Having Defeated These In Battle, He Continued His March To The Bridge Of Abancay[11], Continually Harassed By The Indians.

At that place he learned that Ferdinand and Gonzalo Pizarro had been imprisoned by Almagro, who had taken possession of Cuzco; on which he resolved to halt where he then was till he might receive precise orders from the marquis for his farther proceedings.

When Almagro was informed of the arrival of Alfonso Alvarado at Abancay, he sent Diego Alvarado to wait upon him, attended by seven or eight horsemen, with orders to notify his commission as governor in these parts. Alfonso, after examining the commission, declared that he did not consider himself competent to decide upon an affair of such high importance, and that the documents ought to be communicated to the marquis. Almagro had come part of the way from Cuzco towards the camp of Alvarado, where he waited the return of his messenger; and not seeing him at the time he expected, he became afraid that Alvarado had detained him and might advance to Cuzco by another road. He returned therefore to Cuzco in all haste to provide for his defence. Learning the discontent of Lerma, on account of having been superseded in the command of the army by the marquis, and that he was disposed to come over to his side with eighty men, Almagro marched out from Cuzco with his troops a fortnight afterwards, and advanced towards the army of Alfonso Alvarado. While on the march, the advanced guard belonging to Almagro, by means of an ambush, made Pedro Alvarez Holguin prisoner, who had been sent out on discovery by Alvarado. On learning this circumstance, Alvarado meant to have arrested Pedro de Lerma, as he entertained suspicions that he was in correspondence with Almagro; but Lerma had previously escaped to the enemy, carrying along with him the signatures of all those who had joined him in the plot for deserting to Almagro.

After the junction of Lerma, Almagro approached during the night to the bridge of Abancay with one part of his army, where he knew that Gomez de Tordoya and a son of Colonel Vilalva waited for him; and he detached at the same time a large body of his troops to a ford of the river, where those who had conspired in his favour along with Lerma had the guard. By these men the troops of Almagro were received as friends, so that they passed the river without opposition. Some of these conspirators contrived during the night to throw above fifty lances belonging to the cavalry of Alvarado into the river. Owing to all these circumstances, when Alvarado proposed next morning to have attacked the enemy, he found himself abandoned by the conspirators; and a considerable number of his own troops, not being able to find their arms, did not come up in time for the attack. By these means Almagro got an easy and bloodless victory, not a single Spaniard being killed on either side, Rodrigo Orgognez only losing several of his teeth by a stone thrown from a sling[12]. After the capture of Alfonso Alvarado, the Almagrians pillaged his camp, and carried all the adherents of Pizarro as prisoners to Cuzco, where they were harshly treated.

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