then held as an officer of the crown, which he had not done hitherto on account of the subsisting disturbances in the country.  Lastly, the viceroy charged against him, that having entrusted Suarez at the very beginning of the troubles with certain dispatches for his brother, the licentiate Carvajal, who then dwelt at Cuzco, intended for procuring intelligence by his means of what was going on in that city, he had never given or procured any answer on that subject; although it must certainly have been easy for him to have procured intelligence from his brother, by means of the Indian vassals of both, and by those belonging to the king who were at his disposal officially, all of whom dwelt on the road between Lima and Cuzco.”  Besides that all these allegations carry very little weight in themselves, as evidences of the presumptive guilt of Suarez, none of them were ever satisfactorily established by legal proof.

As the viceroy found that all his affairs had turned out unfortunate, and that every person seemed much discontented in consequence of the death of Suarez, he changed his intention of waiting for Gonzalo Pizarro at Lima, which he had caused fortify in that view with ramparts and bastions.  He now resolved to retire to the city of Truxillo, about eighty leagues from Lima, and entirely to abandon and even to dispeople the city of Lima; in the execution of this project he meant to send the invalids, old persons, women, children, and all the valuable effects and baggage belonging to the inhabitants by sea to Truxillo, for which purpose he had sufficient shipping, and to march all who were able to carry arms by land, taking along with him all the European inhabitants of every settlement in the plain between Lima and Truxillo; and sending off all the Indian population of the plain to the mountainous region.  By these decisive measures, he hoped to reduce the adherents of Gonzalo Pizarro to such straits, by depriving them of every possible succour and refreshment, after the fatigues of a long and painful march, encumbered with baggage and artillery, as might constrain them to disband their army, when they might find the whole way between Lima and Truxillo reduced to a desert entirely devoid of provisions.  The viceroy considered himself under the necessity of employing these strong measures, as some of his people deserted from him almost daily to the enemy, in proportion as the insurgents approached towards Lima.

In pursuance of this resolution, on Tuesday the 15th of September, two days after the slaughter of the commissary Suarez, the viceroy gave orders to Diego Alvarez de Cueto, with a party of horse, to convey the children of the late Marquis Pizarro on board ship, and to remain in charge of them and the licentiate Vaca de Castro.  On this occasion, he gave the command of the fleet to Cueto, being afraid lest Don Antonio de Ribera and his wife, who then had the charge of young Don Gonzalo and his brothers, children of