VIIA. D. 1532THE CONQUEST OF PERU
Pizarrowas reared for a swineherd; long years of soldiering made him no more than a captain, and when at the age of fifty he turned explorer, he discovered nothing but failure.
For seven years he and his followers suffered on trails beset by snakes and alligators, in feverish jungles haunted by man-eating savages, to be thrown at last battered, ragged and starving on the Isle of Hell. Then a ship offered them passage, but old Pizarro drew a line in the dust with his sword. “Friends,” said he, “and comrades, on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here Panama and its poverty. Choose each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.”
Thirteen of all his people crossed the line with Pizarro, the rest deserting him, and he was seven months marooned on his desert isle in the Pacific. When the explorer’s partners at last were able to send a ship from Panama, it brought him orders to return, a failure. He did not return but took the ship to thesouthward, his guide the great white Andes, along a coast no longer of horrible swamps but now more populous, more civilized than Spain, by hundreds of miles on end of well-tilled farms, fair villages and rich cities where the temples were sheathed with plates of pure red gold. As in the Mexico of eight years ago, the Spaniards were welcomed as superhuman, their ship, their battered armor and their muskets accounted as possessions of strayed gods. They dined in the palaces of courtly nobles, rested in gardens curiously enriched with foliage and flowers of beaten gold and silver, and found native gentlemen eager to join them in their ship as guests. So with a shipload of wonders to illustrate this discovery they went back to Panama, and Pizarro returned home to seek in Spain the help of Charles V. There, at the emperor’s court, he met Cortes, who came to lay the wealth of conquered Mexico at his sovereign’s feet, and Charles, with a lively sense of more to come, despatched Pizarro to overthrow Peru.
Between the Eastern and the Western Andes lies a series of lofty plains and valleys, in those days irrigated and farmed by an immense civilized population. A highway, in length 1,100 miles, threaded the settlements together. The whole empire was ruled by a foreign dynasty, called the Incas, a race of fighting despots by whom the people had been more or less enslaved. The last Inca had left the northern kingdom of Quito to his younger son, the ferocious Atahuallpa, and the southern realm of Cuzco to his heir, the gentle Huascar.
These brothers fought until Atahuallpa subdued the southern kingdom, imprisoned Huascar, and reignedso far as he knew over the whole world. It was then that from outside the world came one hundred sixty-eight men of an unknown race possessed of ships, horses, armor and muskets—things very marvelous, and useful to have. The emperor invited these strangers to cross the Andes, intending, when they came, to take such blessings as the Sun might send him. The city of Caxamalca was cleared of its people, and the buildings enclosing the market place were furnished for the reception of the Spaniards.
The emperor’s main army was seven hundred miles to the southward, but the white men were appalled by the enormous host attending him in his camp, where he had halted to bathe at the hot springs, three miles from their new quarters. The Peruvian watch fires on the mountain sides were as thick as the stars of heaven.
The sun was setting next day when a procession entered the Plaza of Caxamalca, a retinue of six thousand guards, nobles, courtiers, dignitaries, surrounding the litter on which was placed the gently swaying golden throne of the young emperor.
Of all the Spaniards, only one came forward, a priest who, through an interpreter, preached, explaining from the commencement of the world the story of his faith, Saint Peter’s sovereignty, the papal office, and Pizarro’s mission to receive the homage of this barbarian. The emperor listened, amused at first, then bored, at last affronted, throwing down the book he was asked to kiss. On that a scarf waved and the Spaniards swept from their ambush, blocking the exits, charging as a wolf-pack on a sheepfold, riding the people down while they slaughtered. So great wasthe pressure that a wall of the courtyard fell, releasing thousands whose panic flight stampeded the Incas’ army. But the nobles had rallied about their sovereign, unarmed but with desperate valor clinging to the legs of the horses and breaking the charge of cavalry. They threw themselves in the way of the fusillades, their bodies piled in mounds, their blood flooding the pavement. Then, as the bearers fell, the golden throne was overturned, and the emperor hurried away a prisoner. Two thousand people had perished in the attempt to save him.
The history of the Mexican conquest was repeated here, and once more a captive emperor reigned under Spanish dictation.
This Atahuallpa was made of sterner stuff than Montezuma, and had his defeated brother Huascar drowned, lest the Spaniards should make use of his rival claim to the throne. The Peruvian prince had no illusions as to the divinity of the white men, saw clearly that their real religion was the adoration of gold, and in contempt offered a bribe for his freedom. Reaching the full extent of his arm to a height of nine feet, he boasted that to that level he would fill the throne room with gold as the price of his liberty, and twice he would fill the anteroom with silver. So he sent orders to every city of his empire commanding that the shrines, the temples, palaces and gardens be stripped of their gold and silver ornaments, save only the bodies of the dead kings, his fathers. Of course, the priests made haste to bury their treasures, but the Spaniards went to see the plunder collected and when they had finished no treasures were left in sight save a course of solid golden ingots in the walls of theTemple of the Sun at Cuzco, and certain massive beams of silver too heavy for shipment. Still the plunder of an empire failed to reach the nine-foot line on the walls of the throne room at Caxamalca, but the soldiers were tired of waiting, especially when the goldsmiths took a month to melt the gold into ingots. So the royal fifth was shipped to the king of Spain, Pizarro’s share was set apart, a tithe was dedicated to the Church, and the remainder divided among the soldiers according to their rank, in all three and a half millions sterling by modern measurement, the greatest king’s ransom known to history. Then the emperor was tried by a mock court-martial, sentenced to death and murdered. It is comforting to note that of all who took part in that infamy not one escaped an early and a violent death.
Pizarro had been in a business partnership with the schoolmaster Luque of Panama cathedral, and with Almagro, a little fat, one-eyed adventurer, who now arrived on the scene with reinforcements. Pizarro’s brothers also came from Spain. So when the emperor’s death lashed the Peruvians to desperation, there were Spaniards enough to face odds of a hundred to one in a long series of battles, ending with the siege of the adventurers who held Cuzco against the Inca Manco for five months. The city, vast in extent, was thatched, and burned for seven days with the Spaniards in the midst. They fought in sheer despair, and the Indians with heroism, their best weapon the lasso, their main hope that of starving the garrison to death. No valor could possibly save these heroic robbers, shut off from escape or from rescue by the impenetrable rampart of the Andes. They owed their salvationto the fact that the Indians must disperse to reap their crops lest the entire nation perish of hunger, and the last of the Incas ended his life a fugitive lost in the recesses of the mountains.
Then came a civil war between the Pizarros, and Almagro, whose share of the plunder turned out to be a snowy desolation to the southward. It was not until after this squalid feud had been ended by Almagro’s execution and Pizarro’s murder, that the desolate snows were uncovered, revealing the incomparable treasures of silver Potosi, Spain’s share of the plunder.