After the failed attempt, they escaped from Lima to Cajamarca, and started to gather men to help the viceroy. In the meantime, thanks to the "oidor" Alvarez, the viceroy had escaped to Tumbes and gathered a small military force in the belief that all the country would rise up to defend the Crown under the royal flag. The viceroy's resistance to Pizarro and his deputy Francisco de Carvajal, the infamous ""el demonio de los Andes"" ("demon of the Andes") would last for two years until he was defeated in Añaquito on 18 January 1546. Aguirre and Melchor Verdugo, a converso Jew, had gone to Nicaragua sailing to Trujillo with 33 men. Verdugo had conferred captain's rank on Rodrigo de Esquivel and Nuño de Guzmán, sergeant major rank on Aguirre and "contador" status on the cleric Alonso de Henao, who would later participate in the expedition of Pedro de Ursúa to Omagua and El Dorado. However, in 1551, Aguirre returned to Potosí (then still part of Peru and now part of Bolivia). The judge, Francisco de Esquivel, arrested him and charged him with infraction of the laws protecting the Indians. The judge discounted Aguirre's justifications and his claims of belonging to the Spanish gentry and sentenced him to a public flogging. His pride wounded, Aguirre waited for the end of the judge's mandate to avenge his honor. Fearing Aguirre's vengeance, the judge fled, changing his residence constantly. Aguirre pursued Esquivel to Lima, Quito and then to Cuzco, missing him at all three places. For three years he trailed Esquivel on foot and without shoes, his soldiers following this obstinate pursuit with interest. Aguirre finally found him in Cuzco, taking a nap in the library of his house, and wearing a coat of chain mail he always wore for fear of Aguirre. Aguirre crept up to the sleeping Esquivel and stabbed him twice with a dagger, but when the mail stopped his blows to the former magistrate's body, he stabbed him in the right temple and killed him. Protected by friends who had hidden him, Aguirre fled from Cuzco and took refuge with a relative in Huamanga.