Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve. Episode two hundred and fifty one,
The Martyr King and the Puppet King. Last week, Pizzaro tried to figure
out what to do with his newfound captive, the Inca Emperor Atualpa. Just
as he hoped. By capturing the Inca Emperor, Pizzaro had effectively cut the
head off the Inca military slash political system. The Incan generals would not order
their men to attack Pizzaro so long as he held their emperor captive. This
bought Pizzarto some desperately needed time. One of his first actions was to fire
off a frantic message to Panama for more men, but that would take time.
For now he had a captive and pliant emperor. But how long would
that last? Today? Otahualpa realizes that no matter how many rooms of gold
and silver he gives Pisarto, it will never be enough. Today, one
emperor dies a martyr and another takes his place. Diego de Almagro finally returned
to Peru in fifteen thirty three with more men and supplies, both of which
Pisarto desperately needed. When he arrived, someone told Almagro that the natives would
not attack him or as men because Pisarto currently held Atahualpa captive. But there
was also a message for Almagro to get to Pizarto as quickly as possible.
No one knew how long the status quo was going to last. By now,
Almagro and Pisarto had been partners for at least fourteen years. Theirs had
been a bumpy relationship as of late. When Pisarto returned from Spain to Panama
in fifteen twenty nine with a royal license to conquer the Inca Empire, a
realm that he was authorized to plunder for a distance of two hundred leagues or
in that distance nowadays seven hundred miles. He had also returned with the title
of Governor of Peru. An addition, Pisarto had secured for himself the military
title of Captain General of Peru. Yet, in contrast to his own multiple
titles, Pisarto had brought back just a single title for his loyal partner Almagro,
that of Mayor of Tumbez, an area that we are told covered a
span of maybe a few square miles, and that now lay desolate and in
ruins. This was despite the fact that during their previous voyage, Almagro had
rescued Pizaro his starving followers on an island off the coast of Columbia, and
despite the fact that it had been al Magro who had raised the funds to
send Pissaro to Spain in the first place. Not Surprisingly, Pissaro's partner had
been furious upon hearing the news that he had been totally short changed. Pisardo,
however, still needed al Magro. He needed his organizational skills, He
needed his ability to find and enlist fresh recruits. He needed his capacity to
do the lion's share of the thousand and one things that the outfitting and expedition
of the conquest of the New World required. Magro, on the other hand,
had been completely outmaneuvered. It was Pisardo who had been granted permission to
conquer Peru, not he, and even if he refused now to participate,
there was nothing he could do to prevent Pissaro from leaving for Peru without him.
Ultimately, Almagro wanted his own realm to govern and was furious about the
turn of events. Pizaro likely had to use all his bargaining abilities, but
he finally convinced his partner that if Almagro continued to help him, then he
would use his influence to get Charles the Fifth to grant Almagro his own governorship
outside the territories Pizzaro currently controlled. Almagro took it because he really didn't have
a better option. In the end, he decided to bury the hatchet and
see if he could make things work. So it was in April fifteen thirty
three that almagro rode with his men down into the city of Kajamarica. Pizzaro
greeted him, briefly, introduced him to a stunned Attahuallapa, and then took
him on a tour of the guarded chamber, steadily filling with gold and silver
objects. Doubtless, Almagro had to put on his best poker face in order
to keep his jaw from falling straight to the floor. But underneath the otur
displays of Comrader's ship, tensions between the two partners remained. Even before Almagro
had arrived. Pissaro had heard rumors that his partner might attempt to conquer Peru
on his own. Almargo made no such move, however, nor any signs
of it, nor were such rumors ever discussed. In truth, Pisaro had
always and would always consider Almagro his sidekick, a subordinate Despite their legal partnership,
to Pissaro, Peru and the titles that came with conquering Peru were his
and his alone. He was willing to share a certain amount of wealth and
power with Almagro, but Pisaro never considered his partner his equal. With Amagro's
arrival, there were now three hundred Spaniards in Kajamarca. However, these men
were part of two very distinct groups based on when they had arrived. The
one hundred and sixty eight men who had been with Pissaro from the start were
forever referred to as the quote men of Kajamarca Quote, the mythical founders of
a Spanish Peru. Crucially, these men were all entitled to a share of
Atahualpa's ransom. The newcomers were not. The Spaniards who had just arrived would
receive only a token share of Atahualpa's treasure. Not everyone was happy about this,
of course, According to Pedro Pisaro, again, Francisco's cousin quote Amagro
did not want the unequal division to be that way, but rather that he
and his companion Pisaro each take half of everything, and that to the rest
of the Spaniards they give a thousand or at most two thousand pesos each.
In this however, the marquis behaved very christianly, for he did not deprive
anyone of what he merited. Since this distribution was made among all the Spaniards
who entered Kajamarca and who took part in the capture of Atahualpa, nothing was
given to the who came afterwards end quote. Of course, one of those
who quote unquote came afterwards and would be given next to nothing was Pisado's own
partner, Diego de Amagro. On June the thirteenth, fifteen thirty three,
two Spanish scouts from Cusco arrived alongside a convoy of two hundred and twenty three
yama loads of gold and silver. If each Yama carried an average load of
fifty pounds of gold, then the caravan would have added more than eleven thousand
pounds of gold and silver to Pisado's hall. Four days later, with tensions
growing among the Spaniards, and a room full of gold on his hands,
Pisardo ordered that the job of melting and a saying the gold begin. He
ordered that the silver, which had already been melted down, be distributed eventually.
During a four month period from March to July fifteen thirty three, the
Spaniards fed more than forty thousand pounds of sake, grid inca, gold,
and silver into the furnaces. Roughly half of the Spaniards washed this process with
mounting joy, while the other half with mounting envy. Pound after pound of
the finest objects crafted by the empire's craftsmen were fed into the fires. Gold
and silver, statues, jewelry, platings, vessels, ornaments, and other
works of art, all reduced to formless red hot puddles, and then poured
into steaming molds to make ingots. Today, ink and objects of gold and
silver are supremely rare, almost all having disappeared nearly five hundred years ago into
the furnaces of Kajamarca. The amount that the one hundred and sixty eight men
of Kajamarca stood to gain from the endeavor was staggering. Each horseman received one
hundred and eighty pounds of silver at ninety pounds of twenty two and a half
carrot gold. One pound of gold presented two years of a common sailor's salary
loss. The gold alone, not counting the silver, amounted to one hundred
and eighty years worth of wages all in one go. The foot soldiers got
about half that amount. The one hundred and sixty eight Spaniards who arrived with
Pizzaro were now richer than they ever could have imagined. Francisco Pizzaro was just
getting started. He had no intention of retiring. Pizzaro had come to Peru
not to retire. He had come to create a feudal kingdom for himself and
his progeny. Immediately after Pizaro distributed the gold and silver, he allowed the
gonquistadors with families back in Spain to return to their wives and their children,
but the rest he ordered to remain because he was far from finished. One
of those slated to return to Spain briefly was Hernan, though Pizzaro his brother,
Hernando did not have a family. But Pisarto needed someone to escort the
royal fifth back to King Charles, and he picked his brother as the man
to do it. Frankly, he didn't trust anyone else with twenty percent of
Vatahualpa was gold. King Charles, by the way, really comes out of
this looking like the smartest guy on the block. He did nothing more than
sign a few documents, and for that minimal amount of effort, he now
found himself richer by five thousand, two hundred pounds of silver and two thousand,
six hundred pounds of gold. Sadly, all of this would be fed
into a new furnace to fund Spain's pointless Italian and soon religious wars. As
he none do. Pesaro and the small group of departing Spaniards prepared to leave.
Many of the conquistadors who were staying behind hurriedly wrote letters to send them.
The only surviving letter from the group was written by one of Francisco Pisato's
pages, Gaspart Garatte, a young Basque in his early twenties from northern Spain.
Like his compatriots, Gaspar was eager to tell his family the surprising news
of his recent good fortune. It's an interesting letter, so I'm going to
read it in its entirety. Quote to my sorely missed father. It must
be about three years ago that I got a letter from you in which you
asked me to send some money. God knows how. Sorry. I was
not to have anything to send to you then, because if I had had
anything, then there wouldn't have been any need for you to write. I've
always tried to do the right thing, but there wasn't any possibility till now.
I'm sending you two hundred and thirteen pesos two point one pounds of good
gold in a bar with an honorable man from Saint Sebastian and Seville. He'll
have it turned into coin and then bring it to you. I'd send you
more, except he's taking money for other people and he couldn't take more.
His name is Pedro d'anandel. I know him, and he's the kind of
person who will get the money to you. So that's why I asked him
to do me a favor and take you the money. I'll tell you something
of my life since I came to these parts. You must know how we
got some news how Governor Francisco Pisaro was coming to be governor of this kingdom
of newcast Stile, and so hearing this news, and having few prospects in
Nicaragua, we came to this district where there's more gold and silver and iron
than m Biscay, and more sheep yamas than in the province of Sauria,
and more supplies of all kind of provisions and fine clothing, and lords among
them, just one of them rules over five hundred leagues today, that's one
thousand, seven hundred and fifty miles. We have him, he's talking about
Atahualpa in our power and with him prisoner. A man can go by himself
five hundred leagues without getting killed. Instead, they give you whatever you need
and carry you on their shoulders in the litter. We took this lord by
a miracle of God, because our forces wouldn't be enough to take him,
nor to do what we did, but God gave us the victory miraculously over
him. You must know that we came here with Governor Francisco Pizarto, to
this land of this lord, where he had sixty thousand warriors, and there
were one hundred and sixty Spaniards with the governor, and we thought our lives
were finished because there was such a horde of them. And even then the
native women were making fun of us and saying they were sorry for us because
we were going to get killed. But afterward their bad thoughts turned out opposite.
Give my greetings to Catalina and my brothers and sisters, my uncle and
his daughters, especially the older one, and also to my cousins and to
the rest of my relatives. I really want to tell them hello from me,
and that I greatly wished to see them, and pleasing God, I'll
be there soon. The only thing I want to ask you is to do
good for the souls of my mother and all my relatives. If God's let
me get there, I'll do it thoroughly myself. I suppose there is nothing
more to write at present, except that I'm praying to our Lord Jesus Christ
to let me see you before I die. From Casumarca in the Kingdom of
New Castile July the twentieth, fifteen thirty three. Your son Gaspar, the
writer of that letter, however, would never see Spain again. He died
fighting in Peru four months after handing the letter and a bar of gold to
his friend. As Attahuelpa watched, Hernando Pisaro prepared to depart for Spain,
he fell into despair. Atahuelpa had been close to Hernando Ernando Pizardo may have
been arrogant and the least liked of the Pisaro clan, but he had been
a good friend and ally to the Inca emperor. With Hernando gone, Atahuelpa
no doubt pondered what would become of him. According to legend, Atahualpa begged
Hernando to take him with him to Spain. He said that if Hernando left
him in Peru alone, then those left with him would surely put him to
death. We have no way of knowing if this exchange ever happened, but
if it did, it was a prescient moment. Rumors now began to swell
that Atahualpa had sent a secret message to one of his generals to come and
rescue him. A local chief even told Pisaro that an Incan army was already
on its way south quote and that all these men are marching under a great
commander called Loomi Nibi, and are very close to hear. They will come
by night and will attack this camp, setting it entirely on fire. The
first person they will attempt to will kill will be you. Azaro, and
they will release their lord Atahualpa from his prison. Two hundred thousand such warriors
are marching from Quito, along with thirty thousand Caribs who eat human flesh and
quote. Gizzarro immediately ordered that a permanent guard be mounted around the city,
and then he went to confront Atahualpa. Atahualpa looked at him and said,
calmly, quote, it is true that if any warriors were coming, they
would be marching here from Quito on my orders. Find out whether it is
true, and if true, you have me in your power and you can
execute me. End quote. According to one eye witness, quote, he
said all this without betraying any sign of anxiety. And he said many other
brilliant things that a quick witted man would make surely during his capture. The
Spaniards who heard them were amazed to see so much wisdom in a barbarian end
quote. Nota wlpas argued, didn't do him any good. Pissaro wasn't taking
any chances. He ordered a large chain fastened around Attahuapa's neck going forward,
and immediately the Spanish camp began debating the emperor's future. One group wanted to
execute Attahuapa immediately, Pissaro and another group wanted to keep him alive like a
hung jury. The Spaniards were unable to agree on whether Attahuapa had been sending
out secret messages or had been telling the truth. Thus, they couldn't agree
on whether they should execute the Inca lord or spare his life. In order
to address their most immediate threats, Pissaro decided to send Hernando de Soto with
four horsemen to ride north and investigate. If they found no native army,
that it was possible that Attahuappa had been telling the truth. But if,
on the other hand, they found an army, then one thing was certain.
Before the Spaniards died Atahualpa, would dard de Soto and his men had
galloped off. The rest of the Spaniards were just waiting nervously Pisado when his
captains meanwhile unanimously agreed on one point. Their next step would be to march
south and seize Cusco, the capital of the empire and the wealthiest and the
grandest of its cities. But with Cusco some six hundred miles to the south
and the Inca road leading there apparently crossing over some of the roughest terrain in
the world. Pisaro and his captains word that they would not be able to
prevent Attahuapa from being rescued by Inca troops during the journey. Their isolated Spanish
force would be much more vulnerable while traveling, and they would inevitably find themselves
exposed amid unknown terrain. According to three Spaniards who had helped loot Cusco,
in fact, there were probably a thousand places where Pisaro's force could be successfully
ambushed along the way if Ottawapa was rescued, that the emperor would easily galvanize
the entire country to rise up against them. That very evening, after dinner,
a Nicaraguan servant, a native from Peru, arrived bearing a message.
In fact, a large army had been spotted advancing towards Cajamarca, only eleven
miles away. Pisaro rose and began questioning the servant, who must have spoke
some basic Spanish. The servant described in great detail what he had seen,
and it became obvious that there was a threat. Pizzaro quickly sent word to
his men to prepare themselves for battle. By now, the tide and the
support of Atahuelpa had turned. With a sudden and frightening threat of an impending
attack, it didn't take long for those would gather to make a decision.
Atahuelpa had to be put to death. The last thing to do was to
get the reluctant Pizarro, who found himself no longer able to support his earlier
view that they were better off Withoutahuelba alive on their side. An entire native
army could not be marching against them with at Atahuelpa having ordered it. Zarro
came to this conclusion on his own, and since Attahuelpa had committed treason,
at least according to the Spaniard's way of thinking, Zaro finally gave the order
that the Inca emperor quote should die by burning unless he be converted to Christianity
end quote. And so the son of Juanna Kappak, who had fought to
gain the Inca throne for years before the Spaniards arrived, was quickly informed of
the Spaniard's decision. Not surprisingly, he was devastated. Quote. Attahuelpa wept
openly and said they shouldn't kill him, for there wasn't one Indian in the
country would make trouble without his command, and since they had him prisoner,
what were they afraid of? End quote. Atahualpa tried without success to convince
his captors that the empire would devolve into chaos if he were executed, and
so at the well, but try to last ditch effort to save his life.
Quote. If they were going to do it, kill him for gold
or silver, then he would give them twice what he had already commanded.
End quote. But this time the gold didn't even seem to register. At
this point, the Spaniards were so terrified of this alleged army they were acting
on cruise control. According to Pedro Pizaro, quote, I saw the governor
that his Francisco Pizzaro weep from sorrow at being able to grant him his life,
but he feared the consequences and risk to the country if he were released.
Quote. Bizarro, however, along with the rest of the Spanish leaders,
were now convinced about one thing. If a native army was less than
eleven miles outside of town, then that army could launch an attack the very
evening. Thus, in terms of keeping their hostage from falling into enemy hands,
there was no time to lose. Atahualpa had to be put to death
immediately. The sun was just beginning to set on Saturday, July twenty sixth,
fifteen thirty three, when the Emperor of the Inca Atahuapa, was led
out to the main square of Kajamarca, Missus Spaniards surrounded him and sounded the
trumpet and began reading out allowed the charges against the emperor. Atahualpa was tied
to a stake that had just been impaled into the ground. A bunch of
natives came out to watch, and for the ordinary native inhabitant, watching the
Spaniards prepare for the execution of their lord and God was probably as frightening as
knowing that the sun was about to disappear. The Incas, after all,
believed that their history was a succession of ages, divided from one to another
by a cataclysmic event. This had begun with the very formation of the Inca
Empire. Now, as the natives watched their lord Attahuelppa being tied to a
stake, many believed that this part of the world, this epoch, was
in fact coming to an end. According to Patro Pissarro, who again gives
us most of our information about this period. Quote. When he Atahualpa was
taken out to be killed, all the native people who were on the square,
and there were many prostrated themselves on the ground, letting themselves fall to
the earth like drunken men, and quote. Some of the Spaniards began gathering
wood, while others began stacking in in preparation for a fire. Around Attahuelpa's
feet. The Dominican friar spoke to the emperor through one of the interpreters.
Quote. He instructed him in the things of our Christian faith, telling him
that God had wished him to die for the sins he had committed in the
world, and that he should repent of them, and that God would pardon
him if he did. It is, of course, impossible to know if
Walpa actually understood any of the things that were being said to him. No
doubt, though Atahualpa was distressed by all this. He had done everything that
the strangers had asked for, yet now some unfriendly man in a dark robe
was threatening him with death by fire if he didn't accept the invaders one and
only God, whom the invader is called Dios from this point on, it
seems like Atahualpa had made peace with his fate. His concern was now only
with his two small sons, which he had left in Quito, and which
were for the moment safe. At one point he suggested friend sis Gopisaro take
responsibility for them himself. Not Tahalpa said that he was entrusting his children to
the governor, But the friar advised him to forget his wives and children and
to die like a Christian, and that if he wanted to become one,
that he must receive the holy baptismal water. But Otahwapa wept greatly and continued
to insist that his children be cared, for indicating their heights with his hand
and making it clear through his gestures that they were small, but that he
was leaving them unprotected in Quito. Yet the father continued to try to induce
him to convert to Christianity and to forget his children, telling him that Governor
Pisado would look after them, would treat them as his own end quote.
But ultimately Ottawappa agreed to convert to Christianity, whether he did this out of
true religious conviction to save himself from being burned alive, or save his children,
or even some combination of those factors cannot say. As the sky began
to turn red from the setting sun, several Spaniards fastened around Ottawappa's neck a
groat, a type of rope attached to a stick that could be turned like
a wheel, tightening the loop until the blood supplied to the coronid arteries was
cut off to the brain. As they began intoning the last rites wanted,
the Spaniards began to twist the stick, the rope slowly tightening around Attahualpa's neck.
For those of you who may be surprised by this, the conversion to
Christianity was never to save Atahualpa's life, was just to change the manner of
the execution. Finally, the emperor's eyes began to bulge, and the solitary
vein in his forehead rose inflamed by the final rays of the sun. A
notary present wrote as follows, with these last words, and with the Spaniards
who surrounded him, saying a credo for his soul, he Atahualpa was strangled.
May God receive him in heaven, for he died repenting of his sins
and in the true faith of a Christian. After he had been strangled in
this way and the sentence executed, some fire was thrown on him to burn
part of his clothing and flesh. Latin night. Because he died late in
the afternoon, his body was left in the square so that everyone could learn
of his death. Another notary wrote, he died on Saturday, at the
same hour that he was taken prisoner and defeated eight months earlier. Some said
it was for his sins that he died on the same day, Saturday and
same hour that he was seized. So ended the life of Atahualpa, the
thirty one year old lord of the Incas, the first Inca emperor over one
hundred years, who had not only failed to expand the empire, but who
had instead presided over the beginning of its collapse for the second time in less
than a decade. Beginning with Juanna Kappa's death by smallpox, the Inca Empire
was suddenly without a ruler. Governors, administrators, generals, and accountants still
busied themselves with their daily tasks, but now there was no one to give
them orders. And from this moment forward, the Inca empire was essentially paralyzed.
With Outahualpa dead, the Spaniards immediately readied themselves for an attack, which
they believed was imminent. But as night turned to mourning, and as the
sun rose once more into the sky, no attack came reprieved for the moment.
From the immediate necessity to fight, the Spaniards now found themselves confronted with
a more mundane problem. What do you do with out ahuap As corpse?
Everyone agreed you couldn't just leave the ink emperor lying on the square, not
Tahualpa had been revered as a god, after all, and the natives continued
to prostrate themselves on the square. Distraught, bizarre finally decided that the sooner
they got rid of the corpse the better. After a brief ceremony, otahualpas
if blackened body was interred in a hastily dug hole. A few days after
Ottahuappa's burial, Spanish sentries finally sighted had Anno de Soto and his horsemen coming
back from reconnoitering. Unaware of what had happened in their absence, and assuming
that Ottahuapa was still alive, Desto rode back in a flourish and dismounted in
the square. He immediately hurried off in search of Pissaro. DeSoto must have
wondered at the somber mood when he got back, and finding DeSoto wearing quote
a large felt hat on his head as if for mourning end quote, presumably
looking about in vain for Anta Huapa. DeSoto quickly informed Pissaro that he and
his men had found nothing. The rumors of the army were false. Atahualpa
had been telling the truth. Pizzaro responded, mournfully, catching Tosto completely by
surprise. According to those present, Pizzaro quietly said, I see now that
I have been deceived. Pizzaro then told DeSoto that they had strangled Atahualpa a
few days earlier, after news reports had arrived at approaching Inca army. Obviously,
he said those were parts had been false. DeSoto was also deeply disappointed
by otahu help his death, and an emotional DeSoto quickly told Pizzaro that it
would have been much better to send that Twalpa to Spain, and that he
himself would have gladly escorted him there. He had killed the emperor for no
reason. No justifiable reason at all, DeSoto said. He then turned on
his heels and left the room. News about Tahuapa's death slowly began to make
its way northward from Peru across the Isthmus of Panama, eventually via a ship
to Spain. Meanwhile, Pisaro and Amagro had more closer matters to deal with.
They're roughly three hundred Spaniards readied themselves for another major military campaign. Azzaro's
plan was to begin a bold military thrust southward along the rugged spine of the
Andes. No longer protected by a hostage emperor that they could count on to
keep the native armies at bay, they would now be forced to entrust their
fates to their lances, swords to their solitary god. Yet capturing Outahuallpa had
been the equivalent of seizing the brain or command center of the empire, than
Pissaro was now determined to fight his way southward in order to capture its heart,
the legend every city of Cuzco. He also knew, though, that
another inca army lurked somewhere to his rear. How those dative armies would behave,
How the commanding generals would now move no one could predict. Bizzaro and
his men spent the next three months working their way south. The three hundred
conquistadors were now joined by a larger retinue of native slaves from what is today
Nicaragua, some African slaves, and local natives. Together they all worked to
move Ottawhelpa's treasure to the coast, from whence it could be transported to Panama
and ultimately back to Spain. Before he and his Spaniards had left Kajamarca,
however, Bizarro had decided to crown the eldest surviving brother of the emperor,
on a kapak A royal prince called Tupac Hulapa his arrow, hope that by
doing so he would be able to continue controlling the Inca aristocracy and hence the
empire, much as he had done without Hualpa. The new Inca Emperor's reign,
however, was short lived. Within two months, Tupac Lupa sickened and
died. A disappointed Bizarro had him hastily buried, and once again the Inca
Empire was without a ruler. Still, there was some good news. His
arrow and his men had been able to gain a rough idea at least of
where the existing Inca armies were deployed, invaluable information for the still relatively tiny
group of foreigners. Essentially, they learned that there were three Inca armies in
the field, one to the north in what is today Ecuador with thirty thousand
troops, another in Central Peru numbered around thirty five thou and and a third
in Cusco thirty thousand strong. The army in Central Peru Pizzaro quickly dealt with.
Even before leaving Kaja Marca, he had decapitated the Central Army by luring
its general Chachumichi to visit the imprisoned Anti Hualpa. After seizing Chachumichi, Bizarro
decided to bring the imprisoned Inca general along on his journey. Pissarro had grown
suspicious, however, that the general might be able to incite local natives to
attack, and had thus earned the man at the stake. This meant now
that only the army in Cuscoup, commanded by General Kiskis, stood between the
Spaniards and their goal of capturing the capital of the Inca Empire. In November
fifteen thirty three, the Army of the Spaniards was now only a day's march
from Cusco. Here they encountered a seventeen year old, boyish looking Native who
wore a yellow tunic and who was accompanied by a group of incannobles. His
Arrow's interpreters soon learned the young native was the son of the Emperor Juanna Kappak,
and thus was of royal descent. Bizarrow also learned that the teenage boy's
name was Manco Inca, and that although he was the brother of both Attahualpa
and Uscar, he was also one of the very few survivors of us Car's
royal lineage. As Bissarro and as Captains listened to their interpreter translating, young
prince explained how he'd been living as a fugitive and spent much of the previous
year quote fleeing constantly from Atahualpa's men so they would not kill him. He
came so alone in a vanity looked like a common Indian end quote. Bizarrow
quickly realized not only was Manko Inca a possible heir to the throne, but
that the royal prince also belonged to Inca's Cuzco faction. Precisely faction that Pissarro
wished to be perceiving as allying himself with. Since Pizarro had already executed Atahualpa,
nothing could be better than for him to arrive in Cusco with a member
of the same faction that had suffered under Atahualpa. Pissarro and his troops could
thus position themselves as liberators, that perception, they hoped, would forestall any
native resistance from developing. According to one chronicler, Quotum Manko Inca said to
the governor that he would help him all that he could in order to rid
the land of those from Quito, which Atahualpa's faction, for they were her
enemies and they hated him. Manko was the man to whom, by law
came all that province, and whose chief it wanted for its lord. When
he came to see Pissaro, he came by way of the mountains, avoiding
the roads for fear of those from Quito. Pissarro was happy to receive him
and told him a lot of what you say pleases me, including a great
desire to be of these men from Quito. You should know that I have
come for no other purpose than to prevent them from doing you harm, to
free you from your slavery to them. And you can be sure that I'm
not coming here for my own benefit, but knowing the injuries they were inflicting
on you, I wanted to come and rectify and undo them, as my
Lord the Emperor commanded me to do. You can thus be sure that I
will do everything I can to help you, and then I will also do
the same to liberate the people of Cusco from this tyranny. The Governor Pizzaro
made these big promises to Manko Inca in order to please him so that he
Pissaro, might get news of how things were going elsewhere. The chief Manko
Inca was marvelously satisfied, as were those who had come with him. Quote.
Pizarro hoped that by allying himself with the young income prince, he could
fool the Cusco faction into believing his only real interest was in placing those who
had been oppressed by Atahualpa back into power. But before he could install Manko
as the new emperor, Pizzaro had to capture Cuzco. Manko told Pizzaro that
the Inca general in charge there intended to burn the city to the ground rather
than watch it fall into Spanish hands. This news touched a nerve with Pizarro.
He knew full well that the only knock against Hernan Cortes was his inability
to take control of tenusht Klan. Cortes had been forced to destroy his jewel
of a capital city in order to win his war against the Mexica. Pizzaro
desperately wanted to avoid that fate, so he dispatched his twenty three year old
brother, Juan Pisaro, and Hernando de Soto with forty horsemen in an effort
to prevent the burning of the capital. After eighteen months of war in Peru,
the Spanish were now supremely confident. The attrician rates of the native banished
troops had thus far been decidedly in the spaniards favor. Beginning with the capture
of Atahualpa. The Inca had lost more than eight thousand warriors, many high
ranking nobles, one of their three key generals, and obviously their emperor.
The Spaniards, by contrast, had thus far lost one African slave, though
relatively few in number, The Spaniards possessed a number of advantages over the Inca.
In terms of military technology, perhaps their greatest monopoly was on horses animals.
They could carry a fully armored Spaniard and outrun the fastest native. These
were the mobile tanks of conquest. They also provided a high platform from which
the Spaniards could use their twelve foot metal tipped lance and strike downward with their
swords. Bizarro's conquisadors also potessed gunpowder, a limited number of cannon, an
assortment of harquebuses. In terms of their ability to defend themselves, the spaniards
superior armor protected them from just about anything that the Inca could throw at them.
We have the following account from Atahuallpa's nephew, who described just how difficult
it was from the Inca perspective to do any damage to these automatons. Quote,
they seemed like Verrocas, which is the name we give in ancient times
to the creator of all things. And they the Incas named those people whom
they had seen in this way in part because they were very different in clothing
and appearance, and also because they rode giant animals which had feet of silver.
And they said this because of the shining of the horseshoes. They called
them verrochas because of their excellent appearance and because of the great differences there were
amongst them. Some had black beards, others red ones because they saw them
eat off silver plates and as they could produce thunder from heaven duote. Besides
their arms and armor, the Spaniards possessed other advantages over the Inca. They
could effectively communicate by writing, They had access to a slow but still useful
international trade network. Plus they had recent battle experience fighting the Moors the Riconquista.
It's hardly one generation old. Plus, though they did not realize it,
the Spanish had a more deadly weapon on their side than horses and steel.
Smallpox. Only five years before the Inca Empire had been united and strong.
Smallpox not only devastated the Inca population, but it also triggered the civil
War Bizzarro was able to take advantage of upon his arrival, in which he
hoped to use to his advantage. Again, it's worth noting at this point,
for all their sophistication, Thea remained essentially a Stone Age or perhaps Bronze
Age people. The Inca had copper and ten, though they didn't use it
primarily to produce bronze. Even if they did, the Inca didn't know anything
of iron ore. Iron ore, in fact, would not be discovered in
Peru until nineteen fifteen. Hence, even if you granted the Inca another three
hundred years to develop their civilization, there's a real chance that they would not
have been much further along in terms of technology. The Inca had the numbers,
but they were about to face steel armor with stone clubs not a recipe
for success. These clubs were incapable of penetrating steel armor. As we're going
to continue to see. While the Spanish will suffer a small number of casualties
and a lot of injuries, these pale in comparison to the damage the Spanish
can do with lances and swords capable of slicing through limbs and killing a man
where he stands. Despite their much greater number of troops, the Incas operated
under a variety of other disadvantages. They didn't have writing, They didn't they
only had this thing called the kuippus, which allowed them to send less information
back and forth than the Spaniards. Essentially was a way to count numbers.
They had little knowledge of the world beyond their frontiers. They were totally unaware
of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and they
didn't know anything but the history of Europe with the rest of the world.
Moreover, it should go without saying that the Inca possessed no advanced armor.
They had some bronze, some copper, but mostly it was just quilted cotton,
and of course they didn't have horses. No November the fourteenth, fifteen
thirty three, Jan Pizzaro and Hernando de Soto reached the outskirts of Kuzco.
Here they found the road blocked by a massive Inca army, which outnumbered them
seven hundred and fifty to one. Despite this numerical inferiority, the Spanish decided
to attack immediately. Throughout their time in the New World, the Spanish had
learned that a direct, an immediate attack was the best policy when it came
to confronting an indigenous army. It worked for Cortez, and so far it
worked for Pizzaro. The native warriors, quote in the greatest numbers, came
out against us with an enormous shout and much determination, with their backs against
the city and the experienced General Quisquis in charge. The Northern Army of Quito
fought fiercely, driving the Spaniards back in an onslaught of sling, fired arrows,
stones, and battering mace clubs. One note we wrote quote, they
killed three of our horses, including my own, and wounded many others.
Protected by their armor and fighting from their horses, however, the Spaniards exacted
a tremendous toll. Hundreds of natives fell that day in fighting that continued until
late in the afternoon, with human limbs and heads lying on the ground after
having been severed with sharp and steel. The Spaniards, by comparison with stones
and mace heads bouncing off their steel armor, received many wounds but didn't suffer
a single casualty. The Spanish used all of their advantages tremendously. If the
Spaniards were in trouble, others on horseback could charge towards the group. If
the Spaniards needed to escape a difficult situation, then they could spur their horses
and outrun even the fastest native warriors. Late in that day, Francisco Pizardo
and the rest of the troops, but only after the Spanish cavalry force and
Kiskis troops had ceased their fighting. With darkness falling, the Inca and Spanish
forces camped within sight of each other. One man rode quote. The Spaniards
set up their camp on a plane, and the Indians stayed on a hark
of us shot away on a slope until midnight, continuously shouting. The Spaniards
spent all night with their horses saddled and bridled. The next day, at
the crack of dawn, the governor organized the foot soldiers in cavalry and he
headed off on the road to Cousco in good order, having been warned and
believing the enemy would come out and attack them on the road end quote.
But nothing happened. Apparently realizing that on level ground his native troops, though
numerous, were no match for the mounted Spaniards, General Kiskis had decided to
save his army to fight another day. It turns out, just after midnight
Kiskis had given the order for his troops to retreat and give up the fight
for Cusco. They did so quietly, leaving their camp fires lit behind them
to fool the Spaniards into thinking that they were still there. The next day,
around noon, the Spaniards marched victorious into the city. As they marched
and rode in full battle order, the city's inhabitants turned out on the stone
paved streets to watch them. It had only been mourning when the surprise citizens
learned of the northern army from Quito, which had occupied the city for the
last year, had suddenly melted away and was nowhere to be found. The
citizens already knew, of course, the emperor Atahualpa was dead and had been
executed by the same group of foreigners. More than a few of them were
surprised, though to see Manko Inca, the young prince. Most of them
had not seen any year. Walking with the strange bearded men and surrounded by
giant animals that made guttural noises, and that none of the city's inhabitants had
ever seen before, Manko was obviously very much alive, and through his behavior
and speech, the young Prince made it known that the foreigners were friendly,
not dangerous, that they were to be treated as honored guests. For the
weary inhabitants of Cusco, the sudden disappearance of a hated occupying army was certainly
a relief question, and no doubt though, was who were these new foreigners,
Why had they come? But at this point clearly the strategy of allying
themselves with us Car's faction and presenting themselves as liberators was paying dividends. For
the Europeans. For the rank and file conquistador, their unopposed march into the
finest city that any of them had, frankly ever seen in the New World
seemed nothing short of miraculous. Consider the following account. The Spaniards who had
taken part in this enterprise or amazed by what they had done. When they
begin to think about it, they can't imagine how they can still be alive,
or how they were able to survive such hardships and such long periods of
hunger. We entered the city without meeting resistance, for the natives received us
with good will. In all, only six Europeans had died on the three
month, six hundred mile trek from Kajamarca to Cuzco, and the seventeen year
old manka Inco well, I mean he was overjoyed. Ever since Ottahuapa's forces
had taken Cusco, he had assumed he was as good as dead. Now,
with these seemingly invincible foreigners on his side, he was back at the
very pinnacle of power. Pizzaro was quick to consolidate his latest military triumph.
Since General Kiskis's army could still mount a counterattack, Pizzaro ordered his troops to
quarter themselves in the larger of Cusco's two main squares. He then commanded those
with horses to keep their mounts ready at all times, day and night,
in case of an Inca assault on the city. Not one to waste time,
Pizarro also informed Manko the day after his arrival in Cusco that he would
soon become the new Inca emperor. As one man described quote, he was
a prudent and bright young man, and was the most important native among those
who were there at the time, and he was the one to whom,
by law, belonged the kingdom. He Pizarro said all this rapidly, so
that the natives would not join the men of Quito, but would have a
lord of their own to revere and to obey, and would not organize themselves
into rebellious bands. Quote. Pizarro, despite being illiterate, seems to have
had an innate understanding of how power worked. He knew that attempting to rule
in his own right was folly. He needed manko Inca to rule, and
to rule through him. Soon after reaching Cusco, Pizzaro started pressuring manko to
recruit a native army. If he had a native army, Pisardo reasoned,
then he could take care of the two remaining Inca armies and deal with any
native resistance. Manko Inca dutifully raised a force of ten thousand men. Together
with DeSoto and fifty other cavalry officers. Manko Inca marched out of Cusco,
confronted the former occupying army that had recently left the capitol, and inflicted enough
damage at the officer's inset. Army decided they had had enough. The men
of Quito packed up and marched north to home. This left only one Inca
army in the field. After the victory, manko Inca was officially named Emperor,
a pope emperor, but emperor all the same. The Spanish were impressed
by the scale of the coronation. One Rode quote. They held huge celebrations
on the city square, and such a vast number of people assembled that only
with great difficulty could the crowd. Fit Manko had all the deceased ancestors brought
to the festivities in the following manner. After he had gone with a great
entourage to the temple to make a prayer to the sun throughout the morning,
he went successively to the tombs, where each dead Inca emperor was embalmed and
seated on his seat with great veneration and respect. They were then removed in
the order of precedence and brought to the city. Each one sitted on his
litter, and uniformed men to carry it. Continuing, he writes, once
they had been placed in order, they remained there from eight in the morning
until nightfall, without leaving the festivities. There were so many people, and
so many men and women who were heavy drinkers, and they poured so much
on their skins, because that is what they do to drink and not eat.
That two wide drains over half vara eighteen inches wide that emptied into the
river beneath the flagstones of the square ran with hurine throughout the day from those
who had urinated into them, as abundantly as if it were flowing into springs.
And Quote taking advantage of this large audience of native chiefs and nobles who
had arrived to honor their new lord. Pizarro arranged to address the important gathering
using the spaniards now ritualized ceremony of conquest. Pizarro soon made it clear to
all those who gathered that they were part of a larger world order than they
had been used to, and that henceforth they would be subservient to an empire
even more powerful than their own. Once mass had been said, he Pisaro
came out onto the square with many men from his army, and he gathered
them together and in the presence of the Emperor, the lords of the land
and the native warriors, who were seated together with his own Spaniards, with
the Inca Emperor seated on a small stool and with his men on the ground
around him, the governor made a speech, as he is used to doing
in similar situations. Quote, of course. The Spaniards, as was their
custom, then read the REQUIREMENTO. Pisarrow's notary read the final paragraph, pausing
now and then for the words to be interpreted into the Inca's language. And
so I request you to recognize the church as your mistress and the governess of
the world and the universe, and the high priest called the Pope in her
name and his Majesty in her place as ruler and Lord king. And if
you do not do this, then with the help of God, we shall
make mighty war against you, and we shall make war on you everywhere and
in every way that we can, and we shall subject you to the Yoka
to be adiance of the Church and his Majesty, and so forth and so
on. We have no idea what the native chiefs were actually thinking while all
this was going on, but they came forward dutifully, one at a time
to embrace Francisco Pizaro. Then the coronation was over. The teenaged mango Inco
was the new emperor. He was the fifth Incan emperor in six years.
Meanwhile, the Spaniards continued looting the capital and Pisaro took up residency in the
Royal Palace. Everything was going swimmingly from his perspective. In fact, if
you were awarding points, I think now we'd need to say Pisaro had done
a cleaner job of his conquest than Cortez. For now, at least.
In March fifteen thirty four, Pizaro distributed all the gold and silver from Cusco.
For those who had arrived late, their patients now more than paid off.
For those who had been in Peru from the beginning, they became millionaires
many times over. Pizarro now presented his fellow Spaniards with a choice. They
could return to Spain and spend the rest of their lives in luxury, or
they could remain in Peru and help found this new colony Pizzaro was calling the
Kingdom of New Castile. Gizzarro had no intention of leaving Peru, but he
couldn't rule an empire on his own, so he needed and expected some men
to agree to stay with him. There were still less than five hundred total
Europeans in a kingdom of around ten million. He needed every man he could
get. Thus, Pissaro offered any man who would remain an encomienda. The
plan was simple, restructure the Inca social pyramid. The idea was that these
uneducated Spaniards would replace the Inca elite. Whether these men realized it or not,
this was virtually the only time in history when a landless spanish Man could
become what was essentially a feudal lord. That kind of social mobility simply did
not happen in early modern Spain, but in the end most men chose to
return to their home country. Eighty eight Spaniards accepted the ecomiendas and became permanent
residence of Cusco. Unaware of the Spaniards plan, the new Inca Emperor,
Manco Inca had a number of problems on his hands. He first had to
take up the reins of an empire that originally been ripped from the hands of
his brother Hugh Scar and then from the hands of his other brother Atahualpa.
Manka's immediate task was to try to re establish the authority of the emperor.
While portions of the empire had continued to function on automatic autopilot, other areas
had reverted to the rule of local warlords and chiefs. These had taken advantage
of the civil wars and of Pizarro's campaign of conquest in order to throw off
the yoke of Inca domination. Seated on his royal stool, Manko now set
about restoring the Inca's imperial authority as best he could for boy of seventeen.
Soon, the young emperor began receiving visits from his provincial governors began appointing new
ones where they had gone missing, and slowly undertook the laborious task of re
establishing the intricate governing mechanism that his ancestors and thousands of years of cultural development
in the Andes had produced. The Spaniards, meanwhile, will had a very
weak grasp of just how complex the empire that they had only partially conquered was.
While they immediately recognized the overall similarities with the old world culture of kings,
nobles, priests and commoners, they knew little of the actual mechanisms that
enabled the Inca Empire to function. The Inca's genius, like that of the
Romans, for example, lay in their masterful organizational abilities. An ethnic group
that probably never exceeded one hundred thousand individuals was able to regulate the activities of
roughly ten million people. This in spite of the fact that the empire citizens
spoke more than seven hundred languages and were distributed among thousands of miles of some
of the most rugged and diverse to reign in the world. The Incan economy
was nearly one hundred percent dependent on agriculture. It wasn't subsistence farming per se.
Thanks to the Inca distribution system, a crop failure in one part of
the empire might be compensated for by importing food from another. Thanks to the
roads and terraces they built, famine had become virtually impossible. But unlike in
Spain, the people of the Inca Empire held no land directly. Remember,
technically all the land in the empire was owned by the emperor. He sort
of leased it back to the people, who then owed a labor tax as
a result. That was how the system worked. However, years of civil
war, plague, and now well this had left the system listing and in
danger of capsizing. So in the latter half of fifteen thirty four, Manko
Inca, actually though a puppet emperor, spent his time trying to shore up
the system as best he could. He might be relegated to a supporting role,
but Manko Inca was going to do the best he could to keep his
people safe and fed. Unfortunately, to some local Inca elites who had begun
to see the Spaniards as conquerors, not liberators, Manko was starting to look
like a collaborator. As an aside, I don't think that's fair. Remember,
he's seventeen or eighteen years old at this point. He doesn't understand Pisaro's
full intentions. I think to judge Manko Inca based on these first few months
would do him a major disservice. He was just being a bit naive.
He didn't understand that Pizarro was being friendly just to stall for time until reinforcements
arrive. How could he, He didn't know anything about Spain, Europe,
etc. Etc. At the same time, Pizarro was just beginning to realize
that some of the Spanish reinforcements he had patiently been waiting for might prove more
dangerous than a potential native attack. Back in March, Pisaro had learned alarming
news that Ernando Cortez's second in command, Pedro de Alvarado, had recently landed
on the coast of Ecuador with five hundred and fifty Spanish conquistadors. Alvarado was
evidently going to try to carve out his own governorship in the area, despite
the fact that Pisaro was the only person with a royal license to conquer any
portion of the Inca Empire. Pizzaro's partner, as dependable as ever, Diego
de Almagro, however, hurried north as soon as he had learned the news,
unwilling to have their years of effort derailed by competition. Al Magro ultimately
succeeded in negotiating a peaceful resolution. In return for one hundred thousand pesos about
a thousand pounds of gold, Alvarado agreed to cancel his plans of conquest,
and also to allow three hundred and forty conquistadors to join Pisardo and Almagro in
completing the conquest of Peru. The negotiations had occurred just in time. No
sooner had al Magro begun to head south again that he almost immediately ran into
a large Inca army commanded by the intrepided General Kiskis, who had gradually retreated
northward since having abandoned Cuzco more than six months earlier. Kiskis and his troops,
having been away from their homes now for more than two years, were
a little surprised to encounter a large Spanish army where they least expected one.
The Inca general had assumed that the northern part of the empire was still free
of the hated foreigners. Soon a series of battles ensued, and one of
them, Kiskis's troops successfully ambushed a group of fourteen Spaniards and beheaded all of
them. In another they managed to wound twenty Spaniards and kill three of their
horses. Still, after years of fighting and now suddenly confronted by a force
of nearly five hundred Spaniards and a large number of horses, Keiskes's men were
just demoralized. The vast majority of them just wanted to go home. Even
more shocking to the proud Inca general was the fact that his very own officers
wanted to give up the fight. There's some irony in this, because Keiskes
was gradually learning how to deal with the Spanish. By stationing his men on
steep hillsides, he learned that he could blunt the effectiveness of the Spanish cavalry
attacks. I guess it's a little sad, then, that this is when
Keiskis's life comes to an end. His officers rebelled, and in the midst
of trying to quell the rebellion, the best Inca general still alive was killed
by his own men. Had he lived, we have to wonder whether Kiskis
might have turned things around against the Spanish, but that's yet another one of
thousands of the what ifs from history. Not long after Kiskis died, Atahualpa's
final army was defeated in Ecuador by a joint Spanish native army. With all
of Atahualpa's generals now dead, Pissaro and Almagro seemed in total control. All
they needed to do was continue the process of transforming the Inca Empire into a
lucrative new colony for the rapidly expanding Spanish Empire, and so Pisardo slowly began
to shift his role for military leader to administrator. But of course, the
elephant in the room remained the question of Almagro. What about him? He
had faithfully supported Pisarto for years, now what was to become of him?
Well. In an effort to give Almagro something, Pisaro decided to make his
partner the governor of Cuzco. Almagro accepted, and in December fifteen forty three,
he rode back up the mountains to the former capital of the Inca.
Ironically, he had just left when news arrived from Spain shocking news King Charles
had decided to split the Inca Empire in two. Pisaro and Almagro would each
get half. The northern part went to Pissaro, the southern part went to
Almagro. The problem is, as we're going to see next week, Charles
neglected to say exactly where the quote end quote northern and southern parts of the
empire began and ended. While Pizaro hurriedly sent a messenger after Almagro, little
did he realize that this news would drive a wedge between the two conquistadors and
quickly upset the delicate balance of power in the region. It turned out the
conquest of the Inca had only just begun.