Melchor Bravo de Saravia

Francisco Hernández Girón had arrived in Peru in 1535 with, among others, the future governor Blasco Núñez Vela.

In the ensuing struggle for power between the Pizarro brothers and the Almagristas in 1537, he had supported neither.

Almagro had been executed in 1538 and Francisco Pizarro, governor of Peru, had been assassinated by Almagro’s son in 1541.

After Pizarro’s replacement, Cristóbal Vaca de Castro, had defeated the Almagristas at Chupas and subsequently been imprisoned by Blasco Núñez Vela, appointed royal viceroy, Hernández Girón had become a supporter of the latter, Fighting at the battles of Añaquito , he had managed to escape death in an emerging defeat.

At Jaquijahuana, he had again taken the royalist side under Pedro de la Gasca, with great success.

On November 13, 1553, however, Hernández Girón leads a rebellion against the new regime, caused by what he perceives as unfair charges proclaimed by Melchor Bravo de Saravia, who, as president of the Audiencia in Lima, has occupied the position of interim Viceroy of Peru from July 1552.

Spanish Basque adventurer Lope de Aguirre, who is about fofty-four in 1554, has pursued the retired judge Francisco de Esquivel, who had in 1551 sentenced him to a public flogging in Potosí, by foot to Lima, Quito and then on to Cuzco.

In three years, he has run six thousand kilometers by foot, unshod, on the trail of Esquivel, who has changed his residence constantly, rightly fearing the vengeance of the monomaniacal Aguirre.

The soldiers have followed this obstinate pursuit with interest.

Aguirre finally finds him him in Cuzco, in the mansion of the magistrate; while Esquivel is taking a nap in the library, wearing the coat of mail he always wears for fear of Aguirre, Aguirre cuts his temples. (Supposedly Aguirre later returned to search for a sombrero he had left behind.)

Protected by friends who had hidden him, he flees from Cuzco, taking refuge with a relative in Guamanga.

Alonzo de Alvarado, ordered by Bravo de Saravia to put down the major rebellion of Francisco Hernández Girón, who had earlier had been affiliated with Aguirre, secures a pardon for everyone who enlists in his army.

Aguirre fights and is wounded at the disastrous battle of Chuquinga against Girón, resulting an incurable limp that will ostracize him from his peers.

Hernández Girón is eventually defeated on December 7, 1554, and executed in Lima.