"The Peruvians," says Michelet in his admirable Précis d'Histoire Moderne, "handed down the principal facts to posterity by knots, which they made in ropes. They had obelisks and exact gnomons to mark the equinoxes and solstices. Their year consisted of 365 days. They had erected prodigies of architecture, and they carved statues with amazing art. They formed the most polished and industrious nation of the New World."
The inca Huayna-Capac, father of Atahualpa, under whom this vast empire was destroyed, had done much to increase and embellish it. This inca, who conquered all the country of Quito, had made, by the hands of his soldiers and of the vanquished people, a great road 1500 miles in length from Cuzco to Quito, across precipices which had been filled up and mountains which had been levelled. Relays of men, stationed at intervals of a mile and a half from each other, carried the emperor's orders throughout the empire. Such was their police, and if we wish to judge of Peruvian magnificence, we need only instance the fact that the king when he travelled was carried on a throne of gold which weighed 25,000 ducats, and the golden litter upon which the throne rested was borne by the highest personages of the realm.
In 1526, when the Spaniards appeared on the coast for the first time, the twelfth inca had lately married—in defiance of the ancient law of the kingdom—the daughter of the vanquished king of Quito, and had had a son of this marriage named Atahualpa, to whom he left this kingdom on his death, which happened about 1529. His eldest son Huascar, whose mother was descended from the incas, had the remainder of his states. But this partition, so contrary to the customs established from time immemorial, caused such great discontent at Cuzco, that Huascar, encouraged by his subjects, determined to march against his brother, who would not acknowledge him for his lord and master. Atahualpa, in his turn, had too lately tasted power to be willing to abandon it. He managed by bribes to attach to himself the greater part of the warriors who had accompanied his father during the conquest of Quito, and when the two armies met, fortune favoured the usurper.
Is it not curious to remark how both in Peru and Mexico the Spaniards were aided by entirely exceptional circumstances? In Mexico some of the people who had recently submitted to the Aztec race, being mercilessly trampled upon by their conquerors, welcome the Spaniards as deliverers; in Peru the strife between two brothers, furious against each other, hinders the Indians from turning all their forces against the invaders whom they might easily have crushed.
Pizarro upon receiving the envoys sent by Huascar, to ask his aid against his brother Atahualpa, whom he represented as a rebel and usurper, saw at once all the advantages that might accrue to him from these circumstances. He saw that by espousing the cause of one of the brothers, he could more easily crush them both, therefore he advanced at once into the interior of the country, at the head of a very inconsiderable force, consisting of sixty-two cavalry and one hundred and twenty foot-soldiers, of whom only twenty were armed with arquebuses and muskets; he was obliged to leave part of his troops to guard San-Miguel, in which Pizarro reckoned upon finding a refuge in case of his being unsuccessful, and where in any case all supplies which might arrive could be landed.
Pizarro first made for Caxamalca, a small town situated at about twenty days' march from the coast. To reach it he had to cross a desert of burning sand, without vegetation and without water, which extended for sixty miles in length as far as the province of Motupé, and where the slightest attack of the enemy, joined to the sufferings endured by the little army, would have been sufficient to crush the whole expedition at one blow. Next the troops plunged into the mountains and became entangled in narrow defiles where a small force might have annihilated them. During this march Pizarro received an envoy from Atahualpa bringing him some painted shoes and gold bracelets, which he was requested to wear at his approaching interview with the inca. Naturally Pizarro was lavish in his promises of friendship and devotion, and assured the Indian ambassador that he should be only following the orders given him by the king his master in respecting the lives and property of the inhabitants. From the moment of his arrival at Caxamalca Pizarro prudently lodged his soldiers in a temple and a palace belonging to the inca, where they were sheltered from any surprise. Then he sent one of his brothers with De Soto and twenty horse-soldiers to the camp of Atahualpa, which was distant only three miles, to announce to him his arrival. The envoys of the governor were received with magnificence, and were astonished at the multiplicity of the ornaments and vases made of gold and silver which they saw throughout the Indian camp. They returned, bringing a promise from Atahualpa that he would come on the next day to visit Pizarro, to bid him welcome to his kingdom. At the same time the envoys gave an account of the wonderful riches they had seen, which confirmed Pizarro in the project which he had formed of seizing the unfortunate Atahualpa and his treasures by treachery.
Several Spanish authors, and notably Zarate, disguise these facts, which no doubt appeared to them too odious, and altogether deny the treachery towards Atahualpa. But at the present day there are extant many documents which force the historian to believe, with Robertson and Prescott, in the perfidy of Pizarro. It was very important for him to have the inca in his own hands, and to employ him as a tool, just as Cortès had done with Montezuma. He therefore took advantage of the honesty and simplicity of Atahualpa, who placed entire confidence in Pizarro's protestations of friendship and so was thrown off his guard, to arrange an ambuscade into which Atahualpa was certain to fall. There was not a scruple in the disloyal soul of the conqueror; he was as cool as though he were about to offer battle to enemies who had been forewarned of his approach; this infamous treason must be an eternal dishonour to his memory. Pizarro divided his cavalry into three small squadrons, left all his infantry in one body, hid his arquebusiers on the road by which the inca must pass, and kept twenty of his most determined companions near himself. Atahualpa, wishing to give the Spaniards a great idea of his power, advanced with the whole of his army. He himself was borne upon a kind of bed, decorated with feathers, covered with plates of gold and silver, and ornamented with precious stones. He was accompanied by his principal nobles, carried like himself on the shoulders of their servants, and he was surrounded by dancers and jesters. Such a march was more that of a procession than of an army.
As soon as the inca had nearly reached the Spanish quarters (according to Robertson), Father Vincent Valverde, the chaplain of the expedition, who was afterwards made a bishop as a reward for his conduct, advanced with the crucifix in one hand and his breviary in the other. In an interminable discourse he set forth to the monarch the doctrine of the creation, the fall of the first man, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the choice made by God of St. Peter to be His vicar upon earth, the power transmitted through him to the Popes, and the gift made by Pope Alexander to the King of Castille of all the regions of the New World. When he had expounded all these doctrines, he called upon Atahualpa to embrace the Christian religion, to recognize the supreme authority of the Pope, and to submit to the King of Castille as his legitimate sovereign. If he submitted immediately, Valverde undertook to promise that the king his master would take Peru under his protection, and allow him to continue to reign there; but he declared war against him and threatened him with fearful vengeance if he refused to obey, and persevered in his impiety.
To say the least of it, this was a singular scene and a very strange harangue, alluding to facts which were utterly unknown to the Peruvians, and of the truth of which a more skilful orator than Valverde would not have succeeded in persuading them. If we add that the interpreter knew so little of the Spanish language that it was almost an impossibility for him to translate what he scarcely understood himself, and that the Peruvian language lacked words to express ideas so foreign to its genius, we shall not be much surprised to learn that Atahualpa understood almost nothing of the Spanish monk's discourse. Some sentences, however, which attacked his own power, filled him with surprise and indignation. But he was none the less moderate in his reply. He said that, as master of his own kingdom by right of succession, he could not see how any one had the power to dispose of it without his consent; he added that he was not at all willing to renounce the religion of his fathers to adopt one of which he had only heard that day for the first time; with regard to the other points touched upon in the discourse he understood nothing, it was a thing entirely new to him, and he would much like to know where Valverde had learnt so many wonderful things. "In this book," replied Valverde, handing him his breviary. Atahualpa received it with eagerness and turned over some of the leaves with much curiosity, then, putting it to his ear, he exclaimed, "What you show me there does not speak to me, and tells me nothing." With this he flung the book upon the ground.
This served as a signal for the combat, or rather for the massacre. Cannon and muskets came into play, the cavalry sprang forward, and the infantry fell sword in hand upon the stupefied Peruvians. In a few moments the confusion was at its height. The Indians fled on all sides, without attempting to defend themselves. As to Atahualpa, although his principal officers tried to make a rampart of their own bodies, while they carried him off, Pizarro sprang upon him, dispersed or overthrew his guards, and seizing him by his long hair, threw him down from the litter in which he was carried. Only the darkness could arrest the carnage. Four thousand Indians were killed, a greater number wounded, and 3000 were taken prisoners. An incontestable proof that there was no real battle is, that of all the Spaniards Pizarro alone was hit, and he received his wound from one of his own soldiers who was too precipitately endeavouring to seize upon the inca.