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294 General Arbieto was satiated with the slaughter of unarmed Indians, he marched back to Cuzco with the Inca Tupac Amaru, his family and chiefs, as prisoners. They dressed the young sovereign in his imperial robes and headgear, put a rope round his neck, and so brought him before Toledo, a most ignoble triumph. Don Carlos Inca had been lawlessly driven out of the Colcampata in order to convert it into a prison, and here the Inca was confined. There was a mock trial, presided over by one of Toledo's creatures named Gabriel de Loarte, who condemned the Inca to be beheaded and all his chiefs to be hanged. The chiefs were tortured with such savage brutality that they died in the streets before they could reach the gallows, and the executioners had to hang the dead bodies.

The unfortunate young Inca was beset by monks in his prison, and, at the end of two days, he was baptised. On the third day he was led forth from the Colcampata, and through the streets to the great square, accompanied by four priests, one being Father Cristoval de Molina, the Quichua scholar and author. The scaffold was built in front of the cathedral. The open spaces and streets were densely crowded with sorrowing Indians. When the Inca ascended the scaffold with the priests, the executioner, a Cañari Indian, brought out the knife. 'Then,' wrote an eye-witness, 'the whole crowd of natives raised such a