Atahualpa was surprised to see no Spaniards. He later admitted that he thought they must have hidden from fear at the sight of his magnificent army. ‘He called out “Where are they?” At this Friar Vicente de Valverde, of the Dominican order … emerged from the lodging of Governor Pizarro accompanied by the interpreter Martin’, ‘and went with a cross in one hand and his missal in the other. He advanced through the troops to where Atahualpa was.’

The various chroniclers who were present gave slightly different versions of the conversation that ensued between Valverde and Atahualpa. Most agreed that the priest began by inviting the Inca to advance into the building to talk and dine with the Governor. Ruiz de Arce explained that this invitation was made ‘in order that he would emerge more from his men’. Atahualpa did not accept. He told Valverde that he would not move forward until the Spaniards had returned every object that they had stolen or consumed since their arrival in his kingdom. He may have been establishing a casus belli with this difficult demand.

Valverde began to explain his own function as a minister of the Christian religion, and launched into an exposition of ‘the things of God’. He also mentioned that he, a friar, had been sent by the Emperor to reveal this religion to Atahualpa and his people. In effect, Valverde was delivering the famous Requirement, an extraordinary document that the royal council had ordered to be proclaimed in any conquest before resorting to bloodshed.* The priest said that the doctrine he was describing was contained in the breviary he was holding. ‘Atahualpa told him to give him the book to examine. He gave it to him closed. Atahualpa did not succeed in opening it and the friar extended his arm to do so. But Atahualpa struck him on the arm with great disdain, not wishing that he should open it. He himself persisted in trying to open it and did so.’ He was ‘more impressed, in my opinion, by the writing itself than by what was written in it. He leafed through [the book] admiring its form and layout. But after examining it he threw it angrily down among his men, his face a deep crimson.’ ‘The boy who was interpreter and was there translating the conversation went running off to fetch the book and gave it to the priest.’

The critical moment had come. Xerez and Hernando Pizarro wrote that Atahualpa stood up on his litter, telling his men to make ready. The priest Vicente de Valverde returned to Pizarro, almost running, raising a call to battle. According to Mena he shouted: ‘Come out! Come out, Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who reject the things of God. That chief has thrown my book of holy law to the ground!’ According to Estete he cried to Pizarro: ‘Did you not see what happened? Why remain polite and servile toward this overproud dog when the plains are full of Indians? March out against him, for I absolve you!’ And for Trujillo it was: ‘What is Your Honour going to do? Atahualpa has become a Lucifer!’ For Murúa: ‘Christians! The evangels of God are on the ground!’ Juan Ruiz de Arce wrote, simply, that Valverde returned ‘weeping and calling on God’.

Pizarro launched the ambush with the prearranged signal. He ‘signalled the artilleryman [Pedro de Candía] to fire the cannons into their midst. He fired two of them but could not fire more.’ The Spaniards in armour and chain mail charged their horses straight into the mass of unarmed natives crowding the square. Trumpets were sounded and the Spanish troops gave their battle cry ‘Santiago!’ ‘They all placed rattles on their horses to terrify the Indians…. With the booming of the shots and the trumpets and the troop of horses with their rattles, the Indians were thrown into confusion and panicked. The Spaniards fell upon them and began to kill.’ ‘They were so filled with fear that they climbed on top of one another – to such an extent that they formed mounds and suffocated one another.’ ‘The horsemen rode out on top of them, wounding and killing and pressing home the attack.’ ‘And since the Indians were unarmed they were routed without danger to any Christian.’

‘The Governor armed himself with a quilted cotton coat of armour, took his sword and dagger and entered the thick of the Indians with the Spaniards who were with him. With great bravery … he reached Atahualpa’s litter. He fearlessly grabbed [the Inca’s] left arm and shouted “Santiago”…but he could not pull him out of his litter, which was on high. All those who were carrying Atahualpa’s litter appeared to be important men, and they all died, as did those who were travelling in the litters and hammocks.’ ‘Many Indians had their hands cut off but continued to support their ruler’s litter with their shoulders. But their efforts were of little avail for they were all killed.’ ‘Although [the Spaniards] killed the Indians who were carrying [the litter], other replacements immediately went to support it. They continued in this way for a long while, overpowering and killing the Indians until, becoming exhausted, one Spaniard stabbed [at the Inca] with his dagger to kill him. But Francisco Pizarro parried the blow, and from this parry the Spaniard trying to strike Atahualpa wounded the Governor on the hand…. Seven or eight [mounted] Spaniards spurred up and grabbed the edge of the litter, heaved on it and turned it on to its side. Atahualpa was captured in this way and the Governor took him to his lodging.’ ‘Those who were carrying the litter and those who escorted [the Inca] never abandoned him: all died around him.’

Meanwhile the terrible carnage continued in the square and beyond. ‘They were so terrified at seeing the Governor in their midst, at the unexpected firing of the artillery and the irruption of the horses in a troop – which was something they had never seen – that, panic-stricken, they were more concerned to flee and save their lives than to make war.’ ‘They could not flee in a body because the gate through which they had entered was small. They therefore could not escape in the confusion. When those at the rear saw how far they were from the sanctuary and safety of flight, two or three thousand of them flung themselves at a stretch of wall and knocked it to the ground. [This wall] gave on to the plain, for on that side there were no buildings.’ ‘They broke down a fifteen-foot stretch of wall six feet thick and the height of a man. Many horsemen fell on this.’ ‘The foot-soldiers set about those who remained in the square with such speed that in a short time most of them were put to the sword…. During all this no Indian raised a weapon against a Spaniard.’

The cavalry jumped the broken curtain wall and charged out into the plain. ‘All were shouting, “After those with the liveries!” “Do not let any escape!” “Spear them!” All the other fighting men whom the [Inca] had brought were a quarter of a league [a mile] from Cajamarca and ready for battle, but not an Indian made a move.’ ‘When the squadrons of men who had remained in the plain outside the town saw the others fleeing and shouting, most of them broke and took to flight. It was an extraordinary sight, for the entire valley of four or five leagues was completely filled with men.’ ‘It was a level plain with some fields of crops. Many Indians were killed…. Night had already fallen and the horsemen were continuing to lance [natives] in the fields, when they sounded a trumpet for us to reassemble at the camp. On arrival we went to congratulate the Governor on the victory.’

‘In the space of two hours – all that remained of daylight – all those troops were annihilated…. That day, six or seven thousand Indians lay dead on the plain and many more had their arms cut off and other wounds.’ ‘Atahualpa himself admitted that we had killed seven thousand of his Indians in that battle.’ ‘The man [killed] in one of the litters was his steward (the lord of Chincha), of whom he was very fond. The others were also lords over many people and were his counsellors. The cacique lord of Cajamarca died. Other commanders died, but there were so many of them that they go unrecorded. For all those who came in Atahualpa’s bodyguard were great lords…. It was an extraordinary thing to see so great a ruler captured in so short a time, when he had come with such might.’ Atahualpa’s nephew wrote that the Spaniards killed Indians like a slaughterer felling cattle. The sheer rate of killing was appalling, even if one allows that many Indians died from trampling or suffocation, or that the estimates of dead were exaggerated. Each Spaniard massacred an average of fourteen or fifteen defenceless natives during those terrible two hours.*

Atahualpa had been hustled away from the slaughter of his subjects and placed under strong guard in the temple of the sun at the edge of Cajamarca. Some of the cavalry continued to patrol the town in case five or six thousand natives on the hill above might attempt a night attack. Meanwhile, with the bodies of thousands of natives lying in heaps on the square, the victors were paying extraordinary attention to their prisoner. ‘ The Governor went to his quarters with his prisoner Atahualpa. He disposed of his clothes, which the Spaniards had torn to pull him from the litter … ordered local clothing to be brought, and had him dressed…. They then went to dine and the Governor had Atahualpa sit at his table, treating him well and having him served as he was himself. He then ordered him to be given the women he wished from those who had been captured, to serve him, and ordered a bed to be made for him in the room where the Governor himself slept.’

All this solicitude was accompanied by speeches of amazing condescension. ‘We entered where Atahualpa was, and found him full of fear, thinking that we were going to kill him.’ ‘The Governor … asked the Inca why he was sad, for he ought not to be sorrowful…. In every country to which we Christians had come there had been great rulers, and we had made them our friends and vassals of the Emperor by peaceful means or by war. He should not therefore be shocked at having been captured by us.’ ‘Atahualpa … asked whether the Spaniards were going to kill him. They told him no, for Christians killed with impetuosity but not afterwards.’

Atahualpa asked as a favour of the Governor to be allowed to speak to any of his people who might be there. ‘The Governor immediately ordered them to bring two leading Indians who had been taken in the battle. The Inca asked them whether many men were dead. They told him that the entire plain was covered with them. He then sent to tell the troops who remained not to flee but to come to serve him, for he was not dead but in the power of the Christians…. The Governor asked the interpreter what he had said, and the interpreter told him everything.’

The Spaniards immediately asked the glaring question: Why had a ruler of Atahualpa’s experience and power walked into such an obvious trap? The answer was quite clear. The Inca had totally misjudged and underestimated his opponents. Marcavilca chief of Poechos and the noble envoy who had spent two days with the invaders had both seen the Spaniards at their most disorganised. According to Atahualpa they ‘had told him that the Christians were not fighting men and that the horses were unsaddled at night. If he [the noble] were given two hundred Indians he could tie them all up. [Atahualpa said] that this captain and the chief … had deceived him.’

The Inca admitted the fate he had planned for the strangers. ‘He answered half smiling that … he had intended to capture the Governor but the reverse had happened, and for this reason he was so pensive.’ ‘ He told of his great intentions: what was to have been done with the Spaniards and the horses…. He had decided to take and breed the horses and mares, which were the thing he admired most; and to sacrifice some of the Spaniards to the sun and castrate others for service in his household and in guarding his women.’ There is no reason to doubt this explanation. Atahualpa, flushed with victory in the civil war, could afford to play cat-and-mouse with the extraordinary strangers that had marched from some other world into the midst of his army. He could not conceive that, with the odds so completely in his favour, the Spaniards would be the first to attack. Nor could he imagine that an attack would come without warning or provocation, before he had even held his meeting with Governor Pizarro.

The Spaniards themselves had acted in terror and desperation, and could scarcely believe the crushing success of their ambush. ‘Truly, it was not accomplished by our own forces for there were so few of us. It was by the grace of God, which is great.’