Part 5
As soon as his capture had become known, what was left of his army had dispersed, the city had surrendered, and Atahualpa, if we are to believe the chroniclers, had taken a terrible revenge, first causing all Huascar’s subjects that were of royal blood, and who could be found, to be put to death, and afterward the captured officers who had fought for him. His cruelty, Garcilaso de la Vega tells us, “was greater than that of the Turks. Not content with the blood of his own two hundred brothers, the sons of the great Huayna Capac, he passed on to drink that of his uncles, nephews, and other relations, so that none of the blood royal might escape, whether legitimate or not. They were all murdered in different ways.... He ordered all the women and children” (of royal blood) “to be assembled, of whatever age and condition, reserving only those who were dedicated to the Sun in the convent of Cuzco. He ordered that they should be killed outside the city, by little and little, and by various cruel tortures, so that they might be long in dying.”
When Pizarro and his party reached Tumbez, Atahualpa, accompanied by a small army, was at the baths near Cajamarca, a town on the Peruvian plateau not far from the Ecuadorian boundary. It was to him there that the report came that strangers had landed—strangers of a different color, who had long hair on their chins and wore strange clothing and armor, who had weapons different from any that had been seen in the land and bestrode terrible monsters that carried them over the ground with incredible speed. The effect of such startling news may be imagined. Pizarro, however, after having fully informed himself respecting the political status of affairs, thought he saw an opportunity to further his ends by diplomacy and protested that his mission was a friendly one. It would seem that Atahualpa must have realized that the strangers were far more formidable than was indicated by their mere number, for he sent his brother Titu to welcome them and make inquiries as to their desires and the purpose of their visit. By him Pizarro, having first expressed his thanks, sent a message to the effect that he would go at once to Cajamarca and call on Atahualpa in person. What then occurred is thus related by Dawson:
“On receiving Pizarro’s answer to his friendly message, Atahualpa resolved to await the promised visit, apparently suspecting no evil. The audacious Spaniard had, however, conceived the design of capturing the victorious claimant of the throne of the Incas, well knowing that in its actual distracted condition the country would be left without a center about which it could rally. Open war, no matter how overwhelming his first victory might be, could hardly be ultimately successful. Atahualpa, once safe at Cuzco or Quito, and surrounded by the disciplined soldiers who had overthrown Huascar, a defensive campaign might be undertaken in which Pizarro would find every step toward either capital bitterly disputed. Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians pouring up from the numberless provinces of the empire would be thrown in a never ceasing succession of armies against the little band of Spaniards and the latter would infallibly be driven back to the coast by starvation and fatigue, if not by defeat in the field.
“Apparently foolhardy, in fact Pizarro’s plan offered the only chance of success. Never dreaming that such a step was in contemplation, Atahualpa took no precautions. Leaving fifty-five men at the little port of San Miguel in the Paita valley to secure his retreat, Pizarro marched south with one hundred and two foot soldiers, sixty-two horses, and two small cannon, two hundred miles along the coast plain to a point opposite Cajamarca, and ascended along an Inca military road, meeting a friendly reception from the wondering natives, and supplied with provisions by Atahualpa’s orders. On the 15th of September, 1532, he entered Cajamarca. He found an open square in the middle of the town, surrounded by walls and solid stone buildings, which he received permission to occupy as quarters. From his camp outside Atahualpa sent word that on the following day he would enter the town in state and receive the Spaniards.
“Marvelous good fortune favored Pizarro’s designs. The Indians had furnished a trap all ready made, and now Atahualpa deliberately walked into it. On the morning of the 16th the Indian army broke camp and marched to Cajamarca, followed by the Emperor, who was borne in a litter and surrounded by his personal attendants, the great chiefs and the nobles belonging to his own lineage.” (Those belonging to Huascar’s he had caused to be killed.) “At sunset he entered the square, accompanied only by these unarmed attendants and found Pizarro and a few Spaniards awaiting him. The rest were hidden in the houses around the square with their horses saddled, their breastplates on, and musketry and cannon ready charged. From among the group that surrounded Pizarro, stepped forward Friar Valverde and approached the Inca monarch, who, reclining in a litter raised high above the crowd on the shoulders of his attendants, waited with dignity to hear what these strangers had to say.
“The priest advanced with a cross in one hand and a Bible in the other and began a harangue which, clumsily translated by an Indian boy, the Inca hardly understood. But in a few moments he realized that this uncouth jargon was meant to convey an arrogant demand that he acknowledge himself a vassal of Charles V and submit to baptism. With haughty surprise, he threw down the book Valverde tried to force into his hand. The priest shouted: ‘Fall on, Castilians—I absolve you!’ and into the helpless crowd burst a murderous fire from the doors of the houses all around. Aghast and bewildered by this display of powers which to them seemed necromantic, the survivors nevertheless stood manfully to the attack of the mail-clad horsemen who rode into the huddled masses, ferociously slashing and slaughtering. The Indians strove desperately to drag the Spaniards from the horses with their naked hands and interposed a living wall of human flesh between the murderers and their beloved sovereign. At length Pizarro’s own hands snatched Atahualpa from the litter. The Indian soldiers outside, hearing the firearms and the noise of the struggle, tried to force their way into the square, but the Spanish musketry and cannon mowed them down by hundreds and they fled before the charges of the cavalry, dispersing in the twilight.”
Atahualpa was then confined in a small stone house adjoining the palace of the Virgins of the Sun (the latter is now a convent, occupied by Sisters of Charity), and every precaution possible under the circumstances was taken to prevent his rescue. Pizarro’s next move in the conquest was to murder him. But, in the meanwhile, he had suggested in conversations with his prisoner that Huascar’s followers would probably take advantage of the opportunity afforded by his capture to reorganize their scattered forces and make an effort to regain the throne; he had hinted, too, at the advisability of arbitration, and Atahualpa had taken alarm and secretly ordered Huascar’s execution; whereupon Pizarro had feigned the greatest indignation and had contrived to frighten his victim into offering his famous ransom. “I will fill this room with gold,” he said, “as high as I can reach, if only you will liberate me.” (The room in which he was confined was 32 feet 9 inches long, 20 feet 9 inches wide, and 10 feet 9 inches high.) Pizarro accepted, a truce was agreed upon, Atahualpa ordered all preparations for war on the Spaniards to be suspended, and arranged for the collection of the gold. When the amount stipulated for was at last assembled, it was found to have a value equivalent to more than seventeen millions of dollars in our currency. Some historians say much more. Dawson, for instance, says it was more than twenty-two millions. One-fifth was sent to the royal treasury in Spain and the rest was divided among the adventurers. The share of the private soldiers even was large enough to make each of them rich for life.
Nevertheless, Pizarro had not performed his part of the agreement by setting his prisoner at liberty. Whether or not he had ever intended to can only be conjectured. It is clear only that, even if he did enter into the agreement in bad faith, as was charged by the chroniclers, he was afterward confronted by a problem which, in the opinion of recent writers, justified his perfidious behavior. Quizquiz, the general whose ability had enabled Atahualpa so often to defeat his late rival, was known to have taken the field with a large body of troops. Could a man such as Atahualpa had proven himself to be, released and at the head of a great army once more, be expected to permit these foreigners, who had so treacherously captured him and slain his attendants while on a friendly visit, to depart in peace with their loot? It did not seem likely. On the other hand, retreat through a then hostile country with the prisoner still in custody was out of the question, and, if he should continue to hold him in Cajamarca, Quizquiz, who had only been awaiting the word, would no longer hesitate to attack.
No; a bold _coup de main_ of some sort was imperative. If Atahualpa could be gotten rid of altogether, for instance, there was a chance, in the confusion that must follow, to reach Cuzco and form an alliance with the partisans of the murdered Inca, with a view to ousting the usurper’s party and restoring the throne to the legitimate line. Such a chance had only to exist to be appreciated by one so clear-sighted and audacious as Pizarro. It was his life and his friends’—and, of course, the Indian treasure—against only the life of Atahualpa, and the prisoner’s fate was sealed. There was a mock trial, wherein he was convicted of the murder of Huascar, conspiracy against the Spaniards, and other high crimes and misdemeanors, and then he was strangled to death in the public square—strangled rather than burned, says Hawthorne, as an act of grace, in consideration of his having professed at the last the Christian faith.
Some weeks before this, Almagro had joined the Conquistadores at Cajamarca with reinforcements that brought the Spanish force up to about five hundred. As soon as Atahualpa had been disposed of, the commander, with all his men, began his advance, by forced marches, on Cuzco, an advantageous position near which he was fortunate enough to secure without having encountered Quizquiz, though some of the cavalry under De Soto were engaged by a detachment on the way; all efforts to interpose the main body of the Indian army were frustrated by their speed. However, though “the true heir to the crown was a second son of Huayna Capac, named Manco, a legitimate brother of the unfortunate Huascar,” says Prescott, “Pizarro had too little knowledge of the disposition of this prince and he made no scruple to prefer Toparca, a young brother of Atahualpa and to present him to the Indian nobles as their future Inca.” So, to make assurance doubly sure, he did not, before he set out, announce his purpose of driving off the enemies of the rightful heir, but took the boy with him, “attended by a numerous retinue of vassals and moving in as much state and ceremony as if in possession of regal power.” Before they reached Cuzco, much to Pizarro’s chagrin, the boy fell sick and died.
But the misfortune was soon repaired, for, sure enough, when the adventurers went into camp outside the walls of the capital, no less a personage than Manco Capac II himself called on the commander in person and proposed the hoped-for alliance; and, just a year from the day he had taken Cajamarca, he entered Cuzco as the protector of the real Inca, whose coronation he permitted to be celebrated with all the splendor of the ancient rites. The Indians of central Peru hailed him as their deliverer from the tyranny of the usurper. Manco Capac, for his part, soon assembled a great army, and, with the help of some of the Spaniards, decisively defeated Quizquiz and drove him back to Ecuador.
VIII
But there was a sad awakening in store for the Inca on his return from that victorious campaign. He had permitted these allies of his—rapacious, recklessly daring as they were, and unscrupulous, cruel, and fanatical in their attitude toward infidels—to obtain a foothold in the very capital of the empire. And what manner of man was it of whom the great body of his subjects was made up? He was brave, yes—physically; he could fight, and conquer, too, when ably led, but also he was morally utterly irresponsible, “a slave,” as Mozans puts it, “utterly devoid of energy and individual initiative,” accustomed to look to the ruling class for guidance, to regard the Inca “with superstitious awe, as a being of a superior order.” Centuries of despotic government, rigid religious ritual, communal ownership of property, and labor, not for himself but for the commonwealth, had robbed him of all ambition and instilled into him the habit of accepting with patient resignation whatever fate might decree.
And now, after all these centuries of complaisance, what must have been his mental attitude at the end of such a succession of events? First, the late legitimate Inca Huascar, omnipotent as he was supposed to have been, directly descended from the Sun-God and Moon-Mother themselves, had been overthrown and put to death by an illegitimate rival. Then that rival, also of the Inca blood, had in his turn been captured in the very face of his army, and put to death despite another and much greater army, by a little band of mysterious strangers, against whose mail-clad bodies the battle-axes and spears of the Indians had been powerless—strangers who had made fierce, “fleet-footed monsters” (horses) subservient to their will and who carried terrible weapons that went off with a noise like thunder and vomited fire and smoke, and with which they killed their enemies before they could come near enough to get in a blow. Had not these invincible strangers, and apparently by supernatural means, overcome even the legitimate Inca’s conqueror? Surely, then, they must be some still superior order of beings, sent by the Sun-God to accomplish some wonderful purpose. Therefore they must be obeyed. Pizarro himself could not have created a people more suited to the carrying out of his designs had he had the power.
Probably realizing this, he promptly abandoned all subterfuge. As a consideration for the help he had been given in the campaign against Quizquiz, the Inca had been induced by stress of circumstances to acknowledge the supremacy of the King of Spain. It was only as a matter of form, he had been led to believe, but Pizarro now exacted the fullest compliance. As Adelantado by appointment of the overlord, he established a municipal council to govern the city, transformed the great temple into a church, made use of certain of the public buildings as officers’ quarters and barracks for the soldiers, seized all the treasure that was to be found—even the private dwellings and tombs were searched and stripped of it—and required the authorities to supply troops and carriers to accompany the exploring parties he sent out. “Pizarro, on entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any soldier to offer violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants,” says Prescott:
“But the palaces were numerous and the troops lost no time in plundering them of their contents as well as in despoiling the religious edifices. The interior decorations supplied them with considerable booty. They stripped off the jewels and rich ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the temple of Coricancha. Indignant at the concealment of their treasures, they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture and endeavored to extort from them a confession of their hiding places. They invaded the repose of the sepulchers, in which the Peruvians often deposited their valuable effects, and compelled the grave to give up its dead. No place was left unexplored by the rapacious conquerors, and they occasionally stumbled on a mine of wealth that rewarded their labors. In a cavern near the city they found a number of vases, richly embossed with figures of serpents, locusts, and other animals. Among the spoils were four golden llamas and ten or twelve statues of women, as large as life, some of gold, others of silver, ‘which merely to see,’ says one of the conquerors, with some naïveté, ‘was truly a great satisfaction.’... The magazines were stored with curious commodities—richly tinted robes of cotton and feather work, gold sandals and slippers of the same material, for the women, and dresses composed entirely of beads of gold.’... In one place, for example, they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver, each piece twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two or three inches thick. They were intended to decorate the dwelling of an Inca noble.... The amount of booty is stated variously by those present at the division of it. According to some, it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahualpa.”
Fully appreciating also the desirability of establishing a capital of his own at some strategic point much more easily accessible from Panama, Pizarro made a careful study of routes and possible sites and finally chose one beside the river Rimac, on a fertile, elevated plain near the base of the Cordillera, only about three leagues from one of the best harbors on the coast, and at the point where the Inca military road began its ascent to the plateau. Here, only about a year after he entered Cuzco, he founded _La Ciudad de los Reyes_ (the City of the Kings), so named in honor of the Three Kings or Wise Men of the East, because their feast day, Epiphany, occurred at that season of the year. Soon it became known as Lima. “Before the erection of a single house was permitted,” he had a plan drawn up, Mozans tells us, providing for large squares and streets unusually wide, “and in making this plan he had in view, not the small number (only sixty-nine) of those who were then prepared to make their homes there, but the future greatness of ‘The Empire City of the New World.’ Moreover, as the city had to be in God and for God and in His name—_en Dios y por Dios y en su nombre_—to use his own words, work was first begun on the church, which was named _Nuestra Señora de la Asunción_. The first stone and the first pieces of timber were put in place by the hands of the Adelantado himself, who wished, like the other Conquistadores, to emphasize his zeal for religion and his devotion to _La Santissima Virgen, Madre de Dios_.”
In the meanwhile his brother Hernando had gone to Spain with the King’s fifth of the loot, and on the way had spread the news. Once more all was excitement on the Isthmus. It was not long before Pizarro’s forces were augmented by three or four hundred soldiers that had been led into Ecuador by Pedro de Alvarado, Governor of Guatemala, who consented to abandon his expedition when persuaded by Almagro, who went at once to meet him, that he was trespassing on Pizarro’s preserves, for which act of grace the Spanish King added the province of Honduras to Alvarado’s jurisdiction, and Almagro gave him a large sum of money; and, when communication was established between Lima and Panama by sea, adventurers of every degree began to flock to the new city as they had before to Mexico and Central America.
This enabled Almagro, with an army of nearly six hundred Spaniards and fifteen thousand Indians, the latter under the command of one of the Inca’s brothers, to make an excursion into Chile for purposes of exploration, for it had been agreed that he should have the southern half of the territory they might conquer and Pizarro the northern. Sebastian de Benalcázar, another of Pizarro’s lieutenants, went to Ecuador with a force of two hundred Spaniards and a large Indian contingent and completed the defeat of Atahualpa’s adherents, took possession of Quito and founded the city of Guayaquil at the mouth of the Guayas River, which provided for that country, too, independent access from the sea.
Also by this time any illusions the Inca may have had as to the continuance of the ancient dynasty under the protection of the Spaniards were dispelled. By this time even his complaisant subjects must have discovered that these superhuman deliverers, as they had thought them, were mere men—or else, if they were indeed a different order of beings, that order, they must have concluded, was infernal rather than divine. The sovereignty of the Inca had become little more than a fiction. As in the islands of the Caribbean and elsewhere, the fairest lands in the country had been divided into vast estates and great numbers of natives practically reduced to slavery and set to work them for the benefit of their new masters. With respect to their treatment in general, though Pizarro himself seems to have been guilty of few acts of wanton cruelty, he either could not, or did not if he could, restrain the oppression of them by his followers. If their behavior was not quite as atrocious as that of other Spaniards toward the tribes in the north, there was an utter lack of considerateness in it and disregard of their property and rights that galled even them.
Roused at last, the Inca took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the scattering of the Spanish force and made his escape from Cuzco, where Hernando Pizarro and his younger brothers Juan and Gonzalo were in command, and, finding his subjects ripe for revolt, had no difficulty in raising two large armies. One he sent against the Adelantado, who was in Lima; with the other he returned to Cuzco and took the great citadel of Sacsahuaman, overlooking the town, and began a siege that was to last more than six months, and during which Juan Pizarro was killed in an attempt to recapture the citadel. The army that went to the coast was ambushed and defeated by the Spaniards and their local adherents before ever it reached Lima. All that what was left of it could do was to prevent the sending of reinforcements to Cuzco despite the desperate straits to which the Spanish force there was reduced. Pizarro was himself compelled to send to the Isthmus for help. Just before it was too late, however, he managed to get away two hundred and fifty men to the relief of his brothers, and just at that juncture also, Almagro, on his way back from Chile, turned up with his followers, and, caught between Cuzco and these two new detachments of the enemy, the Inca was overwhelmed and concluded to retire into the wild region of Vilcabamba, where the Spaniards could not follow with any hope of success, and there held out for some years. But with his retreat all that remained of the Inca dominion came to an end. There were a few other attempts, but neither he nor his descendants ever succeeded in recovering the throne.