Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/131

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AND CHRISTIANITY.
115

alpa's room. To keep his fellow officers, thus flushed with intoxicating deluges of affluence, in some degree quiet, he encouraged them to undertake different expeditions against the natives. Benalcazar fell on Quito,—Almagro on Chili; but the Peruvians were now driven to desperation, and taking the opportunity of the absence of those forces, they rose, and attacked their oppressors in various quarters. The consequence was what may readily be supposed—after keeping the Spaniards in terror for some time, they were routed and slaughtered by thousands. But no sooner was this over than the Spaniards turned their arms against each other. "Civil discord," says Robertson, "never raged with a more fell spirit than amongst the Spaniards in Peru. To all the passions which usually envenom contests amongst countrymen, avarice was added, and rendered their enmity more ravenous. Eagerness to seize the valuable forfeitures expected upon the death of every opponent, shut the door against mercy. To be wealthy, was of itself sufficient to expose a man to accusation, or to subject him to punishment. On the slightest suspicions, Pizarro condemned many of the most opulent inhabitants in Peru to death. Carvajal, without seeking for any pretext to justify his cruelty, cut off many more. The number of those who suffered by the hand of the executioner, was not much inferior to what fell in the field; and the greater part was condemned without the formality of any legal trial."

Providence exhibited a great moral lesson in the fate of these discoverers of the new world. As they shewed no regard to the feelings or the rights of their fellow men, as they outraged and disgraced every