Gonzalo Pizarro

Gonzalo Pizarro led a rebellion against the Spanish crown in Peru, defeated a viceroy in battle, and was beheaded for it. He was the youngest of the Pizarro brothers - Francisco, who took the Inca empire, was his half-brother - and he came to Peru as one of the company that seized Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532. He was given Quito, and in 1541 marched east over the Andes with several thousand men and a herd of pigs looking for the land of cinnamon; the expedition starved, and the lieutenant he sent downriver for food, Francisco de Orellana, did not come back but continued to the Atlantic and became the first European to descend the Amazon. Gonzalo returned with a fraction of his force. In 1542 the crown issued the New Laws, ending the inheritance of encomiendas and the enslavement of Indigenous people, which the conquistadors regarded as confiscation. Gonzalo led the revolt, beat and killed the first viceroy at Anaquito in 1546, and governed Peru for two years without ever quite declaring independence. The crown sent Pedro de la Gasca with no army but with pardons and the authority to suspend the laws, and Gonzalo's officers left him. He was executed at Jaquijahuana in 1548. The New Laws were largely suspended anyway. Orellana's descent of the Amazon, which came out of Gonzalo's failed expedition, gave the river its name: the chronicler Carvajal described being attacked by women warriors, and the classical Amazons were attached to it afterwards. Three of the four Pizarro brothers died violently. Francisco was assassinated in Lima in 1541, Juan was killed at Sacsayhuaman, and Gonzalo was executed.

• Lived: 1510 CE – 1548 CE
• Nationality: Spanish
• Roles: military_leader