Note 16 — ROJO’S NARRATIVE

14. Meanwhile, a few clashes occurred, that of greatest consequence being the death of an English officer who had left their camp with a white flag and came toward our camp, and whom our natives attacked without anyone being able to restrain them. They assassinated him and hacked his body into many pieces. In the endeavor to shelter him, Don Antonio de Sierra Tagle, the nephew of the archbishop, received many mortal wounds from lance thrusts, from which he died in a few days. He was a prisoner,16 and knowing him to be a relative, the generals sent him back with the above-mentioned unfortunate officer. The said generals learning of that assassination and mutilation, through the infraction also of the symbol of peace (a white flag), demanded the aggressors, with the threat that if the demand were not accorded, they would send back the heads of the officers whom they had captured. But the archbishop having ordered an investigation of the matter, it resulted that the Spaniards were not to blame, and that they had ceased firing, and all hostility, on seeing the symbol of peace. Notwithstanding this the sepais [i.e., Sepoys] continued their fire, on account of which the Indians in irritation, committed that assassination. With the letter and testimony of those investigations, which the archbishop wrote to the general, the matter seemed to be dropped.