Fernando, the youngest child of the Inca, "whose shrill cry smote every heart with electric sympathy"[262] when he beheld the cruel tortures of his parents, was taken to Spain by the visitador Areche in 1781. He was then only ten years of age. In 1783 one Don Luis Ocampo, a citizen of Cuzco, went to Spain, and heard that young Fernando was a close prisoner in the castle of San Sebastian at Cadiz. Through the aid of an Irish gentleman, who was intimately acquainted with the town major, Ocampo applied for a pass to visit him, but was refused. He, nevertheless, made his way into the fort, and, looking round at the iron gratings of the cells, at length caught sight of a youth whose countenance bespoke his origin. He addressed him in Quichua, and found that he was speaking to Fernando Tupac Amaru. While talking to him Ocampo received a blow from the butt end of the musket of a Swiss sentry, whom, however, he induced to permit him to continue the conversation. It appeared that the government allowed Fernando six rials a day, but that the soldiers of the guard cheated him of half. Ocampo gave him two or three dollars a week during his stay in Cadiz; and this is the last we know, for a certainty, of the last surviving child of the unfortunate Inca.[263]
The fate of these poor Indians, the remaining descendants of those Incas of Peru whose remarkable civilization, and great power and wealth, became a proverb during the sixteenth century, will not fail to be interesting to those who have become acquainted, through the pages of Robertson, Prescott, or Helps, with the history of the Spanish conquest of Peru. The sufferings and death of Tupac Amaru and his family form a very sad story, yet they did not suffer and die in vain: and it must be recorded of them that, unlike other dispossessed families, they sacrificed themselves, not for their own selfish ends, but in the hope of serving their people. They did not die in vain, for in their fall they shook the colonial power of Spain to its foundation. Not only was the system of repartos at once abolished, and the mitas considerably modified, but in 1795 the hated office of corregidors was replaced by that of intendentes, and from the cruel death of the last of the Incas may be dated the rise of that feeling which ended in the expulsion of the Spaniards from Peru.
The rebellion which broke out in Cuzco, thirty-four years after the death of Tupac Amaru, is historically important, not on account of the patriotism of its leaders, for they were almost all men of small weight and selfish ends, but because the great body of the Indians rose as one man at the first signal, in the hope of freeing their country from a foreign yoke. In 1809 the people of Upper Peru had formed an independent government, which they called an "Institucion de Gobierno," and the viceroy sent General Goyeneche against them with 5000 men from Cuzco. The rebels, ill-provided with arms, were defeated at Huaqui, near lake Titicaca, and slaughtered without mercy;[264] but General Pezuela, who succeeded Goyeneche in the command, had to face a patriot army from Buenos Ayres under Belgrano, which kept him fully employed. Then it was that the opportunity was seized of commencing a rebellion at Cuzco; and this enemy in the rear of the royal army placed Pezuela in a most critical position.
The leader of the rebellion was Mateo Garcia Pumacagua, Cacique of Chinchero near Cuzco, then a very old men. In January 1781, when Tupac Amaru occupied the heights of Picchu above Cuzco, he had marched from Chinchero with Indians to join him, but, hearing that a large Spanish army was advancing from Lima, he changed his mind, and took part against his countrymen with such zeal, that the viceroy created him a brigadier in the Spanish service. On August 3rd, 1814, this Indian Cacique Pumacagua, with the three brothers Vicente, Mariano, and José Angulo, Don Gabriel Bejar, Hurtado de Mendoza, Astete, Pinelo, Prado, and others, raised the cry of independence in Cuzco; and so unanimous was the feeling against Spanish rule, that the whole population of that city joined heart and soul in the insurrection.[265] The brothers Angulo were men of low birth, and vulgar both in their language and their persons;[266] but Astete and Prado were gentlemen of good family and position. It is possible that they made use of Pumacagua, as an Indian cacique, that his countrymen might more readily be induced to join their cause.
Having occupied Cuzco, the insurgents divided their forces into three divisions, which separated in different directions, to excite the other provinces to revolt. Mariano Angulo, Bejar, and Mendoza, who was nicknamed Santafecino, marched to Guamanga, assaulted the house in which several Spaniards had taken refuge, and hung two officers in the plaza. Colonel Vicente Gonzalez was sent against them from Lima, and attacked the insurgents, who had been joined by a body of Morochuco Indians, near Guanta, in September. The rebels were defeated, and several Morochuco Indians were shot at Guamanga, but the country continued in a disordered state until Santafecino was finally routed at Matara in April 1815.
Pinelo, and the cura of Munecas in Upper Peru, entered Puno without resistance with another division on August 29th, advanced to La Paz, and took it by assault after a siege of two days, on September 24th.
The main division, led by Pumacagua in person, and Vicente Angulo, marched on Arequipa.
The position of the royalist army under Pezuela, with the Buenos Ayrean army of independence in front, and this formidable insurrection in the rear, was most critical: for the Indians, believing that the rule of their Incas was to be restored, and that Pumacagua would succeed where Tupac Amaru had failed, were flocking in thousands to the standard of the old cacique. Pezuela organized a division of his army, 1200 strong, commanded by General Don Juan Ramirez, who marched from Oruro in October, and fell upon the rebels, numbering 4000 men, 500 armed with muskets, and the rest with slings, who were encamped on the heights above La Paz. The rebels retired in good order to Puno, and Ramirez entered La Paz, and, having extorted 63,000 dollars from the citizens, continued his march to Puno, which he occupied on November 23rd, and pressed on towards Arequipa on the 26th.[267]
In the mean while Pumacagua and Angulo had been joined by many caciques with their ayllus or tribes, and he organized his army at Cavanilla, giving the rank of generals and colonels to the Indian chiefs.[268] From Cavanilla the rebel forces marched along the road from Puno to Arequipa, descended the "alto de los huesos," and encountered the Spanish troops under Brigadier Picoaga in the plain of Cangallo. Picoaga was defeated and taken prisoner, and the Indians entered Arequipa in triumph, where the greatest enthusiasm prevailed for the cause of independence. Picoaga and Moscoso, the Intendente of Arequipa, were shot by order of the Angulos, who, early in December, issued a proclamation, declaring that Peru was free; that there had been a revolution in Lima; and that the viceroy Don José de Abascal was in prison. These falsehoods were intended to excite the Spanish Americans to revolt; but, indeed, they required no such stimulus, for the people of all races and classes were burning to throw off the yoke of Spain.