The hopes of the Indians were now beginning to wane. Diego, though a man of considerable talent, was not possessed of the same influence over the people as his unfortunate cousin; and the Spanish officials were rapidly receiving reinforcements from Buenos Ayres, while the slaughter of the Indians had been prodigious. In August, 1781, Diego issued a decree, ordering that all women, children, and priests, should be respected during the war;[247] and on the 18th of October he promulgated a manifesto setting forth the numerous violations of law habitually committed by the corregidors, the exactions of the curas, and the extortionate duties imposed by the aduaneros.[248] This is a very able and telling document, and, together with the more detailed writings of the unfortunate Inca, forms a most complete vindication of this memorable insurrection.[249]
On September 12th, 1781, the viceroy of Peru, Don Augustin de Jauregui, had issued a proclamation offering pardon, on submission, to Diego Tupac Amaru and all his followers.[250] It would swell this short narrative to an undue length if I attempted to give any account of the events in Upper Peru during this period;[251] but the final suppression of the revolt in that part of the country by the Spanish commanders Flores, Reseguin, and Segurola, induced Diego Tupac Amaru to accept the Viceroy's offer of pardon, give up the cause, and place himself in the power of a faithless enemy. Dr. Antonio Valdez, cura of Sicuani, the friend of the Inca, and author of the Quichua play of 'Ollantay,' was sent to Azangaro by the Spanish authorities to persuade Diego to adopt this course. They held their conferences on the subject while walking up and down on the banks of the river; and there is a tradition that Pedro Vilca Apasa, one of Diego's bravest officers, overheard one of these conversations, and remonstrated violently against the madness of trusting to the word of a Spaniard. But the advice of Valdez prevailed, Diego sent young Miguel Bastidas to open a negotiation with the Spanish Colonel Reseguin in November; and on December 11th he gave himself up to Don Ramon de Arias, commandant of the column of Arequipa. At the same time Mariano Tupac Amaru, the son of the Inca, Andres Mendagure, and Miguel Bastidas, surrendered to Don Sebastian de Segurola at La Paz. Bastidas was sent to Buenos Ayres.
Diego Tupac Amaru received his pardon at Sicuani, from General del Valle in the name of the viceroy, on January 26th, 1782; and on the same day the Bishop of Cuzco[252] solemnly absolved him in the church. But Vilca Apasa, Alejandro Calisaya, and other chiefs of Diego's army, refused to submit, and continued in arms in the provinces of Caravaya and Azangaro. General del Valle marched against them in March 1782, and took most of them prisoners. Vilca Apasa was captured in his native village of Tapa-tapa, eighteen miles east of Azangaro, where his descendants still live. He was torn to pieces by horses in the plaza of Azangaro, and his limbs were stuck on poles by the road-side.[253] An old lady told me that she could remember seeing one of his arms on a pole near her father's house. Calisaya, and many others, were hung. The Spanish General had the cruelty to force Diego Tupac Amaru to accompany him, and to witness the execution of his old friends. Del Valle then marched over the cordilleras of Lauramarca and Ausangate, where the Indians had been in rebellion, taking Diego with him in a sort of triumph, and returned to Cuzco in August. The old general was taken ill soon afterwards, and died at Cuzco on the 4th of September, leaving the command of the troops to Don Gabriel de Aviles.
Diego Tupac Amaru was permitted to retire to Tungasuca; and young Mariano Tupac Amaru, with his cousin Andres Mendegure, lived at Sicuani. But it would appear that the Spanish authorities had no intention of keeping their faith with these unfortunate Indians, and it was soon seen that the distrust of Vilca Apasa was but too well founded. The Spaniards were only waiting for an excuse before they completed the extirpation of the whole family of the Incas. This was soon found in a rebellion of the Indians of Marcapata and Lauramarca, who, on the approach of a force under the Corregidor Necochea in January 1783, retired to the lofty and almost impenetrable heights of Hapo and Ampatuni. In February their leader, Santos Huayhua, was captured with his family, and torn to pieces by horses.[254]
Thus the desired excuse for treachery and faithlessness was furnished. All the surviving members of the family of the Inca Tupac Amaru were arrested, by order of the viceroy of Peru.[255] The accusations against them were frivolous, and, so far as appears in the sentences, without a shadow of proof to support them. Diego was accused of calling the Indians his sons, of living in a way unbefitting a pardoned rebel, and of performing funeral rites for his cousin the Inca; young Mariano Tupac Amaru of rescuing his lady-love on September 9th, who had been forced to become a novice in the monastery of Santa Catalina in Cuzco; Andres Mendagure of conducting himself in a suspicious way; Manuela Castro, the mother of Diego, of keeping up disaffection amongst the Indians; and Lorenzo and Simon Condori, the brothers-in-law of Diego, of assisting the rebels in Marcapata. The rest of the family were accused of being relations.
Diego was imprisoned with his kindred on the 15th of April, 1783, by Don Raymundo Necochea, Corregidor of Quispicanchi;[256] while Mariano Tupac Amaru and Andres Mendagure were sent to Lima, put on board a ship, butchered at sea, and their bodies thrown overboard. The vulture Matta Linares, who was still an Oidor of the Audienica at Lima, scented carrion from afar, and arrived at Cuzco on April 20th, with the same extraordinary judicial powers as had previously been given by the viceroy to Areche. On the 17th of July he sentenced Diego Tupac Amaru to be dragged at the tail of a mule, with a rope round his neck, to the place of execution in the plaza of Cuzco, there to be hung and quartered, his body and limbs to be distributed amongst the towns of Tungasuca, Lauramarca, Paucartambo, and Calca, his goods to be confiscated, and his houses destroyed; his mother, Marcela Castro, to be hung and quartered, and her body to be burnt in the plaza; Lorenzo and Simon Condori to be hung; and Manuela Titu Condori, the wife of Diego, to be banished for life.[257] These sentences were executed on the 19th of July 1783; and Matta Linares obliged the good cura of Sicuani, Dr. Valdez, by whose persuasion, as the ancient friend of the Inca Tupac Amaru, Diego had been induced to accept the treacherous pardon, to witness the executions.[258] Matta Linares is still remembered in Cuzco for his barbarous, immoral, and sneaking conduct. He died in Spain in about 1818, having been one of the first among the unworthy Spaniards who declared in favour of Joseph Buonaparte.
At about the time of Diego's execution, the last spark of insurrection was trampled out in Huarochiri, a province in the Andes near Lima. The Indians of the villages near Caramporna had risen under one Felipe Velasco Tupac Inca Yupanqui, who declared that the Inca was not dead, but that he was alive and crowned in the "Gran Paytiti."[259] Don Felipe Carrera, who had been appointed Corregidor of Parinacochas, was sent to Huarochiri, and by a rapid march succeeded in capturing the chief. Towards evening, however, he was surrounded by a large body of Indians armed with slings and poles, in a narrow and dangerous part of the road. He retreated to an eminence with his prisoner, where he defended himself until dark against the storm of stones, and then escaped to Lima. After daily fights with the Indians the rebellion was put down in June, 1783. Felipe Velasco, and his lieutenant Ciriaco Flores, were hung in the great square of Lima on July 7th, 1783.[260]
Having, after two years and a half, succeeded in quelling the insurrection, it remained for the viceroy to extirpate all the innocent members of the family of the Incas, and all who were connected with them by marriage. Ninety members of the family were sent to Lima in chains, among whom were Bartolomé Tupac Amaru, the venerable great-uncle of the Inca; Marcela Pallocahua, the mother of the Inca's wife Micaela Bastidas; and Manuela Condori, the wife of Diego. Soon after his arrival at Lima Bartolomé Tupac Amaru died at the extraordinary age of 125. A life of temperance had given this aged prince the strength to endure months of solitary confinement at Cuzco, to sustain blows from muskets and staves in the plaza, to undergo a cruel journey on foot and in chains of 400 miles, but the horrors of the Lima prison at length killed him. The unhappy survivors were shipped off at Callao, in two ships, the 'Peruana' and the 'San Pedro,' and thrown into cells in Cadiz for three years, when Charles III. caused them to be distributed, apart from each other, in prisons in the interior of Spain, until their sufferings were relieved by death. Once during the voyage they were allowed by the brutal captain of the transport 'Peruana,' named José Cordova, to wash their tattered clothes at Rio; but their fetters were never removed, and, though the captain gave his word of honour to a Frenchman who mended his damaged rudder, that he would take them off, he unblushingly perjured himself; and the horrors which were suffered by these innocent persons, many of them aged women and young children, were never relaxed until they arrived at Cadiz.[261]