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