Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [31]
Francisco Pizarro had served as a senior officer on Balboa’s expedition, a role that would have allowed a less ambitious man to live comfortably ever after in Panama as a landowner. Pizarro was illiterate and a bastard (in the genealogical sense, though he was no dream date as far as the Incas were concerned, either), a man who burned to overcome his humble beginnings. Like his ruthless role models Balboa and Cortés, he was a product of the Iberian peninsula’s Extremadura province, a harsh land that produced some of the Age of Discovery’s toughest explorers. After a 1522 expedition returned from what is now the southern coast of Colombia, a land believed to be called Birú (or Virú or Pirú), with reports of great riches, Pizarro formed a syndicate with two other men to explore the area. First and foremost they were entrepreneurs. Their business plan was to find the land of Birú—soon to be altered to Perú—and suck out its riches, just as Balboa and Cortés had done in Mexico.
A first expedition failed miserably, but two later voyages turned up hints of an advanced civilization. In 1528, Pizarro landed at Tumbez in the northernmost part of Peru. He was greeted warmly at this impressive settlement by an Inca magistrate, who was as fascinated by the odd visitors’ chickens, pigs and shiny armor as the Spaniard was taken by the exquisite pottery, woven goods, and gold and silver objects that the Incas possessed. Pizarro returned to Spain and received permission to conquer this promising new land in the name of the crown.
Pizarro sailed into Tumbez again in 1532. The city that he had visited a few years prior now lay in ruins. The cause of the destruction was a civil war that had broken out when the reigning Inca, Pachacutec’s grandson Huayna Capac, had died unexpectedly of a disease, possibly smallpox, introduced to the New World by early Spanish explorers, that had swept through the kingdom. His son Huascar, who had a reputation as a playboy, assumed the title of Inca in Cusco. The Incas did not have a tradition of easy successions, however; a new emperor’s right to rule was often challenged by one or more of his brothers. In this instance the fierce Atahualpa, who led the empire’s strongest armies from a base in modern-day Ecuador, declared war on his half brother Huascar. A brutal campaign dragged on for a few years, decimating the empire and culminating in the capture of Huascar just days before Pizarro’s group of 168 Spaniards arrived at the Inca city of Cajamarca. There, Atahualpa was camped with his battle-hardened army of at least forty thousand soldiers.
Pizarro had learned from the capture of Montezuma in Mexico that seizing the emperor would put him in a very advantageous bargaining position. To the Incas, Atahualpa was a god, the divine son of the sun. Though the Spaniards were grossly outnumbered, Pizarro did have a huge technological edge. His men had brought horses (which the Incas had never seen), harquebuses (an early form of long-barreled firearm more useful for noisy intimidation than sharpshooting) and, most importantly, swords forged from Toledo steel. The most feared army on the South American continent fought primarily with slingshots and clubs, literally using sticks and stones to break foes’ bones.
Thanks to his chasqui messengers, Atahualpa had known the Spaniards