Governor Alonso de Sotomayor, amid his problems with the Mapuche insurgency in southern Chile, has also had to confront the attacks of English pirates, most notably Thomas Cavendish, who had anchored in Quintero on April 9, 1587 and been defeated by the Spanish, losing ten men.

Additionally, he has had to deal with revolts by soldiers in the south, motivated by the poverty that they suffer on account of not being paid in either gold or encomienda rights.

Alarmed by the situation and by the lack of reinforcements, Sotomayor had gone to Peru on July 30, 1592 to petition the viceroy there for more men, leaving, with the title of lieutenant governor of Chile, the old and circumspect lawyer Pedro de Viscarra, who had arrived from Spain two years earlier.

Sotomayor disembarks in August in Callao, where he learns that the king has named a new governor of Chile, Martín García Óñez de Loyola, famous for his capture of Túpac Amaru; Philip II thinks Loyola him the most likely candidate to finish the Arauco War.

Sotomayor returns to Chile to testify about and defend his actions, a tribunal from which he emerges triumphant.

He now heads towards Spain, but is detained on the road by ...