ON 25 September 1513 a force of weary Spanish explorers cut through the forests of Panama and were confronted by an ocean: the Mar del Sur, the South Sea or Pacific Ocean. This expedition was led by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, and one of its senior officers was a thirty-five-year-old captain called Francisco Pizarro. Six years after the first discovery the Spaniards established the town of Panama on the Pacific shore of the isthmus. Panama became a base in which to build ships to explore and exploit this unknown sea. It was the threshold of a vast expansion.

Spain was developing with explosive force during these years. Throughout the Middle Ages the crusading knights of Castile had been driving the Mohammedans out of the Iberian peninsula. The final victory of this reconquest came in January 1492, with the surrender of Granada to the Castilians under King Ferdinand of Aragon. A few months later in that same year Christopher Columbus sailed westwards into the Atlantic and made a landfall in the Caribbean. The ensuing years were spent establishing a Spanish presence in the islands of the West Indies and exploring the northern coast of South America. Francisco Pizarro took part in many of these explorations, tough and unrewarding raids on the tribes of the American forests.

The European conception of the Americas – or Indies, as they were called – changed dramatically when in 1519 Hernán Cortés discovered and invaded the mighty Aztec empire in Mexico. Cortés led only some five hundred men and sixteen horses, but he skilfully won the alliance of rebellious subject tribes. By adroit diplomacy and the endurance and ruthless courage of his men Cortés conquered an empire of exotic brilliance. Spain, a country of under ten million inhabitants, had seized a land with a population and wealth as great as its own. Cortés’s achievement fired the romantic Spanish imagination. Younger sons of feudal families and Spaniards of all classes sailed eagerly to seek adventure and riches across the Atlantic.

While Cortés was conquering Mexico, Spaniards were beginning to explore the Pacific coast of South America. In 1522 Pascual de Andagoya sailed some two hundred miles along the coast of Colombia and ascended the river San Juan. He was seeking a tribe called Virú or Birú; and the name of this tribe, altered to ‘Perú’, came to be applied to a country lying far to the south.

Three partners acquired Andagoya’s ships and succeeded in raising money to finance another voyage. The three were Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, both citizens of Panama and holders of quotas of Indians there, and Hernando de Luque, a priest who was apparently acting as agent of the trio’s financial backer, Judge Gaspar de Espinosa. Pizarro sailed in November 1524 with eighty men and four horses. This first expedition was not a success: it reached a place that the Spaniards called, for obvious reasons, Port of Hunger, and Almagro lost an eye in a skirmish with primitive natives at ‘Burned Village’. No riches were found along the coast, and the adventurers had difficulty persuading Espinosa to finance a further attempt.

The three partners entered into a formal contract on 10 March 1526* and Pizarro sailed eight months later. He took some 160 men and a few horses in two small ships commanded by the able pilot Bartolomé Ruiz. The expedition divided: Pizarro camped at the river San Juan, Almagro returned for reinforcements, and Ruiz sailed on southwards. Ruiz’s ships crossed the equator for the first time in the Pacific, and then, suddenly, came the first contact with the Inca civilisation.

The Spanish ships encountered and captured an ocean-going balsa raft fitted with fine cotton sails. No one who saw that raft was in any doubt that it was the product of an advanced civilisation. The vessel was on a trading mission to barter Inca artefacts for crimson shells and corals. A breathless report of the raft was sent back to King Charles I, who was also Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. ‘They were carrying many pieces of silver and gold as personal ornaments … including crowns and diadems, belts and bracelets, armour for the legs and breastplates; tweezers and rattles and strings and clusters of beads and rubies; mirrors decorated with silver, and cups and other drinking vessels. They were carrying many wool and cotton mantles and Moorish tunics … and other pieces of clothing coloured with cochineal, crimson, blue, yellow and all other colours, and worked with different types of ornate embroidery, in figures of birds, animals, fish and trees. They had some tiny weights to weigh gold … There were small stones in bead bags: emeralds and chalcedonies and other jewels and pieces of crystal and resin. They were taking all this to trade for fish shells from which they make counters, coral-coloured scarlet and white.’f Eleven of the twenty men on the raft leaped into the sea at the moment of capture, and the pilot Ruiz set six others free on shore. But he shrewdly kept three men to be taught Spanish and trained as interpreters for a conquest of this mysterious empire.

Ruiz rejoined Pizarro and ferried the expedition south to explore the coast of Ecuador. They returned to the uninhabited Isla del Gallo, Island of the Cock, in the Tumaco estuary. These coasts are humid, barren of food and often infested with noxious mangrove swamps. The Spaniards suffered terribly. Three or four a week were dying of hunger and disease. When the expedition had lost a large part of its men, a desperate appeal from the survivors reached the Governor of Panama. He opened a full-scale enquiry on 29 August 1527, and ordered that any men who wished to return should be evacuated. The expedition had been maintained largely by the fanatical determination of Francisco Pizarro. He now drew a line across the sand of the Isla del Gallo and challenged his men to cross it and remain with him. Thirteen brave men did so. They stayed with Pizarro on the island and ensured the continuance of the expedition.

Pizarro’s perseverance was rewarded the following year. He sailed south in a voyage of true exploration, with only a handful of soldiers and none of the baggage of an invasion. The expedition entered the Gulf of Guayaquil, and sighted its first Inca city at Tumbez. An Inca noble visited the ship and a Spaniard, Alonso de Molina, landed with a present of pigs and chickens. A tall and dashing Greek, Pedro de Candía, also landed to confirm Molina’s description of Tumbez as a well-ordered town. Here at last was the advanced civilisation that the adventurers had been seeking so ardently. Candía astounded the inhabitants by firing an arquebus at a target, but this first contact between Spaniards and subjects of the Inca was very cordial.

Pizarro sailed on down the coast of Peru as far as the modern Santa river. Two further landings confirmed the magnitude of the discovery and the sophistication of this mysterious empire. The expedition returned with evidence: llamas, pottery and metal vessels, fine clothing, and more boys to be trained as interpreters. Pizarro’s men had glimpsed the edges of a great civilisation, the product of centuries of development in complete isolation from the rest of mankind.

The explorers were excited by their discoveries and the potential for conquest, but they could not arouse the enthusiasm of the Governor of Panama. They decided to send Pizarro back to Spain to win royal approval, and to raise more men and money. Pizarro was well received by King Charles at Toledo in mid-1528. He was fortunate that his visit coincided with the return of Cortés, who charmed the court ladies with lavish presents of Mexican treasure, and was rewarded with a marquisate and other honours. Cortés encouraged Pizarro; but it was the brilliant inspiration of the conquest of Mexico that made it easy for Pizarro to recruit keen young adventurers in his native Trujillo de Extremadura. King Charles had to leave Toledo, but on 26 July 1529 the Queen signed a Capitulación authorising Pizarro to discover and conquer ‘Perú’. Pizarro was named Governor and Captain-General of Peru, Almagro became commandant of Tumbez, and Luque was appointed Protector of the Indians, with a promise of becoming Bishop of Tumbez.*

Pizarro sailed from Seville in January 1530 with a flotilla full of wouldbe conquerors, and including his younger half-brothers Hernando, Juan and Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco Martín de Alcántara. In Panama, Diego de Almagro was understandably disgusted with his meagre appointment in the Toledo agreement. He was persuaded to continue the enterprise only by being promised the title Adelantado (Marshal) and a governorship of territory beyond that of Pizarro.

Pizarro’s third voyage sailed from Panama on 27 December 1530, but inexplicably chose to land on the Ecuadorean coast long before reaching Tumbez. Months of hardships followed: a wearisome march along the tropical coast, an epidemic of buboes, a stay on the dreary island of Puná in the Gulf of Guayaquil and many skirmishes with primitive natives. The most serious battle took place when the expedition attempted to cross on rafts from Puná to the mainland of Inca Peru. The conquistadores were finally beginning to invade the Inca empire, but they were in a remote corner, far from its fabulous cities and treasures. Tumbez, the site of the promised bishopric, was in ruins and there were no signs of a Spaniard who had chosen to remain there. The natives said that this destruction was the result of a civil war within the Inca empire.

The year 1531 and part of 1532 had elapsed since this third expedition left Panama, but Pizarro advanced cautiously. He left Tumbez in May 1532 and moved to the district of Poechos on the Chira river. He spent the ensuing months exploring the arid north-western corner of Peru. Weeks were spent ferrying some of the men from Tumbez to Tangarara, 120 miles to the south. Various reinforcements sailed down the coast to raise the spirits of Pizarro’s men: the seasoned conqueror Sebastián de Benalcázar brought thirty men from Nicaragua, and the dashing Hernando de Soto came with another contingent. Pizarro killed a local chief called Amotape, apparently to intimidate the natives of this outlying province. He then selected a site for the first Spanish settlement in this strange new country: in mid-September a small ceremony marked the foundation of San Miguel de Piura near Tangarara. Some sixty Spaniards were left as the first citizens of San Miguel, and Pizarro struck out into the Inca empire with a tiny army: 62 horsemen and 106 foot-soldiers. The months of hesitation were over.

Pizarro’s force marched out of San Miguel on 24 September 1532. It spent ten days at Piura, paused at Zarán (modern Serrán), Motux (Motupe), and reached Saña on 6 November. Up to now the Spaniards had remained on the coastal plain, a narrow strip of desert between the Pacific and the Andes mountains, but on 8 November they decided to turn inland and march up into the sierra. The Incas were mountain people, with lungs enlarged by evolution to breathe rarefied air. Although they had conquered the many civilisations of the hot coastal valleys, the true Inca empire lay along the ranges of the Andes and it was here that any conqueror must confront them.

With striking good fortune, Pizarro’s Spaniards marched into Peru precisely at a moment of great passion in a war of dynastic succession. When Pizarro first sailed down the Pacific a few years earlier the Inca empire was ruled in tranquillity by one venerated supreme Inca, Huayna-Capac. His possessions stretched for almost three thousand miles along the Andes, from central Chile to the south of modern Colombia – a distance greater than that across the continental United States, or Europe from the Atlantic to the Caspian. With the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Amazonian forests to the east, the Incas were confident that they had absorbed almost all civilisation.

Huayna-Capac had for many years been leading the empire’s professional army against tribes in the extreme north, Pasto and Popayan in Colombia. The fighting was stubborn and the campaigns dragged on. The Inca and his court had long been absent from the imperial capital Cuzco, and Huayna-Capac was considering establishing a second capital in the north at Quito or Tumibamba. It was during these campaigns that Huayna-Capac was first informed of the appearance of tall strangers from the sea. He was destined never to see any Europeans. His army and court were struck by a violent epidemic that killed Huayna-Capac in a delirious fever, at some time between 1525 and 1527. The disease may have been malaria, but it could have been smallpox. The Spaniards brought smallpox with them from Europe and it spread fiercely around the Caribbean among peoples who had no immunity. It could easily have swept from tribe to tribe across Colombia and struck the Inca armies long before the Spaniards themselves sailed down the coast. The epidemic ‘consumed the greater part’ of the Inca court including Huayna-Capac’s probable heir, Ninan Cuyuchi. ‘Countless thousands of common people also died.’â€

The premature deaths of the great Inca Huayna-Capac and his heir left an ambiguous situation. The most likely successor was the Inca’s son Huascar, and he succeeded as ruler of the capital city Cuzco. Another son, Atahualpa, was left in charge of the imperial army at Quito. He was probably acting as provincial governor of the area on behalf of his brother, although a number of chroniclers said that the dying Inca had decided to divide the vast empire into two sections, one ruled from Cuzco, the other from Quito. We shall never know the exact nature of the legacy. What we do know is that, after a few years of quiet, civil war broke out between the two brothers. Different chroniclers gave different versions of the origins of this conflict, depending on the sympathies of their native informants. Being Europeans, most chroniclers were at pains to discover which brother, Huascar or Atahualpa, had the best ‘legitimate’ claim to the throne. This was irrelevant, for the Incas did not stress primogeniture. They were concerned only that the new Inca should be of royal blood and fit to rule. If the eldest or favourite son designated as heir by his father proved weak or incompetent, he was soon deposed by a more aggressive brother in a civil war or palace revolution. Most of the eleven Incas who had ruled up to this time had succeeded only after some such struggle, and the result was a line of remarkable rulers.*

When the civil war broke out, Atahualpa had possession of the professional army, which was still fighting on the northern marches under its generals Chalcuchima, Quisquis and Rumiñavi. Huascar had the loyalty of most of the country. It took only a few years for relations between the two brothers to degenerate into open conflict. Huascar’s militia army attempted to invade Quito, but after initial success was driven south through the Andes by the seasoned forces loyal to Atahualpa. A series of crushing victories by the Quitans culminated in the defeat and capture of Huascar in a pitched battle outside Cuzco. Many peoples of the empire regarded the victorious Quitans as hostile invaders, and the professionals responded with the brutality they had learned in the northern campaigns. Atahualpa ravaged the province of the Canari tribe as punishment for its chief’s intrigues. Quisquis, the general who conquered Cuzco, set out to exterminate all members of Huascar’s family to dispose of any other pretenders. He sent the captive Inca northwards under strong escort. Chalcuchima, Atahualpa’s supreme commander, held the area of the central Andes with another army at Jauja, while Rumiñavi was the general left in command of the Quitan homeland. Atahualpa himself marched triumphantly southwards in the wake of his generals.

Pizarro started his march down the Peruvian coast just as this fierce civil war was ending. His men saw ample evidence of the recent fighting. Tumbez was in ruins. When Hernando de Soto rode inland on a reconnaissance he reached a town called Cajas which was ‘in considerable ruin from the fighting that Atahualpa had waged. In the hills were the bodies of many Indians hanging from trees because they had not agreed to surrender: for all these villages were originally under Cuzco [Huascar], whom they acknowledged as master and to whom they paid tribute.’

When Pizarro learned about the civil war he immediately grasped how useful it could be for him. Cortés had brilliantly manipulated rival factions during the conquest of Mexico twelve years before. Pizarro hoped to do likewise.

By another extraordinary coincidence, the victorious Atahualpa happened to be camped in the mountains at Cajamarca, not far from Pizarro’s line of march. Reports reached Atahualpa as soon as the Spaniards landed on the mainland, and he was told that they were pillaging the countryside and abusing the natives. But Atahualpa was too engrossed in the civil war to be particularly concerned with the movements of the 150 strangers. He was fully occupied in leading his army, arranging the occupation of the newly won empire, planning his own journey to Cuzco, and awaiting reports from his commanders to the south. When Pizarro and his men marched out of San Miguel, Atahualpa did not yet know whether Quisquis had won or lost the battle for Cuzco. But he sent one of his close advisers to investigate the strangers. This Inca noble reached Cajas while Soto’s reconnaissance was there, and at once impressed the Spaniards with his authority. They noted that the local chief ‘became greatly frightened and stood up, for he did not dare remain seated in his presence’. And when the envoy reached Pizarro’s camp, ‘he entered as casually as if he had been brought up all his life among Spaniards. After having delivered his embassy … he enjoyed himself for two or three days among us.’ Atahualpa’s messenger brought presents of stuffed ducks and two pottery vessels representing castles. The more suspicious Spaniards assumed that the ducks, which had been skinned, were intended to represent the fate that awaited the intruders, while the model castles were to indicate that many more fortresses lay ahead.*

The envoy had also been ordered to report on Pizarro’s force. During the two days he was in the Spaniards’ midst, he went about examining every detail of their horses and armour and counting their numbers. He asked some Spaniards to show him their swords. ‘He happened to go up to one Spaniard to do this, and put his hand on his beard. That Spaniard gave him many blows. When Don Francisco Pizarro heard of this, he issued a proclamation that no one should touch the Indian, whatever he did.’ The envoy invited Pizarro to proceed to Cajamarca to meet Atahualpa. Pizarro accepted, and sent the Inca a present of a fine Holland shirt and two goblets of Venetian glass.*

The small force of invaders turned inland, away from the Pacific coast and up into the Andes. The Spaniards probably marched up an Inca trail ascending the Chancay stream past the town of Chongoyape. From the sands of the coastal desert they would have passed through plantations of sugar and cotton. As they climbed through the Andean foothills the valley narrowed into a canyon whose sides would have been covered in fields and terraces. At the source of the Chancay Pizarro’s force probably swung south along the watershed of the Andes, crossing treeless savannah at some 13,500 feet. They were apprehensive, excited by the rapid change of altitude, and disquieted by the sight of Inca forts and watchtowers overlooking their route. But Atahualpa had decided to allow the strangers to penetrate the mountains, and his warriors did nothing to impede their advance.

The Spaniards were fortunate that Atahualpa had decided not to oppose their march into the mountains, for they were moving across difficult country, a region rarely penetrated to this day. Hernando Pizarro wrote: ‘The road was so bad that they could very easily have taken us there or at another pass which we found between here and Cajamarca. For we could not use the horses on the roads, not even with skill, and off the roads we could take neither horses nor foot-soldiers.’ This assessment was reasonable: less professional Inca armies destroyed a force as large as this in similar mountainous country four years later.

Finally, on Friday 15 November, the Spanish force emerged from the hills and looked down onto the valley of Cajamarca. This is a beautiful, fertile valley, only a few miles wide but remarkably flat – a very rare distinction in the vertical world of the Andes, where most rivers rush through precipitous canyons, and the only flat ground is on the high, infertile savannahs. The valley today has cows grazing beneath eucalyptus groves, and boasts a chocolate factory – all imported and unusual sights. The ground is strewn with millions of potsherds, painted with elaborate geometric designs of the pre-Inca Cajamarca civilisations, and on the desolate hills above the town are weird watercourses and incomprehensible designs cut into rock outcrops. Modern Cajamarca is a charming red-roofed Spanish town, with fine colonial monasteries and a lovely cathedral (plate 1).

Pizarro halted his men at the edge of the valley to await the rear-guard, and then rode down in three squadrons in careful marching order. Atahualpa had the tents of his army’s camp spread out across a hillside beyond the town.’ The Indians’ camp looked like a very beautiful city…. So many tents were visible that we were truly filled with great apprehension. We never thought that Indians could maintain such a proud estate nor have so many tents in such good order. Nothing like this had been seen in the Indies up to then. It filled all us Spaniards with fear and confusion. But it was not appropriate to show any fear, far less to turn back. For had they sensed any weakness in us, the very Indians we were bringing with us would have killed us. So, with a show of good spirits, and after having thoroughly observed the town and tents, we descended into the valley and entered the town of Cajamarca.’

Cajamarca itself proved to contain only four or five hundred of its normal two thousand inhabitants. There was a sun temple in an enclosure at its edge, and a series of buildings full of holy women. These chosen women formed part of the empire’s official sun religion, but were also one of the privileges of the ruling Inca hierarchy. They were chosen as girls, for either their noble birth or outstanding beauty, and were then moved to cloistered colleges in the provincial capitals such as Cajas or Cajamarca. These chosen girls, acllas, spent four years weaving fine cloth or brewing chicha for the Inca and his priests and officials. Some then became mamaconas, remained in perpetual chastity and spent their lives in the service of the sun and shrines. Others were given as wives to Inca nobles or tribal chiefs, and the most beautiful became concubines of the Inca himself.

The Spaniards first saw a ‘nunnery’ of acllas and mamaconas when Hernando de Soto led a reconnaissance inland to Cajas. It is easy to imagine the effect of this building full of beautiful girls on men who had been without women for months. Diego de Trujillo recalled that ‘the women were brought out on to the square and there were over five hundred of them. Captain [Soto] gave many of them to the Spaniards. The Inca’s envoy grew very indignant and said: “How dare you do this when Atahualpa is only twenty leagues from here. Not a man of you will remain alive!”‘

Francisco Pizarro assembled his men in the square of Cajamarca, which was surrounded on three sides by long buildings each of which had a series of doors on to the open space. It began to hail, so the men took shelter in the empty buildings. The Spaniards were apprehensive but eager to behave correctly. Francisco Pizarro therefore sent Hernando de Soto to visit Atahualpa with fifteen horsemen and Martin, one of the interpreters acquired on the second voyage. They were to ask him how he wished the strangers to lodge. Shortly after Soto’s departure, Hernando Pizarro grew alarmed. As he explained: ‘I went to talk to the Governor, who had gone to inspect the town in case the Indians should attack us by night. I told him that in my view the sending of fifteen of the best horsemen was a mistake … If Atahualpa decided to do anything, [the fifteen] were not enough to defend themselves; and if some reverse befell them it would be a very serious loss to him. He therefore ordered me to go with a further twenty horsemen who were in a fit state to go, and once there to act as I saw fit.’ Fortunately for us, the contingents sent to visit Atahualpa on that first evening included some of the chroniclers who left eyewitness accounts: Hernando Pizarro, Miguel de Estete, Juan Ruiz de Arce, Diego de Trujillo and possibly Cristobal de Mena and Pedro Pizarro.

A paved road ran for the few miles between Cajamarca and the Inca’s residence. Atahualpa was in a small building close to some baths, the natural hot springs of Kónoj that still hiss and bubble out of the ground to this day. The Spaniards advanced with trepidation through the silent ranks of the Inca army. They had to cross two streams, and left the bulk of the horsemen at the second stretch of water while the leaders rode in to find Atahualpa. ‘The pleasure house … had two towers [rising] from four chambers, with a courtyard in the middle. In this court, a pool had been made and two pipes of water, one hot and one cold, entered it. The two pipes came from springs … beside one another. The Inca and his women used to bathe in the pool. There was a lawn at the door of this building and he was there with his women.’ The moment had finally come when the first Spaniards were to confront the ruler of Peru. Here was ‘ that great lord Atahualpa … about whom we had been given such reports and told so many things’. ‘He was seated on a small stool, very low on the ground, as the Turks and Moors are accustomed to sit,’ ‘with all the majesty in the world, surrounded by all his women and with many chiefs near him. Before arriving there, there had been another cluster of chiefs, and so forth with each according to his rank.’

Atahualpa was wearing the royal insignia. Every important Peruvian wore a llautu, a series of cords wound round the head. But the Inca alone had a royal tassel hanging from the front of this circlet. It consisted of ‘very fine scarlet wool, cut very even, and cleverly held towards the middle by small golden bugles. The wool was corded, but below the bugles it was unwound and this was the part that fell on to the forehead … This tassel fell to the eyebrows, an inch thick, and covered his entire forehead.’ Because of the tassel, Atahualpa kept his eyes downcast and Soto could get no reaction from him. ‘Hernando de Soto arrived above him with his horse, but he remained still, making no movement. [Soto] came so close that the horse’s nostrils stirred the fringe that the Inca had placed on his forehead. But the Inca never moved. Captain Hernando de Soto took a ring from his finger and gave it to him as a token of peace and friendship on behalf of the Christians. He took it with very little sign of appreciation.’ Soto delivered a prepared speech to the effect that he was a representative of the Governor, and that the Governor would be delighted if he would go to visit him. There was no reaction from Atahualpa. Instead, one of his chiefs answered for him and said that the Inca was on the last day of a ceremonial fast.

At this point Hernando Pizarro arrived and delivered a speech similar to Soto’s. Atahualpa apparently gathered that the new arrival was the Governor’s brother, for he now looked up and began to converse. He told of the first report about the Christians that he had received from Marcavilca, chief of Poechos on the Zuricari river (the modern Chira) between Tumbez and San Miguel. This chief ‘sent to tell me that you treated the chiefs badly and threw them into chains, and he sent me an iron collar. He says that he killed three Christians and one horse.’ Hernando Pizarro responded hotly to the latter claim. ‘I told him that those men of San Miguel were like women, and that one horse was enough [to conquer] that entire land. When he saw us fight he would see what sort of men we were.’ Hernando Pizarro warmed to his subject and became more expansive. He told Atahualpa that ‘the Governor [Francisco Pizarro] loved him dearly. If he had any enemy he should tell [the Governor] and he would send to conquer that person. [Atahualpa] told me that four days’ march away, there were some very savage Indians with whom he could do nothing: Christians should go there to help his men. I told him that the Governor would send ten horsemen, which was enough for the entire land. His Indians would be needed only to search for those who hid. He smiled, as someone who did not think much of us.’

Atahualpa invited the Spaniards to dismount and dine with him. They refused, and he offered them drink. After some hesitation for fear of poison, they accepted. Two women immediately appeared with golden jugs of the native maize beverage, chicha, and ceremonial drinks were exchanged with the Inca. The sun was now setting, and Hernando Pizarro asked permission to leave. The Inca wanted one Spaniard to remain there with him, but they claimed that this would be contrary to their orders. So they took their leave, with Atahualpa’s instructions that they were to make their quarters in three houses on the square, leaving only the main fortress for his own residence. He also gave them the assurance they most wanted: he himself would go to Cajamarca the following day to visit Pizarro.

During the meeting, Atahualpa had been ‘closely examining the horses, which undoubtedly seemed good to him. Appreciating this, Hernando de Soto brought up a little horse that had been trained to rear up, and asked [the Inca] whether he wanted him to ride it in the courtyard. He indicated that he did, and [Soto] manoeuvred it there for a while with good grace. The nag was spirited and made much foam at its mouth. He was amazed at this, and at seeing the agility with which it wheeled. But the common people showed even greater admiration and there was much whispering. One squadron of troops drew back when they saw the horse coming towards them. Those who did this paid for it that night with their lives, for Atahualpa ordered them to be killed because they had shown fear.’

The Spaniards now had time to ponder the seriousness of their situation. ‘We took many views and opinions among ourselves about what should be done. All were full of fear, for we were so few and were so deep in the land where we could not be reinforced…. All assembled in the Governor’s quarters to debate what should be done the following day…. Few slept, and we kept watch in the square, from which the camp fires of the Indian army could be seen. It was a fearful sight. Most of them were on a hillside and close to one another: it looked like a brilliantly star-studded sky.’ Cristóbal de Mena recalled how the danger broke down class differences among the Spaniards. ‘There was no distinction between great and small, or between foot-soldiers and horsemen. Everyone performed sentry rounds fully armed that night. So also did the good old Governor, who went about encouraging the men. On that day all were knights.’

The Spaniards now realised, for the first time, the sophistication of the empire they had penetrated. They found themselves isolated from the sea by days of marching over difficult mountains. They were in the midst of a victorious army in full battle order, which Soto and Hernando Pizarro estimated at forty thousand effectives -‘ but they said this to encourage the men, for he had over eighty thousand.’ Added to this was the fear of the unknown, ‘for the Spaniards had no experience of how these Indians fought or what spirit they had’. From what they had seen of Atahualpa himself, his well-disciplined army, and the brutality of the recent civil war, they had no reason to hope for a friendly reception of any long duration.

The men Pizarro was leading were skilled and seasoned soldiers. Many had gained experience in the conquests in and around the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America. Pizarro himself had first arrived in the Indies in 1502 and was now, in his mid-fifties, one of the richest and most important citizens of Panama.† Although he could not read and was a poor horseman, his command of the expedition was never in question for a moment – any friction that occurred was between his captains, Diego de Almagro, Hernando de Soto, Hernando Pizarro and Sebastián de Benalcázar. Other members of the expedition had gained experience in the battles of northern Italy and north Africa that were making Spain the leading nation in Europe and the Spanish tercios its most dreaded soldiers. Even the youngest members – for most of the Spaniards were in their twenties – compensated for any lack of fighting experience by skill in military exercises and by courage and dash. In the feudal structure of Spanish society an ambitious man could rise only by marrying an heiress or by warfare. There was the spirit of a gold rush about this expedition, fortified by some of the conviction of a crusade.

Despite their experience, Pizarro’s 150 men had marched into an impasse and were now thoroughly frightened and desperate. All that they could decide during that anxious night was to employ the various tactics and advantages that had proved successful in the Caribbean. They could use surprise, attacking first without provocation, and take advantage of the novelty of their appearance and fighting methods. Their weapons – horses, steel swords and armour – were far superior to anything they had encountered so far in the Indies, although they were not so sure about the Incas. They had in mind the tactic that had succeeded so well in the conquest of Mexico: the kidnapping of the head of state. They could also try to make capital of the internal dissensions within the Inca empire – Hernando Pizarro had already offered the services of Spaniards to help Atahualpa in his inter-tribal fighting. Possibly their greatest advantage lay in the self-assurance of belonging to a more advanced civilisation and the knowledge that their purpose was conquest: to the Indians, they were still an unknown quantity of uncertain origin and unsure intentions.

It was agreed that Governor Pizarro should decide on the spur of the moment the course of action to be adopted when Atahualpa was in Cajamarca the following day, Saturday 16 November. But careful plans were made for a surprise attack and capture of the Inca. ‘ The Governor had a dais on which Atahualpa was to sit. It was agreed that he should be enticed on to it by kind words and that he should then order his men to return to their quarters. For the Governor was afraid to come to grips when there were so many native warriors and we were so few.’ The attack was to be made only if success appeared possible or if the natives made any threatening move. There were two more peaceful options. Atahualpa might be persuaded to make some act of political or spiritual submission. Or, if the natives seemed too powerful, the Spaniards could maintain the fiction of friendship and hope for a more favourable opportunity in the future.

The square of Cajamarca was ideally suited to the Spaniards’ plan. Long low buildings occupied three sides of it, each some two hundred yards long. Pizarro stationed the cavalry in two of these, in three contingents of fifteen to twenty, under the command of his lieutenants Hernando de Soto, Hernando Pizarro and Sebastián de Benalcázar. The buildings each had some twenty openings on to the square, ‘almost as if they had been built for that purpose’. ‘All were to charge out of their lodgings, with the horsemen mounted on their horses.’ Pizarro himself, being a poor horseman, remained in the third building with a few horse and some twenty foot. His contingent was ‘charged with the capture of Atahualpa’s person, should he come suspiciously as it appeared that he would’.

Roads ran down from the town and entered the square between these buildings. Groups of foot and horse were concealed in these alleys to close them. The lower side of the square was enclosed by a long wall of tapia, compacted clay, with a tower in the middle that was entered from the outside; beyond this lay the open plain. At the middle of the square, apparently on the upper side, was a stronger stone structure that the Spaniards regarded as a fort. Pizarro had the remainder of the infantry guard the gates of this, possibly to preserve it as a final refuge. Inside he stationed Captain Pedro de Candía with ‘eight or nine musketeers and four small pieces of artillery’. The firing of these arquebuses was the pre-arranged signal for the Spaniards to charge into the square.

Atahualpa was in no hurry to make the short journey across the plain to Cajamarca. He had just finished a fast and there was drinking to be done to celebrate this and the victory of his forces at Cuzco. The morning went by with no sign of movement from the native encampment. The Spaniards became increasingly jittery. The familiar noble envoy arrived from Atahualpa saying that he intended to come with his men armed. ‘The Governor replied: “Tell your lord to come … however he wishes. In whatever way he comes, I will receive him as a friend and brother.”‘ A later messenger said that the natives would be unarmed. The Spaniards ‘heard mass and commended ourselves to God, begging him to keep us in his hand’. Atahualpa’s army finally began to move at midday and ‘in a short while the entire plain was full of men, rearranging themselves at every step, waiting for him to emerge from the camp’. The Spaniards were concealed in their buildings, under orders not to emerge until they heard the artillery signal. The young Pedro Pizarro recalled: ‘I saw many Spaniards urinate without noticing it out of pure terror.’

Atahualpa had clearly decided to turn his visit to the extraordinary strangers into a ceremonial parade. ‘All the Indians wore large gold and silver discs like crowns on their heads. They were apparently all coming in their ceremonial clothes.’ ‘In front was a squadron of Indians wearing a livery of chequered colours, like a chessboard. As these advanced they removed the straws from the ground and swept the roadway.’ ‘They pointed their arms towards the ground to clear anything that was on it – which was scarcely necessary, as the townspeople kept it well swept…. They were singing a song by no means lacking grace for us who heard it.’

As the tension mounted, Atahualpa paused on a meadow half a mile from the town. The road was still full of men, and more natives were still emerging from the camp. There was another exchange of messengers. Atahualpa started to pitch his tents, as it was by now late afternoon: he said that he intended to stay the night there. This was the last thing Pizarro wanted, for the Spaniards were particularly frightened of a night attack. In desperation, Pizarro sent one Hernando de Aldana ‘to tell him to enter the square and come to visit him before night fell. When the messenger reached Atahualpa, he made a reverence and told him, by signs, that he should go to where the Governor was.’ He assured the Inca ‘that no harm or insult would befall him. He could therefore come without fear – not that the Inca showed any sign of fear.’

Atahualpa complied. With the sun sinking low, he continued his progress into the town. He left most of the armed men outside on the plain, ‘but brought with him five or six thousand men, unarmed except that they carried small battle-axes, slings and pouches of stones underneath their tunics’. Behind the vanguard, ‘in a very fine litter with the ends of its timbers covered in silver, came the figure of Atahualpa. Eighty lords carried him on their shoulders, all wearing a very rich blue livery. His own person was very richly dressed, with his crown on his head and a collar of large emeralds around his neck. He was seated on the litter, on a small stool with a rich saddle cushion. He stopped when he reached the middle of the square, with half his body exposed.’ ‘The litter was lined with parrot feathers of many colours and embellished with plates of gold and silver…. Behind it came two other litters and two hammocks in which other leading personages travelled. Then came many men in squadrons with headdresses of gold and silver. As soon as the first entered the square they parted to make way for the others. As Atahualpa reached the centre of the square he made them all halt, with the litter in which he was travelling and the other litters raised on high. Men continued to enter the square without interruption. A captain came out in front and went up to the fort on the square which contained the artillery’ and ‘in a sense took possession of it with a banner placed on a lance’. This stiff banner was Atahualpa’s royal standard, with his personal coat of arms.