How the captain Alonso de Alvarado, on getting the news of Pero Alvarez Holguin, sent another messenger to Vaca de Castro urging him to come to where the camp was with all possible speed.

IT was very fortunate for Vaca de Castro that he should have found so much loyalty¹ in the Realm; and that now that Don Diego had usurped² the government of the provinces, his Majesty³ the King our Lord should have had vassals⁴ of a kind who would not countenance⁵ so weighty an offence, nor allow any one to occupy the Realm against his royal pleasure.

Although his Majesty has pronounced the battle that was fought at Chupas to have been just, I will not, in my book, term Don Diego and his followers⁶ traitors⁷, for two reasons; as to which, if they are not evident, I submit to correction by those wise and learned men who understand these things better than I do. I say then, that the principal reason is that Vaca de Castro brought no mandate⁸ or commission to fight a battle. The second is that Don Diego and his followers would have supported Vaca de Castro if the latter had not joined with Pero Alvarez; and further, because the object of the Chile party, at first, was to avenge⁹ the death of the Adelantado by murdering[179] the Marquis,[97] and if the King should not think fit to pardon them, to retire into the most remote interior. It may be true that they committed a great mistake in that, at the time that they murdered the Marquis, they took the wands of Office from the Alcaldes of Lima, and gave them to men of their own choice: an ill-judged action.

But to return to our subject. Alonso de Alvarado had collected all the men within his reach, and had sent his messengers to Vaca de Castro; but when he knew that Pero Alvarez Holguin, with the people of Cuzco and Plata were approaching him, he

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