SOURCE: Green, Otis H. “Notes on the Pizarro Trilogy of Tirso de Molina.” Hispanic Review 4, No. 3 (July 1936): 201-25.

[In the following essay, Green argues that Tirso's trilogy Las hazañas de los Pizarros is designed to rehabilitate the family name of the Pizarros, principal conquerors of Peru.]

The reader of the three plays which comprise Tirso's trilogy Las hazañas de los Pizarros¹ is at once struck by the fact that the historical material is treated in a manner differing widely from that employed in La prudencia en la mujer.² As Hartzenbusch remarked in 1842,

… son tres comedias en que está compendiada la historia del conquistador del Perú y la de sus hermanos Hernando y Gonzalo: la del último está muy desfigurada, y en los tres dramas se descubre el empeño de engrandecer a esta ilustre familia más de lo que necesita y más de lo que permite la verdad. Francisco Pizarro, héroe de la primera parte, no está pintado en el teatro de sus glorias, sino en España: los amores de su padre, y la niñez, adolescencia y singulares travesuras del hijo llenan los tres actos de la comedia, que acaba siendo de edad de quince años el que después había de destruir imperios y fundar ciudades.³

It is not a question of an heroic personage or an heroic episode in Spain's history that the dramatist endeavors to re-create; on the contrary, his selection and suppression of incidents, as well as the whole pyramidic structure of the trilogy, point to an ulterior motive: the vindication of the Conqueror's brothers Gonzalo and Hernando and the glorification of his descendants, represented at the time the plays were written by the first Marqués de la Conquista, Don Juan Hernando Pizarro. The trilogy becomes understandable and acquires meaning when it is assumed that we are dealing with occasional plays,⁴ a pageant in three parts prepared by Tirso to commemorate the creation, in 1631, of this title—a revival of the title of Marqués en Indias which Francisco had possessed during his lifetime but which ceased to exist at his death.

Before examining the plays themselves it will be necessary to review certain facts. Francisco Pizarro's marquisate, though officially granted by the Emperor in 1537, remained an empty honor, since the 20,000 Indians over whom he was to have had control were never definitely specified.⁵ Owing to excesses commited in the civil wars in Peru the Pizarro family fell into disfavor and for two generations no attempt was made to revive the title. By 1625, however, public opinion was more concerned with the fabulous riches of Peru than with the manner of its conquest, and accordingly Juan Hernando Pizarro⁶ directed a memorial to Philip IV, requesting that the marquisate be revived and that recompense be made for the 20,000 vassals originally promised. A second memorial was prepared in 1628⁷ and in 1630 the King ordered that the petitioner be granted a marquisate in Spain, its location to be determined by the new marquis. In accordance with these terms, Juan Hernando Pizarro chose in 1631 the town of La Zarza, near Trujillo in Extremadura and assumed the title of Marqués de la Conquista.⁸

The revival of this title was accomplished in the face of difficulties. In the first place, there were the historians and their attitude toward the Conquest in general. The first chroniclers of Pizarro, who wrote while the events were fresh, justify on the grounds of expediency such acts as the murder of Atahualpa, while those who wrote later generally condemn the Pizarros and López de Gómara declares their ruin to be a case of Divine retribution for their sins.⁹ In the second place, it was necessary to prove to the satisfaction of the King and the Royal Council that Gonzalo Pizarro, though beheaded as a traitor, had merely defended his legitimate rights and that Hernando Pizarro had been innocent of the charges which caused his imprisonment for twenty years in the Mota of Medina del Campo. The defense necessary to overcome these obstacles and to vindicate the Pizarro name is found, to my knowledge, in two places only: in the Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo of Pizarro y Orellana, chief counsel for the family in the legal battle for reinstatement of the title,¹⁰ and in the three plays now under consideration. It may be regarded as certain that the dramatist consulted this work in manuscript and used it as a principal source.

Tirso's residence in Trujillo, birthplace of the Pizarros, as Comendador of the convent of his Order (1626-1629?) could scarcely have failed to bring him into contact with the descendants of the Conqueror, since existing documents show a close relation between the Trujillo convent and the Pizarro y Orellana family.¹¹ His stay there coincided almost exactly with the period when the marquisate was pending, i.e. 1625-31. The Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo, while not published until 1639, was completed in 1631, as the censura shows, and the Discurso legal annexed to it is dated 1625. That this material, before its publication, was placed at the disposal of Tirso is evident from the following facts: both its author and the author of our plays sacrifice all other considerations to the presentation of an eloquent apology for the Pizarro family as a whole; they both are less concerned with the principal hero—Francisco Pizarro—than with his brother Hernando, since Francisco left no male heirs and the title descended through Hernando;¹² they both struggle desperately with historical fact in an effort to clear Gonzalo Pizarro of the charge of treason; and they both introduce incidents and arguments not found in other sources. The fact that Tirso did not limit himself to the numerous accounts of the Conquest that were readily available but consulted the manuscripts and papers of the Pizarros' chief advocate is of itself additional evidence connecting his trilogy with the restoration of the marquisate in 1631.

The first of the plays, Todo es dar en una cosa, is scarcely more than an overture. It presents the fantastic mocedades of Francisco Pizarro and ends, before he has left his native Extremadura, with only a suggestion of future greatness. Entirely outside the limits of serious history, it is a combination of legend and the poet's imagination.

According to López de Gómara the discoverer of Peru was a bastard son of Gonzalo Pizarro, captain of the King's troops in Navarre, was abandoned at the door of a church in Trujillo, and was suckled by a sow until another nurse was provided. Later recognized by his father, he was treated with neglect and was set to watch a herd of pigs. One day the pigs strayed and were lost and Francisco, fearing the consequences, walked to Seville and took ship for Santo Domingo. This story is ignored by other historians of the Conquest with the exception of Garcilaso de la Vega, the Inca, who contradicts it (II, iii, 9), stating that the Conqueror, though a bastard, was acknowledged immediately by his parents and that later the father arranged an honorable marriage for the woman in question.

The amount of fact and fancy in all of this is made clear by Cúneo-Vidal, who reconstructs the details of Francisco's birth on the basis of the información sobre el Hábito de Santiago para Francisco Pizarro (1529). Gonzalo Pizarro, hidalgo de solar conocido, and ensign in the King's army, seduced one Francisca González, a peasant girl who served the noble sisters of the convent of San Francisco el Real in Trujillo, whose walls were adjacent to those of his own home.¹³ Forced by circumstances, Francisca appealed to Inés Alonso, “la barragana,” who served as midwife—“le vido nascer,” as we read in the información. Ensign Gonzalo had in the meantime gone to Italy, and did not legitimize his son.¹⁴

These facts were unpalatable to Pizarro y Orellana, the family panegyrist, who in his Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo (p. 186) complains of the historians who “dudan de su nacimiento.” That Tirso should have turned to them, and to the legends which grew out of them, rather than to the exploits of “los trece de la fama” proves, strange as it may seem, that he too is a panegyrist. The achievements of Francisco Pizarro were known to all in 1631. It was sufficient merely to suggest the Conquest, leaving it as a dream in the mind of a boy, in order to hasten on to the rehabilitation of the beheaded Gonzalo and the imprisoned Hernando. At the same time, it was possible to raise the seduction of Francisca González to the level of a comedia de capa y espada, suffusing the whole with the spirit of Castilian hidalguía and placing Francisco Pizarro in the company of such worthies as Moses and Romulus. It was this course that Tirso chose.

He has therefore given a poetized version of Gómara's account. The country wench Francisca González becomes Doña Beatriz Cabezas, beneath whose window Ensign Gonzalo Pizarro wounds another galán who, through an error, has challenged him. The father of Doña Beatriz, assuming that this affair concerns the honor of his elder daughter Margarita, spirits the wounded man away to his farm—La Zarza—in the hope that he may recover and, marrying the girl, preserve untarnished the family's good name. Having arrived at La Zarza he is approached by a veiled woman who asks him to receive as a sacred trust an object to be found in a hollow tree. He promises as a gallant gentleman, little suspecting that he is speaking to his younger daughter Beatriz who, with a cunning akin to that of Moses' sister, has taken this means of guaranteeing the safety of her new-born son. A nurse is found to replace the goat that up to that time has suckled the child, and Doña Beatriz herself is told to supervise its care—a second reminiscence of the story of Moses. The foundling is Francisco Pizarro.

In the second act, he is twelve years old. His father, blinded by jealousy of the man he had wounded, had joined the Spanish forces in Italy¹⁵ and has now returned to find Doña Beatriz married to another man.¹⁶ Francisco is introduced, in enigmatical terms, to Gonzalo, feels the fuerza de la sangre, and ponders: Is this strange man his father?

The boy has grown up violent. Unable or unwilling to learn his letters,¹⁷ he stabs his teacher for calling him a bastard and runs off to La Zarza to be hidden by his old nurse. There he performs feats of strength and continues as pugnacious as ever.

It happens that the Catholic Sovereigns pass through Trujillo. So does Hernán Cortés, the future conqueror of Mexico, as he goes to join the army marching against Portugal. He arrives at La Zarza at the moment when the young Francisco is resisting arrest for the recent stabbing, holding his pursuers at bay with a ball used in bowling.¹⁸ Cortés seeks to gain possession of the ball and as the two contend for it the oaken sphere is pulled in two, each retaining his half. Cortés exclaims:

¿Quién eres, rapaz valiente
que tanta fuerza has tenido?

and Pizarro in turn:

Mas ¿quién sois vos, que habéis sido
para tanto?(19)

Here there is obvious symbolism. The ball is the New World, which the two heroes of the Conquest will divide between themselves.

At this juncture Doña Beatriz reveals to Francisco the circumstances of his birth, telling him that his legitimization is now impossible and urging him to be the son of his own exploits. Her words sink deep. The parted ball is half a world. He will conquer it or die in the attempt. There is something of epic grandeur in this boy's soliloquy.

In the third act, Francisco is an ensign in the Castilian army. He has distinguished himself in the war with Portugal,²⁰ and is returning to Trujillo to prevent his father's marriage to Doña Beatriz de Mendoza.²¹ On the way, he has occasion to defend his father from an attack by assassins, of whom they kill two. Learning that his father's marriage has already taken place, he is inclined to fight the man by whom he considers himself wronged. Only filial respect restrains him. But he will have none of such paternity. Instead, he will make a name for himself in the new world which even then Columbus is hoping to discover.

In the last scenes of the play the two Pizarros appear before the Queen to give an account of the deaths for which they have become responsible. Isabella keeps them under arrest pending an investigation and offers the boy a captaincy if what he says is true. At this point, and with nothing concluded, the action breaks off with the promise of a comedia segunda.

The whole conception of a young Pizarro obsessed by the determination to carve an empire for himself is counter to history: “Ya Pizarro tocaba en los umbrales de la vejez, sin haberse señalado por cosa alguna que en él anunciase el destructor de un grande imperio …”²² It is, however, very characteristic of Tirso. It is another example of that championing of the bastard with which Doña Blanca de los Ríos sought to bolster her arguments concerning the “enigma” of Tirso's birth.²³ And, as already pointed out, the play thus conceived serves admirably as a pedestal for the super-structure that is to be added. The realization of Francisco's dream is left to the imagination, and in the comedia segunda we pass at once to the desperate attempt of his brother Gonzalo to defend, consolidate and retain for his family the territories already won from the Inca.

This second play of the trilogy, Amazonas en las Indias, is concerned with the civil wars in Peru and with a defense of Gonzalo Pizarro. It will therefore be necessary to state briefly the historical situation. The conquerors of the country had quarrelled and Diego Almagro, the elder, had been captured and put to death by Hernando Pizarro. A group of conspirators had gathered around his son, Diego Almagro the younger, had murdered Francisco Pizarro, and sent representatives to the Emperor to maintain the claims of their chief and demand redress. To offset their influence Hernando Pizarro had gone to Spain and had been thrown into prison. The Government, regarding the Peruvian situation as dangerous, sent a commissioner—the Licenciate Vaca de Castro—to study the situation, co-operate with Pizarro in the redress of grievances, and, in case of the latter's death, to act as royal governor. In September, 1542, he met and defeated at Chupas the younger Almagro, who was condemned by a council of war and executed. Still greater troubles were brewing.

In that same year, through the efforts of Bartolomé de las Casas, a council was called at Valladolid to devise a system of laws for governing the American colonies.²⁴ The result of its labors was a new code so drastic in its reforms that in Peru it provoked revolution. It seemed to all that the King was threatening the encomenderos with ruin and also depriving the Pizarros of their rights by placing the government in the hands of a viceroy, Blasco Núñez Vela, a man who proved incompetent to handle the situation. Alarmed by his high-handed measures, the encomenderos appealed to Gonzalo Pizarro and made him Procurator-General of Peru. Step by step he was led, both by events and by his own folly, into acts of rebellion until he found himself in open warfare against the representative of his King. Blasco Núñez Vela was killed in the battle of Añaquito (1546).

This insurrection appeared to the Spanish authorities more formidable than the war of the Comunidades, but owing to the difficulty of the situation a conciliatory policy was decided on. Toward the end of 1545 an ecclesiastic named Pedro de la Gasca was ordered to Peru to restore the country to its allegiance. Negotiation failing, he marched against Gonzalo Pizarro in 1548, routed his forces at Xaquixaguana, and on the following day, on the scene of the battle, ordered him beheaded as a traitor.

We are now prepared to consider Tirso's treatment of these facts in his attempt to clear Gonzalo's name. The title of our play, Amazonas en las Indias, calls for explanation. There has existed for centuries a legend of the existence of Amazons, that is, of a race of warlike women, in the New World. It was originated by Francisco de Orellana, who broke away from Gonzalo Pizarro on the expedition into the land of the cinnamon trees (jornada de la canela), sailed down the Amazon instead of returning to his captain, reached the Island of Trinidad and went from there to Spain, claiming for himself the territory he had discovered. To make his relación the more astounding, he stated that in those forests he found a race of women of great valor whose customs were essentially the same as those of the Amazons of classical literature.²⁵ This tradition is reported briefly by the historian Zárate (BAE, XXVI, 494) and is scoffed at by Gómara (BAE, XXII, 210). Father Acuña says simply “time will discover the truth,” and Garcilaso the Inca, “I can neither believe nor affirm owing to the difficulty of discovering the truth.”²⁶

Tirso took this tale no more seriously²⁷ than did Juan de Castellanos, who in 1589 published in heroic verse his Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias in which he laughs to scorn “la gran patraña” (BAE, IV, 157-8). But our dramatist had good reasons for introducing Amazons into his story. They enabled him to meet the natural requirements of the comedia—gallantry, love making, novelesque interest—and they provided him with a means of foretelling the future, so necessary to his main purpose: to write a pageant commemorating the restoration of the Pizarros' title of nobility. He therefore makes use of Orellana's “patraña,” gives his own explanation of the origin of his “Amazons,” and expands the type by giving it the attributes of the Peruvian oracles.²⁸ He also uses them as a counterpart of the chorus in Greek tragedy, in this play which, in the appeal to the senado, he classes as a tragedia.

It was Francisco de Orellana rather than Gonzalo Pizarro who was reported to have passed through the country of the Amazons, but Pizarro y Orellana had already connected Gonzalo's name with the legend. In his Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo he annexes to Gonzalo's biography a Vida postuma de la buena opinion de Gončalo Pičarro: Paralela panegirica de Gončalo Pičarro al gran Pompeyo in which he speaks of “aquella … Conquista de las Amačonas, dõde aventajò a Põpeyo; porq. si en la batalla ˜q tuvo con los Albanos los desampararon, este las quebrantò las leyes de su voluntad; pues fuera de los tièpos en ˜q barbaro govierno las niega habitar con hombres, descubriò sus reinos, hallò … su habitacion, y su osada bizarria, padeciendo tantos trabajos …”²⁹ That Tirso obtained his idea from this source is a reasonable inference from the fact that Pizarro y Orellana gives as a reference (p. 352) the only classical work that contains both of the proper names—Martesia, Melanipe (Menalipe)—used by our dramatist: Justinus' Historia universalis, lib. II.³⁰

In the first scenes of the play we find Gonzalo Pizarro in the land of the Amazons fighting with these women but gallantly refusing to wound them even when hard pressed. One of them, Martesia, when asked how it is that she speaks Spanish, mentions Hercules, and even knows the names of the explorers themselves, replies that she is an oracle and that by her prophetic powers she can read the past and future. Thereupon her sister, Menalipe, Queen of the Amazons, tells the story of her race: its origin, its conquests and defeats, and finally the storm that blew an Amazon fleet across the Atlantic and up the river that bears their name.³¹ Martesia, in very un-Amazon fashion, has fallen in love with Gonzalo's captain, Francisco de Carvajal, and begs him to stay there and love her, offering to renounce Amazon principles.³² In like manner, Gonzalo has fallen in love with Menalipe, who resists his advances until she wounds him, when pity opens the way for love.³³ They tell the Spaniards not to go back. Carvajal, Martesia says, will be beheaded if he returns, but he considers it a thing of the devil and refuses to believe. Pizarro also is warned of envy and danger if he goes back to Peru.³⁴ He, loving Menalipe as he does, would be willing enough to stay, but he must go. Loyalty calls him—loyalty to his king, to his religion. He promises, however, to carry her tale to the Emperor and to ask his permission to marry her. She warns him again against false friends,³⁵ and they part.

This prophecy constitutes a Leitmotiv which reappears as the drama progresses. From this point onward the Amazons fade into the background, coming forward at intervals in an effort to avert the disasters which they foresee,³⁶ and finally to lament Gonzalo's death and to prophesy the future glories of the Pizarros.

In Scene V the younger Almagro exults at the turn fortune has taken. His conspirators have avenged the death of his father by killing Francisco Pizarro. Hernando Pizarro, at whose order the elder Almagro was put to the garrote, is a prisoner in Spain; and Gonzalo is far away in the Cinnamon country. The young rebel would be Monarch of the Andes:

                                                            si provoco
a España y a su Rey, España intente
quitarme la corona de la frente.

As the brief act ends he prepares to march against the royal commissioner Vaca de Castro.

Considerable time elapses before the beginning of the next act. We learn that in this interim the battle of Chupas has been won by Vaca de Castro and that the young Almagro has died a traitor's death. A herald announces:

Parabienes llega a darte,
de la victoria adquirida,
Gonzalo Pizarro.

An interview did actually take place after the battle of Chupas between Gonzalo and Vaca de Castro; but Tirso has distorted the facts. On returning from the Cinnamon expedition (June, 1542) Gonzalo was perturbed to learn that at his brother's death the government of Peru had passed not to him but to Vaca de Castro. However, he decided to offer his services to this representative of the King. The offer was declined. After the battle of Chupas Vaca de Castro, fearing an effort by Gonzalo to get possession of the government, summoned him to appear in his presence, received him courteously, questioned him about his recent expedition, showed sympathy for the hardships he had suffered, and recommended that he retire to his estates at Las Charcas.³⁷ In our play there is the same courteous reception, the same request for an account of the jornada de la canela (which Carvajal gives in a 400 line relación), but here the parallel ceases. Far from sending Gonzalo back to his estates, Vaca de Castro charges him with the care of the Conqueror's daughter Francisca and refers to that mysterious document, the royal rescript whereby Francisco Pizarro was said to have been made governor of Peru por dos vidas:

Si el César, cual se afirma,
hizo al Marqués merced de que nombrase
Gobernador que en su lugar quedase,
presénteme su cédula, o su firma,
que si antes que muriese
el Marqués, ordenó que sucediese
Vuesa merced en su gobierno y cargo,
yo renunciaré el mío …

Gonzalo replies that such is the case, but that he will suspend action until the matter has been referred to the Emperor, and retires voluntarily to his estates. He ends, however, with a note of warning:

Mas, si el Virrey que viene
turba la paz que agora el Perú tiene
(como de él se recela y conjetura),
y a mis servicios muestra ingrato pecho,
por fuerza habré de usar de mi derecho.

The cédula de dos vidas appears to have been a pure fiction and is dismissed as such by the historians.³⁸ Francisco Pizarro's capitulation with the Crown in 1529 made him governor for his own life only: “por todos los días de vuestra vida.”³⁹ But Tirso is here following Gonzalo's kinsman and eloquent advocate Pizarro y Orellana, who on pages 367-68 of his Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo attributes to him the following reply to the city of Cuzco:

Aunque por la muerte del Marques don Francisco Pičarro mi hermano … pudiera pretender el gouierno de que el Emperador mi señor le hizo merced por dos vidas, sujeto a su voluntad, y obedeciendo a sus ordenančas, lo dexarè para informarla en tiempo mas oportuno, y pues que retirado gozava los premios de [la paz], aunque la nobleza mia se fatiga de lo que padeceis, me escuso … Y a mi permitidme que viva en la quietud de mi casa, pues en una vida tan corta como la mia sabeis la diferencia de trabajos infinitos que la alargan. Amenazado estoy de los Indios, que me pronostican otros mayores; y si son por el servicio de Dios, y del Emperador mi señor, ninguno escusarè.

In Scene V the Amazons—and the Leitmotiv—reappear. Menalipe, unable to forget her love for Gonzalo, begs her sister, by her magic arts, to enable her to see him. Martesia protests:

¿Pero qué logros esperas
de un hombre tan desdichado
que a muerte le han destinado
las superiores esferas?
Un juez ha de degollarle;
los mismos que le acompañan
y aduladores le engañan,
le han de vender y dejarle …

She nevertheless yields and within two hours they are at Gonzalo's door. The latter has just asked his niece Francisca⁴⁰ to marry him, that her deceased father may not be left without posterity, and she has accepted. The conversation is interrupted by Carvajal, who enters to report the great excitement caused by the arrival at Panama of the Viceroy Núñez Vela with the intolerable ordenanzas, and to convey to Gonzalo the request of the city of Lima that he come at once to accept the government which is his by virtue of the cédula de dos vidas, bringing his niece with him that her presence may lend weight to the universal demand for the suspension of the new code. Gonzalo refuses to go to Lima, sending his niece in his stead.

Menalipe, having overheard without being seen, upbraids her inconstant lover and prophesies that he shall not be privileged to marry Francisca, but that

las bodas, que no mereces,

shall fall to the lot of his brother Hernando. The drama here degenerates into farce as Martesia, annoyed by Gonzalo's orderly, seizes him by the ear and flies off with him.

At the beginning of Act III Gonzalo is enjoying the quiet of his estates at Las Charcas. His orderly returns, after a month's absence, bearing a message from the land of the Amazons: beware of the Viceroy. Unimpressed, Gonzalo reiterates his determination never to leave his retirement,

no obligándome a perdella
mi ley, mi Rey y mi fama.

This fama at once becomes the compelling force. The city of Cuzco sends ambassadors to him demanding protection against the Viceroy and alleging yet again the cédula de dos vidas, but they make no headway whatsoever until they inform Gonzalo that his niece is a prisoner on a ship,

                                                            expuesta
entre marineros libres
a la atrevida torpeza.(41)

At the same time there comes another report: The excesses of the Viceroy have caused the people of Lima to arrest him and to name Gonzalo governor in his stead.⁴² Stirred at length to action, Gonzalo sets out for Lima. His niece shall be protected and the Viceroy shall be sent back to Spain, there to render an account to his Majesty.

In Scene V the Amazons return, Martesia now serving as messenger. The Viceroy has gained the upper hand and is marching against Pizarro, who has sent Carvajal to oppose him. The latter appears on the stage with his troops. In vain the two sisters urge him to return to his captain to convince him that disaster lies ahead. Carvajal hastens on, caring less for Martesia and Menalipe than for

diez legiones de duendes.

In Scene X the battle of Añaquito is announced as won by the forces of Pizarro. On that field the Viceroy perished. Carvajal gives his famous words of advice to Gonzalo: La Gasca has been sent to pacify Peru. There can be no turning back. The sword, once taken up against one's king, may not be laid down—

Gonzalo, o César, o nada.(43)

Much history is compressed into the next—and final—212 lines of the play. Passing over in silence Gonzalo's long campaign against La Gasca, Tirso brings us to the battlefield of Xaquixaguana. The rebel's followers, faced by the forces of their King, desert him and Gonzalo himself, disdaining flight, surrenders his sword, only to be condemned as a rebel and executed on the spot.

While the deserters shout:

¡Muera quien no supo ser
Rey del Perú!

he soliloquizes:

Pues morir …
Sepa mi Rey, sepa España
que muero por no ofenderla …
que todos me desamparan
por fiel, por leal, por noble …
Diga que pude, la fama,
ser Monarca y que no quise …

It will be necessary to examine point by point this soliloquy. Had Gonzalo given offense to his King? He had marched against the Viceroy Núñez Vela, whom his men had killed at Añaquito. He had defeated the royalist Centeno at Huarina, and had himself been routed by the King's representative La Gasca. He had been a rebel but, like the heroes of the épopée féodale, he could not take the final step and become a traitor. Lacking the intelligence of his brothers or even of Carvajal, he believed that without playing false he yet might wrongly win. His friends likened his position to that of the Castilian comuneros. His own attitude is well expressed in a letter to his friend Lorenzo de Aldana:

… en lo que toca al servicio de S. M. bien save V. m. que yo no he errado un punto, y querer un gobernador no recibir a otro cada día se hace en España, y es cosa de que S. M. no se ofende.⁴⁴

The defense here given by Tirso follows Garcilaso the Inca, Parte II, lib. iv, cap. 41.

The soliloquy continues:

Diga que violentamente
me sacaron de mi casa,
de mi quietud, de mí mismo,
los que en el riesgo me faltan,
los que me dejan agora.

Such were Gonzalo's public statements. Tirso here follows his letter to La Gasca, accessible to him in Diego Fernández's Historia del Perú (1571):

Ninguna cosa deseo mas que, descansando de tantos trabajos, dejar a la governacion a quien me descuidasse y descargasse; pero todos los caballeros destos reinos … me importunan y fatigan …⁴⁵

But it should not be forgotten that when the Royal Audience of Lima, after the seizure and deposition of the Viceroy, called on Gonzalo to disband his forces, he disobeyed and compelled the same Royal Audience, under threat of pillage, to invest him with the government.⁴⁶

Proceeding with his defense, Pizarro again refers to the non-existent cédula de dos vidas and to its confirmation—under duress—by the Royal Audience:

Gobernador me nombró
mi hermano el Marqués, sellada
tengo esta merced, del César;
cuatro ciudades me llaman
para Procurador suyo;
la Audiencia Real me despacha
confirmacion del gobierno;
no está, hasta aquí, derogada
mi justicia por el Rey.(47)

It is noteworthy that Gonzalo makes no mention of any cédula de dos vidas in his letters to La Gasca and to the Emperor,⁴⁸ although in both he does refer emphatically to the fact that he acted on the authority of the Royal seal, thus throwing responsibility on the oidores. All of the chroniclers, including even Garcilaso, dwell at length on Gonzalo's high-handed methods in obtaining the confirmation at Lima. La Gasca, in his letter to Gonzalo of December 16, 1547, laughs his defense to scorn.⁴⁹ It would appear, therefore, that Tirso is again following Pizarro y Orellana (p. 370):

Con esta ocasion de aver los Oidores desterrado al Virrey, los Procuradores, que asistian al intento de Gončalo Pičarro, pidieron que se diesse sobrecarta por el Audiencia de la Cedula que tenia el Marques dõ Francisco Pičarro de Governador de aquel Imperio por dos vidas, insertando la Cedula con la Provision real sellada, como se acostumbra. Con el sello de la Magestad Imperial le dieron a Gončalo Pičarro la possession de aquel Govierno, haziendo en el Audiencia el juramento ordinario de Governador, y ˜q lo serviria fielm˜ete en servicio de Dios, y de su Magestad, hasta q le mandasse otra cosa … Luego embiô la Audiencia, y Gončalo Pičarro a dar cu˜e (sic) à su Magestad de aquellos sucessos, y à pedirle … confirmasse el Govierno …, buena señal de su lealtad.

Finishing his soliloquy, Gonzalo throws down his sword and asks to be led to La Gasca. The Amazons then take the stage to announce his execution and to prophesy the eventual rehabilitation of his family's good name:

No piense la emulación …
que porque Gonzalo muere
podrá la sangre Pizarra
agotar deudos ilustres …
Fernando, su hermano heroico,
puesto que preso en España,
dará a sus reyes un nieto
que vuelva a resucitarla.
Al Marqués de la Conquista
vuestra Extremadura aguarda,
luz del crédito español,
nuevo Alejandro en las armas …

The final lines are spoken by the loyal Alonso de Alvarado, who addresses the senado:

Este fué el fin lastimoso
de don Gonzalo; la fama
de lo contrario ha mentido.
La malicia, ¿qué no engaña?
Lea historias el discreto,
que ellas su inocencia amparan,
y supla en esta tragedia
quien lo fuere, nuestras faltas.

To what histories does Tirso refer? Garcilaso is by far the most kindly disposed toward the Pizarros, for his father had fought under Gonzalo's banner until near the end, and his lot was linked with that of the rebel. Garcilaso, furthermore, is the only historian who meets with the approval of the Pizarros' panegyrist, Pizarro y Orellana.⁵⁰ Yet even Garcilaso speaks repeatedly of Gonzalo's “usurpation of tyrannical power,” his “evil designs and intentions,” his “sayings derogatory to the honor and Majesty of his King.”⁵¹ We can only assume that Tirso was thinking of the Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo which, though published in 1639, had already received the imprimatur in 1631.

In the play just studied the Amazons have foretold the marriage of Francisca Pizarro and her uncle Hernando, through whose union the glories of the family were to be restored. The final play of the trilogy, La lealtad contra la envidia, is concerned with Hernando Pizarro in this rôle of patriarch and ancestor of the Marqueses de la Conquista.

Actually, Hernando was the evil genius of the Conquest, being chiefly responsible for the war between the Pizarro and Almagro factions.⁵² It devolves upon Tirso to show that he was a model of hidalguía; that all valor, charm, and faithfulness were his; and that the disgrace that so long clouded his name was the result of the machinations of the rival party in Peru, of the envidia of the supporters of Almagro. It devolves upon him also to dispose of Hernando's sordid liaison with Isabel de Mercado—within the prison walls of the Mota of Medina—and leave him free to wed his brother's daughter Francisca.

This is exactly what Pizarro y Orellana had attempted to do in his Varones ilustres, attributing to his hero (p. 263) the cardinal virtues of faith, hope, charity, prudence, temperance, justice. We may read passim such eulogies as the following:

Hernando Pičarro, aunque en el descubrimi˜eto del … Imperio del Peru no fue de los primeros, en el ganarle, conservarle y restaurarle fue el unico …

Hernando Pičarro andava muy solicito (como tan diestro capitan) à todas partes, bolviendo los ojos al cielo, esperando con grandissima fè y confianza de Dios el remedio …

Fue loable la docilidad de Hernando Pičarro …

Lo que mas se puede alabar en Hernando Pičarro es la benignidad con que se huvo con los rendidos.⁵³

It is denied that he ever had illicit amorous relations: “En todo el tiempo [UNK] estuvo en Italia, si˜edo tan gallardo mo˜co, ni en las Indias, ni en otra parte tuvo hijos fuera del matrimonio; y assi se los diò Dios de ambos matrimonios.”⁵⁴ And, as in Tirso's play, he is presented as a victim of envidia: “Con ser esta victoria de las mas importantes, pasan por ella los Historiadores de priessa … Devenlo de hacer por no atribuir a Hernando Pičarro lo que se le deve” (p. 333).

It is on this foundation that Tirso builds. But whereas Pizarro y Orellana had preferred to make a prosaic marriage of the liaison with Isabel de Mercado, Tirso employs the same technique as in Todo es dar en una cosa. Out of it he builds a comedia de capa y espada.

In the opening scenes of the play Hernando is in Spain, where he has recently delivered to the Emperor the “royal fifth” of the treasures gained in Peru, together with a special donativo. His arrival at the Cortes in Calatayud had produced a sensation. Admitted at once to the royal presence, all of his requests were granted and he himself was admitted to the Order of Santiago. Tirso, for the sake of his plot, brings Hernando from Calatayud to Medina del Campo where he is the guest of Don Alonso de Mercado, governor of the castle of the Mota. During his stay, he has fallen in love with that gentleman's sister Isabel.

When the action begins, a bullfight is in progress, and Hernando's brilliant performance in the arena causes the spectators to discuss his identity and his successes. Having killed his bull, Hernando joins the spectators, but at that moment a fire breaks out, a tablado crashes to the ground, a bull escapes and charges the crowd, and Hernando with great skill and courage kills the beast and carries his lady to a place of safety. There follow various scenes of love and jealousy, stock-in-trade of the comedia, all of them marked by the perfect conduct and perfect discretion of Hernando. At the end of the act the hero departs to rejoin his brothers in Peru, promising to return in two years.⁵⁵

The second act begins with the seige of Cuzco by the revolting Indians under the leadership of the Inca Manco. So severe is the fighting that the Spaniards' imagination renews the legends of the Middle Ages, and they see the Apostle St. James, mounted on a white warhorse, with the sign of his Order on his target, his gleaming sword in his right hand. This vision is followed by another. The Blessed Virgin herself hovers over the city's walls, extinguishing the conflagration started by the attackers' burning arrows. These miracles, reported by Garcilaso⁵⁶ and others, add greatly to the poetic value of Tirso's battle scenes, but he also turns them to account as a means of proving his contentions. Hernando speaks:

                                                            No habrá duda
desde hoy, contra envidia tanta
de que esta conquista es santa,
pues Dios nuestra empresa ayuda …
No ayuda a la tiranía
Dios, que a la inocencia ampara;
luego nuestra acción es clara,
pues su Madre nos la envía.(57)

Here, and from this point on, Tirso appears again as the advocate. Almagro the elder returns suddenly from Chile and arrives at Cuzco at a time when the Inca has withdrawn to the hills. Claiming that a new order of the Crown has assigned the city of Cuzco to his territory, Almagro endeavors to dislodge Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro. He also seeks an interview with the Inca. Were “the men from Chile” seeking an alliance for the purpose of destroying the Pizarros?⁵⁸ The latter made this charge, and Tirso, more intent upon his purpose than on establishing historical fact, repeats the charge and inserts in the text of his play a letter in prose from Almagro to the Inca, “para que los dos en recíproca amistad poseamos este Imperio, muertos los que nos le estorban.” The letter is dated May 10, 1534, a fact which proves it to be Tirso's invention, the events in question having occurred in 1535.⁵⁹

This much of the act was intended to show that for a year Hernando and his brothers Gonzalo and Juan had defended the city of Cuzco against overwhelming odds and at the cost of the latter's life; that the Christian cause had been victorious; and the resulting peace with the Inca had been disturbed by a traitor, Almagro. A messenger now reports that Almagro, breaking a truce, has made himself master of the city and is holding Hernando a prisoner. The remainder of the act is concerned with the manner in which he is set at liberty.

The details of that release are—historically—as follows. Constantly threatened with death by Almagro, Hernando gambled with one of his men, Diego de Alvarado, and won heavily. Refusing to accept payment, Hernando gained the man's friendship and this fact was sufficient to save his life.⁶⁰ Later, when the boundary dispute between Pizarro and Almagro was settled by arbitration, Hernando's liberty was demanded as one of the terms of the agreement.

Tirso gives to all this a more novelesque turn, following Pizarro y Orellana (p. 313). According to this writer, Hernando gambled in his prison and took great pains to lose, at the same time saying that he could not pay unless he returned to his mines. The winner brought pressure to bear on Almagro and Hernando was released. There is no mention of arbitration in this connection although in the next scene—the last of the act—it is announced that Francisco Pizarro is on his way from Lima and that the quarrel is to be arbitrated by Fray Francisco de Bobadilla.

In the third act we find Hernando in prison in the Mota of Medina del Campo. In the first part of this act, it will be Tirso's task to show that this imprisonment was unjust; in the second part, to free him from all entanglement with Isabel de Mercado and prepare the way for his marriage with his niece Francisca Pizarro, daughter of the Conqueror.

It will be necessary to explain the cause of his imprisonment. The decision of Fray Francisco de Bobadilla, highly pleasing to the Pizarros, produced consternation in the camp of Almagro. Nevertheless, it was not the latter but Francisco Pizarro who, interpreting to his own advantage a new royal order, declared the treaty at an end, at the same time requiring Hernando to break his pledges to Almagro and march against him.⁶¹ The result was the rout of Almagro's forces at Salinas, where Almagro himself was captured, condemned as a traitor by Hernando, and put to the garrote. To avenge his death a group of conspirators killed Francisco Pizarro, as we have seen. Other members of this party, notably Diego de Alvarado, had gone to the Spanish Court and were vigorously supporting the claims of the younger Almagro. Alarmed by this activity, Hernando returned to Spain in 1539 to offset it. A process was instituted against him for his actions at Salinas and he was committed to the Mota. He was not released until 1560 when he emerged an aged and broken man. “Rarely,” says Prescott (II, 140), “has retributive justice been meted out in fuller measure to offenders so high in authority.”

Not even Garcilaso is able to justify the Pizarros in these high-handed dealings. “That unjust blood and death of Almagro” stands against them. Hernando, he says, put Almagro to death because he dared not trust his case to the Council of the Indies, and Almagro, though a foundling, must have been born of noble parents, “for so his actions declare him.”⁶² It remains for Pizarro y Orellana to justify Almagro's death, while admitting that “solo pudo aver alguna culpa en el modo de fulminar la causa contra Almagro.” Claiming to have fuller information than other writers, he attributes Hernando's long imprisonment to the activity of interested parties.⁶³

Tirso, in his defense, places Almagro in the company of Count Julian, Vellido Dolfos and Ganelon, and declares that the real traitor is none other than Hernando's enemies at Court. Violating the chronology by nearly twenty years—Philip II is now on the throne—he next causes Hernando to learn of his brother Francisco's death at the hands of the conspirators and of Gonzalo's campaign against the Viceroy Núñez Vela. Though informed of all the attenuating circumstances, Hernando is enraged by the latter report and offers to take upon himself the punishment of his brother. A man guilty of disloyalty to his king is no brother of his, is not even his father's bastard, but the child of a strumpet's infidelity. This outburst, introduced as proof of his lealtad, is suggested by the Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo.⁶⁴ It is eclipsed by a proof still greater, of Tirso's own invention. As Hernando seeks comfort in considerations recalling Segismundo's famous soliloquy, a key is thrown to him. But he refuses it:

¿Qué más la envidia quisiera,
sino que huyendo rigores
acreditara a traidores
y verdad su engaño hiciera?

The remainder of the play has to do with Isabel de Mercado, whose death—according to Tirso—leaves Hernando free to marry his niece and found anew the line of the Pizarros Conquistadores. Isabel de Mercado comes to Hernando in the Mota, to which, as sister of the alcaide, she had constant access. For a year the two have been living there as man and wife, maintaining absolute secrecy. The union has been given legal character, however, by secret desposorios. Isabel, soon to be delivered of her child and fearing her lover's condemnation and death, tells him of her premonition that her own death also is imminent. She plans to go to a convent in Trujillo which will be at the same time the birthplace of her child and a final resting place for herself. Saying that she is going to offer a novena for Hernando's release, she departs. In the final scene, Don Alonso de Mercado announces to Hernando the birth of a daughter and the death of Isabel. He announces also that Philip II has set Hernando at liberty and that La Gasca has sent from Peru the daughter of his brother the Marquis. He urges his friend to marry her:

juntad segunda vez sangre,
añudad quebradas líneas,
dad a vuestro hermano nietos
porque eterno en ellos viva.

This union had already been announced by the prophetess in Amazonas en las Indias. Tirso therefore causes Hernando—always the soul of discretion—to hold the matter under advisement:

Consultaréme a mí mismo.

With a short moral addressed to the audience, the play—and the trilogy—is brought to a close.

The story of Isabel de Mercado is told in official documents, at present preserved in the Sección de Ordenes Militares of the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid. In 1590 Juan de Orellana Pizarro, grandson of our Hernando through Isabel de Mercado, sought admission to the Order of Santiago. The following is taken from the testimony given at the información:

Saben que Isabel de Mercado fué hija legítima de Francisco Fernández de Mercado, tenida por noble e hidalga y limpia de sangre.

Saben que la dicha Isabel, muerto su padre, fué recogida por una su tía llamada doña Francisca de Mercado, la cual, compelida por la pobreza …, llevó a la fortaleza a su sobrina doña Isabel, la cual era hermosísima, y la entregó a Hernando Pizarro, hombre poderoso, confiada en que éste acabaría por hacerla su esposa.

Que de estos amores, que tuvieron por teatro el Castillo de la Mota, en donde la joven vivió oculta durante algún tiempo, por temor de que sus deudos la matasen, en castigo de su deshonra, nacieron un niño que murió en tierna edad, y una niña llamada doña Francisca Pizarro Mercado, la cual, legitimada, casó años más tarde en Trujillo con Hernando de Orellana …

Que en 1551 vino de Indias a España doña Francisca Pizarro Inga, hija del difunto marqués don Francisco … y sobrina de dicho Hernando Pizarro.

Que éste, de más de setenta años de edad, casó con “la perulera” … y abandonó a [Isabel de Mercado] …, dando lugar a que ésta … optase por recogerse al Monasterio llamado de las Beatas Fajardas de Medina del Campo, de donde, años después, se trasladó al monasterio de Santa Clara, de Trujillo.⁶⁵

Here again we see that Tirso, while well acquainted with the facts, prefers to distort them.

The trilogy Las hazañas de los Pizarros is thus a series of genealogical plays. In Todo es dar en una cosa, the dramatist lays bare the strong, sound root of the Pizarro family tree: Francisco was no swineherd, suckled by a sow, but the issue of an approved capa y espada intrigue, whose innate nobility could find an outlet only in conquest. In Amazonas en las Indias, he shows that a great lateral branch—that of Gonzalo—is free from decay. The head that rolled on the field at Xaquixaguana was no traitor's head. In La lealtad contra la envidia, the other great lateral branch—that of Hernando, which was to rejoin the main stem—is cleared from mould and fungi and the tree blossoms forth in new luxuriance. Everything in the trilogy centers around Martesia's prophetic words:

Fernando, su hermano heroico,
puesto que preso en España,
dará a sus reyes un nieto
que vuelva a resucitarla.
Al Marqués de la Conquista
vuestra Extremadura aguarda,
luz del crédito español,
nuevo Alejandro en las armas.

The first two plays are of doubtful value except for certain occasional epic passages. The third shows the chief defect of the comedia—lack of character development—but is none the less full of beauty and absolutely true to the ideals of a nation.

Notes

1. Todo es dar en una cosa, Amazonas en las Indias, and La lealtad contra la envidia, published the fourth “Parte,” 1635.

2. A. Morel-Fatio, “La prudence chez la femme,” in Études sur l'Espagne, III, 1904, 25-72.

3. Teatro escogido de fray Gabriel Téllez, XII, Madrid, 1842, p. 359. Cf. Adolf Schaeffer, Gesch. des Span. Nationaldramas, Leipzig, 1892, I, pp. 342-44.

4. That Tirso wrote such plays is evidenced by his La fingida Arcadia.

5. Libro primero de Cabildos de Lima. Segunda parte: Apéndices, n. p., 1888, Apéndice No. 3, pp. 159-166; also R. Cúneo-Vidal, Vida del Conquistador del Perú, Don Francisco Pizarro y de sus hermanos …, Barcelona, [1925], pp. 359-62.

6. Great grandson of Francisco. The latter never married but his daughter Francisca, born of an Inca princess, was legitimized by the Emperor and after her father's death married his brother Hernando, the offspring of this union constituting the direct line of descent.

7. See the Discurso legal appended to Fernando Pizarro y Orellana's Varones ilustres del Nuevo Mundo. … Con un discurso legal de la obligacion que tienen los Reyes a Premiar los servicios de sus vasallos, ò en ellos, ò en sus Descendientes. Madrid, 1639.

8. See Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., p. 633, and Pizarro y Orellana, op. cit., Dedication to the Conde de San Lúcar. La Zarza was an estate belonging originally to Francisco Pizarro's father, by whose will it became a mayorazgo and passed as such to Hernando Pizarro and his heirs (Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., pp. 57-8). According to Cúneo-Vidal and according to Tirso, it was at La Zarza that Francisco Pizarro grew to manhood.

9. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, Philadelphia, 1868, I, pp. 496-97.

10. See Pizarro y Orellana, op. cit., Dedication and p. 342; also Prescott, op. cit., II, 188, n. 21. Of the former work Prescott says the following: “The cavalier Pizarro y Orellana has given biographical notices of each of the [Pizarro] brothers. It requires no witchcraft to detect that the blood of the Pizarros flowed in the veins of the writer to his fingers' ends. Yet his facts are less suspicious than his inferences.” Op. cit., II, 151, n. 30.

11. The last document signed by Tirso's predecessor as Comendador at Trujillo is an “Escritura de azetación que otorgó el Convento de la Merced en favor de la buena memoria de doña Marta de Orellana.” Blanca de los Ríos, El enigma biográfico de Tirso, Madrid, 1928, p. 63.

12. Pizarro y Orellana devotes six chapters to Francisco, ten to Hernando. Tirso does not present Francisco in Peru at all.

13. This last fact is brought out by Tirso, NBAE, IV, 538 a.

14. Francisco Pizarro is not mentioned in his father's will (dated 1527) Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., pp. 51 and 111. In Tirso's play he also remains unrecognized.

15. For this service in Italy, see Pizarro y Orellana, op. cit., p. 128.

16. Cf. Garcilaso's statement (supra) that this marriage was arranged by Gonzalo himself.

17. It is well known that the Conqueror was illiterate.

18. For Pizarro's fondness for this game and occasional loss of temper when playing it, see Garcilaso the Inca, Comentarios reales, Parte II, lib. iii, cap. 9.

19. Cortés and Pizarro were related. The former's mother was Doña Catalina Pizarro, whom Tirso presents as Francisco's aunt. Cúneo-Vidal (p. 21) says merely: “oriunda de Trujillo y parienta de los Pizarros de esta última villa.” The two men met in Santo Domingo.

20. Pizarro y Orellana (p. 128) says that Francisco served with his father in Italy and Navarre, but does not mention Portugal.

21. But Gonzalo married Doña Isabel de Vargas. Cúneo-Vidal, p. 46.

22. Quintana, Vidas de españoles célebres, Paris, 1845, vol. II, p. 42.

23.                     Yo soy hijo,
    sin padres, de un encinar …
    mientras no gano otro mundo
    no os tengo por padre a vos.

    (III, xi)

    Without following Doña Blanca in her attempt to connect Tirso with the House of Osuna, we may yet believe him to have had personal reasons for harboring such sentiments.

24. Prescott, op. cit., II, 244 ff.

25. For these see the Pauly-Wissowa Real-Encyclopädie der class. Altertumswissenschaft, art. Amazones. On the American “Amazons,” see R. Cúneo-Vidal, “Las leyendas geográficas del Perú de los Incas: IV,” in Bol. de la R. Acad. de la Historia, 1925, LXXXVII, 313-15. The legend was believed by Condamine and by Humboldt and there are references to it in the 19th century. Thomas Whiffen in his book The North West Amazons: Notes of some Months spent among cannibal Tribes, London, 1915, treats the whole thing as a fable. Robert Southey in his History of Brazil decided in favor of their existence. On Orellana, see P. A. Means, “Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana,” in Hisp. Am. Historical Review, 1934, XIV, 275-295. José Toribio Medina has a valueless chapter entitled “Orellana in the Drama” in The Discovery of the Amazon according to the Account of Friar Gaspar de Carvajal …, as pub. by José Toribio Medina, translated … by Bertram T. Lee, edited by H. C. Heaton. American Geographical Society, New York, 1934, Part I, Chap. iv.

26. See Expeditions into the Valley of the Amazons …, translated and edited by C. R. Markham (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, vol. XXIV), London, 1859, pp. 36 and 123.

27. In our play, Carvajal repeatedly calls the Amazon Martesia “señora comisaria del infierno,” “bruja tahur,” etc. Menéndez y Pelayo, in his discussion of Lope's Las mujeres sin hombres (Estudios sobre el teatro de L. de V., vol. II, 1921, 172 ff.) states that Tirso “tuvo presente la comedia de Lope, de la cual, además, conserva la suya muchas reminiscencias.” The treatment of the Amazons “como en broma” is, indeed, a point of contact, but there is no evidence of direct relationship between the two plays. The name Menalipe, which according to Menéndez y Pelayo is a connecting link, occurs in Justinus, a source consulted by both dramatists.

28. On the Incan oracles, see Garcilaso the Inca, op. cit., I, i, 6, and II, i, 30.

29. Op. cit., p. 396.

30. Various classical authors mention Melanipe (Menalipe). I find Martesia only in Justinus.

31. Tirso follows in general the account of Justinus, II, iii-iv. There is also some contamination with the legend of the women of Lemnos, probably indirectly through the Orlando furioso. This is the more evident in that they raise a temple to Cruelty (Vengeance in the Orlando, XX, xxxv). Cf. Pio Rajna, Le fonti dell' Orlando furioso, Firenze, 1876, cap. x, especially p. 254 ff.

32. Not all the Amazons of antiquity were implacable in their hatred of men Cf. Herodotus, book IV (Melpomene), chap. cxiii, and Pausanias, I, 2, 1.

33. Probable influence of the Orlando: “L'intenerimento di Alessandra per Albanio ha riscontri innumerevoli nella compassione e nelle fiamme delle donzelle saracine per qualche prigioniero cristiano …” Rajna, op. cit., p. 255.

34. This warning is another link connecting Tirso's plays with the Varones ilustres of Pizarro y Orellana. On p. 353 this author tells of Gonzalo's return from the jornada de la canela to Quito where he learned that his brother Francisco had been killed, “donde vio verificado lo que algunos Indios le dixeron, en medio de las penalidades referidas, que eran muy cortas para las que avia de padecer: y que no lo fuera su fortuna, si se contentara con esto su mala estrella.”

35. “Si en Gončalo Pičarro huvo culpa, fue causada de los que le engañaron y vendieron, esperando mayor premio.” Pizarro y Orellana, op. cit., p. 346.

36. Tirso, as a priest, comes to the defense of the doctrine of free will:

    Porque agüeros e influencias
    si señalan, no ejecutan.

    (II, iv)

37. Prescott, op. cit., II, 221, 239-40.

38. Prescott makes no mention of it. Garcilaso calls it a “specious pretense” (II, iv, 8-9; II, v, 5). Cf. Zárate, BAE, XXVI, 513. It does not appear among the “Capitulaciones para la conquista” reproduced in the Libro primero de Cabildos de Lima (Parte tercera: Documentos, pp. 131-66), all of which contain and confirm the phrase “por todos los días de vuestra vida.” Gonzalo Pizarro himself makes no mention of it in his letters to the pacificador La Gasca and to the Emperor. See Col. de docs. inéds. para la hist. de España, XLIX, 48; L, 194. On Oct. 14, 1546, the city of Lima sent word to La Gasca that they were asking the Emperor to confirm Gonzalo in the governorship and stated as their only reason the fact that he alone was qualified (ibid., XLIX, 10-11; cf. Prescott, II, 359). La Gasca, on the other hand, wrote to Gonzalo: “Hanme dicho un error en que V. m. está, o a lo menos le ponen, diciéndole que por haber el marqués, que sea en gloria, descubierto esta tierra, y ayudádola a conquistar, se puede alzar con ella, cosa tan fuera de tino y de caber en juicio de hombre, que no osaría creer que en pensamiento ni boca de nadie tal cayere” (loc. cit., 348). The cédula de dos vidas is mentioned, however, in Carvajal's notorious letter advising Gonzalo to make himself king of Peru (apud Garcilaso, II, iv, 40), and it becomes the keystone of Pizarro y Orellana's defense of Gonzalo (see below).

39. Text in Prescott, II, Appendix VII, and in Libro primero de Cabildos de Lima, Parte tercera, pp. 136-42.

40. Daughter of Francisco Pizarro by an Inca princess, legitimized by the Emperor. “En 1538 (read 1548) se habló de un posible matrimonio de Gonzalo Pizarro con su sobrina doña Francisca. De Madrid se consultó a tal respecto a de la Gasca, y éste contestó que Gonzalo “nunca pensó en tal cosa.” Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., p. 575.

41. Cf. Garcilaso, II, iv, 14, and Pizarro y Orellana, pp. 369-70.

42. Here Tirso twists events to suit his purpose. The naming of Gonzalo Procurador-General of Peru was at Cuzco a spontaneous event; but at Lima the authorities demanded that he disband his forces and named him governor only after he had threatened to sack the city if this were not done. Prescott, II, 283-86.

43. Tirso follows Garcilaso, II, iv, 40.

44. Col. de docs. inéds. para la hist. de España, L, 190.

45. I have not seen Fernández's rare history but it could scarcely alter my conclusions since, according to Prescott, II, 473 n., it does scanty justice to Gonzalo's cause. The words here quoted are found in Pizarro y Orellana, op. cit., p. 391, and in Col. de docs. inéds. para la hist. de España, XLIX, 48.

46. Garcilaso, II, iv, 18; Prescott, II, 283-88.

47. Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., p. 552, states that Francisco Pizarro did name Gonzalo as his successor, “y no a otro ninguno.” I do not know what authority he follows, since the will seems to have been lost (ibid., pp. 609-10). This may have been done by the Marquis, for Almagro, whose governorship of his Province was, like Pizarro's, for one life only, nevertheless designated his son to succeed him. Cf. Libro primero de Cabildos de Lima, Parte tercera, p. 148 ff., and Parte segunda, p. 99.

48. See above, note 39.

49. Col. de docs. inéds para la hist. de España, XLIX, 261.

50. Op. cit., pp. 354-5, 371-5.

51. Parte II, lib. iv, caps. 12, 27, 30.

52. Prescott, I, 312, and II, 141-43; Quintana, op. cit., II, 68. “Su colaboración fué amarga para cuantos le trataron, y aciaga para su medio hermano Francisco.” Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., p. 507.

53. Op. cit., pp. 245, 276-77, 323.

54. Pizarro y Orellana here (p. 263) makes legal, just as Tirso does in his comedia, his protracted alliance with Isabel de Mercado. See below.

55. Actually his return to Spain was delayed for five.

56. Op. cit., II, ii, 24.

57. PIzarro y Orellana dwells insistently on Hernando's conception of the Conquest as a crusade (pp. 254, 256). Tirso makes a martyr of Hernando's brother Juan Pizarro who dies in this seige: “Piedras en rubíes convierte, / coronado vencedor.”

58. The Indians so believed. Quintana, op. cit., II, 136. Since the interview was prevented by Hernando Pizarro, Almagro's real purpose is not known.

59. Cf. Pizarro y Orellana, p. 308: “Esta nueva traxeron los Indios amigos de Hernando Pičarro, dando a entender que entre el Inga y don Diego de Almagro avia grande amistad, y que traian resolucion de destruir a todos los españoles, que estavan en el Cuzco, mas nunca se pudo persuadir a esto.” Tirso likewise makes Hernando incapable of believing that Almagro could be guilty of such treachery.

60. Quintana, op. cit., II, 143-44.

61. Prescott, II, 105-09; Garcilaso, II, ii, 35.

62. Op. cit., II, ii, 39; II, iii, 5.

63. Op. cit., pp. 328, 338, 341.

64. “No devio obscurecer en los grandes hechos de los tres hermanos, el [UNK] por ilegitimo no se presume de la familia.” (From the Discurso legal, p. 3.) On pages 382-83 of the text proper this author states that when Gonzalo's daughter came to Spain to defend the cause of her rebel father, Hernando refused to aid her, saying “que avia de borrar de la memoria a su padre, que no era su hermano, ni su deudo: no porque pensasse avia cabido en el tan ruin pensamiento, como el Vulgo dezia; pero que bastava aver dado ocasion para que … se pudiesse dezir cosa tan torpe de un hombre de su linage.”

65. Cúneo-Vidal, op. cit., pp. 521-23.

I make grateful acknowledgment to my former student, Miss Eleanor O'Kane, for assistance in the preparation of this article.