[One of the Spanish conquerors of America, born about 1471, died 1541. The illegitimate son of a Spanish general, his childhood was spent in a peasant’s hut. Going as an adventurer to the New World, he took part in several important expeditions, among them Balboa’s settlement of Darien. In 1524, Pizarro, with a brother adventurer, Almagro, in an attempt on New Grenada, got intelligence of the great Peruvian empire of the Incas. It was not till 1531 that Pizarro, having secured full commission and extraordinary concessions from Charles V., was able to raise a force of two hundred and fifty men to attempt the conquest, which was brilliantly successful. He reigned as viceroy, and was finally assassinated by a son of his old comrade Almagro, whom he had put to death.]
Pizarro was tall in stature, well-proportioned, and with a countenance not unpleasing. Bred in camps, with nothing of the polish of a court, he had a soldier-like bearing, and the air of one accustomed to command. But, though not polished, there was no embarrassment or rusticity in his address, which, where it served his purpose, could be plausible and even insinuating. The proof of it is the favorable impression made by him, on presenting himself, after his second expedition—stranger as he was to all its forms and usages—at the punctilious court of Castile.
Unlike many of his countrymen, he had no passion for ostentatious dress, which he regarded as an incumbrance. The costume which he most affected on public occasions was a black cloak, with a white hat, and shoes of the same color; the last, it is said, being in imitation of the Great Captain, whose character he had early learned to admire in Italy, but to which his own, certainly, bore very faint resemblance.
He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour before dawn. He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrank from no toil. He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance. Like most of his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser—a mode of conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer for its delicacy.
Though avaricious, it was in order to spend, and not to hoard. His ample treasure, more ample than those, probably, that ever before fell to the lot of an adventurer, were mostly dissipated in his enterprises, his architectural works, and schemes of public improvement, which, in a country where gold and silver might be said to have lost their value from their abundance, absorbed an incredible amount of money. While he regarded the whole country, in a manner, as his own, and distributed it freely among his captains, it is certain that the princely grant of territory, with twenty thousand vassals, made to him by the Crown, was never carried into effect; nor did his heirs ever reap the benefit of it.
Though bold in action and not easily turned from his purpose, Pizarro was slow in arriving at a decision. This gave him an appearance of irresolution foreign to his character. Perhaps the consciousness of this led him to adopt the custom of saying “No,” at first, to applicants for favor; and afterward, at leisure, to revise his judgment, and grant what seemed to him expedient. He took the opposite course from his comrade Almagro, who, it was observed, generally said “Yes,” but too often failed to keep his promise. This was characteristic of the careless and easy nature of the latter, governed by impulse rather than principle.
It is hardly necessary to speak of the courage of a man pledged to such a career as that of Pizarro. Courage, indeed, was a cheap quality among the Spanish adventurers, for danger was their element. But he possessed something higher than mere animal courage, in that constancy of purpose which was rooted too deeply in his nature to be shaken by the wildest storms of fortune. It was this inflexible constancy which formed the key to his character, and constituted the secret of his success. A remarkable evidence of it was given in his first expedition, among the mangroves and dreary marshes of Choco. He saw his followers pining around him under the blighting malaria, wasting before an invisible enemy, and unable to strike a stroke in their own defense. Yet his spirit did not yield, nor did he falter in his enterprise.
There is something oppressive to the imagination in this war against nature. In the struggle of man against man, the spirits are raised by a contest conducted on equal terms; but in a war with the elements we feel that, however bravely we may contend, we can have no power to control. Nor are we cheered on by the prospect of glory in such a contest; for, in the capricious estimate of human glory, the silent endurance of privations, however painful, is little, in comparison with the ostentatious trophies of victory. The laurel of the hero—alas for humanity that it should be so!—grows best on the battle-field.
This inflexible spirit of Pizarro was shown still more strongly when, in the little island of Gallo, he drew the line on the sand which was to separate him and his handful of followers from their country and from civilized man. He trusted that his own constancy would give strength to the feeble, and rally brave hearts around him for the prosecution of his enterprise. He looked with confidence to the future, and he did not miscalculate. This was heroic, and wanted only a nobler motive for its object to constitute the true moral sublime.
Yet the same feature in his character was displayed in a manner scarcely less remarkable when, landing on the coast, and ascertaining the real strength and civilization of the Incas, he persisted in marching into the interior at the head of a force of less than two hundred men. In this he undoubtedly proposed to himself the example of Cortés, so contagious to the adventurous spirits of that day, and especially to Pizarro, engaged as he was in a similar enterprise. Yet the hazard assumed by Pizarro was far greater than that of the conqueror of Mexico, whose force was nearly three times as large, while the terrors of the Inca name—however justified by the result—were as widely spread as those of the Aztecs.