Don Juan Nino de Tavora

[In the margin:  “This matter is reserved for the inspection or residencia of the marquis of Cerralbo.  The decree.”]

[Endorsed:  “Read and decreed September 15, 1633.”]

II

Military affairs

Sire: 

I am duly grateful that your Majesty ordered the letters which I wrote from here in the years 28 and 29 to be examined in that your Council of War of the Yndias.  Your Majesty has answered them, and has done me honor in accordance with your usual custom toward those who serve you.  And thus with new courage I pray God that He may give me life and better health in order to serve you.  I have for a year back been in so poor health, by reason of great exhaustion and weakness, that I greatly fear that I shall not be able to leave this place.  If I shall not do that, I shall have fulfilled my duty by giving my life in the service of your Majesty.  Your Majesty knows that I am not fit for the burden of government since the death of Dona Magdalena, who is in heaven.  Everything has been hardship for me; and I have become so exhausted that I can scarce rise from my bed, and I have been very near my end twice or thrice.  May God fulfil His will, and may your Majesty be pleased to give orders that I be relieved, if you wish affairs to be safe here; for surely the country will be very quickly in the power of the auditors, if some person does not come from there who will not let it be lost.  If God give me life, I shall be contented even with retiring to the post with which your Majesty has favored me, as your commissary of war.  Notwithstanding that I assure your Majesty as your faithful vassal, and as a person who would prefer to lose a thousand lives than to utter one falsehood to his king, that the Filipinas have been worth nothing to me, during the six years of my residence herein; but rather I have lost the twenty thousand pesos which I have spent from the dowry that Dona Magdalena brought me.  And had not our Lord been pleased to give me a son (at whose birth she died), she would not have had enough whereby to have returned safely home to her parents.  I confess that it must seem to politicians that one does not come so far not to gain a bit of bread; but it is certain that if one is to serve your Majesty to the letter, and live as a Christian, it is difficult to acquire much property.  I arrived at these islands very deeply pledged, for the expenses of the Indias are heavy.  I brought many men, so that they might serve your Majesty here.  I have carried myself in accordance with the honor which your Majesty bestowed upon me; and, consequently, I have not been able to save enough from my salary to pay the expenses of the return (if God grants me life).  I am anxious; for it is not right to spend the possessions of this child.  If some accommodation, in some of the ways that my agents will represent there, were to be allowed me for this purpose, I would appreciate it; for that would enable me to take from here something with which to serve your Majesty in Europa.