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Two Conquistadores

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Francisco Pizarro (1478-1541), Conqueror of the Incas

The two great Spanish conquerors of pre-Columbian civilizations could not have been more different from each other. Hernán Cortés was born of lesser Spanish nobility in Medellín, Castile. According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who served with him at the conquest of the Aztecs:

He was of good stature and body, well proportioned and stocky, the color of his face was somewhat grey, not very cheerful, and a longer face would have suited him more. His eyes seemed at times loving and at times grave and serious. His beard was black and sparse, as was his hair, which at the time he sported in the same way as his beard. He had a high chest, a well shaped back and was lean with little belly.

He was also fairly well educated, though his parents had despaired of making a lawyer out of him, though he did serve for two years as a notary, which did equip him with a legal background of sorts.

Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Incas of Peru, was actually the second cousin once removed of Cortés, though nowhere near as well educated. In fact, he was illiterate as well as being illegitimate. Moreover, he was such a poor horseman that he confused Atahualpa, the Inca, because he was always on foot.

Where Pizarro’s background shows is that while Cortés wrote at great length to the King of Spain to justify his behavior in New Spain (Mexico and Central;America)., Pizarro never wrote anything. In addition, many of his soldiers were equally illiterate. In fact, when Agustín de Zarate was sent by the King to investigate the Inca conquest, he was forbidden by Francisco de Carvajel, a lieutenant of Gonzalo Pizarro’s, to “record his master’s deeds.” Zarate did it anyhow, but from the safety of His Majesty’s Dutch domains.

Did the difference between the two conquerors have any positive results for the conquered? Not at all. The record of misery for the native peoples of the New World was in both cases marked by death, disease, cruelty, and slavery.

Cajamarca

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Back to the World of the Inca: Cajamarca, Peru

On my imaginary Northern Peru trip, I head inland from the coast to Cajamarca, which is 2,750 meters (9,022 feet) above sea level. It was near here at Francisco Pizarro and his Conquistadores captured Atahualpa, the Inca ruler, on November 15, 1532 while he was enjoying himself at the nearby Baños del Inca thermal baths.

At that time the Incas were engaged in a civil war, with Atahualpa ruling the north and Huascar the south. Atahualpa had just defeated Huascar at Cuzco when he decided to take his ill-advised spa treatment. Cajamarca is even today a major gold mining area, so Pizarro imprisoned Atahualpa and held him for ransom. And what was the ransom? A whole roomful of gold from floor to ceiling. Even though the Incas kept their side of the bargain, Pizarro had the Inca leader executed.

The building where Atahualpa was imprisoned still exists, though it is mistakenly called El Cuarto del Rescate (the Ransom Chamber).

From Trujillo, it is a seven hour bus ride to the heights of Cajamarca. From here, I have two choices:

  1. Return to Lima by air (or take a sixteen-hour bus ride).
  2. Take a dangerous bus route to Leimebamba, Chachapoyas, and the ruins of Kuelap, returning by bus to Chiclayo, from which I fly back to Lima.

In my next post, I will discuss this second option.

A Most Unprepossessing Man

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The Mouse That Conquered the Lions

The Mouse That Conquered the Lions

This is my last posting inspired by my reading of William H. Prescott’s The History of the Conquest of Peru, which I have just completed. After the Incas were conquered and Atahuallpa executed, there arose in Peru a civil war between the two partners of the enterprise, Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, and after these two were killed, between their families. Finally, Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco’s brother, was firmly in power—or so he thought. There was still the Spanish crown with which to contend. Carlos V and later Philip II sent various representatives, some well chosen, some notoriously bad.

Finally, the Spanish cleric Pedro de la Gasca was sent with broad authority to put an end to the conflicts and to secure Peru to the crown. Where others failed, Gasca finally succeeded. While a most unprepossessing man, he had vast reserves of shrewdness and good judgment which enabled him to take down the last of the Pizarros and unite the people behind him:

After the dark and turbulent spirits with which we have been hitherto occupied, it is refreshing to dwell on a character like that of Gasca. In the long procession which has passed in review before us, we have seen only the mail-clad cavalier, brandishing his bloody lance, and mounted on his war-horse, riding over the helpless natives, or battling with his own friends and brothers; fierce, arrogant, and cruel, urged on by the lust of gold, or the scarce more honorable love of a bastard glory. Mingled with these qualities, indeed, we have seen sparkles of the chivalrous and romantic temper which belongs to the heroic age of Spain. But, with some honorable exceptions, it was the scum of her chivalry that resorted to Peru, and took service under the banner of the Pizarros. At the close of this long array of iron warriors, we behold the poor and humble missionary coming into the land on an errand of mercy, and everywhere proclaiming the glad tidings of peace. No warlike trumpet heralds his approach, nor is his course to be tracked by the groans of the wounded and the dying. The means he employs are in perfect harmony with his end. His weapons are argument and mild persuasion. It is the reason he would conquer, not the body. He wins his way by conviction, not by violence. It is a moral victory to which he aspires, more potent, and happily more permanent, than that of the blood-stained conqueror. As he thus calmly, and imperceptibly, as it were, comes to his great results, he may remind us of the slow, insensible manner in which Nature works out her great changes in the material world, that are to endure when the ravages of the hurricane are passed away and forgotten.

With the mission of Gasca terminates the history of the Conquest of Peru. The Conquest, indeed, strictly terminates with the suppression of the Peruvian revolt, when the strength, if not the spirit, of the Inca race was crushed for ever. The reader, however, might feel a natural curiosity to follow to its close the fate of the remarkable family who achieved the Conquest. Nor would the story of the invasion itself be complete without some account of the civil wars which grew out of it; which serve, moreover, as a moral commentary on preceding events, by showing that the indulgence of fierce, unbridled passions is sure to recoil, sooner or later, even in this life, on the heads of the guilty.

I find it interesting that the Bolivian stamp illustrated above honors Gasca and pokes fun at neighboring Peru, which had to be pacified by this mouse of a Spanish cleric.

The Conquistador

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Francisco Pizarro (d. 1541)

Francisco Pizarro (d. 1541)

No one is quite sure when the great conquistador Francisco Pizarro was born. As he was a bastard, no one noted such niceties. He was raised to be a soldier—and he was a good one. But he was also illiterate, because no one took care that he learn to read and write, or to act the part of a gentleman. So he grew up a litle on the wild side, a man of great talents and a great destiny. With a handful of men, he destroyed an empire.

On this Columbus Day—a holiday which we are growing ever more abashed about celebrating without twinges of guilt—it is interesting to note the career of this man, who took on the mighty Inca empire, killed Atahuallpa, its leader, and sent vast treasures of gold and silver to his monarch across the Atlantic.

Pizarro founded cities, most especially Lima, enslaved the native Incas, acted at times with condign cruelty, and at other times with lightness and gentility. But, in the end, all was thrown into chaos by a partnership that failed. At the outset, he formed a compact with his fellow conquistador (and fellow bastard) Diego de Almagro. It was Pizarro, however, who seemed to get all the credit for the conquest from Charles V in Spain, who only belatedly recognized the one-eyed Almagro for his role in the conquest. In the meantime, envy had taken control; and Almagro wrested Cuzco from his partner. Francisco Pizarro’s brother Hernando defeated the rebel at Las Salinas, after which he had him tried, convicted, and executed by garroting.

The brief civil war did not have a clear victor, as, within three years, Francisco Pizarro, was assassinated by remnants of the Almagro faction in Lima. Finally, the Spanish had to step in to restore order.

In his magisterial History of the Conquest of Peru, William H. Prescott waxes lyrical about all the might-have-beens in the late conquistador’s life:

Nor can we fairly omit to notice, in extenuation of his errors, the circumstances of his early life; for, like Almagro, he was the son of sin and sorrow, early cast upon the world to seek his fortunes as he might. In his young and tender age he was to take the impression of those into whose society he was thrown. And when was it the lot of the needy outcast to fall into that of the wise and virtuous? His lot was cast among the licentious inmates of a camp, the school of rapine, whose only law was the sword, and who looked upon the wretched Indian as their rightful spoil.

Who does not shudder at the thought of what his own fate might have been, trained in such a school? The amount of crime does not necessarily show the criminality of the agent. History, indeed, is concerned with the former, that it may be recorded as a warning to mankind; but it is He alone who knoweth the heart, the strength of the temptation, and the means of resisting it, that can determine the measure of the guilt.

Contrast Pizarro with Cortés, who knew how to read and write and who was able to protect his own place in history with his writings after the conquest of the Aztecs. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that in neither Mexico or Peru are there any monuments to the conquistadores who secured those lands for Spain.