Chronicle of the time of the fourteenth viceroy of Peru

I

On an afternoon in June 1631, all the bells of the churches of Lima tolled in mourning, and the monks of the four religious orders that existed at the time, gathered in the choir, sang psalms and prayers.

The inhabitants of the thrice-crowned city crossed the sites where, sixty years later, the viceroy, the Count of Monclova, would build the portals of Escribanos and Botoneros, stopping in front of the side door of the palace.

Inside, everything was a flurry of comings and goings of more or less distinguished characters.

One would have thought that a galleon had just arrived in Callao with important news from Spain, such was the commotion in the palace and among the people! Or that, as in our democratic days, one of those theatrical coups was taking place that are quickly brought to an end by the justice of the rope and the stake.

Events, like water, must be drunk at the source; and for this reason, with the permission of the captain of the arquebusiers on duty at the aforementioned door, we will enter, reader, if you will accompany me, into a small chamber of the palace.

There were His Excellency Mr. Luis Jerónimo Fernández de Cabrera Bobadilla y Mendoza, Count of Chinchón, viceroy of these kingdoms of Peru by His Majesty Philip IV, and his close friend, the Marquis of Corpa. Both were silent and looking eagerly toward an escape door, which, when opened, gave way to a new character.

This was an old man. He was dressed in black cloth breeches, corduroy shoes with stone buckles, a velvet jacket and waistcoat, from which hung a thick silver chain with beautiful seals. If we add that he wore kid gloves, the reader will have a perfect picture of a physician of that era.

Doctor Juan de Vega, a native of Catalonia and a recent arrival in Peru, was the viceroy's personal physician and one of the luminaries of the science of killing by prescription.

“Well, Don Juan?” asked the viceroy, questioning him more with his eyes than with his words.

“Sir, there is no hope. Only a miracle can save Doña Francisca.”

And Don Juan withdrew with a contrite air.

This short dialogue is enough for even the most uninformed reader to understand what is going on.

The viceroy had arrived in Lima in January 1639, and two months later his beautiful young wife, Doña Francisca Henríquez de Ribera, whom he had disembarked in Paita so as not to expose her to the hazards of a probable naval battle with pirates.

Some time later, the vicereine was struck by the periodic fever known as tertian fever, which was known by the Incas as endemic in the Rimac Valley.

It is well known that when Pachacutec sent an army of thirty thousand men from Cuzco to conquer Pachacamac in 1378, he lost the best of his troops to the ravages of tertian fever. In the early centuries of European rule, the Spaniards who settled in Lima also paid tribute to this terrible disease, from which many recovered without any known cure and which took the lives of many.

The Countess of Chinchón was terminally ill. Science, through the mouth of its oracle, Don Juan de Vega, had failed.

“So young and so beautiful!” said her disconsolate husband to his friend. “Poor Francisca! Who would have told you that you would never see the skies of Castile or the gardens of Granada again? My God! A miracle, Lord, a miracle!”

“The countess will be saved, Your Excellency,” replied a voice at the door of the room.

The viceroy turned in surprise. It was a priest, a son of Ignatius of Loyola, who had uttered such comforting words.

The Count of Chinchón bowed before the Jesuit. The latter continued:

“I want to see the vicereine. Have faith, Your Excellency, and God will do the rest.”

The viceroy led the priest to the dying woman's bedside.

II

Let us pause in our narrative to sketch a brief picture of the period of the government of Don Luis Jerónimo Fernández de Cabrera, son of Madrid, commander of Criptana among the Knights of Santiago, governor of the fortress of Segovia, treasurer of Aragon, and fourth Count of Chinchón, who held office from January 14, 1629, to the 18th of the same month in 1639.

With the Pacific threatened by the Portuguese and the fleet of the Dutch pirate Pie de Palo, much of the Count of Chinchón's activity was devoted to putting Callao and the fleet on a defensive footing. He also sent a thousand men to Chile against the Araucanians and three expeditions against some tribes in Puno, Tucumán, and Paraguay.

To sustain the capricious luxury of Philip IV and his courtiers, America had to contribute to the detriment of its prosperity. There were excessive taxes and duties, which the trade of Lima was forced to bear.

The decline of the minerals of Potosí and Huancavelica dates from this time, as does the discovery of the veins of Bombón and Caylloma.

It was under the government of this viceroy that the famous bankruptcy of the banker Juan de la Cueva occurred in 1635. According to Lorente, both private individuals and the government had great confidence in his bank. Until recently, this bankruptcy was commemorated with a mojiganga called Juan de la Cova, coscoroba.

The Count of Chinchón was as fanatical as befitted an old Christian. This is evidenced by many of his decrees. No shipowner could take passengers on board unless they first produced a certificate stating that they had confessed and taken communion the previous day. Soldiers were also obliged, under severe penalties, to fulfill this precept every year, and men and women were forbidden to gather in the same temple during Lent.

As we have written in our Annals of the Inquisition in Lima, this was the period when the relentless tribunal of the faith sacrificed the most victims. It was enough to be Portuguese and wealthy to find oneself buried in the dungeons of the Holy Office. In just one of the three autos-da-fé attended by the Count of Chinchón, eleven Portuguese Jews, wealthy merchants from Lima, were burned.

We have read in the Duke of Frías's booklet that during the count's first visit to the prisons, he was told of a case against a gentleman from Quito accused of attempting to revolt against the monarch. From the proceedings, the viceroy deduced that it was all slander, and ordered the prisoner to be released, authorizing him to return to Quito and giving him six months to revolt in the territory; it being understood that if he did not succeed, the informers would pay the costs of the trial and the damages suffered by the gentleman.

What a clever way to punish envious and infamous informers!

His Excellency must have had some quarrel with the women of Lima when he twice issued decrees against women wearing headscarves, which, it must be said, they turned into curls and ringlets. Legislating against women has always been and always will be a waste of time.

Let us return to the vicereine, whom we left dying in her bed.

A month later, a grand party was held at the palace to celebrate Doña Francisca's recovery.

The fever-reducing properties of cascarilla were revealed.

An Indian from Loja named Pedro de Leyva, struck by fever, drank water from a pool to quench his thirst, on the banks of which grew some cinchona trees. Thus saved, he decided to give other patients suffering from the same illness to drink from jugs of water in which he had placed cascarilla roots. With his discovery, he came to Lima and told a Jesuit, who, by successfully curing the vicereine, did humanity a greater service than the friar who invented gunpowder.

The Jesuits kept the secret for several years, and everyone who was attacked by tertian fever came to them. For this reason, for a long time, the powder made from the bark of the cinchona tree was known as Jesuit powder.

Dr. Scrivener says that an English doctor, Mr. Talbot, cured the Prince of Condé, the Dauphin, Colbert, and other figures with quinine, selling the secret to the French government for a considerable sum and a life pension.

Linnaeus, paying tribute to the vicereine, the Countess of Chinchón, gave quinine the name it is known by today: Chinchona.

Mendiburu says that at first the use of cinchona was strongly opposed in Europe, and that in Salamanca it was maintained that any doctor who prescribed it was committing a mortal sin, since its virtues were due to a pact between the Peruvians and the devil.

As for the people of Lima, until a few years ago they knew the powder from the bark of this wonderful tree by the name of polvos de la condesa (powder of the countess).

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END