The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (22 page)

Sapa Inka, Atawallpa ruled an empire encompassing almost one thousand square miles and approximately ten million subjects.1 He had an

army of at least one hundred thousand men, so it is unlikely that he

considered the band of fewer than two hundred “barbarians” much

of a risk. True, the Sapa Inka’s advisors and generals were troubled by

reports of new weapons and horses, but Atawallpa had far more serious concerns. Having just vanquished his half-brother Waskar in a

brutal civil war, his main concern was to consolidate power and wrest

the Inkan capital of Cuzco from his mutinous sibling. The strangers,

who had left themselves dangerously exposed by rashly blundering

into the heart of the Inkan Empire, could now be easily dealt with.

Although Atawallpa’s priorities were entirely understandable, he

should have taken the Spaniards more seriously. Led by Francisco

Pizarro, the barely literate illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman,

111

112 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

the conquistadors were a rapacious band of fortune seekers. Far from

being professional soldiers, they were armed speculators who won

royal sanction by promising to spread Christianity and carve out a

New World empire for the Spanish Crown. Above all, these relatively

common men sought to become rich enough to join the ranks of the

lower nobility.

Initially, Pizarro and his partner, Diego de Almagro, struggled

to fi nd suffi ciently lootable prizes along the Pacifi c coast of Central

and South America. Their fortunes changed in 1528 when their ally

Bartolomé Ruiz captured a raft carrying gold and silver jewelry, gems,

and fi nely woven cloth. Drawn by the strong whiff of treasure, Ruiz

continued southward until he found an Inkan outpost at Tumbez.

Pizarro used Ruiz’s booty to convince Charles V to grant him a
capit-

ulación
, an imperial contract giving him the authority to conquer the

Andean highlands as a knight, captain general, and, ultimately, royal

governor of the new lands that came to be called Peru.2 Almagro was

to be the commandant of Tumbez with the promise of a governorship

over the as yet undiscovered regions lying beyond Pizarro’s realm.

In return, the Spaniards promised the Crown that they would civilize

the Andeans by turning them into Christians.

Armed with this royal sanction, Pizarro claimed the right to lead

the expedition to Peru, which included his half-brothers Hernando,

Juan, and Gonzalo, while Almagro raised reinforcements. His troop of

approximately two hundred conquistadors and thirty horses reached

Tumbez in 1531. When Ruiz fi rst encountered the city three years

earlier it had been secure and prosperous under the rule of Atawallpa’s father, Wayna Qhapaq. Since then, the Sapa Inka’s death from

what was most likely smallpox or measles had plunged the empire

into a civil war between his sons so widespread in its devastation that

the Pizarrists found Tumbez in ruins. Relying on captured translators, they learned that the Inkas were precariously divided. Local

people also warned that Atawallpa was brutal and ruthless, but the

conquistadors’ relatively easy victories over Inka vassals on the coast

gave them the confi dence to push inland.

It took Pizarro two years to reach the plaza at Cajamarca. As the

conquistadors plundered their way into the highlands they learned

that common Andeans had no love for their imperial rulers. Although

the Spaniards did not know it, the Inka Empire was little more than

a century old. It was still in the process of assimilating the recently

Spanish

Peru 113

conquered peripheral territories that the Pizarrists encountered on

their inward march. Pizarro made alliances with these restive Inkan

subjects as he grew more conversant in Andean politics. But he also

covered his bets by sending a message to Atawallpa offering Spanish military support in the war with the Sapa Inka’s brother Waskar.

Atawallpa in turn granted Pizarro an audience, and the two leaders

exchanged gifts through their intermediaries.

Not surprisingly, the Inkas and Spaniards both secretly prepared

for a military confrontation. Plotting to entrap the conquistadors,

Atawallpa bragged that he would sacrifi ce some of the Pizarrists to

the sun god and turn the survivors into eunuchs to serve the women

of his court. The nobles who attended him in the plaza concealed

weapons and armor under their clothes, and a force of twelve thousand men stood at the ready throughout the town. If these forces

somehow proved insuffi cient to deal with 62 Spanish horsemen

and 106 foot soldiers, Atawallpa’s seventy-thousand-man army was

camped nearby.

Pizarro and his men realized the precariousness of their situation.

They gambled that horses, armor, guns, military experience, and sheer

ruthlessness would compensate for their lack of manpower if they

could convince Atawallpa to meet them in the narrow confi nes of the

plaza. On open ground, the Inkas would overwhelm them. Pizarro

therefore sent a delegation of horsemen under Hernando de Soto to

goad the Sapa Inka into granting them an audience in the town. De

Soto and his men found Atawallpa sitting on a stool. Defi antly, they

brought their horses so close that the animals’ breath disturbed the

fringe of gold and feathers that was his imperial crown. Confi dent in

his power and unwilling to hesitate before the barbarians, Atawallpa

barely blinked and agreed to meet the Spanish in the plaza the following day.

This is how Friar Vicente came to meet Atawallpa. Accompanied

by Felipillo, one of the Pizarrists’ kidnapped translators, his job was to

fulfi ll the conquistador’s obligations under the
capitulación
by offering to instruct the Sapa Inka in Christianity. Oblivious to this legal

fi g leaf, Atawallpa demanded that the Spanish return the treasure and

captives they had looted on their way to Cajamarca, and he angrily

fl ung the friar’s Bible aside. This was the signal for the Spaniards

to attack. Hidden about the square, the horsemen charged, yelling,

“Santiago, Santiago!” while their gunmen opened fi re on the massed

114 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Andeans. Pizarro and his guard swiftly captured Atawallpa, hacking

off the arms and hands of the aristocrats holding his litter above the

fray. Panicked and demoralized, the Sapa Inka’s troops broke down a

plaza wall and trampled each other in a desperate bid to escape the

carnage. Spanish chroniclers estimated that the Pizarrists slaughtered

approximately six thousand to seven thousand of them, including key

Inka nobles, generals, and administrators.3

Despite his victory, Pizarro knew full well that the massed Inkan

army was camped nearby. Seeking to buy time until Almagro and his

reinforcements arrived from the coast, he tried to consol Atawallpa:

“You should consider it to be your good fortune that you have not

been defeated by a cruel people, such as you are yourselves, who

grant life to none. We treat our prisoners and conquered enemies

with kindness, and only make war on those who attack us, and, being

able to destroy them, we refrain from doing so, but rather pardon

them.”4 The Sapa Inka in turn calculated that he could crush the

Spaniards if he escaped their clutches. He therefore proposed to buy

his freedom with a ransom of gold, silver, gems, and jewelry, enough

to fi ll a 3,366-cubic-foot room in the palace. This was wealth beyond

Pizarro’s wildest dreams, and he settled down in Cajamarca for the

eight months it took Atawallpa’s followers to gather the treasure.

The conquistador captain spent this time learning about Inka politics and teaching Atawallpa how to play chess. Secure in the knowledge that the Sapa Inka had ordered the Andeans to cooperate, he sent

out bands of men to loot cities and shrines throughout the Andes.

More signifi cantly, he exploited divisions in Inkan society by courting subject Andean communities and making overtures to Waskar,

whom Atawallpa’s men held prisoner in Cuzco. Waskar recognized

that Cajamarca had rendered the civil war moot and offered to double

his brother’s ransom if the Spanish backed him instead. Atawallpa

found this intolerable and ordered his men to drown his rival before

he could conclude an alliance with the invaders.

Yet Atawallpa’s days also became numbered as the room in Cajamarca slowly fi lled with plunder. By mid-1533, the ransom amounted

to thirteen thousand pounds of gold and twenty-six thousand pounds

of silver, much of it melted down into ingots from priceless works

of decorative and ceremonial art. Shared out among the conquistadors, it came to forty-fi ve pounds of gold and ninety pounds of silver per man. Horsemen received larger shares than foot soldiers, and

Spanish

Peru 115

one-fi fth of the treasure, which equaled 262,259 pesos, went to the

Spanish Crown. Pizarro ruled that Almagro and his contingent of

150 men, who arrived late on the scene, were not eligible for a full

share, a decision that eventually would lead the conquistadors to turn

on each other.5

This windfall had an immediate and corrupting impact on the

Spaniards. Suddenly rich and powerful, men from humble backgrounds spent their time gambling, fi ghting, and preying upon Inkan

noblewomen. Having paid his ransom, Atawallpa now became a liability. Pizarro knew full well that the Sapa Inka would seek retribution

once free, and cynically condemned Atawallpa to death by garroting

for the murder of his royal brother Waskar. The Sapa Inka accepted

baptism before his execution on August 29, 1533, thereby earning a

full Christian burial. Pizarro appointed a seemingly compliant prince

named Manqu to be the new Sapa Inka.

Most Spanish chroniclers depicted the Pizarrists as daring heroes

who single-handedly overthrew a mighty heathen tyrant, but in

reality they hijacked one of the great empires of the New World by

exploiting the deep rifts in the Inkan Empire. Although the conquistadors’ guns, horses, and armor gave them a tactical advantage, these

military innovations would have not amounted to much if they had

encountered the Inkas at the height of their power. Old World epidemics of smallpox, measles, and infl uenza preceded the Pizarrists

into the highlands and indirectly touched off the civil war by killing

Atawallpa’s father, Wayna Qhapaq. Many of Atawallpa’s rivals in this

fratricidal struggle joined Pizarro as foot soldiers after the carnage at

Cajamarca decapitated the Inkan imperial government. Understandably, the Inkas’ newly conquered subjects also viewed Atawallpa’s

downfall as potentially liberating and many threw in with the Spaniards. Where Claudius and Tariq ibn Ziyad needed thousands of seasoned soldiers to conquer Britain and Spain, in the early modern era

Pizarro demonstrated that it was possible to build an empire with

only a handful of followers if audacious imperial entrepreneurs could

exploit divisions in a conquered society. In effect, the conquistadors

enlisted New World peoples in their own subjugation.

Peru became a domain of the Spanish Crown, but in the immediate

decades after Pizarro’s coup at Cajamarca it was essentially a private

imperial state. Rarely, if ever, had such a small group of marauders

been able to lay their hands on the levers of imperial exploitation

116 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

for such an extended period. The conquistadors’ capture of the Inkan

state led to an orgy of looting and naked exploitation that probably

would have seemed extreme to even the most hardened ancient and

medieval empire builders. Claudius and Tariq certainly plundered

and enslaved vanquished Britons and Iberians. But they lacked the

means, and perhaps even the will, to match the ruthless tactics that

the Pizarrists used to wring wealth out of subject Andeans. While the

capitulación
gave the conquistadors’ empire a veneer of royal and

Christian legitimacy, Pizarro and his men viewed the Andeans as a

disposable resource and raised imperial extraction to new heights of

brutality.

The conquistadors had almost total freedom to do as they pleased

in the New World because they were free from royal supervision.

The marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand brought most of the Iberian

Peninsula together by joining the kingdoms of Castile and Aragón.

Through matrimony, inheritance, and dynastic alliance their grandson Charles became the ruler of Spain and Habsburg Austria. Elected

Holy Roman Emperor in 1520, his realm was so large and powerful that contemporary European observers assumed that it would

eventually encompass the entire world. Of this, the Americas were

only a secondary concern for Charles. He profi ted from his share of

the conquistadors’ plunder, but the limits of transatlantic travel and

communication kept his focus on Europe. Although Columbus’s

discoveries allowed Spanish monarchs to burnish their Catholic

credentials through state-sanctioned evangelism in a hemisphere

that had never encountered Islam, they initially had no more direct

control over their American possessions than the Umayyad caliphs

had over Al-Andalus.