"But though the troops in Peru served without, any regular pay, they were raised at an immense expence. Among men accustomed to divide the spoil of an opulent country, the desire of obtaining wealth acquired incredible force. The ardour of pursuit augmented in proportion to the hope of success. Where all were intent on the same object, and under the dominion of the same passion, there was but one mode of gaining men, or of securing their attachment. Officers of name and influence, besides the promise of future establishments, received large gratuities in hand from the chief with whom they engaged. Gonzalo Pizarro, in order to raise a thousand men, advanced five hundred thousand pesos. Gasca expended in levying the troops which he led against Pizarro nine hundred thousand pesos. The distributions of property, bestowed as the reward of services, were still more exorbitant. Cepeda as the reward of his perfidy, in persuading the court of royal audience to give the sanction of its authority to the usurped jurisdiction of Pizarro, received a grant of lands which yielded an annual income of an hundred and fifty thousand pesos. Hinojosa, who, by his early defection from Pizarro, and surrender of the feet to Gasca, decided the fate of Peru, obtained a district of country affording two hundred thousand pesos of yearly value. While such rewards were dealt out to the principal officers, with more than royal munificence, proportional shares were conferred on those of inferior rank."
"Such a rapid change of fortune produced its natural effects. It gave birth to new wants, and new desires. Veterans, long accustomed to hardship and toil, acquired of a sudden a taste for profuse and inconsiderate dissipation and indulged in all the excesses of military licentiousness. The riot of low debauchery occupied some; a relish for expensive luxuries spread among others. The meanest soldier in Peru would have thought himself degraded by marching on foot; and, at a time when the price of horses in that country was exorbitant, each individual insisted on being furnished with one before he would take the field. But, though less patient under the fatigues and hardships of service, they were ready to face danger and death with as much intrepidity as ever; and, animated by the hope of new rewards, they never failed, on the day of battle, to display all their ancient valour."
"Together with their courage, they retained all the ferocity by which they were originally distinguished. Civil discord never raged with a more fell spirit than among the Spaniards in Peru. To all the passions which usually envenom contests among countrymen, avarice was added, and rendered their enmity more rancorous. Eagerness to seize the valuable forfeitures expected upon the death of every opponent, shut the door against mercy. To be wealthy was, of itself, sufficient to expose a man to accusation, or to subject him to punishment. On the slightest suspicions, Pizarro condemned many of the most opulent inhabitants of Peru to death. Carvajal, without searching for any pretext to justify his cruelty, cut off many more. The number of those who suffered by the hand of the executioner, was not much inferior to what fell in the field; and the greater part was condemned without the formality of any legal trial."
"The violence with which the contending parties treated their opponents was not accompanied by its usual attendants, attachment and fidelity to those with whom they acted. The ties of honour, which ought to be held sacred among men, and the principle of integrity, interwoven as thoroughly in the Spanish character as in that of any nation, seem to have been equally forgotten. Even regard for decency, and the sense of shame, were totally abandoned. During these dissensions, there was hardly a Spaniard in Peru who did not abandon the party which he had originally espoused, betray the associates with whom he had united, and violate the engagements under which he had come. The viceroy Nunnez Vela was ruined by the treachery of Cepeda and the other judges of the royal audience, who were bound to have supported his authority. The chief advisers and companions of Gonzalo Pizarro in his revolt were the first to forsake him, and submit to his enemies. His fleet was given up to Gasca, by the man whom he had singled out among his officers to entrust with that important command. On the day that was to decide his fate, an army of veterans, in sight of the enemy, threw down their arms without striking a blow, and deserted a leader who had often conducted them to victory. Instances of such general and avowed contempt of the principles and obligations which attach man to man, and bind them in social union, rarely occur in history. It is only where men are far removed from the seat of government, where the restraints of law and order are little felt, where the prospect of gain is unbounded, and where immense wealth may cover the crimes by which it is acquired, that we can find any parallel to the levity, the rapaciousness, the perfidy, and corruption prevalent among the Spaniards in Peru."
Among those who were dissatisfied with the distribution of the repartimientos in Peru by the president, was Francisco Hernandez Giron, to whom De la Gasca granted a commission to make a conquest of the district called the Cunchos, to the north-east of Cuzco, and beyond one of the great chains of the Andes, with the title and authority of governor and captain-general of that country, which he engaged to conquer at his own expence. Giron was much gratified by this employment, as it afforded him a favourable opportunity for fomenting and exciting a new rebellion against the royal authority, which he had long meditated, and which he actually put in execution, as will be seen in the sequel. Immediately after the departure of the president from Peru, he went from Lima to Cuzco publishing the commission which he had received, and appointed several captains to raise men for his intended expedition in Guamanga, Arequipa, La Paz, and other places; while he personally 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.