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The Last Inca Atahualpa
Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers: The Illusion of
Power in Sixteenth-Century Peru
The Lost Tomb of Viracocha
Maurice
Cotterell
The Ancient Kingdoms of Peru
Lost City of the Incas
Hiram Bingham
The Discovery and Conquest of Peru
Inca
Lonely Planet Peru
Who's Who of the Conquistadors
Conquistadors
Conquest
The Last Conquistador
In Defense of the Indians
Rivers of Gold
A Little Matter of Genocide
Travel in the Middle Ages
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When
you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the
good that we have done you by coming to your land … Our Lord
permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian
should be able to offend a Christian.
Pizarro to Atahualpa
November 16,
1532
 New
World: Spanish conquistador Francisco
Pizarro (c. 1475 - June 26, 1541)
seized
Incan emperor
Atahualpa
(pictured; c.
1502 - August 29,
1533) after victory at
Cajamarca,
Peru.
Pizarro had
just 168 men and Atahualpa had 80,000 battle-hardened soldiers
who had recently defeated an indigenous enemy. However, the Spaniards had
iron swords, guns, horses and armour, which the Incas did not. The result:
one of history's most incredible battles, and it was all over in one
afternoon.
Atahualpa
(or Atahuallpa; Atabalipa) (ah'-ta-oo-al'-pa), was
the13th and final emperor of the Incan Empire. He was a younger son of the Incan ruler Huayna Capac and an Ecuadorian
princess of the Quito; although not the legitimate heir, he seems to have been
the favourite. When Huayna Capac died (c. 1527), the kingdom was divided between
Atahualpa, who ruled the northern part of the empire from Quito, and his
half-brother Huáscar, the legitimate heir, who ruled from
Cuzco, the traditional Inca capital. Contemporary chroniclers
depicted Atahualpa as courageous, ambitious, and very popular with the army.
In 1532 he was celebrating his victory in a devastating war of accession with his
elder half-brother.
He had
been embroiled in war with Huáscar for control of the whole Incan Empire. The war ravaged Inca cities, wreaked havoc on the economy, and decimated the population. Early in 1532, near
Cuzco,
while Pizarro was making his way to Atahualpa's heartland, the army of the
Incan lord had defeated Huáscar's army in what was probably the greatest of
any Incan military engagement to date. Atahualpa treacherously captured his
half-brother and his family and later had them executed, while Atahualpa was
himself a prisoner – of Pizarro. (As Huáscar had been something of an
ally to the Spanish, his half-brother's actions were later cited as a cause
of the treatment Pizarro meted out to Atahualpa.)
In November, while the newly victorious Atahualpa and his
battle-hardened army of 80,000 were relaxing with the hot springs in the
town of Cajamarca, before their planned triumphal entry into Cuzco, Francisco Pizarro entered the city with a force of
168. Atahualpa got wind of the incursion. History was about to change in a
most dramatic way.
On November 15, as the Spanish band moved close to Cajamarca, they tortured a few natives and discovered that Atahualpa was waiting for them
at Cajamarca. Bravely, 'Governor' Pizarro’s 'army' moved towards the
Incan town, and saw a beautiful place filled with so many tents that the
soldiers were filled with fear. Hernando Pizarro, the leader’s brother, estimated
the number of Incan soldiers at 40,000, but an eyewitness wrote that he gave
this estimate in order to calm his comrades: there were in fact more than
80,000. Meanwhile, most of Pizarro’s men were hidden around the main
courtyard of Cajamarca.
Atahualpa
ambushed
Invited
by the Spaniard to attend a feast in his honour, the Inca chief accepted. The
next day, he arrived at the appointed meeting place with several thousand
unarmed retainers; Pizarro, prompted by the example of Hernán Cortés and
Moctezuma in Mexico, had prepared an ambush.
The next day
at around
noon,
Atahualpa appeared in the town centre, carried on a litter,
or palanquin, borne by 80 Incan
noblemen in rich blue livery, and with a retinue of 2,000 Indians sweeping the road before him. An eyewitness wrote “Then came a number of men
with armour, large metal plates, and crowns of gold and silver which they
bore, that it was a marvel to observe how the sun glinted on it."
Atahualpa
was also surrounded by his warriors, many thousands of them. One of the
Spaniards who was present wrote:
“Atahualpa himself was very richly
dressed, with his crown on his head and a collar of large emeralds around
his neck. He sat on a small stool with a rich saddle cushion resting on
his litter. The litter was lined with parrot feathers of many colours and
decorated with plates of gold and silver …
“Governor
Pizarro now sent Friar Vicente de Valverde to go to speak to Atahualpa,
and to require Atahualpa in the name of God and of the King of Spain that
Atahualpa subject himself to the law of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the
service of His Majesty the King of Spain. [The priest advanced] with a
cross in one hand and the Bible in the other hand, and going among the
Indian troops up to the place where Atahualpa was …
“Atahualpa
asked for the Book, that he might look at it, and the Friar gave it to him
closed. Atahualpa did not know how to open the Book, and the Friar was
extending his arm to do so, when Atahualpa, in great anger, gave him a
blow on the arm, not wishing that the Book should be opened. Then he
opened it himself, and, without any astonishment at the letters and paper
he threw it away from him five or six paces, his face a deep crimson.
“The Friar
returned to Pizarro, shouting, ‘Come out! Come out, Christians! Come at
these enemy dogs who reject the things of God …. Why remain polite and
servile towards this over-proud dog when the plains are full of Indians?
March out against him, for I absolve you!’”
It
has been reported that Atahualpa asked Friar Vicente on what authority he acted, and the friar
told him it derived from the book he was holding. The Incan emperor then
commanded: "Give me the book so that it can speak to me." Atahualpa,
holding the book next to his ear,
tried to listen to its pages. Finally he asked: "Why doesn't the book
say anything to me?" and defiantly and disdainfully threw it to the
ground. On the friar's command (rather than Pizarro's), the Spanish soldiers
emerged from the porticoes around the square and fired into the
crowds of unarmed warriors and citizens.
Seven
thousand slain
Just several hours of bloody battle ensued, with the conquistadors having
the technological advantage. By evening, Pizarro and his men had killed 7,000 Indians
yet lost not one of
their own merry men. Later, Pizarro said to Atahualpa through an
interpreter: “When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will
understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land … Our
Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian
should be able to offend a Christian.”
During
the melee, Pizarro had personally grabbed Atahualpa from his litter, calling out the Spanish war cry (“Santiago!”,
or “St James!”) as he did so, and took Atahualpa prisoner.
Soon, Atahualpa recognised that a huge ransom was his only chance of
freedom, so he promised a huge hoard of gold to the Spaniards, which the Incan king’s subjects duly paid.
The ransom, the largest
ever made, was staggering – when melted down, it consisted of
sufficient gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of more than 8
feet! What artistic treasures were lost, we shall never know. We note here
that the Incas made even the soldiers rich, not just Pizarro and the King of
Spain (who took 20 per cent of the booty). The conquistadors each received a share
appropriate to his rank: horseman received 40 kilograms of gold and 81 kg of silver,
while foot-soldiers received half that amount.
 After the full amount had been delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and
on August 29, 1533, the conquistador ordered Atahualpa burned to death.
However, when Atahualpa was brought to the stake, Father de
Valverde offered him the choice of being burned alive or being killed by the
more merciful garrot if he would convert to Christianity. Although
throughout his captivity Atahualpa had resisted conversion, he agreed to it
and so died that day by strangulation.
Cajamarca
was not the
only occasion in 1532 on which Western technology was able to trounce Incan
technology – for technology such as guns and steel swords, rather than
fighting skills and valour were what won the day. Jared Diamond, from
whose excellent, Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, (Vintage, 1998), the above
quotations come, writes:
“During
Pizarro’s march from Cajamarca to the Inca capital of Cuzco after
Atahualpa’s death, there were four such battles: at Jauja, Vilcashuaman,
Vilcaconga, and Cuzco. Those four battles involved a mere 80, 30, 110, and
40 Spanish horsemen, respectively, in each case ranged against thousands
or tens of thousands of Indians.”
Footnote
On January 18,
1535,
as Pizarro thought the Inca capital of Cuzco was too
far up in the mountains and far from the sea to serve as the Spanish capital
of Peru, he founded the city of Lima, still the capital of that nation.
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Part 1: The Aztecs and Cortés
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Saint James, folklore and
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The Sad Night, the Story of an Aztec Victory and a Spanish
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