Some weeks prior to the battle Carbajal, however, had been ordered to return south to put down a loyalist rising in the Charcas region led by Diego de Centeno, an encomendero of Sucre. Entering Lima with only 12 horsemen, within days he had provisioned a force of some 200 men, each aware of the reputation of the elderly soldier, renowned not only for his brutality but for his caustic wit. The chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, who as a young boy had met him in Cuzco, recalled that on one occasion Carbajal, coming across a new recruit he had sarcastically addressed as ‘Your Grace’, asked the man his name, and being told that it was ‘Hurtado’ (stealing), he had commented: ‘Not worth finding, let alone stealing.’11 On taking prisoner a loyalist encomendero, who pretended not to know why he was to be hung, he had said to him: ‘I perceive you wish to establish a pedigree for your martyrdom, so that you can point to it as an heirloom for your descendants? So be it, and now, adíos.’12 Most chroniclers record that his bizarre appearance only added to a reputation of sadism and cruelty which would earn him the name of el demonio de los Andes, the devil of the Andes:
. . . instead of a cloak he always wore a purple moorish burnoose with a hood . . . and on his head a hat of black tafetta with a plain silk band adorned with black and white chicken feathers. This ornament he told his soldiers he wore to set an example to them, for one of the things he most exhorted them to do was to wear such apparel on their helmets, for he claimed it was the mark of a true soldier and would distinguish him from the frivolity of the plumes worn by an encomendero . . .13
Battle of Añaquito. (Herrera: BL, 783. g. 1–4)
The reprisals ordered by Carbajal and the Conquistador Alonso de Toro, the rebel governor of Cuzco, and which were personally sanctioned by Gonzalo by letter, included the execution and torture of a great number of suspected loyalists. Mansio had himself been recaptured in the Cuntisuyo, possibly some six months before the Battle of Añaquito. Luis Sánchez recorded: ‘At the time I was in the city of Cuzco and witnessed Alonso de Toro, lieutenant-governor of Gonzalo Pizarro, take Mansio Serra prisoner and do him injury, and it was believed that he would kill him for being his enemy . . .’.14 In a letter to Toro, dated 21 July 1545, Carbajal had ordered that the Conquistador Diego Maldonado ‘be tortured by chords and water, after being placed naked on a donkey’.15 Maldonado, known as el rico, the rich, was probably the wealthiest encomendero in Peru and was reputed to have given his wife on their marriage the giant pearl known as ‘La Peregrina’, the pilgrim, which he had probably looted during the sacking of Cuzco and which would find its way into the hands of the Spanish royal family.* Mansio’s close friend Alonso de Mesa had fared little better after his arrest some months later, having his arms broken by Toro on the rack.16 Torture and circumstance would soon break the spirit of each of the loyalist prisoners, among them Mansio, and who finally pledged their allegiance to Gonzalo. Among the correspondence dictated by the illiterate Gonzalo is a letter he sent from Quito to Pedro de Soria, his brother Hernando’s factor, who had fled the loyalist rising at Charcas and was at the time in Arequipa, dated 18 October 1545, in which he instructs him: ‘. . . to thank Serra and [Diego] Camacho for what they have done, and for which one day I will reward them’. He ends his letter by telling Soria to remember him to them, ‘and to all my encomenderos and our friends’.17 The only other reference to Mansio’s complicity in the rebellion is recorded by the chronicler Pedro de Cieza de León. He wrote that after Carbajal’s later pursuit of Centeno’s loyalist forces near Lake Titicaca, Carbajal gave Mansio and two other encomenderos permission to return to Cuzco, and that after the three men left his squadron, ‘he entrusted his banner to Pedro Alonso Carrasco, who he appointed his lieutenant commander’.18 It seems likely that Mansio’s desertion to the rebel cause would have earned him a prominent role among Carbajal’s squadron of cavalry, though he would have been allowed little share of the booty Carbajal extracted from his victims in the various settlements of the Bolivian altiplano and Charcas where he pursued Centeno’s loyalists. Centeno’s eventual escape to a cave in the Cuntisuyo, where he remained hidden for almost a year, marked the last semblance of armed resistance to the rebellion.
It was probably after serving in Carbajal’s squadron of cavalry and on his return to Cuzco that Mansio was allowed to repossess his encomienda and mansion. The relative penury in which he found himself, due to the loss of almost two years of tribute from his Indians and the looting of his mansion and lands, probably influenced his decision to seek a dowry in marriage and to discard the Indian mother of his daughter Doña Paula, who was probably ten years old at that time. His son Juan, then twelve years old, was living with his mother Doña Beatriz in Cuzco. The Coya’s husband Pedro de Bustinza had been one of the leading supporters of the rebellion and had helped the Inca Paullu establish the allegiance of the city’s Indian nobility for Gonzalo. The bride Mansio chose was Doña Lucía, the sixteen-year-old daughter of his neighbour the Conquistador Gómez de Mazuelas, who brought him a dowry of 20,000 pesos of gold.19 The marriage took place at Cuzco, possibly towards the end of the year 1546. The little that is recorded of Doña Lucía’s father is that he was born at Valdetorres, in Medellín, Estremadura, the son of Pedro de Mazuelas.20 He is listed as having sailed for the Isthmus on 29 February 1516, and where, sometime before his departure with Almagro’s reinforcements, he married a Spanish woman whose surname was Zuñiga. One of the more elderly encomenderos of Cuzco and a staunch rebel, Mazuelas had been amply rewarded by Gonzalo for his loyalty, as is evident in a letter written by a settler from the region of Titicaca: ‘I recently came across a steward of Gómez de Mazuelas who was on his way to take possession of Don Gómez’s Indians. Handsomely has the governor [Gonzalo] our lord, rewarded him, giving him 25,000 pesos of gold in annual rent, and what he possesses is of such value that it is worth four times what Luis de Alamo and Nuño de Chávez were awarded . . .’21 Mazuelas’ sadistic character is, however, self evident in the description left of him by Pedro de Oñate in his letter to the Emperor Charles V, in which he names him as one of the torturers of the Inca Manco during his imprisonment at the hands of Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro. As for his wife, nothing is known of her, and it is possible she may have died in the Isthmus and that he would have sent for their daughter after the younger Almagro’s defeat at Chupas, where he had fought in the loyalist ranks. That it was a marriage of convenience for the by then 34-year-old hidalgo is confirmed in the letter his father-in-law wrote to Gonzalo Pizarro shortly afterwards, dated 27 February 1547:
My illustrious lord, by other letters I have sent you and which you have not answered, I have already informed your excellency of the events that have taken place here [in Cuzco]. In this letter I will only touch on what has wasted me away, with the little I possess, which is ever at your excellency’s disposal and service . . . as your excellency is by now aware, Mansio Serra de Leguizamón, encomendero of this city, married my daughter, who I would have imagined would have best served your excellency in this city or in the domain of his encomienda, and if he be there, and that be the case, I breathe freely in accepting his departure . . . however, as I know him to be so obsessed with this business of his gambling, I believe he has gone to that city [of Lima] which offers him greater opportunity to be among people of that persuasion; yet not content in merely gambling what he possesses and what he does not possess, he has sold the dwelling of his mansion in this city, which has caused us all here a great deal of trouble, and being informed of this, my daughter, his wife, has petitioned the justices of this city for the tribute he receives from his Indians . . . the justices, nevertheless, have informed me that your excellency has ordered that the tribute be sent to Lima. If your excellency has no need for it in expenditure for your service, I beg it be sent to his wife, even if it be only for her food and sustenance. And this I beg as your servant, for other than it being just, I will also receive some mercy. Our lord, most illustrious excellency, may health and prosperity be yours, whose illustrious hands I kiss . . .22
The gaming tables of Lima, for which Mansio had abandoned his young bride, were more than any other settlement representative of the wealth of the Indies and of the ostentation of its encomendero aristocracy, evident in the richness of their dress and jewellery and beauty of their women, Spanish and Indian, some the daughters, wives and concubines of their loyalist enemies. It was a wealth derived not only from the tribute of their Indians, but from the vast quantity of silver that by then was being mined near Sucre, at a mountain known as Potosí that had recently been discovered. The trade of the colony with the rebel-held Isthmus had also enabled it to continue importing the wines, clothing and other European articles of luxury, stockpiled by Seville’s merchants at Panama and the Caribbean islands, and paid for in gold and silver coin still minted with the effigy of their Habsburg Emperor. Gonzalo’s government of Peru in practice differed little from that of his brother or of Vaca de Castro, and the administration of its settlements and economic prosperity remained virtually unhindered by his rebellion, and was enriched by his appropriation of the Crown’s share of bullion and taxes. His naïve belief, however, that the governorship he had won by force of arms he could eventually retain as a servant of the Crown was not shared by Carbajal, well aware of the fate of Gonzalo’s brother Hernando, who was still languishing in prison in Spain for ordering Almagro’s execution:
My lord, when a viceroy is killed in a pitched battle and his head is struck off and placed on a gibbet, and the battle was against the royal standard, and where there have been as many deaths and as much looting, there is no pardon to be hoped for, and no compromise to be made; even though your lordship makes ample excuses and proves himself more innocent than a suckling babe. Nor can you trust in words or promises, nor whatever assurances be given you, unless, that is, you declare yourself king; and seize the government yourself without waiting for another to offer it to you, and place the crown on your head: allocating whatever land is unoccupied among your friends and adherents; creating them dukes and marquises and counts, such as there are in all the countries of the world, so that they will defend your lordship in order to defend their own estates; . . . and pay no heed if it is said that you are a traitor to the king of Spain: you are not, for as the saying goes, no king is a traitor . . . I beg your lordship to consider carefully my words, and of what I have said about ruling the empire in perpetuity, so that all those who live here will follow you. Finally, I urge you again to crown yourself king . . . die a king. I repeat, and not a vassal . . . for who so ever accepts servitude can merit no better . . .23
At the time none of the rebel encomenderos and conquistadors envisaged that the Crown had either the means or the will to send a battle armada and army half way across the world to reassert its authority. Nor did they believe that the Crown would be able successfully to mobilize reinforcements for such an operation from its settlements in Mexico and Guatemala without the support of the rebel-held Isthmus and of its Pacific fleet. Also it did not seem plausible that such a task force, unfamiliar with the equatorial and Andean terrain, would have survived a campaign against an army equally well armed and supplied with munitions and gunpowder manufactured in the colony. Moreover, they were aware that their appropriation of almost two years of the Crown’s revenue of silver bullion had left Spain’s already precarious financial resources on the brink of bankruptcy. Though the revenue from Peru up to that time is greatly exaggerated – averaging annually the equivalent cost of a single campaign against the city of Metz24 by the imperial army – it was a source that the Spanish Treasury relied upon, and which the Emperor had pledged his German and Italian bankers for several years to come.25 It had also taken almost a year for the news of the rebellion to reach Spain, where the Council of Castile, devoid of military and financial resources, was forced to seek a negotiated settlement.
Towards the end of 1546, a small and frail bearded priest was to arrive in the Atlantic port of Nombre de Dios. A former official of the Inquisition, he had been responsible for the defence of Valencia against the corsairs of the Turkish Admiral Barbarossa, who had ravaged the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Menorca, and in his role as a Crown official had successfully suppressed the threat of an insurrection of the city’s Morisco population. The arrival of Don Pedro de la Gasca had been of little significance to the rebel commander of the port, in which his small squadron of caravels had berthed. Nor had the news of his appointment by the Crown as administrator of Peru, with the title of president of the Audiencia of Lima, caused any alarm to the rebel governor of Panama Pedro de Hinojosa. Forwarding a letter from the Emperor, who had been in Germany at the time the news of the rebellion had been received in Spain, Gasca wrote to Gonzalo informing him also of the decision of the Council of the Indies to repeal the New Laws, and offering him and his supporters a full pardon: pledges that were at first met with polite silence, and later with evasion by Gonzalo. Faced with the humiliation of his virtual isolation, and unable to contact any of the encomenderos of Peru without the co-operation of Hinojosa’s fleet, Gasca over the weeks began an unrelenting correspondence with the rebel leaders of the Isthmus, couched in language varying from appeals to their loyalty, to threats and simple bribery. It was a campaign the middle-aged priest waged from his writing desk in the quarters he had been given in the port, and which would within time bring about the defection of Hinojosa, whom Gasca promised to award one of the richest encomiendas in Peru. The defection secured for Gasca not only the Isthmus, but the surrender of the Pacific fleet, of some twenty-two vessels. It also enabled him for the first time to communicate with the rebel encomenderos. In the months to come, with the same quiet determination he had used in securing the allegiance of Panama’s rebels, he levied an army of invasion, from not only the Isthmus but the Caribbean islands. Its ultimate success, however, he knew depended on his ability to appeal to the feudal loyalty of Peru’s encomenderos as much as to their purses, promising them future awards of Indians and guaranteeing them their lands. What followed was an endless and secret correspondence, smuggled by his caravels into Peru. Carbajal, who had executed a number of encomenderos for being found in possession of Gasca’s correspondence, himself wrote to Gasca:
With what genius does a chaplain, of the intelligence some say you to possess, involve himself in an enterprise not even the king with all his forces is able to suppress, nor is capable of, if not by your worthless decrees and letters filled with lies? What you may consider is that the inducements which made the traitors surrender to you the fleet, selling their lord for money, as did Judas, was only so that they could themselves become lords, and you, their chaplain . . . and let us hope that your sins will in time bring you safely into my hands . . .26
The effect of Gasca’s correspondence soon became evident in risings at Puerto Viejo on the equatorial coast, at Trujillo and Chachapoyas, in the central Andes. In May 1547, Diego de Centeno, who had been in hiding in the Cuntisuyo, also raised the royal standard, and with the support of loyalists from Charcas captured Cuzco. Almost at the same time the city of Arequipa declared for the Crown, imprisoning its rebel governor Lucas Martínez Vegazo, who was brought to Cuzco in chains. Aware by now of what was amounting to a mass desertion, and of the landing at Túmbez of Gasca’s armada of 18 vessels, numbering 820 volunteers and Isthmian soldiers, Gonzalo evacuated Lima. Carbajal was ordered to join him at Arequipa with his squadrons of horse and infantry, which had been securing silver from the Charcas and the new silver mines discovered at Potosí. With his combined force now reduced to under 500 men, Gonzalo began his retreat towards the Bolivian altiplano, and with the intention of crossing the southern Andes to the settlement at Santiago, in Chile. It was a decision Carbajal vehemently opposed, believing that only victory on the field would save the rebellion. Gonzalo’s retreat was to lead to the desertion of a further number of encomenderos. Among the deserters was Mansio, who on his return to the loyalist-held Cuzco was appointed one of its regidores and charged with the city’s defence.27 Informed of the ret
reat of the rebel army, Centeno, who had been reinforced by a large contingent of men from the Charcas and the Collasuyo, positioned his troops, of some 460 horse and 540 infantry, near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca, cutting off Gonzalo’s retreat south.
At first light of the morning of 20 October 1547, the two armies faced one another on the plains of Huarina. Amid the bleak and windswept landscape of the Andean plateau, the loyalist infantry slowly advanced towards the rebel positions. At a distance of some hundred paces Carbajal’s arquebusiers opened fire, refiring for a second and third time with the spare muskets he had ordered them to load beforehand. Positioning his outnumbered pikemen in the formation of squares, time and again he resisted the overwhelming superiority of Centeno’s cavalry, and by advancing his arquebusiers he was finally able to break the loyalist positions, horses and men fleeing for their lives.28 The engagement left 350 of Centeno’s men dead and was considered the bloodiest of all the wars of the Conquest. The chronicler Diego Fernández claimed that Carbajal, accompanied by two of his Negro slaves, toured the battlefield, clubbing to death the loyalist wounded. The news of the defeat of Centeno, who had been suffering from pleurisy and had watched the battle from his litter, and who had managed to make his escape with a small company of horse, was to reach Cuzco with the arrival of the armoured figure of its Bishop Juan Solano, whose brother had been killed by Carbajal. Though Mansio had been able to send his young wife and their year-old daughter to the safety of his encomienda in the Cuntisuyo, he was nevertheless taken prisoner by Gonzalo’s captain Juan de la Torre, who shortly afterwards entered the city with a squadron of arquebusiers, as the loyalist prisoner Hernando de Cespedes recorded: ‘. . . Mansio Serra suffered much ill-treatment and torture for his stance, and for not wishing to go with Gonzalo to the battle at Huarina; and this is known to me for I had been taken prisoner at the battle and brought to Cuzco by Gonzalo Pizarro when he had come there carrying the royal standard of the captain Diego de Centeno’.29
The Last Conquistador Page 13
