The virgin of the sun

by George Chetwynd Griffith

The last grand attack on the Spanish camp had failed, as all the others had done, and the disheartened hosts of the Inca were falling back to their old belief that, after all, these strange invaders must be something more than human, and therefore unconquerable, and Manco and his old General well knew that, while the people were in this temper, to neglect or even to postpone the Feast of Sowing would be to provoke almost universal mutiny and revolt, and utterly ruin all hope of future resistance.

So, after long and earnest debate between the young Inca and his General, the priests of the Sun and the chief nobles of the Blood, a compromise was decided upon. Manco was to start at dawn with his priestly retinue, and proceed with all possible dispatch to Titicaca. The bulk of the people were to be sent to their homes to prepare the fields for sowing, and Ruminavi was to remain with the picked regiments of the army to continue the blockade of the city.

It was thus that there came about the last of the long series of fatalities which had seemed to foredoom the empire of the Incas to destruction. If this decision had been made even a day later, or even if the Spaniards had carried out their original plan of attacking the fortress the next morning, Cuzco might have fallen, and the Spaniards might have been forced to begin the whole conquest over again in the face of a victorious and triumphant people.

But it so happened that the next day was St. James’, and when Hernando Pizarro told the Fray Valverde, who was now duly consecrated Bishop of Cuzco and the Southern Indies, of the projected attack, he protested with all the vigour of his eloquence against the desecration of the holy day by avoidable bloodshed, and ended by refusing point blank to celebrate Mass or to give absolution to any who took part in the impious enterprise.

“No, Señor,” he said sternly, in reply to Don Hernando’s military arguments as to the necessity of striking quickly. “No, the day on which the holy St. Jago died is no day for battle and slaughter if good Christians can avoid them. If you are attacked again, then strike back like true men, and prayers shall not be wanting for the souls of those who fall. But if the heathen leave you in peace, as after to-day’s defeat they may well do, then should the solemn hours of to-morrow be devoted to a better and more urgent service. They must be hours of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.

“Do you wonder, Señor, at the misfortunes that have overtaken you when you and your captains have permitted your men to imperil their own souls and pollute their holy cause by all manner of greed and lust and violence? Think you that God and the Holy Saints can look down with favour on work done by hands so foul and wicked as theirs are? It is not a battle with the heathen that they must fight to-morrow. It is a battle with their own evil lusts, which destroy the soul as well as the body. Do your will according to your own advice, Señor, but remember that to-morrow I proclaim a solemn fast and day of humiliation and intercession, and those who go out to battle between the rising and setting of the sun, save to repel an assault of the enemy, will go followed, not by the Church’s blessing, but by her solemn anathema!”

Don Hernando was too good a soldier as well as too good a Catholic not to see that in the face of such an interdict the order to march would be answered by the superstitious soldiery with nothing less than flat refusal and mutiny. So Bishop Valverde had his way, and, all unknowingly, did more than any other man at such a juncture could have done to ensure the triumph of the enterprise. All through the day a silence hung over the Spanish camp, broken only by the tolling of bells and the murmur of prayer and chanting and exhortation. The Peruvians, most mistakingly believing that they were preparing to leave the city and run the fatal hazard of the mountain passes, left them unmolested and went on with their own dispositions. The Inca departed southward at dawn, his heart full of heavy forebodings, and yet firmly persuaded that duty as well as necessity compelled the observance of the sacred duty he was going to perform; while Ruminavi and his captains busied themselves in organising the people according to their divisions, or nations, preparatory to dismissing them to their homes.

And so it came about that, when that ever memorable Saturday came, the amazed and delighted Spaniards looked out upon the surrounding hills and saw that the innumerable hosts which for months had blackened the hillsides and covered the plain had melted away and vanished like the creatures of an evil dream.

“Behold how quickly the Lord has answered the prayer of His servants!” cried Valverde, when the news was brought to him, and he came out on the terrace before the palace of Viracocha, which he had consecrated as the Cathedral of San Francisco. “Behold the Lord of Hosts hath spoken and His enemies are scattered, even as were the multitudes of Sennacherib before Salem! Now, soldiers of the Cross, go forth and conquer, for the voice of your contrition has risen up to Heaven and the hour of your deliverance is at hand. Go now and take the triumph that awaits you and the blessing of God and His holy Church go with you!”

The soldiers who had assembled before the terrace at the sound of his voice knelt by one impulse and received his benediction. Then they ate as good a meal as their scanty resources afforded them and set about their preparations.