1. The prisoners were slightly consoled by Aguirre's words, although the very reverse succeeded as to anything in their favour; for he was a false traitor, and never kept his word, and if he did anything, it was the very reverse of what he promised, as we shall see in what happened concerning the prisoners. He caused the rest of the inhabitants, and their families, to leave the fortress, so that they might have no idea of his designs. It is said that the principal mover in this affair was a soldier, one Gonzalo Hernandez, a Portuguese, a friend of Aguirre's, who informed the traitor that Don Juan and the other prisoners were conspiring against him, and that they had sent messengers and arquebusses to the provincial, begging of him to land his people, and give Aguirre battle.

The traitor (irritated by what the Portuguese said to him), and fearing the provincial, thought that it was not good policy to leave enemies in the rear, although they were prisoners, so he determined to kill them before he left the city, and thus to meet his ecclesiastical foe, a warlike churchman. It was nearly midnight, and the hour for such deeds, when he ordered one Francisco de Carrion, a mestizo, his alguazil, to go quickly with certain soldiers, and strangle the governor, and his imprisoned companions, who were in the lower apartment.