Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire
Francisco Pizarro destroyed the Inca empire with 168 men. He landed on the Peruvian coast in 1532 with 62 horsemen and 106 foot, on his third attempt to reach the country, and marched inland to Cajamarca, where the Inca Atahualpa was camped with an army of tens of thousands. The empire was at its weakest possible moment. Smallpox, arriving ahead of the Spaniards from the Caribbean, had killed the emperor Huayna Capac and his heir around 1527, and a civil war between his sons Atahualpa and Huáscar had just ended in Atahualpa's victory, leaving the country divided and the losing faction willing to help anyone. On 16 November 1532 Atahualpa entered the square at Cajamarca with several thousand unarmed attendants. A friar presented him with a breviary; he threw it down; the Spaniards opened fire from concealed positions with cannon and arquebuses and charged with cavalry. Thousands were killed in a few hours and the Inca was taken alive. He offered a room filled once with gold and twice with silver for his release. It was delivered, and he was garrotted in July 1533 after a summary trial. Cuzco fell that November. Manco Inca, installed as a puppet, revolted in 1536 and besieged Cuzco, and a rump Inca state held out at Vilcabamba until 1572. Epidemic disease, not Spanish arms, killed most of the population. The conquistadors then fell to fighting each other, and Pizarro was murdered in Lima in 1541 by supporters of a rival he had executed. The gold and silver of Peru, and above all the mountain of Potosí, financed Spanish power in Europe for a century. The Andean population is estimated to have fallen by more than half within fifty years. The Quechua language, the terraces and much of the road network survived the empire that built them.
- Category: War
