Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro destroyed the Inca empire with fewer than two hundred men. Born in Trujillo in Extremadura around 1478, he was the illegitimate son of an infantry colonel and a servant, was probably illiterate, and worked as a swineherd before sailing for the Indies in 1502. He spent twenty years in the Caribbean and Panama, serving with Balboa when he crossed the isthmus and sighted the Pacific in 1513, and growing wealthy as a landowner at Panama. Two voyages down the Pacific coast from 1524 found evidence of a rich civilisation to the south. On the second, ordered to return, he is said to have drawn a line in the sand at the Isla del Gallo and invited those willing to continue to cross it; thirteen did. He obtained a royal licence in 1529 and landed in 1532 with about 168 men and 62 horses, arriving as the Inca empire was ending a civil war between the brothers Atahualpa and Huáscar, with smallpox already having killed the previous ruler and much of the population. At Cajamarca in November 1532 he invited Atahualpa to a meeting in the square, and when the emperor threw down a breviary offered by a friar, the Spanish opened fire from concealed positions and seized him. Thousands of unarmed retainers were killed. Atahualpa filled a room with gold and silver as ransom and was garrotted anyway in July 1533. Pizarro took Cuzco and founded Lima in 1535. He fell out with his partner Diego de Almagro and had him executed in 1538, and Almagro's supporters murdered him in his palace in 1541.
- Lived: 1478 CE – 1541 CE
- Nationality: Spanish
- Roles: conquistador, military_leader, explorer
