How the men of Chile plotted to murder the Marquis, and how one of them named Francisco de Herencia gave notice of it at confession. Of the great heedlessness of the Marquis, and of what further happened until those of Chile went out to kill him.

HAPPY should I be if I could get through some part of my story without having to relate mournful things and cruel deaths, but we cannot make the pen shun or turn back from the work we have commenced; for my writing is not to please the living, but to be a faithful witness of what happened, for future ages. Now I have to tell the story of the death of the Marquis Don Francisco Pizarro, a fate in no way fitted for a man of such great merits—and who had served his royal master so long in those Indies, and who in his own person had discovered so great, rich, and prosperous a country as Peru is; where such great riches of gold and silver, unequalled in any other part of the world, have been found. But there was the death of the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro, which he could have prevented if he had so willed. ¹