The conquest of the Inca Empire was the Spanish Empire's next great enterprise after they took control of Central America following their Conquest of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century. It was undertaken mainly by conquistadores Francisco Pizarro, a distant uncle to Hernán Cortés, and Diego de Almagro, his Lancer and eventually Friend Turned Rival.
This chapter of the Conquest of America could be considered the Darker and Edgier sequel to the capture of México. Compared to the colourful epic of the Mexican conquest, Pizarro's reign was an ugly affair marked by constant betrayals, bad strategic decisions and bloody large-scale battles, whose plots brought the Crown of Spain plenty of gold yet no less as many headaches. Unlike the Mexica Empire, which offered the commodity of having failed to submit rival states that rolled the Spaniards into their ancestral enmities in the lush Mesoamerican jungle, the Inca Empire was a dry, mountainous domain that had assimilated all possible competition and had only shattered into factions due to a bloody civil war, making its conquest more akin to bursting into a Deadly Decadent Court, in which nobody could thrive without backstabbing someone regardless of color and race, than engaging in a military campaign.
Ironically, despite the tortuousness of its course, the conquest of the Incas might have been the most successful Spanish venture for all the sides involved. Not only did the Inca Empire get to retain its structure under the Spanish administration to a degree greater than the dismantled Mexicas and the fragmented Mayans, eased by the admirable Inca organization and the need to keep it running to control the country, but the whole resultant viceroyalty would become the wealthiest of the Spanish Empire for the combo of precious metals and sea trading routes, to the point that in the following centuries, even miners and workers enjoyed reportedly a higher standard of life than their homologues in many cities in Europe.
Tne success of Pizarro's enterprise entered Spanish language in the form of an idiom, valer un Perú/Potosí (roughly, "to be worth a Peru/Potosi," Potosí being a successful mining town of the viceroyalty).
Background
The Inca Empire — called Tahuantinsuyo in Quechua, their main administrative language — was likely the largest and most advanced of the Pre-Columbian Civilizations; estimates place their pre-contact population at around 12 million people. It started off in the Peruvian Andes, when the city state of Cusco started a campaign of expansion, though the latter was more bureaucratic than militaristic. Unlike the Mexicas, Human Sacrifice was not instrumental in Inca culture, although they did practice it in small numbers, mainly sacrificing children in the mountains.At the time of the conquest, the empire had no real political competition around. Their only great conflict had been against invasions of Guarani tribes from the heart of South America, who were seen by the Incas as something like the early barbarian migrations of The Roman Empire, but which were more or less under control by the time of king Huayna Cápac. Note the curiosity that one of those Guarani invasions was captained by a Mighty Whitey, a Spanish-Portuguese castaway named Aleixo Garcia, but the Inca Empire managed to repeal his incursion and he died shortly after without leaving a mark. Anyway, Huayna also died, supposedly from one of the strains of smallpox accidentally brought by the Spanish presence in Mesoamerica,note and without him, a bloody civil war for the throne exploded between his sons Huáscar and Atahualpa.
Atahualpa eventually won the war, arresting and imprisoning his brother, after which he initiated a massive campaign of punishment against those tribes and states that had supported Huáscar. The tribe of the Cañaris, whose renowned warriors had composed Huáscar's royal guard, suffered the greatest of the decimations, to the point that by the time the Spaniards arrived, they found a male Cañari alive for every sixteen of their women. Other tribes, like the Huancas and Chachapoyas, suffered his wrath as well, leaving many of them swearing revenge on their new ruler and all his regime. Atahualpa's rise, however, would be cut short by the arrival of the Spaniards not much after.
As with the Aztecs, there is the popular belief that the conquistadores were initially mistaken as avatars of the gods, specifically the deity Huiracocha. Again, this impression comes mostly from sources written at least two decades after the conquest, when Christian missionaries and superstitious natives were inclined to see religious predestinations where there was none.
First expeditions
In 1512, rumors about yet another mighty indigenous empire came to the Spanish conquistadores stationed in the city of La Antigua (modern Unguía, Colombia). The major of the city, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a young entrepreneur who had originally come as a stowaway, headed an expedition that discovered the Pacific Ocean following indigenous reports of a rich empire. However, the rights to conquer the new lands would be stolen by a political enemy, Pedrarias Dávila, who pulled strings to get Balboa executed. Eleven years and one Aztec conquest later, two of Balboa's underlings, Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, decided to gather funds and give it a try, so soon another Spanish expedition sailed off from Panamá.Their first attempt to border the Pacific coast was unsuccessful, as the presence of hostile natives and the lack of interesting gains forced them to return. The second seemed to be going the same way, to the point Pizarro and Almagro argued and almost had a duel to the death. Dávila' successor Pedro de los Ríos eventually retained Almagro during a resupply trip and ordered Pizarro to return, but at that point, Pizarro managed to get 13 crewmen to stay with him and continue, later called the Trece de la Fama ("The Famous Thirteen"). This proved to be the best decision for them, as Pizarro eventually made contact with Tumbes, a rich land that was a tributary of the infinitely richer Inca Empire. The expedition returned while leaving three famosos as intendants in Tumbes.
In order to get permission to expand towards the empire, Pizarro sailed back to Spain with his amazing findings and managed to convince Queen Isabella of Portugal, who was King Charles V's regent, to authorize his further exploits (folklore claims that his relative Hernán Cortés helped him, but there is controversy whether Pizarro and Cortés even knew each other personally). Francisco then returned with his half-brothers, the Power Trio of Gonzalo, Hernando and Juan, and after gathering a fleet with Almagro again in the supply lines, he commenced his third and definitive travel to the lands of the Incas. This time there was success in finding valuable gold and jewels, which prompted many people back home to follow them.
In the Inca Empire
In 1531, Pizarro arrived to Puná island, near Tumbes, and tried to strike an alliance with their chieftains, Tumbalá and Chilimasa. However, it turned out those two were now vassals to Inca emperor Atahualpa, who had devastated their cities into submission and ordered them to wipe out any possible invaders (the intendants left there were basically MIA), and it was only under the warning of a native translator, and the timely reinforcements of an expedition by the unruly Hernando de Soto, that the Spaniards survived the trap. Their following campaigns to subject native communities brought news to Atahualpa himself, who wondered if the strange foreigners were supernatural beings, but in turn, Pizarro and company also gathered info about the Inca Empire and the civil war that Atahualpa had just won against Huáscar.Pizarro and Atahualpa traded messages of peace, after which the Inca invited him to meet in the city of Cajamarca. However, one of the indigenous chieftains in the Spanish party, Guachapuro, unmasked an Inca spy and warned that Atahualpa was luring them into a trap. Apparently, the emperor planned to destroy them and retain some Spanish slaves as artisans to capitalize on their advanced crafts and weapons.note Certainly, Pizarro found Cajamarca empty and shadowed by an army of 30,000-50,000 headed by Atahualpa, and a tumultuous first interview between the emperor and Hernando Pizarro seemed to confirm their fears. The oncoming battle seemed utterly hopeless for the meager 150 Spaniards, but Francisco decided to turn the trap on its head and pretend to invite Atahualpa to their camp. The emperor, overconfident by his superiority, arrived with just his civilian entourage, shadowed from afar by 8,000 warriors under his general Rumiñahui, and this gave Pizarro the chance he needed: he captured Atahualpa and charged against Rumiñahui while unveiling the Spanish cavalry and firearms, easily routing the indigenous natives by sheer confusion and terror.note
The Spaniards seized an insane amount of booty, but just as importantly, the news of Atahualpa's predicament overjoyed the partisans of Huáscar and other tribes that couldn't wait to be freed from the Atahualpist rule, like the Chancas, Huancas, Cañaris and Chachapoyas, all of which would progressively come to ally with the Iberians. The Cañaris, ruled by the chieftain Vilchumlay, were obviously the most interested; some even claim they had been secretly in league with Pizarro all along since his very arrival in Tumbes. Anyway, Atahualpa tried to bribe his way out by handing Pizarro a mountain of treasure, which Hernando was sent to bring, and meanwhile the emperor and Pizarro got to know each other to find out the best course of action. This accidentally prompted the Inca civil war to be briefly reignited: when Pizarro requested to meet the imprisoned Huáscar, Atahualpa had his brother secretly executed to prevent him from becoming a replacement to his throne. Anyway, Pizarro also received Atahualpa's sister Quispe Sisa (baptized as Inés) in marriage.
The Inca treasure was bigger than anything the conquistadores had ever dreamed of, but as it often happens, it would end up bringing only trouble. After their arrival, Almagro and his people were annoyed that their part was way smaller due to having missed the fight, while other crewmen who chose to return to Spain found their own parts confiscated by King Charles V, who wanted it (and all money in America, really) to fund his wars in Europe. And while all of this happened, the Spanish captains and allies argued unceasingly about what to do with Atahualpa, fueled by believable reports that the Inca was gathering his armies to attack them all as soon as he was free. In the end, on July 1533, and very much against Pizarro's wishes to send Atahualpa to Spain, the emperor was put on trial and executed on rather absurd charges, being replaced by a Puppet King in the form of another brother, Túpac Hualpa.
Conquest of the empire
As the Inca empire itself still remained technically unconquered, Pizarro marched towards its capital, Cusco, now enjoying the safety (and armies) provided by the Huascarists and the rest of the tribes opposed to the Atahualpa regime. Among them, he found an unvaluable ally in Chilche, an experienced Cañari who had been Huayna Cápac's pageboy and now pledged himself for life to the Spaniards in gratitude. However, several Atahualpist generals, of which Quizquiz and Rumiñahui were the greatest, were preparing to fight him to take over the weakened empire, setting defensive measures that forced Pizarro to strengthen his position before continuing. Pizarro's multi-national army fought several battles, with Almagro and Soto often complicating things due to their eagerness to grab gold, but altogether they managed to carve their way towards Cusco, which was taken and divested of its gold reserves.Hualpa died poisoned, likely by Atahualpists, requiring yet another replacement, so Pizarro supported the election of Huascarist general Manco Inca. More battles followed, with the Spanish-Huascarist alliance beating their enemies in Maraycalla, Teocaxas and Pancallo. A bizarre event came in 1534 when Pedro de Alvarado, Hernán Cortés' former lieutenant, came from the Conquest of the Maya with 500 Spaniards and 2,000 Mayan warriors, trying to steal his piece of the Inca. However, Pizarro sent Almagro to negotiate with him, and after many deliberations, Alvarado joined them in exchange for (you guessed it) a lot of gold. In the end, the allies defeated Quizquiz, who died betrayed by another chieftain, and Rumiñahui, who was captured and executed.
The conquest seemed to end there, in November 1533, so Pizarro and company passed the time developing their new lands and founding or enlarging cities, most importantly Lima. By Manco Inca's suggestion, Almagro also started his own expedition to the southern lands of Collasuyo (now Chile). However, much to their shock, it turned out that it had all been a Batman Gambit to divide their forces by Manco, who had secretly decided to betray the Spaniards, apparently out of revenge for bad treatment. The emperor's plans were discovered by Hernando Pizarro, but Manco deceived him to escape, and then used his royal status to gather an utterly gigantic army of around 100,000 Incas. Surprised by such a horrifying twist, Hernando was defeated and had to return to Cusco, which was promptly besieged.
The last emperor
Being busy with Cusco, Manco deployed his general Quizu Yupanqui to besiege the city of Lima too. Four Spanish parties were ambushed and wiped out before Lima's major Francisco de Godoy realized what was happening, and after finding out about it, Pizarro assumed command and quickly closed the city off. The Spaniards had been caught divided and were confused about each other's whereabouts and status, but they gathered the city's native allies, around 30,000 auxiliars, and set in motion a counterattack, while their civilians took refuge in the city's harbor in case they had to get the heck out. In one of their skirmishes, they managed to kill Yupanqui in a cavalry attack, which disorganized his army, and afterwards, with the arrival of reinforcements led by Diego de Sandoval and Vilchumlay, the Inca were finally forced to withdraw.Meanwhile, Manco managed to overpower Cusco's defenses and started conquering it with his much greater numbers, but Hernando, his younger brothers and Chilche offered a strong resistance with the local Cañaris, Chachapoyas, black slaves and all defenders they could find, numbering another 30,000, and slowly pushed the Incas out by sheer will. Juan Pizarro died in the fighting, though, and Hernando then failed spectacularly at counterattacking against Manco's camp in Ollantaytambo, where the Incas unveiled battle tactics they had learned from the Spaniards. Hernando seemed to be in trouble, but the arrival of Almagro with another army of 50,000 indigenous allies turned the tide again. Outnumbered and realizing he had lost his big chance, Manco ultimately abandoned his position for the forests of Vilcabamba.
Since 1537, the conflict became stagnant. Manco opted to install a vestigial territory, the Neo-Inca state of Vilcabamba, from which he directed guerrilla action against their enemies; among the latter, a clash for power broke out unexpectedly, as Almagro, discouraged by his lack of success in Collasuyo, allied with Manco's replacement Paullu Inca and capitalized on the ravaged state of affairs to revolt against Pizarro. This was the end of a Vitriolic Best Buds friendship that had started fifteen years earlier. As a bonus, Pizarro also got divorced from his Inca wife Inés, their marriage embittered by the events, and instead hooked up with her relative Cuxirimay Ocllo (baptized Angelina).
The end of the conquest
Almagro easily overtook Cusco, from which he also defeated a Pizarrist army headed by Pedro de Alvarado's nephew Alonso. Almagro seemed to have the advantage, having captured Hernando Pizarro, but the shrewd Francisco feigned a truce to ask the king for arbitration, and when his brother was liberated, the Pizarros went "haha I lied" and marched against Almagro. In the final battle at Las Salinas, the Almagrists were defeated and Almagro himself executed, reportedly against the wishes of Francisco, who still wanted to keep his old ex-friend alive. The following year, the empire scored a goal on Manco Inca by capturing his favorite wife Cura,note but no diplomatic solution was given; as the elder Pizarro learned his negotiators had been executed by Manco, he threw Cura to the vengeful Cañaris for them to kill her.After this, the original players finished exiting the game. In 1541, Pizarro sent his brother Hernando to Spain to defend his actions against Almagro, only for Hernando to be jailed there for the next 20 years due to his own charges. In his absence, Francisco, the great conquistador, would be murdered by Almagro's followers, who were finally forced to submit by a royal arbiter originally proposed by Hernando, Cristóbal Vaca de Castro (with the help of Francisco de Carvajal and a younger, presumably sane Lope de Aguirre). Manco Inca would be murdered three years later by runaway Almagrists he had welcomed in his Neo-Inca state as military consultants. Then Gonzalo Pizarro, the last brother, would shockingly revolt in 1548 against the Spanish Crown due to their New Laws, being ultimately defeated and executed.
Over the next decades, Manco's successors made moves towards surrendering the Neo-Inca state to the Spanish viceroyalty, although this only happened after the last one, Túpac Amaru I, was captured and executed - by a Cañari executioner, for extra irony and poetic justice. This would be the end of the conquest of Perú, leaving behind the ruins of an empire and the continued rise of another. Ironically, when the dust of the multi-racial fratricides finally settled, the Inca was the last man standing: Paullu Inca, who had managed to survive all the political changes by constantly changing sides, earn King Charles V's gratitude and being named Alférez Real de los Incas, the head of a council of 24 members of the main Inca noble houses, who would continue being part of the administration under the Spanish viceroy.
In fiction:
Film- The documentary Spain, the first globalization mentions the conquest among its many points about Spanish history.
- Clive Cussler's Inca Gold features the conquest as part of the novel's background.
- Rafael Dumett's El espía del Inca is an exceedingly well researched novel that covers the conquest of the Inca Empire.
- Age of Empires II features the conquest of the Inca Empire in its aptly named The Conquerors expansion pack.
- Inca and its sequel are an interesting depiction of the conquest literally Recycled In Space, only with Aguirre in Pizarro's place for extra craziness.
