Part 17

The state of affairs in Peru, though improved by the death of Almagro and the crushing of his wicked rebellion, was still far from secure. Manco was developing what has since come to be regarded as the characteristic Indian tactics. He had learned that the original fashion of rushing upon a foe in mass, fairly to smother him under a crush of bodies, would not work against discipline. So he took to the tactics of harassment and ambuscade,--the policy of killing from behind, which our Apaches learned in the same way. He was always hanging about the Spaniards, like a wolf about the flock, waiting to pounce upon them whenever they were off their guard, or when a few were separated from the main body. It is the most telling mode of warfare, and the hardest to combat. Many of the Spaniards fell victims; in a single swoop he cut off and massacred thirty of them. It was useless to pursue him,--the mountains gave him an impregnable retreat. As the only deliverance from this harassment, Pizarro adopted a new policy. In the most dangerous districts he founded military posts; and around these secure places towns grew rapidly, and the people were able to hold their own. Emigrants were coming to the country, and Peru was developing a civilized nation out of them and the uplifted natives. Pizarro imported all sorts of European seeds, and farming became a new and civilized industry.

Besides this development of the new little nation, Pizarro was spreading the limits of exploration and conquest. He sent out brave Pedro de Valdivia,--that remarkable man who conquered Chile, and made there a history which would be found full of thrilling interest, were there room to recount it here. He sent out, too, his brother Gonzalo as governor of Quito, in 1540. That expedition was one of the most astounding and characteristic feats of Spanish exploration in the Americas; and I wish space permitted the full story of it to enter here. For nearly two years the knightly leader and his little band suffered superhuman hardships. They froze to death in the snows of the Andes, and died of heat in the desert plains, and fell in the forest swamps of the upper Amazon. An earthquake swallowed an Indian town of hundreds of houses before their eyes. Their way through the tropic forests had to be hewn step by step. They built a little brigantine with incredible toil,--Gonzalo working as hard as any,--and descended the Napo to the Amazon. Francisco de Orellana and fifty men could not rejoin their companions, and floated down the Amazon to the sea, whence the survivors got to Spain. Gonzalo at last had to struggle back to Quito,--a journey of almost matchless horror. Of the three hundred gallant men who had marched forth so blithely in 1540 (not including Orellana's fifty), there were but eighty tattered skeletons who staggered into Quito in June, 1542. This may give some faint idea of what they had been through.

Meanwhile an irreparable calamity had befallen the young nation, and robbed it at one dastardly blow of one of its most heroic figures. The baser followers who had shared the treachery of Almagro had been pardoned, and well-treated; but their natures were unchanged, and they continued to plot against the wise and generous man who had "made" them all. Even Diego de Almagro, whom Pizarro had reared tenderly as a son, joined the conspirators. The ringleader was one Juan de Herrada. On Sunday, June 26, 1541, the band of assassins suddenly forced their way into Pizarro's house. The unarmed guests fled for help; and the faithful servants who resisted were butchered. Pizarro, his half-brother Martinez de Alcantara, and a tried officer named Francisco de Chaves had to bear the brunt alone. Taken all by surprise as they were, Pizarro and Alcantara tried to hurry on their armor, while Chaves was ordered to secure the door. But the mistaken soldier half opened it to parley with the villains, and they ran him through, and kicked his corpse down the stair-case. Alcantara sprang to the door and fought heroically, undaunted by the wounds that grew thicker on him. Pizarro, hurling aside the armor there was no time to don, flung a cloak over his left arm for a shield, and with the right grasping the good sword that had flashed in so many a desperate fray he sprang like a lion upon the wolfish gang. He was an old man now; and years of such hardship and exposure as few men living nowadays ever dreamed of had told on him. But the great heart was not old, and he fought with superhuman valor and superhuman strength. His swift sword struck down the two foremost, and for a moment the traitors were staggered. But Alcantara had fallen; and taking turns to wear out the old hero, the cowards pressed him hard. For several minutes the unequal fight went on in that narrow passage, slippery with blood,--one gray-haired man with flashing eyes against a score of desperadoes. At last Herrada seized Narvaez, a comrade, in his arms, and behind this living shield rushed against Pizarro. Pizarro ran Narvaez through and through; but at the same instant one of the crowding butchers stabbed him in the throat. The conqueror of Peru reeled and fell; and the conspirators plunged their swords in his body. But even then the iron will kept the body to the last thought of a great heart; and calling upon his Redeemer, Pizarro drew a cross with bloody finger upon the floor, bent and kissed the sacred symbol, and was dead.

So lived and so died the man who began life as the swineherd of Truxillo, and who ended it the conqueror of Peru. He was the greatest of the Pioneers; a man who from meaner beginnings rose higher than any; a man much slandered and maligned by the prejudiced; but nevertheless a man whom history will place in one of her highest niches,--a hero whom every lover of heroism will one day delight to honor.

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Such was the conquest of Peru. Of the romantic history which followed in Peru I cannot tell here,--of the lamentable fall of brave Gonzalo Pizarro; of the remarkable Pedro de la Gasca; of the great Mendoza's vice-royal promotion; nor of a hundred other chapters of fascinating history. I have wished only to give the reader some idea of what a Spanish conquest really was, in superlative heroism and hardship. Pizarro's was the greatest conquest; but there were many others which were not inferior in heroism and suffering, but only in genius; and the story of Peru was very much the story of two thirds of the Western Hemisphere.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Spanish Pioneers, by Charles F. Lummis