beat up for volunteers in Cuzco.  Being a man of popular manners and much beloved among the soldiers, he soon drew together above two hundred men.  So great a number of the most loose and dissolute inhabitants being collected together at Cuzco and in arms, they took extreme liberty in canvassing the late events, and to speak with much licentiousness respecting the president and the officers he had left in the government of the kingdom.  Their discourse was so open and scandalous, that the magistrates of the city deemed it necessary to interpose; and Juan de Saavedra, who was then mayor or regidor of Cuzco, requested Giron to depart upon his intended expedition without delay, that the peaceable inhabitants might no longer be scandalized by the seditious discourses of his soldiers, as most of them were quartered upon the citizens to whom they behaved with much insolence.

I was then in Cuzco, though a boy, when Giron and his soldiers made their first disturbance; and I was present also about three years afterwards at their second mutiny; and, though I had not even then attained the age of a young man, I was sufficiently able to notice and understand the observations and discourses of my father on the various events which occurred; and I can testify that the soldiers behaved in so proud and insolent a manner that the magistrates were forced to take notice of their conduct.  The soldiers thought proper to be much offended on this occasion, pretending that no one ought to have any authority over them except Giron under whose command they had inlisted; and they carried their mutinous insolence to such a height as to assemble in arms at the house of their commander to protect themselves against the magistrates.  When this mutiny was known in the city, the magistrates and citizens found themselves obliged to arm, and being joined by many soldiers who were not of the faction, they took post in the market-place.  The mutineers drew up likewise in the street where Giron’s house stood, at no great distance from the market-place; and in this manner both parties remained under arms for two days and nights, always on the point of coming to action; which had certainly been the case if some prudent persons had not interposed between them, and prevailed on the magistrates to enter into a treaty for compromising their differences.  The most active persons on this occasion were Diego de Silva, Diego Maldonado the rich, Garcilasso de la Vega my father, Vasco de Guevara, Antonio Quinnones, Juan de Berrio, Jeronimo de Loyasa, Martin de Meneses, and Francisco Rodriguez.  By their persuasions the regidor Juan de Saavedra and Captain Francisco Hernandez Giron were induced to meet in the great church, on which occasion the soldiers demanded four hostages for the security of their commander.  In this conference Giron behaved with so much insolence and audacity, that Saavedra had assuredly arrested him if he had not been restrained from respect for the hostages, of whom my father was one.  In a second conference in the evening, under the same precautions, Giron agreed to remove his soldiers from the city, to give up eight of the most mutinous of his soldiers to the magistrates, and even to make compearance in person before the court to answer for his conduct during the mutiny.