Ercilla received a thorough education from the most learned teachers, and also enjoyed the advantages of extensive travel and life at court where he came in contact with high personages.

In this capacity Ercilla (sometimes spelled Arcilla) visited Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, and was present in 1554 at the marriage of his master to Queen Mary I of England.

In 1556 Ercilla continued on his way to Peru and accompanied García Hurtado de Mendoza, recently named Governor and Commander-in-chief of Chile, where the Araucanians had revolted.

This is an epic poem of military exaltation in 37 "cantos" or verses, where the narrator relays the most significant facts of the Arauco War against the Araucanos (mapuches) and which he began to write during the campaign.

Then two women, one Spanish and another Native American, approached the house of García, entering by the window, and managed to convince the governor to spare the lives of both.

After Ercilla's return to Spain in 1562, he made several diplomatic journeys to Austria, where his mother was a maid of honor at the imperial court, and also visited Italy, France, Germany and Bohemia.

In 1570, he married Doña María de Bazán, a woman of illustrious family and of intellectual attainments and, after other diplomatic missions, settled permanently in Spain in 1577.

Ercilla's great work is La Araucana, an epic poem of thirty-seven cantos, describing the difficulties encountered by the Spaniards during the insurrection in Arauco, and the heroic deeds of the natives as well as his companions.

In his novel In Search of the Castaways (1867), Jules Verne wrote,[3] "Araucania is populated by the Mapuche, the native Chilean race extolled in verse by the poet Ercilla".