The governor, however, resenting Pizarro's disobedience of his orders at the isle of Gallo, refused to sanction another expedition; and Pizarro resolved upon the bold course of returning to Spain and appealing to the Crown. This was in the spring of 1528.
Arriving at Seville, he was immediately thrown into prison for a debt incurred at Darien. But he was released by order of the emperor, Charles V., who received him graciously at Toledo, heard the wondrous story of his wanderings, which Pizarro knew how to tell, and saw the vessels of gold and silver, the fine fabrics, the llamas, and other evidences of the Peruvian civilization, which were displayed before his royal eyes. He was also, no doubt influenced by the recent achievements of Cortes, who was then at court, and who perhaps spoke for his kinsman a friendly word.
The monarch turned over Pizarro and his enterprise, with his recommendation, to the Council of the Indies. Yet a year passed, and nothing was done. Pizarro was fast sinking into obscurity, and he would likewise have sunk into despair, if he had been less stout of heart. Then, as Queen Isabella had aided Columbus, so the queen of Charles V. came to the assistance of Pizarro, and caused to be executed the extraordinary instrument which bestowed on him, with the rights of discovery and conquest, the titles of Governor and Captain-General of New Castile, as Peru was then called, and a salary of 725,000 maravedis, to be drawn however from the conquered country. Almagro and Luque were also provided for, but in a more modest way, which proved the beginning of a long, bitter, and deadly feud between Almagro and his chief. Nor did the instrument fail to make the usual provision for the conversion to Christianity of the nations to be subjugated and plundered.
In mustering his recruits Pizarro had the satisfaction of revisiting his native town of Truxillo, where he had lived in degradation, and to which he now returned a renowned discoverer and soldier, and a titled magnate. There he found his three brothers, the Pizarros, all poor and proud and eager for adventure; and a fourth brother, on his mother's side. With these and other followers, hardly exceeding one hundred, he sailed from Seville, in January, 1530; and a year later, namely, in January, 1531, after a solemn consecration of his enterprise in the cathedral of Panama, he put forth from that port with one hundred and eighty men and twenty-seven horses, on his fourth, last, and finally successful expedition, to overthrow a populous empire.