Pedro de Puelles deserted and was killed by a gang of Spaniards led by the hunchback Diego de Salazar, who then himself crossed to La Gasca. Gonzalo hanged a common soldier whom he observed wearing two shirts, which he interpreted as a sign that he was ready to desert. Gonzalo announced that even if only ten friends stood by him, he would reconquer all Peru. But every day brought a new setback: Lima declared for La Gasca, and some of Gonzalo’s men began to think that they could preserve their lives only by fleeing to the forest of Anti or going to join Valdivia in Chile. Gonzalo had also sent some of his best men against Diego Centeño, who was still sheltering near Lake Titicaca. Reading of these and other maneuvers is like hearing of an elaborate game whose rules had not yet been decided.