[2][3] He might have served as a teenager in the Granada War, but either way, the conquest of the last Muslim stronghold and the end of hostilities in Spain drove him and his half-brother Álvaro to start a career abroad as mercenaries.

Eventually, they contacted their relative, Cardinal Bernardino López de Carvajal, a favorite of Pope Alexander VI who was in conflict with the barons of the Romagna and took Diego and Álvaro into his service.

The brothers were later promoted to Papal troops and moved to the Castel Sant'Angelo, reportedly because the Pope was impressed by an earlier street brawl where Diego and Álvaro, along with Gonzalo Pizarro Sr. and four other Spaniards, defeated an entire squad of Papal soldiers, "killing five, mauling ten, and leaving all the rest well battered and knocked out", with Diego not wielding a sword, but a heavy iron bar used in a weight throw game called tirar a la barra.

[4] The Pope's son Cesare Borgia recruited García to drown a revolt in Montefiascone, in which the Spaniard infiltrated the citadel by night and pried off the gate's locks with his enormous strength, letting the rest of the army in to take the castle easily.

[2] In 1500, in midst of the war between the Borgias and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, García was expelled from the Papal army after dueling and killing Italian captain Cesare Romano, who had insulted Garcia for shouting the name of Spain during a battle.

During the subsequent siege of the Castle of Saint George, the Turks used an especially designed crane to hoist enemy soldiers and capture them or drop them to their deaths, and Paredes was one of the men caught by the engine.

However, he held on to the hook and let himself be taken to the enemy wall, and once there he attacked fiercely the Ottoman soldiers, repealing the castle's garrison during three entire days and taking down many of them until being finally captured by exhaustion and hunger.

Paredes capitalized on his imprisonment in the fortress to recover, and as soon as he heard the Spaniards assaulting the walls again, he broke his chains, seized weapons and started fighting the Turks from the inside, eventually helping the rest of the army take the castle.

Despite his earlier betrayal, he was welcomed by Cesare Borgia due to his newfound renown, being appointed colonel of his armies and undertaking campaigns in Rimini, Fosara and Faenza.

[3] During the impasse between the Spanish and French armies at both sides of the Garigliano river, Paredes advised Córdoba to engage action, but the general, being ill at the time and waiting for more reinforcements, preferred to stay put.

The brawl got out of control and summoned both armies to the river, with the French bringing their artillery against them, after which Paredes' comrades finally managed to drag him back to the safety of their lines.

The name was possibly first given to him by Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, an ally to the French, who barely missed being struck down by Paredes' halberd during the battle and was forced to flee on horse.

Disappointed by the treatment given to Córdoba and himself, Paredes left the army and became a pirate with the secret support of another of their war comrades, the famed admiral Juan de Lezcano.

[4] He reached the safety of Prospero Colonna's allied camp, where he recovered, but two months later he was challenged by a Spanish captain, Bartolomé Palomino, who blamed him for the death of many of his comrades while solely he escaped.

Poet Luis Zapata de Chaves claimed García fought in the Battle of Pavia, after which he would have been tasked with watching over the captured King Francis I of France,[8] although this is unproven.

Receiving four musquet wounds, the Spaniard was forced to barricade himself with his young son Sancho and their servants in a guest house, where he killed ten attackers trying to break in before the imperial guard rescued them.

[1] He never commanded an army or rose to the position of a general, but he was a notable figure in the wars of the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, when personal prowess had still a considerable share in deciding combat.

[5] In his Brief Summary, later printed at the end of the Chronicle of the Great Captain, published in 1584 at Alcalá de Henares, Paredes modestly lays no claim to having done more than was open to a very athletic man.