The world’s history contains no chapter more striking and attractive than that comprising the narrative of Spanish conquest in the Americas. Teeming with interest to the historian and philosopher, to the lover of daring enterprise and marvellous adventure it is full of fascination. On the vast importance of the discovery of a western hemisphere, vying in size, as it one day, perhaps, may compete in civilisation and power, with its eastern rival, it were idle to expatiate. But the manner of its conquest commands unceasing admiration. It needs the concurring testimony of a host of chroniclers and eye-witnesses to convince succeeding generations that the hardships endured, the perils surmounted, the victories obtained, by the old Conquistadores of Mexico and Peru, were as real as their record is astounding. The subjugation of vast and populous empires by petty detachments of adventurers, often scantily provided and ignorantly led—the extraordinary daring with which they risked themselves, a few score strong, into the heart of unknown countries, and in the midst of hostile millions, require strong confirmation to obtain credence. Exploits so romantic go near to realise the feats of those fabulous paladins who, cased in impervious steel and wielding enchanted lance, overthrew armies as easily as a Quixote scattered merinos. Hardly, when the tale is put before us in the quaint and garrulous chronicle of an Oviedo or a Zarate, can we bring ourselves to accept it as history, not as the wild invention of imaginative monks, beguiling conventual leisure by the composition of fantastical romance. And the man who undertakes, at the present day, to narrate in all their details the exploits and triumphs of a CortÉs or a Pizarro, allots himself no slight task. A clear head and a sound judgment, great industry and a skilful pen, are needed to do justice to the subject; to extract and combine the scraps of truth buried under mountains of fiction and misrepresentation, to sift facts from the partial accounts of Spanish jurists and officials, and to correct the boastful misrepresentations of insolent conquerors. The necessary qualities have been found united in the person of an accomplished American author. Already favourably known by his histories of the eventful and chivalrous reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of the exploits of the Great Marquis and his iron followers, Mr Prescott has added to his well-merited reputation by his narrative of the Conquest of Peru. In its compilation he has spared no pains. Private collections and public libraries, the archives of Madrid and the manuscripts of the Escurial, he has ransacked and collated. And he has been so scrupulously conscientious as to send to Lima for a copy of the portrait whose engraving faces his title-page. But although his materials had to be procured from many and distant countries, their collection appears to have occasioned him less trouble than their abundance. The comrades and contemporaries of Pizarro were afflicted with a scribbling mania. They have left masses of correspondence, of memoranda and personal diaries, contradictory of each other, often absurd in their exaggerations and childish in their triviality. From this farrago has Mr Prescott had to cull,—a labour of no trifling magnitude, whose result is most creditable to him. And to our admiration of his talents are added feelings of strong sympathy, when we read his manly and affecting account of the painful circumstances under which the work was done. Deprived by an accident of the sight of one eye, the other has for years been so weak as at times to be useless to him for all purposes of reading and writing. At intervals he was able to read print several hours a-day, but manuscript was far more trying to his impaired vision, and writing was only possible through those aids by which even the stone-blind may accomplish it. But when he could read, although only by daylight, he felt, he says, satisfied with being raised so nearly to a level with the rest of his species. Unfortunately the evil increases. “The sight of my eye has become gradually dimmed, whilst the sensibility of the nerve has been so far increased, that for several weeks of the last year I have not opened a volume, and through the whole time I have not had the use of it, on an average, for more than an hour a-day.” Sustained by love of letters, and assisted by readers and amanuenses, the student and scholar has triumphed over these cruel disadvantages, surmounted all obstacles, and produced three long and important historical works, conspicuous by their impartiality, research, and elegance; entitling him to an exceedingly honourable position amongst writers in the English tongue, and to one of the very loftiest places in the as yet scantily filled gallery of American men of letters. The last of these works, of which Pizarro is the hero and Peru the scene, yields nothing in merit or interest to its predecessors.

The discovery of America infected Europe with a fever of exploration. Scarce a country was there, possessing a sea-frontier, whence expeditions did not proceed with a view to appropriate a share of the spoils and territory of the new-found El-Dorado. In these ventures Spain, fresh from her long and bloody struggle with the Moor, and abounding in fierce unsettled spirits, eager for action and adventure, took a prominent part. The conquests of Cortes followed hard upon the discoveries of Columbus: Dutch, English, and Portuguese pushed their investigations in all directions; and, in less than thirty years from its first discovery, the whole eastern coast of both Americas was explored from north to south. The vast empire of Mexico was added to the Spanish crown, and the mother country was glutted and intoxicated by the Pactolus that flowed from this new possession. But enterprise was not yet exhausted, or thirst of gold satiated, and Balboa’s discovery of the Pacific gave fresh stimulus to both. Rumour had long spoken of lands, as yet untrodden by European foot, where the precious metals were abundant and worthless as the sand upon the sea-beach. Years elapsed before any well-directed attempt was made to reach these golden shores. With a view to discovery and traffic in the Pacific, a settlement was made on the southern side of the Isthmus of Darien, and the town of Panama was built. But the armaments that were fitted out took a westerly direction, in hopes to realise a fixed idea of the Spanish government relative to an imaginary strait intersecting the Isthmus. At last an expedition sailed southwards, but soon returned, owing to the bad health of its commander. This was in 1522. The moment and the man had not yet arrived. They came, two years later; Pizarro appeared, and Peru was discovered.

But the discovery was comparatively a trifling matter. There lay the long line of coast, stretching south-eastwards from Panama; the navigator disposed to explore it, had but to spread his sails, keep the land in sight, and take the risk of the hidden shoals and reefs that might lie in his course. The seas to be crossed were often tempestuous; the country intervening between St Michael’s Gulf and the southern empire, whose rumoured wealth and civilisation wrought so potently upon Spanish imagination, was peopled by fierce and warlike tribes. Shipwreck was to be dreaded, and a landing might for weeks or months be unsafe, if not impracticable. But what were such secondary dangers contrasted with the perils, doubly terrible from their unknown and mysterious nature, incurred by the sanguine Genoese and his bold companions, when they turned their brigantine’s prow westward from Europe, and sailed—they knew not whither? Here the path was comparatively plain, and the goal ascertained; and although risks must be dared, reward was tolerably certain: for further tidings of the Peruvian empire had reached the ears of the Spaniards, less shadowy and incomplete than the vague hints received by Balboa from an Indian chief. Andagoya, the officer whom illness had compelled to abandon an expedition when it was scarcely commenced, had brought back intelligence far more explicit, obtained from Indian traders who had penetrated by land into the empire of the Incas, as far (so he says in his own manuscript, comprised in Navarrete’s collection) as its capital city of Cuzco. They spoke of a pagan but civilised land, opulent and flourishing; they described the divisions of its provinces, the wealth of its cities, the manners and usages of its inhabitants. But had their description been far more minute and glowing, the imagination of those who received the accounts would still have outstripped reality and possibility. Those were the days of golden visions and chimerical day-dreams. In the fancy of the greedy and credulous Spaniards, each corner of the New World contained treasures, compared to which the golden trees and jewelled fruits of Aladdin’s garden were paste and tinsel. The exaggerated reports of those adventurers who returned wealth-laden to Spain, were swoln by repetition to dimensions which enchantment only could have realised. No marvels were too monstrous and unwieldy for the craving gullet of popular credulity. “They listened with attentive ears to tales of Amazons, which seemed to revive the classic legends of antiquity, to stories of Patagonian giants, to flaming pictures of an El-Dorado, where the sands sparkled with gems, and golden pebbles as large as birds’ eggs were dragged in nets out of the rivers.” And expeditions were actually undertaken in search of a magical Fountain of Health, of golden sepulchres and temples. The Amazons and the water of life are still to be discovered; but as to golden temples and jewelled sands, their equivalents, at least, were forthcoming,—not for the many, but for a chosen and lucky few. Of the fortunes of these the record is preserved; of the misfortunes of those comparatively little is told us. We hear of the thousands of golden castellanos that fell to the lot of men, who a moment previously, were without a maravedi in their tattered pouches; we find no catalogue of the fever-stricken victims who left their bones in the noxious districts of Panama and Castillo de Oro. And those who achieved riches, earned them hardly by peril and privation, although, in the magnificence of the plunder, past sufferings were quickly forgotten. Thrice did Pizarro and his daring companions sail southward; countless were their hardships, bitter their disappointments, before the sunshine of success rewarded their toils, revealing to them treasures that must in some degree have appeased even their appetite for lucre. They came suddenly upon a town whose inhabitants, taken by surprise, fled in consternation, abandoning their property to the invaders. It was the emerald region, and great store of the gems fell into the hands of the Spaniards. Pizarro had one as large as a pigeon’s egg. A quantity of crowns and other ornaments, clumsily fashioned, but of pure gold and silver, were more to the taste of the ignorant conquerors, who were sceptical as to the value of the jewels. “Many of them,” says Pedro Pizarro, whose rough, straightforward account of the discovery and conquest of Peru is frequently quoted by Mr Prescott, “had emeralds of great value; some tried them upon anvils, striking them with hammers, saying that if they were genuine, they would not break; others despised them, and affirmed that they were glass.” A cunning monk, one of the missionaries whom Pizarro had been ordered by the Spanish government to take out in his ships, encouraged this opinion, in order to buy up the emeralds as their market value declined. The specie, however, was of immense amount, if the authority just quoted may be depended upon. He talks of two hundred thousand castellanos, the commercial value of which was equivalent to more than half a million sterling. This from one village, of no great size or importance. It was a handsome earnest of future spoils, and of the mountain of gold which, as an Inca’s ransom, awaited the Spaniards at Cuzco.

In these days, when the rumoured existence of a land previously unknown provokes expeditions authorised and fitted out by half the maritime powers of Europe, and when great nations risk the peace of the world for the possession of a paltry Pacific islet, the small degree of vigour shown by the Spanish crown in pushing its American discoveries fills us with surprise. Take Peru as an instance. The isthmus of Darien was colonised by Spaniards; Mexico was theirs, and the armaments sent by Pedrarias from Panama to explore in a north-westerly direction, had met at Honduras the conquerors of the Aztecs, the brave and fortunate companions of Hernan CortÉs. One empire had received the Spanish yoke; at Panama the foot of the European was on the threshold of another; but there it paused, desirous, yet fearing, to proceed. No aid or encouragement to enterprise was afforded from Spain; it was left to private capital and individual daring further to extend colonies already so vast. A priest found the money; two veteran soldiers, of low extraction, desperate fortunes, and brave spirit, undertook the risk. The most remarkable of the three men who thus formed a partnership for the conquest of kingdoms, could neither read nor write, was illegitimate, and a foundling. “He was born in Truxillo,” says Gomara, in his Historia de las Indias; “was left at the door of a church, and for a certain number of days he sucked a sow, none being willing to give him milk.” Young Pizarro subsequently requited this porcine nourishment by taking care of his foster-mother’s relatives. The chief occupation of his youth was that of a swineherd. Gomara’s account of his birth, however, is only one of many, various and contradictory in their details. The fact is that very little is known of the early years of Francisco Pizarro. His valour and soldierly qualities he doubtless inherited from his father, a Spanish colonel of infantry, who served with distinction in Italy and Navarre. Neither from him nor from his mother, a person of low condition, did he receive much parental attention. Even the date of his birth is a matter of doubt, and has been differently stated by different chroniclers. He cannot, however, have been far from fifty when he started on his Peruvian expedition. During the fourteen previous years he had followed the fortunes of Ojeda, Balboa, and other Spanish-American adventurers, until at last the opportunity offered for himself to assume a command to which he proved in every way competent. His rank was that of captain, and the number of men under his orders made but a slender company, when, in the month of November 1524, he left the port of Panama, on board a small vessel, indifferently provided, and of no great seaworthiness. About a hundred adventurers, (some accounts say eighty, others a hundred and twenty,) stalwart, stout-hearted fellows, for the most part of no very reputable description, composed the powerful army destined to invade a populous empire. They started under many disadvantages. Almagro, Pizarro’s partner in the undertaking, who was to follow in another ship, as soon as it could be got ready, had had the victualling of that on which his colleague embarked, and he had performed the duty in a slovenly manner, reckoning that, upon a coasting voyage, supplies might be obtained from shore. Landing for this purpose, a few leagues south of the river Biru, Pizarro could procure nothing besides wood and water. A tremendous storm came on; for ten days the ship was in imminent danger, tossed by the furious waves; rations ran short, and two ears of Indian corn were each man’s daily allowance. Thus poorly nourished, and in a crazy ship, they struggled with desperate energy against the fury of the tropical tempest. Only a miracle, as it seemed, could save them, and yet they escaped. The vessel bore Pizarro and his fortunes.

This first expedition, however, resulted in nothing, except much suffering and discontent. On landing, after the storm, the voyagers found themselves in a desolate and unproductive country, covered with tangled forests, untenanted even by beasts or birds. No living creatures were visible, except noxious insects—no food was obtainable, save herbs and berries, unpalatable, and often poisonous. The men desponded, and would fain have returned to Panama; but Pizarro, with much difficulty, appeased their murmurs, and sending back the ship to the Isle of Pearls for provisions, attempted to explore the country. On all sides stretched a gloomy forest, matted with creepers, and penetrable only with axe in hand; habitations there were none; the bitter buds of the palm, and an occasional stranded shell-fish, were the best entertainment offered by that inhospitable region to the weary and disheartened wanderers, some of whom actually perished by famine. At last, after many weeks’ misery, an Indian village was discovered. The Spaniards rushed upon it like starving wolves upon a sheep-fold, and got a small supply of food, chiefly maize and cocoa-nuts. Here, also, they received further tidings of the golden southern realm that had lured them on this luckless voyage. “Ten days’ journey across the mountains,” the Indians told Pizarro, “there dwelt a mighty monarch, whose dominions had been invaded by one still more powerful—the Child of the Sun.” They referred to the kingdom of Quito, which the warlike Inca, Huayna Capac, had added, some thirty years previously, to the empire of Peru.

Six long weeks of hunger and misery had elapsed, when the ship returned with good store of provisions. Revived by the seasonable supply, the adventurers were now as eager to prosecute their voyage as they shortly before had been to abandon it; and leaving Famine Port, the name given by Pizarro to the scene of their sufferings, they again sailed southwards. When next they landed, it was to plunder an Indian village of its provisions and gold. Here they found traces of cannibalism. “In the pots for the dinner, which stood upon the fire,” says Herrera, in his Historia General de las Indias, “amongst the flesh which they took out, were feet and hands of men, whence they knew that those Indians were Caribs,”—the Caribs being the only cannibals as yet known in that part of the New World. This discovery drove the horrified Spaniards to their ships, from which they again landed at Punto Quemado, the limit of this first expedition. The sturdy resistance they there met from some warlike savages, in a skirmish with whom they had two men killed and many wounded, (Pizarro himself receiving seven wounds,) made them reflect on the temerity of proceeding further with such a scanty force. Their ship, too, was in a crippled state, and in a council of war it was decided to return to Panama, and seek the countenance and assistance of the governor for the further prosecution of the enterprise.

Without attempting to follow Mr Prescott through his detailed and interesting account of Pizarro’s difficulties, struggles, and adventures, during the six years that intervened between his first departure from Panama, and his commencement of the conquest of Peru, we will glance at the character and deeds of a few of his comrades. The principal of these was Diego de Almagro, a brave and honourable soldier, who placed a confidence in his leader which the sequel shows was scarcely merited. A foundling like Pizarro, like him he was uneducated, and unable to sign his name to the singular covenant by which the two, in concert with Father Luque, (the Spanish ecclesiastic, who found the funds for the expedition,) agreed, upon oath, and in the name of God and the Holy Evangelists, to divide amongst them in equal shares, all the lands, treasures, gold, silver, precious stones, and other property, that might accrue as the result of their enterprise. For in such terms “three obscure individuals coolly carved out, and partitioned amongst themselves, an empire of whose extent, power, and resources, of whose situation, of whose existence even, they had no sure and precise knowledge.” Contented at first with the post of second in command, it does not appear whether it was on his own solicitation that Almagro was named by the governor of Panama Pizarro’s equal in the second expedition. This domination greatly mortified Pizarro, who suspected Almagro of having sought it, and did not neglect, when the opportunity offered, on his visit to the court of Charles the Fifth, to repay him in kind. As far as can be gathered from the mass of conflicting evidence, Almagro was frank in disposition and straightforward in his dealings, but hasty in temper, and of ungovernable passions. When he had despatched Pizarro on the first voyage, he lost the least possible time in following him, tracing his progress by the concerted signal of notches on the trees. In this manner he descended the coast to Punto Quemado, and in his turn had a fight with the natives, whose village he burned, and drove them into the woods. In this affair he lost an eye by a javelin wound. Passing Pizarro’s vessel without observing it, he pushed on to the mouth of the river San Juan, whence he returned to Panama, having gone farther, suffered less, and collected more gold than his friend. At this time, however, great amity and mutual reliance existed between them; although not long afterwards we find them quarrelling fiercely, and only prevented by the interposition of their subordinates from settling their differences sabre in hand.

Bartholomew Ruiz, an Andalusian pilot, a native of that village of Moguer which supplied Columbus with many seamen for his first voyages, also played an important part in the earlier researches of the discoverers of Peru. Upon the second voyage, when the two ships had reached the river of San Juan, he was detached in one of them to explore the coast, and soon made the little island of Gallo, in two degrees of north latitude. The hostile demonstrations of the natives prevented his landing, and he continued his course southwards, along a coast crowded with spectators. “They stood gazing on the vessel of the white man, as it glided smoothly into the crystal waters of the bay, fancying it, says an old writer, some mysterious being descended from the skies.” The account of Ruiz’s voyage, although it occupied but a few weeks, and was comparatively devoid of adventure, has a romantic and peculiar charm. The first European who, sailing in that direction on the Pacific, crossed the equinoctial line, he was also the first who obtained ocular proof of Peruvian civilisation. He fell in with a balsa or native raft, consisting of beams lashed together, floored with reeds, guided by a rude rudder and rigged with a cotton square-sail. On board this primitive craft—still in use on the rivers and coasts of South America—were several Indians, whose dresses and ornaments, showing great ingenuity and progress in manufacturing art, excited his surprise and admiration. “Mirrors mounted in silver,” says a Spanish narrator of Ruiz’s cruise, “and cups, and other drinking vessels, blankets of cotton and wool, and shirts, and vests, and many other garments, embroidered for the most part with very rich embroideries of scarlet, and crimson, and blue, and yellow, and all other colours, in various designs and figures of birds and animals, and fishes and trees; and they had small scales, in the fashion of a steelyard, for weighing gold; and many other things.” Right musical to the ears of the Spaniards were the tales these Indians told of the abundance of the precious metals in the palaces of their king. Wood, according to their report, was scarcely more plentiful than silver and gold. And they enlarged upon the subject, until their auditors hardly dared credit the flattering accounts which, as they were soon to find, little exceeded the truth. Detaining a few of the Indians, that they might repeat their tale to Pizarro and serve as interpreters after they should have acquired the Spanish tongue, Ruiz prosecuted his voyage to about half a degree south of the line, and then returned to the place where his commander and comrades anxiously awaited him.

As pilot and navigator, old Ruiz rendered eminent services, and his courage and fidelity were equal to his nautical skill. In the former qualities another of Pizarro’s little band, Pedro de Candia, a Greek cavalier, was no way his inferior, although his talents were rather of a military than a maritime cast. Soon after the return of Ruiz to the river San Juan, Almagro, who had been to Panama for a reinforcement, made his appearance with recruits and stores. The pilot’s report inspired all with enthusiasm, and “Southward, ho!” was again the cry. They reached the shores of Quito, and anchored off the port of Tacamez. Before them lay a large and rich town, whose population glittered with gold and jewels. Instead of the dark swamps and impervious forests where they had left the bones of so many of their companions, the adventurers beheld groves of sandal and ebony extending to the very margin of the ocean; maize and potato fields, and cocoa plantations, gave promise of plenty; the streams washed down gold-dust, and on the banks of one were quarries of emeralds. This charming scene brought water into the mouths of the Spaniards; but their wishes were not yet to be fulfilled; with the cup at their lips, they were forbidden to taste. A numerous array of armed and resolute natives set them at defiance. And that they did so, speaks highly for their courage, when we consider the notion they entertained of the party of horsemen who, with Pizarro at their head, effected a landing. Like the Mexicans and other races to whom the horse was unknown until introduced from Europe, they imagined man and beast to form one strange and unaccountable monster, and had, therefore, the same excuse for a panic that a European army would have if suddenly assailed by a regiment of flying dragons. Nevertheless they boldly charged the intruders. These, feeling their own inability to cope with the army of warriors that lined the shore, and which numbered, according to some accounts, fully ten thousand men, had landed with the sole purpose of seeking an amicable conference. Instead of a peaceful parley, they found themselves forced into a very unequal fight. “It might have gone hard with the Spaniards, hotly pressed by their resolute enemy, but for a ludicrous incident reported by the historians as happening to one of the cavaliers. This was a fall from his horse, which so astonished the barbarians, who were not prepared for the division of what seemed one and the same being into two, that, filled with consternation, they fell back, and left a way open for the Christians to regain their vessels.”

Doubting not that the account they could now give of the riches of Peru, would bring crowds of volunteers to their standard, Almagro and some of his companions again sailed for Panama, to seek the succours so greatly needed; Pizarro consenting, after some angry discussion, to await their return upon the island of Gallo. The men who were to remain with him were highly discontented at their commander’s decision, and one of them secreted a letter in a ball of cotton, sent, as a sample of Peruvian produce, to the wife of the governor of Panama. In this letter were complaints of privations and misery, and bitter attacks upon Pizarro and Almagro, whom the disaffected soldiers represented as sacrificing their comrades’ lives to their own ambition. The paper reached its destination; the governor was indignant and sent ships to fetch away the whole party. But Pizarro, encouraged by letters from his two partners, who promised him the means of continuing his voyage, steadily refused to budge. With his sword he drew a line upon the sand from east to west, exposed, with a soldier’s frugality of words, the glory and prosperity that awaited them in Peru, and the disgrace of abandoning the enterprise, and then, stepping across the line, bade brave men stay by him and recreants retreat. Thirteen were stanch to their courageous leader. The first to range himself by his side was the pilot Ruiz; the second was Pedro de Candia. The names of the eleven others have also been preserved by the chroniclers.

“A handful of men, without food, without clothing, almost without arms, without knowledge of the land to which they were bound, without vessels to transport them, were here left upon a lonely rock in the ocean, with the avowed purpose of carrying on a crusade against a powerful empire, staking their lives on its success. What is there in the legends of chivalry that surpasses it? This was the crisis of Pizarro’s fate.... Had Pizarro faltered from his strong purpose, and yielded to the occasion now so temptingly presented for extricating himself and his broken band from their desperate position, his name would have been buried with his fortunes, and the conquest of Peru would have been left for other and more successful adventurers.”

Courage and constancy had their reward. True to their word, Luque and Almagro sent a small vessel to take off Pizarro and his little band. They embarked, set sail, and after twenty days were in the gulf of Guayaquil, abreast of Chimborazo, and in full view of the fertile vale of Tumbez. There an Inca noble came on board, and was received by Pizarro with all honour and distinction. In reply to his inquiries concerning the whence and wherefore of the white men’s coming, the Spanish leader replied, “that he was the vassal of a great prince, the greatest and most powerful in the world, and that he had come to this country to assert his master’s lawful supremacy over it.” He further announced his intention of rescuing them from the darkness of unbelief, and converting them to Christianity. In reply to these communications the Inca chief said nothing—all, perhaps, that he understood. He was much more favourably impressed by a good dinner, Spanish wine, and the present of an iron hatchet. The next day one of Pizarro’s followers, Alonzo de Molina by name, was sent on shore with a propitiatory offering of pigs and poultry for the curaca or governor of the district. He brought back such marvellous accounts that he was set down as a liar; and Pedro de Candia was selected to bring a true report of things on shore, whither he was sent, “dressed in complete mail as became a good knight, with his sword by his side, and his arquebuse on his shoulder.” His brilliant equipment greatly dazzled the Indians, and at the report of his arquebuse they fell to the ground in dismay. A wondrous story is gravely told by several chroniclers, how the Indians, taking him for a supernatural being, and desirous to ascertain the fact beyond a doubt, let loose a tiger upon him. Candia took a cross from his neck and laid it upon the back of the animal, which instantly fawned upon and gambolled round him. On returning to his ship the report of the Greek cavalier confirmed that of Molina. Both, as it subsequently appeared, were guilty of some exaggeration. But their flaming accounts of temples tapestried with plates of gold, and of convent gardens where fruits and vegetables were all in pure gold and silver, gave heart to the adventurers, and sent them on their way rejoicing. To the port of Santa, nine degrees farther south than any previous expedition had reached, they continued their voyage; and then, having fully convinced themselves of the richness of the country, and the importance of their discoveries, but, being too few and feeble to profit by them, they retraced their course to, Panama, and arrived there, after an, absence of eighteen months, early in the year 1528.

It was now that Pizarro, finding the governor of Panama unwilling to assist him either with men or money, set out for Europe, to lay the report of his discoveries before the Emperor, and implore his support and patronage. He had little taste for the mission. The unlettered soldier, the war-worn and weather-beaten adventurer, was at home on the deck of a tempest-tost caravel, or, in the depths of a howling wilderness, where courage, coolness, and fortitude were the qualities needed; and there he would rather risk himself than in the perfumed atmosphere of a court. His associates, however, urged him to depart. Father Luque’s clerical duties prevented him from undertaking the journey; neither by manners nor appearance was Almagro eligible as an envoy; Pizarro, although wholly uneducated, was of commanding presence, and ready, even eloquent, in speech. With honourable frankness and confidence in his friend’s integrity, Almagro urged him to set out. It was agreed that Pizarro should solicit for himself the offices of governor and captain-general of the newly discovered country, for Almagro that of adelantado; that the pilot Ruiz, should be AlguaÇil Mayor, and Father Luque Bishop of Tumbez. Promising to act in conformity with this agreement, and in all respects to consult his friends’ interests equally with his own, Pizarro, accompanied by Pedro de Candia, and taking with him some Peruvians and llamas, specimens of cloth and ornaments of gold and silver, traversed the Isthmus, and embarked for Spain.

The discoverer and future conqueror of Peru had scarcely set foot upon his native soil, when he was thrown into prison for a debt of twenty years’ standing, incurred by him as one of the early colonists of Darien. Released from durance, so soon as intelligence of his detention reached the court, he hurried to Toledo, where Charles the Fifth then was. The records of courts afford no scene more pregnant with interest than the arrival of Pizarro in the presence of his sovereign. It is the very romance of history,—a noble subject for either poet or painter. The great monarch was then in the zenith of his glory and full flush of his fame. Pavia had been won; the chivalrous king of France made prisoner. Charles, the hero of his day, was about to enter Italy and receive an imperial crown from a pontiff’s hand. Engrossed by his own triumphs and by the spread of his European power and dominions, the fortunate monarch had scarcely given a thought to the rich conquests made in his name by obscure adventurers in the golden regions of the West. The arrival of Hernan CortÉs, come to lay an empire at his feet, had scarcely roused him from his indifference, when, in that brilliant and martial court, crowded with nobles and grandees, there appeared an unknown soldier, penniless, almost friendless, the child of shame, but whose daring deeds and great achievements were soon to give his name a lustre far above any that gentle birth and lengthy pedigree can bestow. Wholly unknown, however, Pizarro was not. The tale of researches, prosecuted, during a period of four years and in the teeth of innumerable difficulties and dangers, with a perseverance which rumour said had been rewarded by great discoveries, had reached the ears of Charles. Pizarro met a gracious reception and patient hearing. Unabashed before royalty, he spoke with the gravity of a Castilian, and the dignity of a man conscious of his own worth. And he spoke well—“so well,” says Montesinos in his annals, “that he secured attention and applause at Toledo, where the Emperor was, who gave him audience with much pleasure, treated him lovingly, and heard him tenderly, especially when he related his constancy and that of his thirteen companions upon the island, in the midst of so many troubles and hardships.” It is said that Charles shed tears at the recital of such great sufferings so nobly supported. Compelled to leave Spain, he recommended Pizarro to the Council of the Indies; and after some delay, the famous Capitulacion or agreement was drawn up and signed by the queen. By this document Pizarro received right of conquest and discovery in Peru as far as two hundred leagues south of Santiago, was made governor, captain-general, Adelantado and AlguaÇil Mayor for life, with a salary of seven hundred and twenty-five thousand maravedis, and various immunities and privileges. Almagro was appointed commander of the fortress of Tumbez; Father Luque got his bishopric; Ruiz was named grand pilot of the Southern Ocean; Candia received command of the artillery; and on the eleven others who had remained on the island with Pizarro, the rank of hidalgo was bestowed, besides the promise of municipal dignities in Peru, when it should be under the Spanish rule. From this statement, it is apparent that Pizarro either did not attempt, or failed in his endeavours, to procure for Almagro and Ruiz the offices he had promised to solicit for them, and which, on the contrary, were all heaped upon himself. This treachery, or want of success, was the cause of bad blood between him and Almagro. Pizarro’s conduct in the affair has been variously represented by different writers. His kinsman, Pedro Pizarro, vindicates him from the charge of unfair dealing. “And Don Francisco Pizarro petitioned in accordance with what had been agreed with his companions; and in the council he was answered that the government could not possibly be divided between two persons, for that had been done in Santa Marta, and one of the two had killed the other.” And Pedro, who is a bit of partisan, and has a natural leaning to his cousin and commander, further states, that Pizarro, in honourable fulfilment of his promise, pleaded urgently for Almagro, till he received a rebuff, and was told, that if he did not ask the adelantamiento for himself, it should be given to a stranger. Whereupon he applied for it, and it was granted him in addition to his other dignities. He was also made a knight of St Jago; and in the armorial bearings which he inherited by the father’s side, were introduced the black eagle and the two pillars emblazoned on the royal arms. A ship, a llama, and an Indian city were further added; “while the legend announced that under the auspices of Charles, and by the industry, the genius, and the resources of Pizarro, Peru had been discovered and reduced to tranquillity.” A premature announcement, which many subsequent scenes of bloodshed and violence sadly belied. As regards the good faith kept by Pizarro with Almagro and his other companions, and the degree of sincerity and perseverance with which he pressed their claims at the court of Spain, Mr Prescott is justly sceptical; and much of the conqueror’s after-conduct compels us to believe that in such solicitations it was one word for his friend and two for himself. It is less interesting, however, to trace his dissimulation and double-dealing, and the dissensions resulting from them, than to accompany him upon his final expedition to the empire of the Incas.

Although, by the articles of the capitulacion, Pizarro was bound to raise, within six months of its date, a well-equipped force of two hundred and fifty men, it was with less than three-fourths of that number that he sailed from Panama in January 1531. Careful to secure an ample share of the profits of the enterprise, the Spanish government did nothing to assist it, beyond providing some artillery and a few military stores. Pizarro must find the funds and the men, and this was no easy matter. To obtain the latter, he repaired to his native town of Truxillo in Estremadura, where he recruited a few followers. Amongst them were four of his brothers—three illegitimate like himself, and one legitimate, Hernando Pizarro, a man of talent and energy, but of turbulent and overbearing disposition, who cut an important figure in the Peruvian campaigns. “They were all poor, and proud as they were poor,” says Oviedo, who had seen them, “and their eagerness for gain was in proportion to their poverty.” Consequently the New World was the very place for them. Many, however, who listened eagerly to Pizarro’s account of the wealth to be obtained there, hesitated to seek it through the avenue of perils by which it was to be reached. As to money, those who had it were loath to invest on such frail security as Peruvian mines; thus proving themselves wiser in their generation than many in more recent times. CortÉs, it is said, assisted Pizarro to the necessary funds, which he would hardly have raised without the aid of the Mexican conqueror; and the stipulated six months having expired, the newly-made governor of Peru cut his cables, and in all haste left the shores of Spain, fearing that if the incompleteness of his preparations got wind, the Spanish crown might recede from its share of the contract. At Panama, recruits were as reluctant and scarce as in Spain; and at last, impatient of delay, he started on his expedition with only one hundred and eighty men and twenty-seven horses. Their equipment, however, was good; they were well supplied with arms and ammunition, and, above all, sanguine of success. Before their departure, their banners and the royal standard were blessed by a Dominican monk, and the soldiers took the sacrament.

Anchoring after thirteen days’ sail in the Bay of St Matthew, Pizarro landed his men and marched along the coast. He at first intended not to disembark till he reached Tumbez, of whose riches and fertility he entertained a pleasant recollection; but, baffled by winds, he altered his determination. He had, perhaps, better have adhered to it. True, that the emeralds and gold found at Coaque encouraged his followers, and enabled the politic adventurer to make a large remittance to Panama, to dazzle the colonists and induce volunteers. But the sufferings of the Spaniards on their march through those sultry and unhealthy regions, were very great. Encumbered with heavy armour and thick cotton doublets, they toiled wearily along beneath a burning sun and over sands scarce less scorching. Fortunately, they were unmolested by the natives, who fled on their approach. They had enough to do to combat disease and the climate. “A strange epidemic broke out in the little army; it took the form of ulcers, or rather of hideous warts of great size, which covered the body, and when lanced, as was the case with some, discharged such a quantity of blood as proved fatal to the sufferer.” Mr Prescott recognises in this horrible malady—which he says made its appearance during the invasion, and did not long survive it—“one of those plagues from the vial of wrath, which the destroying angel who follows in the path of the conqueror pours out on the devoted nations.” Conquerors and conquered, however, suffered from it alike; and as to its having speedily become extinct, we suspect that it is still well known in Peru. The verrugas, described by Dr Tschudi in his valuable and delightful narrative of Peruvian travel, and which the natives attribute to the noxious qualities of certain streams, is coincident in its symptoms with the disease that afflicted Pizarro’s followers, diminishing their numbers and impeding their progress. The arrival of one or two small reinforcements filled up the vacancies thus made in their ranks, and the march was continued until the adventurers found themselves opposite the island of PunÁ, upon which Pizarro resolved to pitch his camp, and there plan his attack upon the neighbouring city of Tumbez. Between the Tumbese and the men of PunÁ there was a long-standing feud, and the former lost no opportunity of exciting Pizarro’s suspicions of the islanders. Having been informed that ten or twelve chiefs were plotting against him, he seized and delivered them to their rivals, who forthwith cut off their heads. A battle was the immediate consequence; and the handful of Spaniards defeated several thousand PunÁ warriors, mowing them down with musketry and sabre. As was by no means unusual in those days, the Christians received encouragement from heaven. “In the battle,” says Montesinos with laudable gravity, “many, both of our people and of the Indians, saw that in the air there were two other camps—one led on by the archangel St Michael with sword and buckler, the other by Lucifer and his myrmidons; but no sooner did the Castilians cry victory, than the demons fled, and from out of a mighty whirlwind terrible voices were heard to exclaim—‘Thou hast conquered! Michael, thou hast conquered!’ Hence Don Francisco Pizarro was inspired with so great a devotion to the holy archangel that he vowed to call by his name the first city he should found, fulfilling the same, as we shall presently see.” These angelic interventions were common enough both in the Moorish and American wars of Spain, and have been commemorated by many artists, whose paintings, for the most part more curious in design than skilful in execution, are still to be occasionally met with in the Peninsula. Pizarro was twice favoured with such celestial succours; the second time at the fight, or rather massacre, of Caxamalca, when certainly he required little aid against the panic-stricken hordes, who fell, like grass before the mower’s scythe, under the fierce sabre-cuts of the martial Spaniards. Nevertheless, “a terrible apparition appeared in the air during the onslaught. It consisted of a woman and a child, and at their side a horseman, all clothed in white, on a milk-white charger,—doubtless the valiant St James,—who, with his sword glancing lightning, smote down the infidel host, and rendered them incapable of resistance.” Thus gravely and reverently deposeth the worthy Fray Naharro, who had his information from three monks of his order present in the fight.

The arrival of Pizarro and his band upon the coast of Peru, occurred at a moment most favourable to their projects of appropriation. The country had just emerged from a sanguinary civil war, in which many of its best warriors had perished; the throne of the Incas was occupied by a usurper, who, to cement his power, had shed the blood of hundreds of the royal family, his own brethren and relatives. These events had been thus brought about:—The warlike Inca and conqueror of Quito, Huayna Capac, forgot, on his death-bed, the sagacity that had marked his reign; and, in direct contravention of the fundamental laws of the empire, divided his dominions between Huascar, his legitimate heir, and Atahuallpa, a pet son whom he had had by one of his numerous concubines. The old Inca died, and, for five years, his two successors reigned, without quarrel, over their respective territories. Then dissensions arose between them; war broke out; and in two great fights, one at the foot of Chimborazo, the other on the plains of Cuzco, Atahuallpa’s troops, veterans grown gray under his father’s banner, were completely victorious. Huascar was taken prisoner and shut up in the fortress of Xauxa; his rival assumed the borla or scarlet diadem of the Incas, and, using his victory with little moderation, if Garcilasso de la Vega and subsequent Spanish writers are to be believed, butchered, with circumstances of great cruelty, all of the Inca blood upon whom he could lay hands. Mr Prescott, however, doubts the veracity of Garcilasso, the son of a niece of Huayna Capac and of a Spanish cavalier, who arrived in Peru, soon after its conquest, in the suite of Pedro de Alvarado. His origin, and familiarity with the Peruvian tongue, should ensure the correctness of his statements; whilst his relationship, by the father’s side, with a family illustrious in letters as in arms, seems to guarantee his literary capacity. But Garcilasso was sadly given to romancing; and his pages exhibit, amidst much that is really valuable, great exaggeration and credulity. If we could implicitly credit his statements of Atahuallpa’s atrocities, our sympathy with the Inca, betrayed, dethroned, and finally murdered, by the Spaniards, would be materially lessened. The triumph of the usurper occurred only a few months previous to the invasion of Peru by Pizarro, in the spring of 1532.

After the battle of PunÁ the Spaniards were greatly annoyed by the enemy, who kept up a desultory and harassing warfare, and they welcomed with joy the arrival of a strong reinforcement under Hernando de Soto, the future discoverer of the Mississippi. With a hundred fresh men and a supply of horses for the cavalry, Pizarro did not hesitate to cross to the mainland. The inhabitants, although previously on the most friendly terms with the Spaniards, opposed their landing, but with no great energy; and a charge of horse drove them to the woods. At Tumbez, however, a grievous disappointment awaited the invaders. With the exception of half-a-dozen of the principal buildings, the city was razed to the ground; and of the rich spoils the Spaniards had reckoned upon, not a trace was left. The adventurers were greatly discouraged by this discovery. “The gold of Peru seemed only like a deceitful phantom, which, after beckoning them on through toil and danger, vanished the moment they attempted to grasp it.” They lost heart in this search after an intangible treasure; and Pizarro, fearing disaffection as a consequence of inaction, hurried them into the interior of the country. At thirty leagues from Tumbez, he founded, in conformity with his vow, the city of San Miguel; and, after waiting several weeks for further reinforcements and receiving none, he left fifty men for the protection of the new settlement, and marched with the remainder in search of the Inca, proclaiming every where, as he proceeded, the religion of Christ, the supremacy of the Pope, and the sovereignty of Charles the Fifth.

And here, as much, perhaps, as at any period of his career, we are struck by the genius and activity of Pizarro, and by his wonderful ascendency over a band of restless desperadoes. Within five months after landing at Tumbez, he had made an extensive tour of observation, established a friendly understanding with the Indians, parcelled out lands, cut timber, and quarried stone; founded a city, and organised a municipal government. A church and a fortress—always the two first edifices in a Spanish-American town,—a storehouse and a court of justice, strongly, if not elegantly built, had already arisen. Strict discipline was maintained amongst the Spaniards, who were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to molest or ill-treat the natives; and, most astonishing of all, Pizarro succeeded in persuading his rapacious followers to relinquish their shares in the gold and silver already collected, which was sent, after a fifth had been deducted for the crown, to pay off the ship-owners and those who had supplied stores for the expedition. After the settlement of these preliminaries, he struck boldly into the heart of the land. His army (the name is a mockery, applied to such a force) consisted of sixty-seven cavalry and one hundred and ten infantry, amongst whom were only three arquebusiers and twenty crossbowmen. With this paltry troop he dared to advance against the powerful army which he had ascertained was encamped under command of Atahuallpa, within twelve days’ journey of San Miguel. We read of subsequent events and scarcely wonder at a mob of timid Peruvians being dispersed by a handful of resolute men, mail-clad, well disciplined, and inured to war, but in numbers as one to a hundred of those opposed to them. Pizarro, however, had no assurance of the slight resistance he should meet; he could know but imperfectly the resources of the Inca; he was wholly ignorant of the natural obstacles the country might oppose to his progress, and of the ambuscades that might beset his path. His dauntless spirit paused not for such considerations. And, scanty as his numbers were, he did not fear to risk their diminution, by a proposal resembling that of Harry the Fifth to his troops. Those who had no heart for the expedition, he announced to his little band, on the fifth day after their departure from San Miguel, were at full liberty to return to the city. The garrison was weak, he would gladly see it reinforced, and any who chose to rejoin it should have allotted to them the same share of land and number of Indian vassals as those Spaniards who had remained in the settlement.

Precisely similar to the proclamation of the hero of Agincourt was that of the conqueror of Peru. He preferred weakening his force, already far too feeble, to retaining the discontented and pusillanimous. The contagion of bad example had more terrors for him than the hosts of Atahuallpa. And he “would not die in that man’s company who feared his fellowship to die with him.” Only nine of his one hundred and seventy-seven followers availed themselves of the permission, thus boldly accorded them, to retrace their steps. With the residue Pizarro resumed his march.

As the Spaniards advanced, their difficulties and uncertainties increased. Rivers impeded their progress, and they had to construct bridges and rafts. They passed through well-built towns, where they saw large magazines of military stores and rations, and along handsome paved roads, shaded by avenues of trees, and watered by artificial streamlets. The farther they penetrated into the country, the more convinced they were of its resources and civilisation, far beyond any thing they had anticipated, and the more sensible they became of the great temerity of their enterprise. When they strove to learn the Inca’s intentions and whereabouts, the contradictory information they obtained added to their perplexity. The Inca, it was said, was at the head of fifty thousand men, tranquilly awaiting the appearance of the eight-score intruders who thus madly ran into the lion’s jaws. This was discouraging enough. And when the Spaniards reached the foot of the stupendous Andes, which intervened between them and Caxamalca, and were to be crossed by means of paths and passes of the most dangerous description, easily defensible by tens against thousands, their hearts failed them, and many were of opinion to abandon the original plan and take the road to Cuzco, which wound along the foot of the mountains, broad, shady, and pleasant. Pizarro was deaf to this proposal. His eloquence and firmness prevailed, and the Andes were crossed, with much toil, but without molestation from the Peruvians.

It is difficult to understand the Inca’s motives in thus neglecting the many opportunities afforded him of annihilating the Spaniards. His whole conduct at this time is mysterious and unaccountable, greatly at variance with the energy and sagacity of which he had given proof in his administration of the empire, and wars against Huascar. Nothing was easier than to crush the encroaching foreigners in the defiles of the Cordilleras, instead of allowing them to descend safely into the plain, where their cavalry and discipline gave them great advantages. Perhaps it never occurred to Atahuallpa that so trifling a force could contend under any circumstances, with a chance of success, against his numerous army. In their intestine wars, the Peruvians fought with much resolution. In the battle of Quipayan, which placed the crown of Peru on Atahuallpa’s head, the fight raged from dawn till sunset, and the slaughter was prodigious, both parties exhibiting great courage and obstinacy. And subsequently, in engagements with the Spaniards, proofs of Peruvian valour were not wanting. After the death of Atahuallpa, on the march to Cuzco, more than one fierce fight occurred between Spanish cavalry and Peruvian warriors, in which the former had not always the advantage. When Cuzco was burned, and siege laid to its fortresses, one of these was valiantly defended by an Inca noble, whose single arm struck the assailants from the ramparts as fast as they attained their summit. And when, several ladders having been planted at once, the Spaniards swarmed up on all points, and overpowered the last of his followers, the heroic savage still would not yield. “Finding further resistance ineffectual, he sprang to the edge of the battlements, and, casting away his war-club, wrapped his mantle around him and threw himself headlong from the summit.” Relying on the bravery of his troops, and considering that the Spaniards, although compact in array, and formidable by their horses and weapons, were in numbers most insignificant, it is probable the Inca felt sure of catching and caging them whenever he chose, and was therefore in no hurry to do it, but, like a cat with a mouse, chose to play with before devouring them. This agrees, too, with the account given in an imperfect manuscript, the work of one of the old conquerors, quoted by Mr Prescott. “Holding us for very little, and not reckoning that a hundred and ninety men could offend him, he allowed us to pass through that defile, and through many others equally bad, because really, as we afterwards knew and ascertained, his intention was to see us, and question us as to whence we came, and who had sent us, and what we wanted ... and afterwards to take our horses and the things that most pleased him, and to sacrifice the remainder.” These calculations were more than neutralised by the decision and craft of the white man. Established in Caxamalca, whose ten thousand inhabitants had deserted the town on his approach, Pizarro beheld before him “a white cloud of pavilions, covering the ground as thick as snow-flakes, for the space apparently of several miles.” In front of the tents were fixed the warriors’ lances; and at night innumerable watch-fires, making the mountain-slope resemble, says an eyewitness, “a very starry heaven,” struck doubt and dismay into the hearts of that little Christian band. “All,” says one of the Conquistadores, “remaining with much fear, because we were so few, and had entered so far into the land, where we could not receive succours.” All, save one, the presiding genius of the venture, who showed himself equal to the emergency, and nobly justified his followers’ confidence. Pizarro saw that retreat was impossible, inaction ruinous, and he resolved to set all upon a cast by executing a project of unparalleled boldness. The Inca, who, very soon assumed a dictatorial tone, had ordered the Spaniards to occupy the buildings on the chief square at Caxamalca, and no others, and had also signified his intention of visiting the strangers so soon as a fast he was keeping should be at an end. The, square, or rather triangle, was of great extent, and consisted of a stone fortress, and of large, low, wide-doored halls, that seemed intended for barracks. Upon this square Pizarro prepared to receive his royal visitor.

On the appointed day, Atahuallpa made his appearance, at the head of his numerous army, variously estimated by Pizarro’s secretary and others there present, at from thirty to fifty thousand men. These halted at a short distance from the town; the Inca began to pitch his tents, and sent word to Pizarro that he had postponed his visit to the following morning. The Spanish leader deprecated this change of plan, and said that he fully expected Atahuallpa to sup with him; whereupon the Inca, either from good nature, or lured by the prospect of a feast, entered the town with a comparatively small retinue. “He brought with him,” says Hernando Pizarro, in a manuscript letter, “five or six thousand Indians, unarmed, save with small clubs, and slings, and bags of stones.” In fact, it appears from all accounts that very few of them had any arms at all. Upon a throne of gold, borne on an open litter, by Peruvian nobles in a rich azure livery, the Inca came, and paused in the square. Not a Spaniard was to be seen, save Fray Vicente de Valverde, Pizarro’s chaplain, who, by means of an interpreter, addressed the royal visitor in a homily which, to judge from the multiplicity of subjects it embraced, can have been of no trifling length. Beginning with the creation of the world, he expounded the doctrines of Christianity, talked of St Peter and the Pope, and finally, with singular coolness, requested his astonished hearer to change his religion, and become a tributary of the Emperor. Naturally offended at such presumptuous propositions, Atahuallpa answered with some heat, and threw down a Bible or breviary which he had taken from the friar’s hand. The friar hurried to Pizarro. “Do you not see,” he said, “that whilst we waste our breath talking to this dog, the fields are filling with Indians? Set on at once! I absolve you.” Slay! Slay! mass or massacre. The old cry of the Romish priest, covetous of converts. The sword in one hand, the crucifix in the other; abjuration of heresy, or the blood of heretics. In Smithfield and the Cevennes, on the dread eve of St Bartholomew, and amidst the gentle sun-worshippers of Peru,—such has ever been the maxim of the ministers of a religion of mercy. In this instance the appeal to violence was not unheard. Pizarro waved a scarf, a signal gun was fired from the fort, the barrack doors flew open, and, armed to the teeth, the Spaniards sprang into the plaza, shouting the fierce slogan before which, in Granada’s sunny vega, the Moslem had so often quailed. “Santiago y À ellos!” St James and at them! was the cry, as the steel-clad cavalry spurred into the crowd, carving, with trenchant blade, paths through the confused and terrified Indians; whilst musketry flashed, and two falconets, placed in the fort, vomited death upon the mob. The exit from the plaza was soon choked with corpses, and the living, debarred escape by the bodies of the dead, could but stand and be slaughtered. The square was soon converted into a shambles. “Even as they fell, in files they lay,”
slain in cold blood, and innocent of offence. At last “such was the agony of the survivors under the terrible pressure of their assailants, that a large body of Indians, by their convulsive struggles, burst through the wall of stone and dried clay which formed part of the boundary of the plaza!” And the country was covered with fugitives, flying before the terrible sweep of the Spanish sabre.

“The Marquis,” says Pedro Pizarro, “called out, saying, ‘Let none wound the Inca, under pain of his life!’” Atahuallpa was to be made prisoner, not killed. Around him a faithful few, his nobles and court, fought desperately to protect their sovereign. Unarmed, they grappled with the Spaniards, clung to their horses, and tried to drag them from their saddles. The struggle was of some duration, and night approached when, several of the palanquin-bearers having been slain, the litter was overturned, and the Inca fell into the arms of Pizarro and his comrades. He was carefully secured in an adjacent building, the news of his capture quickly spread, and the whole Indian army disbanded and fled, panic-struck at the loss of their sovereign. The number that fell that day is very variously stated. “They killed them all,” says one authority, a nephew of Atahuallpa, on whose testimony Mr Prescott inclines to place reliance, “with horses, with swords, with arquebuses, as though they were sheep. None made resistance, and out of ten thousand not two hundred escaped.” This is probably an exaggeration. Other accounts state the number of dead as far smaller, but there appears ground to believe that four or five thousand fell. The example was terrible, and well suited to strike the Peruvians with terror. But the extermination of the whole Indian army would have been of less importance than the single captive Pizarro had made, and whom, agreeably to his promise, he had to sup with him when the fight was done. Deprived of their sovereign, and viewing with a superstitious awe the audacious stranger who had dared to lay hands upon his sacred person, the Indians lost heart, and were no longer to be feared.

The capture of the Inca, although so important and beneficial in its results, occasioned Pizarro some embarrassment. He was anxious to march upon the capital, but feared to risk himself on the roads and mountains with the Inca in his keeping; and as he could not spare a sufficient guard to leave behind with him, he was compelled to wait patiently for reinforcements. Atahuallpa, who did not want for penetration, but in the words of an old manuscript, “was very wise and discreet, a friend of knowledge, and subtle of understanding,” soon found out that the Spaniards were at least as eager to accumulate gold as to disseminate their religion. He offered to buy his liberty, and a room full of gold was the prodigious ransom he proposed. The length of the apartment he engaged to fill is variously stated. The most moderate account makes it twenty-two feet. Hernando Pizarro says it was thirty-five. The width was seventeen feet, and the gold was to be piled up as high as the Inca could reach, which was about nine feet from the ground. A smaller room was to be filled twice with silver. Pizarro having accepted, or allowed his prisoner to infer that he accepted, this very handsome price for his liberty, the captive sovereign took measures to collect the stipulated treasure. Palaces and temples were stripped of their ornaments, and from distant parts of Peru gold was sent to complete the Inca’s ransom. The agreement was that it should not be melted, but piled up in the room in whatever form it arrived, which gave Atahuallpa some advantage. Goblets, salvers, vases, and curious imitations of plants and animals, were amongst the heterogeneous contributions that soon began to rise high upon the floor of the Inca’s prison. “Among the plants, the most beautiful was the Indian corn, in which the golden ear was sheathed in its broad leaves of silver, from which hung a rich tassel of threads of the same precious metal. A fountain was also much admired, which sent up a sparkling jet of gold, while birds and animals of the same metal played in the waters at the base.” But the greedy conquerors grew impatient, and thought the gold came too slowly, although on some days a value of fifty or sixty thousand castellanos was added to the store. Rumours of a rising of the Peruvians were spread abroad, and Atahuallpa was accused of conspiring against the Spaniards. These, and especially a strong reinforcement that had arrived under Almagro’s orders, became clamorous for the Inca’s death. They had already divided all that had arrived of his ransom, equivalent to the enormous sum of three millions and a half sterling, besides fifty thousand marks of silver. At last the Inca was brought to trial on the most absurd charges, “having reference to national usages, or to his personal relations, over which the Spanish conquerors had no jurisdiction.” Thus, he was accused of idolatry and adultery, and of squandering the public revenues, since the conquest of the country by the Spaniards! His death, in short, was decreed, and his butchers were not very nice about the pretext. It was found expedient to get rid of him; and under such circumstances a reason to condemn is as easily found as a rope to hang. Some few honest and humane men there were in the court, who rejected the false evidence brought before them, and denied the authority of the tribunal. But their objections were overruled, and they had to content themselves with entering a protest against proceedings which they justly held to be arbitrary and illegal. Father Valverde was not one of those who leaned to mercy’s side. A copy of the sentence, condemning Atahuallpa to be burned alive, was submitted to him for his signature, which he gave with alacrity, convinced, he said, that the Inca deserved death. Why, it is hard to say, at least at the hands of the Spaniards. But the whole of the circumstances connected with his mock trial and subsequent execution are a disgrace to the conquerors of Peru, an eternal blot upon the memory of Francisco Pizarro. To avoid the flames, Atahuallpa embraced Christianity, and was executed by strangulation, after being duly baptised and shriven by the clerical scoundrel Valverde. Previously he had begged hard for his life, offering twice the ransom he had already paid, and guarantees for the safety of the Spaniards. “What have I done, or my children,” said the unfortunate monarch, “that I should meet such a fate? And from your hands, too,” added he to Pizarro—“you, who have met friendship and kindness from my people, with whom I have shared my treasures, who have received nothing but benefits from my hands.” Adding hypocrisy to cruelty, Pizarro affected emotion. In its sincerity we cannot believe, or that he could not, had he chosen, have saved Atahuallpa. “I myself,” says Pedro Pizarro, ever his cousin’s eulogist and advocate, “saw the Marquis weep.” We believe Pedro lies, or was mistaken, or that the tears were of the sort called crocodile’s. We have no faith in the tenderness of the stern and iron-hearted conqueror of Peru.

Although the Inca’s ransom had not been made up to the full amount promised, Pizarro had acquitted his prisoner, some time previously to his death, of any further obligation on that score. With respect to this ransom, Dr Tschudi gives some interesting particulars, doubtless true in the main, although exaggerated in the details. “The gold which the Inca got together in Caxamarca and the neighbourhood, was hardly sufficient to fill half the room. He therefore sent messengers to Cuzco, to complete the amount out of the royal treasury; and it is said that eleven thousand llamas, each bearing a hundredweight of gold, really started thence for Caxamarca. But before they arrived, Atahuallpa was hung. The terrible news ran like a lighted train through the whole country, and reached the Indians who were driving the heavily laden llamas over the uplands of Central Peru. Panic-stricken, they buried their treasures upon the very spot where the mournful message was delivered to them, and dispersed in all directions.” Eleven thousand hundredweight of gold! If this were true, the cruelty of the Spaniards to their prisoner brought its own punishment. The buried treasure, whatever its amount, has never been recovered, although numerous researches have been made. Either the secret has perished with its possessors, or those Peruvians to whom it has been handed down, persist, with the sullen and impenetrable reserve that forms a distinguishing trait in their character, in preventing their white oppressors from reaping the benefit of it.

With the death of Atahuallpa, the principal danger incurred by the Spaniards in Peru—that, namely, of a combined and simultaneous uprising of the nation—may be said to have terminated. Subsequently, it is true, under the Inca Manco, a terrible insurrection occurred: an Indian army, the boldest, best equipped, and in all respects the most formidable that the Spaniards had seen, boldly assailed them, burned Cuzco, and beleaguered them in the citadel. At one time Pizarro felt the greatest uneasiness as to the possible result of this last effort for Peruvian independence. Seven hundred Christians fell in the course of the struggle. But there were still sufficient left to reduce the insurgents, and inflict a terrible chastisement. Lima had been built, and fortified posts established. And serious as this uprising was, there hardly seems to have been a probability of the extermination of the Spaniards in Peru, or of their expulsion from the country, at any period subsequent to Atahuallpa’s execution. The throne vacant, the rights of succession uncertain, the ancient institutions of the country fell to pieces, and anarchy ensued. Peruvian generals gathered their armies around them, seized upon provinces, declared themselves independent, and were beaten in detail. Difficulties and hardships were still in store for the conquerors; privations, and painful marches, and sharp encounters; but they were strengthened by reinforcements, cheered by success, and urged on by their thirst of gold, which was irritated rather than assuaged by the rich booty they had made. After crowning with his own hands a brother of Atahuallpa, selected in preference to Manco, the legitimate heir to the throne, as more likely to be a docile instrument in his hands, Pizarro marched upon Cuzco, the much-talked-of metropolis of Peru, with a force that now amounted to nearly five hundred men, one-third of them cavalry. After a sharp skirmish or two, in which the Peruvians displayed much spirit and bravery, the conquerors entered the capital. They were disappointed in the amount of booty found there. Their expectations must have been outrageous, for the spoil was very large. The great temple was studded with gold plates; its gardens glittered with ornaments of the same precious metal. In a cavern near the city they found a number of pure gold vases, and ten or twelve statues of women, as large as life, some of gold, others of silver. The stores of food, and of manufactures for clothing and ornament, were very numerous and considerable. And there were women’s dresses composed entirely of gold beads; and “in one place they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver, each piece being twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two or three inches thick.” But the rapacious Europeans were not content, and some of the inhabitants were barbarously tortured to compel them to reveal their hidden stores of wealth. Gold lost its value, and the commonest necessaries of life rose to exorbitant prices. A quire of paper was worth ten golden dollars, a bottle of wine fetched sixty. And the inherent Spanish vice of gambling was carried to a prodigious extent. Many of the conquerors thus lost the whole of their booty. One man had received in his share of spoil a golden image of the sun. “This rich prize the spendthrift lost in a single night; whence it came to be a proverb in Spain, Juega el Sol antes que amanezca, ‘Play away the sun before sunrise.’”

With the capture of Cuzco, or very soon afterwards, the unity of Spanish conquest in Peru may be said to have ceased. Previously to that event, all were subordinate to Pizarro; none claimed independence of him; he kept his men together, and with his whole force—excepting the small garrison at St Miguel—pushed forward into the heart of the land. It was by far the most romantic and adventurous period of Spanish operations in the empire of the Incas. But now other cavaliers of fortune, good soldiers, and men of experience in American warfare, turned their attention to Peru, eager to share its treasures and territory. Amongst these, the governor of Guatimala, Pedro de Alvarado, one of CortÉs’ officers, was conspicuous. Early in 1534, he landed in the Bay of Caraques, at the head of five hundred men, “the best equipped and most formidable array that had yet appeared in the southern seas.” They marched towards the rich province of Quito, which they believed to be still unexplored; but suffered frightfully on the road; and on emerging, with greatly diminished numbers, from the Puertos Nevados, a terrible mountain passage where many of the troopers were frozen in their saddles, they had the mortification to discover the hoof prints of Spanish chargers, proving that they had been forestalled. Benalcazar, governor of San Miguel, had entered the province with one hundred and forty men and some native auxiliaries. He had been met by the Indian general Ruminavi; but the son of the Moor was more than a match for the Peruvian, and after some well-contested fights, the standard of Castile waved over Quito’s capital. Almagro, who had heard of Alvarado’s landing, soon joined Benalcazar, and together they marched to oppose their intruding countrymen. At one time a battle seemed imminent, but matters were finally compromised, Alvarado receiving one hundred thousand pesos de oro, and re-embarking his men.

Amongst the conquerors themselves, dissensions soon broke out. Charles the Fifth, to whom Hernando Pizarro had been sent to give an account of events in Peru, and to submit specimens of its riches and manufactures, had received the envoy most favourably. He confirmed his previous grants of land to Francisco Pizarro, extending them seventy leagues further south, and empowered Almagro to discover and occupy the country for two hundred leagues south of that. Disputes about boundaries, imbittered by the rankling recollection of former feuds, soon occurred between Pizarro and Almagro; and though a temporary reconciliation was effected, a civil war at last broke out, where both parties fought nominally for the honour and profit of the Spanish king, and in reality for their own peculiar behoof and ambition. “El Rey y Almagro!” “El Rey y Pizarro!” were the battle-cries on the bloody field of Las Salinas, in the neighbourhood of Cuzco, where, on the 26th April 1538, Almagro fell into the hands of Hernando Pizarro, who, from their very first meeting, had bitterly disliked him. “Before the battle of Salinas, it had been told to Hernando Pizarro that Almagro was like to die. ‘Heaven forbid,’ he exclaimed, ‘that this should come to pass before he falls into my hands!’” After such a speech, Almagro’s fate scarce admitted of a doubt. He was brought to trial, on charges that covered two thousand folio pages. Found guilty, he was condemned to death, and perished by the garrote. He was to have been executed on the public square of Cuzco; but public sympathy was so strongly enlisted on his side, that it was thought more prudent to make an end of him in his dungeon. The chief apparent movers of his death, Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, were amongst the principal mourners at his funeral—thus aping the hypocrisy of their brother Francisco, who had paid similar honours to his victim Atahuallpa. The Marquis himself was on his way to Cuzco during Almagro’s trial, of which he was cognizant. He lingered on the road, and upon reaching the river Abancay he learned his rival’s death. The old farce was played over again. He shed tears, for whose sincerity none gave him credit. Speedily forgetting this mockery of wo, he entered Cuzco in triumph, richly dressed, and with clang of martial music. There can be little doubt of his having secretly instigated and entirely approved the execution of Almagro. The testimony of all the impartial historians of the time concurs in fixing its odium upon him.

But the crimes of this great conqueror and bad man were destined to meet punishment. By the sword he had risen—by the sword he was to perish; not on some well-fought battle field, with shouts of victory ringing in his ear, but in his palace hall, by the assassin’s blade. In his own fair capital of Lima, the City of the Kings, the gem of the Pacific, which had sprung up under his auspices with incredible rapidity—for Pizarro seemed to impart his vast energy to all about him—a score of conspirators, assembled at the house of Almagro’s son, plotted his death. It was on a Sunday in June 1541, at the hour of dinner, that they burst into his apartments, with cries of “Death to the tyrant!” A number of visitors were with him, but they were imperfectly armed, and deserted him, escaping by the windows. His half-brother, Martinez de Alcantara, two pages and as many cavaliers, were all who stood forward in defence of their chief. They soon fell, overpowered by numbers, and covered with wounds. But Pizarro was not the man meekly to meet his death. Alone, without armour, his cloak around one arm, his good sword in his right hand, the old hero kept his cowardly assailants at bay, with a vigour and intrepidity surprising at his advanced age. “What ho!” he cried, “traitors! have you come to kill me in my own house?” And as he spoke, two of his enemies fell beneath his blows. “Rada, (the chief of the conspirators) impatient of the delay, called out ‘Why are we so long about it? Down with the tyrant!’ and taking one of his companions, Narvaez, in his arms, he thrust him against the Marquis. Pizarro, instantly grappling with his opponent, ran him through with his sword. But at that moment he received a wound in the throat, and reeling, he sank on the floor, while the swords of Rada and several of the conspirators were plunged into his body. ‘Jesu!’ exclaimed the dying man; and, tracing a cross with his finger on the bloody floor, he bent down his head to kiss it, when a stroke, more friendly than the rest, put an end to his existence.”

Great indeed have been the changes wrought by three centuries in the world beyond the Atlantic. The difference in the manner of foundation of the English and Spanish empires in America is not more striking than the contrast offered by their progress and present condition. The English, Dutch, and other northern nations, were content to obtain a footing in the new-found lands, without attempting their conquest. Settled upon the coast, defending themselves, often with extreme difficulty, against the assaults of warlike and crafty tribes, they aimed not at the subjugation of empires, or, if visions of future dominion occasionally crossed the imagination of the more far-sighted, the means proposed were not those of armed aggression and sanguinary spoliation, but the comparatively slow and bloodless victories of civilisation. Far otherwise was it with the warlike and ambitious Spaniard of the sixteenth century, when, with a mixture of crusading zeal and freebooting greed, he shaped his caravel’s course for distant El-Dorado. Not with a log-house, in the wilderness was he content; it suited not his lofty and chivalrous notions to clear land and plough it, and water the stubborn furrow with his forehead’s sweat. For him the bright cuirass, the charging steed, the wild encounter with tawny hosts, reminding him of the day when, after eight hundred years’ struggle, he chased the last Saracen from Iberia’s shores. For him the glittering gold mine, the rich plantation, the cringing throng of Indian serfs. One day a cavalier of fortune, with horse and arms for sole possessions, the next he sat upon the throne whence he had hurled some far-descended prince, some Inca demi-god, or feather-crowned cacique. And at the period that a few scanty bands of expatriated malefactors, and of refugees for opinion’s sake, flying from persecution to the wilderness, toiled out a scanty and laborious existence in the forests and prairies of North America, and alone represented the Anglo-Saxon race in the New World, Spain was in secure and undisturbed enjoyment of two vast and productive empires. To-day, how great the contrast! The unwieldy Spanish colonies have crumbled and fallen to pieces, the petty English settlements have grown into a flourishing and powerful nation. And we behold the descendants of the handful of exiles who first colonised “the wild New England shore,” penetrating, almost unopposed, to the heart of the country that Montezuma ruled, and CortÉs was the first to conquer.