CHAPTER II
THE SPANISH CONQUEST
During the long campaigns by which his general, Quizquiz, had conquered Peru, Atahuallpa had never left the North. He received the news of the crowning victory and the capture of Huascar, in his palace at Tumibamba on the Cuencan plain, and started at once for Cajamarca, the first great town on the plateau south of the Ecuador border, accompanied by only a small army. While waiting near Cajamarca, Atahuallpa heard the wonderful news that two hundred strangers had landed on the coast at Tumbez—a port on the southern side of the Gulf of Guayaquil. They were white and their faces were covered with hair; they had garments and arms different from any his informants had seen; and most extraordinary of all they were accompanied by outlandish gigantic beasts who carried them over the ground with a terrifying speed.
The effect of this intelligence upon Atahuallpa and his advisers can only be conjectured. It was remembered that four years before a ship carrying a score or more of these same foreigners had sailed along the coast of Ecuador and northern Peru, landing at various places to beg provisions and ask questions. Two had been left behind, and were taken to the interior, where their fate is unknown. It is, however, probable that these unfortunate Spaniards had given to Atahuallpa's officers much information about the resources and intentions of their countrymen. The Inca emperor seems to have realised that the importance and power of the foreigners was out of all proportion to their numbers. The newcomers protested that their purposes were amicable, and sent friendly messages to Atahuallpa, who resolved to act cautiously and avoid offending them unnecessarily. He despatched his own brother as an ambassador with assurances of good-will and a polite inquiry as to their wishes and intentions. But unfortunately for himself and his country the Inca was dealing with a man whose profound and deceitful diplomacy was as much superior to his as a musket is to a cross-bow. The Spanish leader returned word that he appreciated the kind expressions of the emperor and would at once proceed to Cajamarca to pay his respects in person.
This was Francisco Pizarro, one of the greatest practical geniuses whom modern Europe has produced. Born out of wedlock at Trujillo, a town in Estremadura, the province which during centuries was the great fighting ground of Castilian and Moor, he passed his youth as a swine-herd in the most abject poverty and illiteracy. Enlisting as a private soldier, he spent his young manhood in fighting under Gonzalo de Cordoba, in those campaigns which carried the renown of the Spanish infantry to the farthest confines of Europe. An admirable soldier, conscious that he possessed powers of the highest order, hopelessly handicapped in old Europe by his base birth and illiteracy, the discovery of the New World opened up a field for his talents. He eagerly embraced the opportunity, embarking in 1509 with Alonso de Ojeda for the Darien gold mines. Four years later he accompanied Balboa in that memorable journey across the Isthmus which resulted in the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. To the city of Panama, looking out over the mysterious sea, adventurers flocked like a pack of wolves eager for a share in the spoils of its unknown shores, and Pizarro was among them. The news of Cortes's conquest of Mexico brought to America a horde of soldiers of fortune. Recklessly brave, experienced in the most scientific warfare of the time, arrogantly proud of their nationality, utterly careless of odds, ready to risk their lives on the chance of sudden fortune, a set of men better qualified for the work which fate threw in their way could not be conceived.
Panama had hardly been founded when rumours of the existence of a wealthy and civilised empire lying far to the south reached the ears of the Spaniards. In 1522, Pascual de Andagoya, a gentleman of distinguished family who occupied a high office at Panama, made an expedition for a short distance along the coast and obtained valuable confirmation of the vague reports. Obliged to abandon the enterprise by his own illness, he turned it over to a partnership formed for the purpose by Pizarro, Almagro, and a priest named Luque. The first enjoyed a great reputation for good judgment and fertility of resource, gained in expeditions along the Caribbean coast, and by mere force of his talents had come to be regarded as one of the ablest and luckiest captains on the Isthmus. The active command was to be his, while Almagro, a soldier of more advanced age and hardly inferior reputation, backed him up and sent supplies and reinforcements. Luque was the moneyed man of the concern. They bought a small vessel at Panama which Balboa himself had built eight years before, and in 1524 Pizarro started down the coast. But his supply of provisions was inadequate, it was impossible to obtain more from the savage natives of the forested shores of Colombia, and the first effort ended in failure.
Nothing discouraged, Pizarro and his partners persevered. They had great difficulty in raising money to fit out properly the next expedition, but happily they succeeded in interesting the mayor of Panama. Eighteen months later Pizarro sailed once more with a better equipment and one hundred and sixty men. For five hundred miles he found nothing except the hot and swampy seashore of Colombia, inhabited by miserable naked tribes, and his companions had begun to believe that the empire they were seeking was a myth, when the pilot who had been sent on ahead came back with word that he had penetrated south of the equator, and there had met a sort of large sea-going raft coming from the south manned by a clothed and civilised crew and laden with cloth, silver work, metal mirrors, vases, and various other goods.
These Indians said they came from Tumbez, a city in a fertile valley on a dry and penetrable coast which lay not more than two hundred miles farther south. They were traders bringing up a stock to sell to the shore peoples of Ecuador—tribes who had long been compelled to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Incas, but who still lived in virtual independence under their own chiefs. The men on the raft told the Spaniards that the whole interior and the southern coast were inhabited by civilised peoples, subjects of an emperor whose capital was a great city in the mountains hundreds of leagues to the south. Having received this confirmation of their most extravagant hopes, Pizarro and his men pushed on until they nearly reached the northern boundary of Ecuador, not far from the limits of the Inca empire. It was clear, however, that their small force would never be able to cope with the armies of such a power. Almagro went back to Panama for reinforcements, while the indomitable Pizarro landed his already disheartened adventurers on a swampy island where their clothes rotted in the steaming, tropical heat and never-ceasing rain; fevers decimated them, mosquitoes tortured them, and eatable provisions were impossible to obtain. When Almagro reached Panama, the governor flew into a rage on hearing that Pizarro was holding his men against their will, and sent a ship to bring back all who wished. Nine-tenths of the band deserted Pizarro, but he was indomitable and thirteen heroes stood by him in his determination to reach Peru or perish. For weary months he waited for provisions, but the moment they arrived he set off for the south. Within twenty days he and his little band of adventurers reached the Gulf of Guayaquil, four hundred miles farther on, and immediately landed at Tumbez. With their own eyes they saw full confirmation of what the Indians of the raft had told them. Irrigated fields, green with beautiful crops, lined the river bank; eighty thousand people, all comfortably housed, lived in the valley; commerce was flourishing; large temples profusely ornamented with gold and silver testified to wealth and culture; the government was well-ordered and stable; and the people received the visitors with open-handed hospitality.
After refreshing his followers, Pizarro continued his explorations down the coast for a couple of hundred miles, finding a succession of fertile valleys interrupting the monotonous desert, each filled with villages and farms and a thriving, civilised, and prosperous population. In the fall of 1527 he returned to Panama, full of the idea of leading an expedition to conquer the great empire about which he had obtained such minute and exact information. He wisely resolved himself to go to Spain and secure the direct patronage and countenance of the government at Madrid. Taking with him natives brought from Tumbez and specimens of products, he set off, and on his arrival was granted an audience by Charles V. The Emperor was greatly impressed by the story which the adventurer told. Naturally of a noble and commanding presence, the conscious dignity of Pizarro's manners corresponded to the high ambitions which filled his mind. In the doing of great things he had dropped all evidences of his base origin, and contact with men and the habit of command had given him an ease of address and clearness of thought which made his hearers forget the deficiencies of his early education. The concession he prayed for was granted. He himself was legitimatised and ennobled and received the title of "adelantado," while the gallant followers who had refused to abandon him on the Colombian island were made gentlemen of coat-armour. Pizarro and his partners were formally authorised to conquer and settle Peru in the name of the Castilian sovereign and received a grant of money for the purchase of arms, agreeing to remit to the royal treasury one-fifth of all the gold that they should find.
Pizarro knew just the kind of men needed to assist in this hazardous enterprise, and he took every precaution to select only those of whose valour and capacity he was well assured. His mother had bred up a family of lions in the little old Estremadura town, and his four brothers were hardly his inferiors in valour and audacity. Hernando, the oldest and only legitimate son of Francisco's father, agreed to go. So did Juan and Gonzalo, two illegitimate brothers who were younger, and also Francisco Alcantara, a half-brother on the mother's side. Hernando Cortes, the noble conqueror of Mexico, exerted himself to help Pizarro fill up his ranks with soldiers of the most approved courage, and the latter finally sailed for the Isthmus with a small body picked from the very flower of the fighting men of the Peninsula.
Pizarro believed that a few hundreds of good men, well provided with artillery and horses, would be as effective as thousands in striking terror to masses of Indians armed only with spears and swords. Arrived at Panama, it was arranged that he should proceed to Peru at once, while Almagro would follow later with reinforcements recruited among the unemployed adventurers in Nicaragua. All sorts of good fortune favoured the daring enterprise. For once the fitful winds which usually baffle sailing ships in the Gulf of Panama were kind, and Pizarro's clumsy, little caravels traversed in thirteen days the seven hundred miles of inhospitable coast which lay between the Isthmus and the first Inca provinces. Landing among the half-civilised tribes of Ecuador, he had the good luck to find a store of gold and emeralds. This he sent back, as an encouragement to Almagro, and marching down the Ecuador coast, he reached the Gulf of Guayaquil, on whose southern shore began the populous and civilised portions of the empire. He crossed to the island of Puna, overcame its fierce inhabitants with great slaughter, and there was joined by a large and welcome reinforcement of men and horses under the command of Hernando de Soto, afterwards so famous as the discoverer of the Mississippi, who had come on his own motion to get his share in the spoils.
So far, Pizarro's operations had been among outlying provinces owning only nominal allegiance to the Incas, but he now felt strong enough to cross over to Tumbez and establish a footing in their real domain. From Tumbez he marched south to Paita, where he determined to establish his base. The quick eye of the master general appreciated the strategical advantages of this valley. At this point the great military road coming down from the plateau of Ecuador debouched on the coast plain. Communication to the south was easy by a road which connected all the coast valleys with branches climbing to the plateaux. An anchorage at the valley's mouth afforded a sure means of keeping open that communication with Panama which was so essential to success; reinforcements could reach him in whatever part of Peru he might venture, and a garrison left at Paita would command the main route connecting Quito and Cuzco, cutting the Peruvian empire in two.
On receiving Pizarro's answer to his friendly message, Atahuallpa 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 centre about which it could rally. Open war, no matter how overwhelming his first victory might be, could hardly be ultimately successful. Atahuallpa 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 his 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, Atahuallpa took no precautions. Leaving fifty-five men at the little post 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 being supplied with provisions by Atahuallpa's orders.
On the 15th of November, 1532, Pizarro 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, Atahuallpa sent word that the following day he would enter the town in state and receive the Spaniards. Marvellous good fortune favoured Pizarro's treacherous designs. The Indians had furnished a trap already made, and now Atahuallpa 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. 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 breast-plates on, and musketry and cannon ready charged.
From among the group which 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 those 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 realised 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 which 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 manfully stood to the attack of the mail-clad horsemen who rode into the huddled mass 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 Atahuallpa 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.
Pizarro took every precaution to prevent the escape or rescue of his prisoner, and for the first few weeks treated him kindly. The Spaniard was playing a profound diplomatic game. He well knew that Atahuallpa's generals would fear to endanger the latter's life by undertaking any aggressive measures, and that Huascar's partisans would take advantage of this providential opportunity to reorganise their forces. He conversed much with the captive emperor and at length began to hint to him the advisability of arbitration with Huascar. But the Inca took alarm and secretly sent off orders for his brother's execution. Seeing that the Indian was not to be cajoled, the Spaniard adopted a sterner attitude, pretended the greatest indignation at the fratricide, and soon had Atahuallpa willing to offer anything for his release. Shrewdly guessing that for gold the Spaniards would run any risk, the Inca negotiated for his ransom, saying: "I will fill this room with gold as high as I can reach if only you will liberate me." Pizarro agreed, insisting, however, that the ransom be delivered in advance at Cajamarca. A formal contract was drawn up and executed before a notary, and the deluded emperor ordered all preparations for war on the Spaniards to be interrupted and that the temples be stripped of their gold ornaments to supply the enormous amount he had promised. Under protection of this truce Pizarro sent out expeditions to explore the country and to expedite the process of gathering the treasure, and while this was going on Almagro arrived with reinforcements which doubled the Spanish forces. Finally the agreed sum was all in Cajamarca. It amounted to four million five hundred sterling in modern money. One-fifth was sent to the royal treasury and the remainder divided, making even the private soldiers rich for life.
Nevertheless, Atahuallpa was not released. Large bodies of his troops were known to be on their way from Cuzco, and Pizarro realised that, once at the head of his forces, the Inca would wage an unrelenting warfare to expel the last Spaniard from Peru. If kept a prisoner his partisans would no longer hesitate to fight to release him, appreciating now the uselessness of relying on Spanish promises. He must be got rid of, and so after a mock trial in which he was charged with Huascar's murder and with conspiring against the Spaniards, the Inca emperor was strangled to death in the public square at Cajamarca. Pizarro knew better than to allow the Indians time to settle the disputed succession. With masterful sagacity he resolved to strike at Cuzco during the confusion. He suddenly evacuated Cajamarca and rapidly marched along the northern plateau, and over the Cerro de Pasco into the fertile valley of Jauja. From this point a short road led down the Cordillera to the sea, making it an admirable base for a campaign against Cuzco.
OBSEQUIES OF ATAHUALLPA.
[From a painting by the Peruvian artist, Monteros.]
Leaving a garrison to protect his retreat to the ocean, Pizarro advanced by forced marches along the great central plateau toward Cuzco. Quizquiz and the army, which had defeated and captured Huascar two years before, tried to oppose his progress, but all the calculations of the Indian general were overthrown by the incredible speed of the Spanish cavalry. The horsemen reached the neighbourhood of Cuzco without encountering any considerable force of the enemy. Here the advance guard was surprised, lost a fourth of its number, and was on the point of being overwhelmed, when the opportune arrival of the main body dispersed the Indians. Though only a small part of Quizquiz's army had taken part, this defeat badly demoralised his soldiers; it seemed impossible to make any headway against these strangers clothed in steel, mounted on great beasts, and armed with weapons which slew their opponents before the latter could got in a blow. Moreover, Quizquiz was in a hostile country, where sympathies were all with the Huascar party and where the executioners of Atahuallpa were regarded as deliverers.
Manco Capac, Huascar's brother and legitimate successor, went in person to the Spanish camp to propose a formal alliance and a joint war of extermination against the Atahuallpa faction, Pizarro received him with every mark of honour and respect and renewed his assurances that the sole object of his march from Cajamarca was to crush the enemies of the rightful emperor. Quizquiz tried hard to get his forces into shape for resistance, but his position near Cuzco was untenable, and after a slight skirmish he was obliged to leave the way open to the capital. Just a year from the day he had reached Cajamarca, Pizarro entered Cuzco by the side of the legitimate emperor amid the acclamations of the people. Manco's inauguration was splendidly celebrated with all the ancient rites, but among the procession of rejoicing Incas rode an ominous cavalcade—the Spanish soldiers, who now numbered nearly five hundred.
The new emperor gathered an army, and, assisted by some Spaniards, set off in pursuit of Quizquiz, whom he defeated a short distance north of Cuzco. The old northern general, still indefatigable, made a rapid march on Jauja to surprise the Spanish garrison, but was repulsed in this well-considered effort to cut Pizarro's communications with the coast, and had to make his way, the best he could, back towards Quito. The central portion of the empire would now have been content to settle back into quiet allegiance to Manco. But the latter soon found that his allies regarded the country as their own. Under the pressure of necessity for help against Quizquiz he had acknowledged, as a matter of form, the titular supremacy of the Spanish king, and he was now required to carry out his obligation to the letter. A municipal council, framed on the Spanish model, was installed as the governing body of the ancient capital; the great temples were turned into churches and monasteries; other public edifices were seized to be used as residences or barracks for the Spaniards; tombs, temples, and private residences were searched for gold; and the authorities were required to furnish troops and carriers for the expeditions which their oppressors planned against the remoter parts of the empire. With the resignation characteristic of the race, the Indians submitted to these exactions, and Manco hesitated long before deciding to put himself at the head of a revolt.
The transcendant military and diplomatic qualities Pizarro had displayed were equalled by the energy and foresight which he now showed as an administrator. Realising that his capital should be on the coast in order to secure direct communication with Panama, he made a careful examination of routes and possible sites and selected the valley of the Rimac, just below Jauja, where he founded Lima. From this point the military road by which the Incas had kept up communication from Cuzco with the coast and the northern provinces ascended to the plateau. Lima and Jauja were the strategical keys to central and southern Peru; San Miguel gave easy access to Quito, and Pizarro insured the region extending from Cerro de Pasco to the Ecuador border by establishing the city of Trujillo half-way up the coast.
Their original agreement provided that Pizarro should have the northern half of the countries they might conquer, and Almagro the southern. Accordingly, about two years after Cuzco was occupied, Almagro started for Bolivia and Chile, accompanied by five hundred Spaniards and two brothers of the Inca emperor, leading a large native army. In Bolivia, where the Inca power had been established for centuries, he encountered no opposition, and crossed the bleak plateaux of the Puna, descended the Andes, and finally reached the fertile valleys of northern Chile. But so little gold was found that Almagro determined to return and set up a claim to Cuzco.
STONE BRIDGE OVER THE RIMAC RIVER, LIMA, PERU.
In the meantime the Incas of central Peru had awakened from the dream of a continuance of the ancient dynasty under Spanish protection. Pizarro himself seems to have been guilty of few acts of wanton cruelty, but he neither wished nor tried to restrain his followers from reducing the Indians to vassalage. The natives were fast crowded to the wall, and the Spaniards divided the fairest parts of the country into estates, treating the Indians as tenants from whom tribute was due. The sovereignty of the emperor soon became a mere fiction. In 1536 Manco escaped from Cuzco and raised the standard of rebellion. The moment appeared favourable. The Spanish forces were scattered; Pizarro was at Lima, and Almagro in the wilds of Chile, but as a matter of fact the Incas laboured under almost hopeless disadvantages. Their cities, fortresses, and roads were all in the hands of the Spaniards, and the kingdom of Quito, the most warlike part of the empire, had meanwhile been reduced by a Spanish expedition from San Miguel.
The rebellion was confined at first to the tribes who lived in the neighbourhood of Cuzco. These rose en masse and besieged the two hundred Spaniards, who, under the command of Hernando Pizarro and his two younger brothers, Juan and Gonzalo, occupied the capital. The Indians captured the citadel overlooking the town, and poured an incessant rain of stones and burning darts on their enemies. The Spaniards soon ran out of provisions, and were forced to try to recapture the citadel or perish miserably by fire and starvation. Juan Pizarro led a desperate assault, ably assisted by Hernando and Gonzalo, and all three proved themselves worthy of the name they bore. Juan fell mortally wounded in the moment of victory, but the Incas fled in confusion, giving the surviving Spaniards an opportunity to procure supplies of maize from the neighbouring farms. This defeat disheartened the Indians. Numbers and bravery seemed useless against the horses and firearms of these strangers, whose reckless courage was only equalled by their cruelty. The Incas kept up the siege for several months, but without artillery their swords and spears could make little headway against men provided with firearms and protected behind solid stone walls. While the Spaniards in Cuzco were thus fighting for their lives, the Incas near Jauja rose and descended on Lima, but Francisco Pizarro with his dreaded cavalry waited for them in ambush, and the Indians were surprised and cut to pieces.
In spite of this success the governor's position remained most grave. He sent for help to Panama, Guatemala, and Mexico, but meanwhile had no means of relieving Cuzco. Its fall meant not only the death of his beloved brothers, but would almost certainly be followed by a general insurrection and the loss of all the advantages gained in three years of fighting and scheming. He hurried forward two hundred and fifty men,—all he could possibly spare,—but had little prospect of success until news came that Almagro and his five hundred followers had arrived at Arequipa on their way back from Chile. From Arequipa there is a pass to the north end of Lake Titicaca, and thence to Cuzco the way was easy. Manco would be caught between Pizarro's army coming up from Lima and Almagro's descending from the south. The Inca gave up hope and with a few devoted followers retired into the wild region of Vilcabamba, lying north of Cuzco near the Amazonian plain. In those rugged and forested defiles he was safe from Spanish pursuit, but his retirement ended all hope of organised and general resistance. The Inca empire had fallen never to rise again. With stoical resignation the Indians made the best of their sad situation, while the conquerors were left free to fight among themselves over the division of the magnificent spoils which had so miraculously fallen into their hands.
