Toledo was assisted by statesmen of great ability and experience, who warmly sympathized with the aboriginal races, and were anxious for their welfare. Chief among his advisers was the licentiate Polo de Ondegardo, who had now been several years in Peru, had filled important administrative posts,—especially as corregidor of Charcas and of Cusco,—and had studied the system of the government and civilization of the Yncas with minute attention, especially as regards the tenures of land, and always with a view to securing justice to the natives. The licentiate Juan Matienzo was another upright and learned minister who had studied the indigenous civilization and the requirements of colonial policy with great care; while in affairs relating to religion and the instruction of the people, the viceroy consulted the accomplished Jesuit author, José de Acosta.
But the conduct of Toledo with regard to the Ynca royal family was dictated by a narrow view of political expediency, and was alike unwise and iniquitous. He reversed the generous and enlightened policy of the Marquis of Cañete. After the death of Sayri Tupac, the Ynca court had again retired into the mountain fastnesses of Vilcabamba, where the late Ynca’s two brothers, Titu Cusi Yupanqui and Tupac Amaru, resided with many native chiefs and followers. When the new viceroy arrived at Cusco, in January, 1571, the Ynca Titu Cusi sent an embassy to him, and requested that ministers of religion might be sent to Vilcabamba. Accordingly, the friar Diego Ortiz arrived at the Ynca court; but almost immediately afterward Titu Cusi sickened and died, and the superstitious people, believing that it was the work of the friar, put him to death. The youthful Tupac Amaru was then proclaimed Ynca, as successor to his brother. This gave the viceroy the pretext he sought. He despatched a strong force into Vilcabamba, under the command of Martin Garcia Loyola, who was married to an Ynca princess, the daughter of Sayri Tupac. Loyola penetrated into Vilcabamba, and took young Tupac Amaru prisoner on the 4th of October, 1571. He was brought to Cusco and confined in a palace, under the shadow of the great fortress, which until now had belonged to the family of his uncle, the Ynca Paullu. But the viceroy had seized it as a strong position to be held by Spanish troops under his uncle Don Luis de Toledo. There was a trial for the murder of the friar; several chiefs were sentenced to be strangled, and Tupac Amaru, who was perfectly innocent and against whom there was no evidence, was to be beheaded.
The young sovereign was instructed for several days by two monks who were excellent Quichua scholars, and who spoke the language with grace and elegance. He was then taken to a scaffold, which had been erected in the great square. The open spaces and the hills above the town were covered with dense crowds of people. When the executioner produced his knife, there was such a shout of grief and horror that the Spaniards were amazed, and there were few of them with a dry eye. The boy was perfectly calm. He raised his right arm, and there was profound silence. He spoke a few simple words of resignation, and the scene was so heart-rending that the hardest of the conquerors lost self-control. Led by the bishop and the heads of the monasteries, they rushed to the house of the viceroy and threw themselves on their knees, praying for mercy and entreating him to send the Ynca to Spain to be judged by the king. Toledo was a laborious administrator, but his heart was harder than the nether millstone. He sent off the chief Alguazil, of Cusco, to cause the sentence to be executed without delay. The crime was perpetrated amid deafening shouts of grief and horror, while the great bell of the cathedral was tolled. The body was taken to the palace of the Ynca’s mother, and was afterward interred in the principal chapel of the cathedral, after a solemn service performed by the bishop and the chapter. Toledo caused the head to be cut off and stuck on a pike beside the scaffold; but such vast crowds came to worship before it every day, that it was taken down and interred with the body.
TEMPLE OF CUSCO.
[Fac-simile of the engraving as given in Montanus and in Ogilby. Garcilasso de la Vega describes Cusco soon after the Conquest, and explains the distribution of buildings which was made among the conquerors. A plan of the ancient and modern city, showing the conquerors’ houses, is given in Markham’s Royal Commentaries of De la Vega, vol. ii., and in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1871, p. 281. A plan of the ancient and modern town, by E. G. Squier, is given in that author’s Peru, Land of the Incas (New York), 1877, p. 428. The house of Pizarro is delineated in Charton’s Voyageurs, vol. iii. p. 367; and the remains of the palace of the first Inca, in Squier’s Land of the Incas, p. 451.
Cieza de Leon says: “Cusco was grand and stately; it must have been founded by a people of great intelligence.” (Markham’s edition. Travels, pp. 322, 327.)