THE QUEST FOR EL DORADO 75
in all directions, and overwhelming royal forces
were moving against him. His small army, already
much diminished by his summary executions of
suspected traitors, began to melt away as a result
of growing desertions. On October 27, 1561, after
a number of his most trusted followers had fl ed to
the royalist camp, Aguirre ran his sixteen-year-old
daughter through with his sword to save her, he
said, from going through life as the daughter of a
rebel. Shortly after, he was killed by arquebus shots
fi red by two of his former soldiers.
Some weeks before his death, Aguirre had
written King Philip a remarkable letter that offers
a conquistador’s vision of the Conquest and the
world it created. In stark contrast to the heroic
vision of the great captains like Cortés, however,
Aguirre described the Conquest’s underdogs, bitter
over their betrayal by the great captains, the vice-
roys, cunning letrados (offi cials with legal training)
or judges like La Gasca, and their king. Aguirre in-
sisted that he was of Old Christian descent and of
noble blood but admitted that he was born of “mid-
dling parents,” basically admitting that he was one
of the many poor hidalgos who came to the Indies
in search of fame and fortune.
Aguirre recounted the services that he and his
comrades had rendered to the crown and fi ercely
attacked the king’s ingratitude:
Consider, King and Lord, that you cannot
justly take any profi ts from this land, where
you risked nothing, until you have properly
rewarded those who labored and sweated
there in your service.... Few kings go to hell,
because there are so few of you, but if there
were many none would go to heaven. I hold it
for certain that even in hell you would be worse
than Lucifer, for your whole ambition is to
quench your insatiable thirst for human blood.
Despite this blasphemously revolutionary sen-
timent, Aguirre expressed the horror that he and
his comrades felt for the Lutheran heresy and as-
sured the king that, sinners though they were,
they accepted completely the teachings of the Holy
Mother Church of Rome. But Aguirre denounced
the scandalous dissolution and pride of the friars
in the Indies. “Their whole way of life here is to
acquire material goods and sell the sacraments
of the church for a price. They are enemies of the
poor—ambitious, gluttonous, and proud—so that
even the meanest friar seeks to govern and rule
these lands.”
Aguirre was also harsh in his comments on
the royal offi cials in Peru. He noted that each royal
oidor (judge) received an annual salary of 4,000
pesos plus 8,000 pesos of expenses, yet at the end of
three years of service, each had saved 60,000 pesos
and acquired estates and other possessions to boot.
Moreover, they were so proud that “whenever we
run into them they want us to drop on our knees
and worship them like Nebuchadnezzar.” Aguirre
advised the king not to entrust the discharge of his
royal conscience to these judges, for they spent all
their time planning marriages for their children,
and their common refrain was “To the left and to
the right, I claim all in my sight.”
Aguirre closed his revealing letter by wishing
King Philip good fortune in his struggle against
the Turks and the French and all others “who
wish to make war on you in those parts. In these,
God grant that we may obtain with our arms the
reward rightfully due us, but which you have de-
nied.” He signed himself, “son of your loyal Basque
vassals and rebel till death against you for your in-
gratitude, Lope de Aguirre, the Wanderer.”^5(^5) Thanks to Professor Thomas Holloway of the University
of California at Davis for calling attention to the peculiar
interest of the Aguirre episode and for allowing the use of
his translation of Aguirre’s letter to Philip II.
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