He also wrote to the Franciscan friars who had accompanied Bobadilla asking them to use their influence--the Admiral having some vague connection with the Franciscan order since his days at La Rabida.
No reply came to any of these letters, and Columbus sent word that he still regarded his authority as paramount in the island.

For reply to this he received the Sovereigns' message to him which we have seen, commanding him to put himself under the direction of Bobadilla.

There was no mistaking this; there was the order in plain words; and with I know not what sinkings of heart Columbus at last set out for San Domingo.
Bobadilla had expected resistance, but the Admiral, whatever his faults, knew how to behave with, dignity in a humiliating position; and he came into the city unattended on August 23, 1500.

On the outskirts of the town he was met by Bobadilla's guards, arrested, put in chains, and lodged in the fortress, the tower of which exists to this day.

He seemed to himself to be the victim of a particularly petty and galling kind of treachery, for it was his own cook, a man called Espinoza, who riveted his gyves upon him.
There remained Bartholomew to be dealt with, and he, being at large and in command of the army, might not have proved such an easy conquest, but that Christopher, at Bobadilla's request, wrote and advised him to submit to arrest without any resistance.