When the Norman knight Verlaine, known as Longue Èpée (long sword), took up the cause of the loser Diego de Almagro in Peru in 1538, no European except him was familiar with the customs of the bushi (samurai). The Vikings reached America long before Columbus; Verlaine was stranded on the Japanese island of Tanegashima near Kagoshima just a quarter of a century before the first Old World "explorers". Historians date the official first contact between the Japanese and Europeans to 1543. Six years later, the missionary work in Japan began under the direction of the Jesuit Francisco de Xavier y Jassu.Verlaine became acquainted with Japan during the Ashikaga Shōgunate in the Muromachi era. Ashikaga Yoshizumi was the eleventh shōgun of his dynasty. The shipwrecked man, still a youth, showed himself to be insightful and skillful in the face of a lesser lord. He adapted a resilient fighting style in the spirit of bushido. In America, Verlaine appears as a legendary swordsman. The virtuoso notices the unbridled thirst for recognition of the Vice-Statesman of New Castile. Almagro lacks the self-control that is considered the greatest virtue in Japan. Verlaine finds the lack contemptible.
The Gobernación de Nueva Castilla is under the command of Francisco Pizarro González. The advanced swineherd represents the Spanish crown in the New World in the first place.
Gouty jailer
On a sunny Sunday morning. A gouty jailer enjoys his footbath in the guard's area of the palace dungeons. Gonzalo and Hernando Pizarro, who were arrested by Almargo, are dozing in a cell. The brothers of the Viceroy of New Castile are counting on their speedy release. Almagro stands in a general's pose at the panorama window of his salon, the round table deserted at his back, and revels in the illusion that he has not weakened his negotiating position to the point of an abyss. He demands the capital city of Cuzco as his personal residence. He makes Pizarro's noble errand boy a generous offer: "If your boss moves to Lima, I'll send his brothers after him."
The viceroy's emissary shrugs his shoulders. Verlaine immediately realizes what has happened.
"I left the palace on the spot," he writes in his memoirs The Battle for Nueva Toledo. "I was aware that my master would not be alive much longer."