Biography
He passed some of his early years at the court of the Roman emperor Charles V. Charles granted the province of Venezuela, or Venosala as Hutten calls it, to the Welser family of Augsburg, and Hutten joined a band of 600 adventurers, under Georg von Speyer, who sailed out to conquer and exploit the province in the family's interest. The party landed at Coro in February 1535 and Hutten accompanied von Speyer on his long and toilsome expedition into the interior in search of treasure (El Dorado).
In December 1540, after the death of von Speyer in June 1540, Hutten became governor (captain-general) of Venezuela. Hutten then continued the hunt in the interior. After several years of wandering, harassed by the natives and weakened by hunger and fever, he and his followers came on a large city, the capital of the Omaguas, in the country north of the Amazons, where they were routed by the Indians, and Hutten himself severely wounded. He led those of his followers who survived back to Coro, in 1546, to find that a Spaniard, Juan de Carvajal, had been appointed by the Audiencia of Santo Domingo to preserve order in Venezuela.
As the years had gone by with no news of Hutten and his followers, Carvajal had begun to feel secure in his position, and the return of the adventurers was not welcome to him. When he saw how diminished they were in number, he thought to force from them an acknowledgment of his authority. In this, however, he was unsuccessful, and a subsequent attempt to seize them was well nigh disastrous to himself, for he was wounded by a traveling companion of Hutten's, Bartholomeus VI. Welser (the younger).
Carvajal was forced to pledge the Germans safe passage to the coast. In their journey to the coast, the adventurers took no precautions against attack, and were easily captured by Carvajal in April 1546, who, after keeping Hutten and Welser in chains for a time, had them beheaded. Eight years after Hutten's death, the Welsers' grant was taken from them, and German rule in Venezuela ceased.
Read more about this topic: Philipp Von Hutten
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