The body of the god king Atahualpa lay partially burned in a hastily dug ditch near Cajamarca.
His empire was now in the hands of Francisco Pizarro and his brothers.
On their long march towards Cuzco they encountered the teenage brother of Huascar - Manco Inca
and placed him on the throne.
Wielding power through this puppet-King the conquistadors were welcomed into Cuzco as
liberators rather than conquerors.
The new Inca-Spanish military alliance crushed all forces within the Empire that had remained
loyal to Atahualpa’s faction.
With the massive Empire now firmly in his grip and a military alliance secured with
Manco Inca.
Pizarro and his brothers set about transforming Tawantinsuyu into New Castile.
The land and lordship over natives were handed out to Pizarro’s men.
Those few hundred conquistadors, many of them poor and illiterate, soon found themselves
rich beyond their wildest expectations.
After Manco Inca’s coronation in Cuzco, both leaders of the Spanish expedition would
leave the city.
Francisco Pizarro would go to the coast to found the city now known as Lima and Diego
de Almagro, frustrated that Pizarro had been named the sole governor of Peru and furious
that Pizarro had refused to share Atahualpa’s ransom with him and his men, departed with
570 Spanish cavalry and foot soldiers and with twelve thousand native troops.
His goal was to conquer the southern part of the Inca Empire in what is now Chile.
The Inca Capital, Cuzco, was now left in the hands of Manco Inca and Pizarro’s two younger
brothers, Juan and Gonzalo.
Manco Inca tried to get to work rebuilding his fractured and smallpox ridden realm but
with Juan and Gonzalo now in charge of the city the illusion of an equal alliance between
the Emperor and the Pizarros quickly shattered.
Juan and Gonzalo harassed Manco Inca for gold, silver, and native women.
They soon began to disrespect him in public and then Gonzalo Pizarro kidnapped and raped
Manco Inca’s wife, Cura Ocllo.
Soon he was imprisoned and beaten.
Manco Inca now became aware of the horrific bargain he had made for the title of Sapa
Inca.
Tensions had reached a boiling point.
In early November of 1535, two years after the death of Atahualpa, the puppet king Manco
took his first steps towards rebellion.
A secret meeting of the Inca nobility was called and Manco made a speech to his chiefs.
“I ask you!
Where did we meet them, what is it that we owe them or which one of them did we injure
so that with these horses and weapons of iron they have made such cruel war on us?
It seems to me that it would be neither just nor honest that we put up with this.
Rather, we should strive with the utmost determination to either die to the last man or to kill our
cruel enemies.”
Manco fled the city into the harsh Andes and soon the Inca war machine began to slowly
creek into motion.
Chasquis runners breathlessly crisscrossed the Empire, bringing word of Manco’s rebellion
to the native chiefs.
Soon the conquistadors – now the feudal lords were individually lured away from their
palaces and manors and clubbed to death.
Within months these small-scale attacks had killed more Spaniards than had died in the
entire conquest thus far.
As reports of these deaths trickled into Cuzco and Lima, far off in the mountains native
soldiers started gathering clubs, axes, spears, and halberds from their warehouses and marching
across the Andes to answer the call of their Emperor.
The 20-year-old great-great grandson of Pachacuti, who served as a meek puppet for two years
was now at war with the invaders from across the sea.
Like a giant blanket covering the hillsides, the immense legions of Manco converged on
Cuzco.
Hernando, Juan, and Gonzalo Pizarro were now trapped inside, along with 196 Spaniards,
a handful of African slaves and Morisca women, and hundreds of native allies.
Early in the morning on Saturday the 6th of May 1536, conch shell trumpets rang out from
the mountains surrounding Cuzco.
A curtain of javelins, rocks, and arrows darkened the sky while 100,000 soldiers wielding massive
spears and clubs began to slowly make their way down the hillside, encircling the glittering
city.
The constant barrage forced the defenders to immediately run for cover.
Inca troops poured into the city and forced the Spaniards to retreat into 2 buildings
located in the main plaza.
Manco knew from the experience that Inca weapons were ineffective against Spanish armour and
cavalry.
It was near impossible for an Inca to kill a Spaniard in a hand to hand combat.
No matter the strength behind a blow or the bravery of the warrior, stone and bronze would
never pierce steel.
The Spanish could only be killed if knocked from their horses or with a direct impact
to the face.
Manco’s strategy was to tighten a noose around the city, trap the Spaniards, and then
overwhelm them with his superior numbers.
In a panic the Spaniards darted between the two buildings now transformed into bunkers.
Hernando Pizarro was screaming orders and doing his best to reinforce his position.
But before they could even formulate a real plan the roof of the buildings caught fire.
Inca slingers and archers were firing red hot rocks and flaming arrows into the city.
The trapped Spaniards soon found themselves suffocating from the smoke.
Hot ashes filled the air.
Broken beams fell from the ceiling tossing up fresh burning embers.
As the heat became more intense it seemed all hope was lost… until suddenly the fire
went out.
Some Spaniards claim to have seen the Virgin Mary herself descended from heaven and put
out the flames.
The Inca chroniclers report that it was the African slaves that the Spanish had stationed
on the roof who put it out under a barrage of arrows and rocks.
The Incas continued to heave against the Spanish defences.
Unable to cut through their armour or defend against a cavalry charge, they swarmed the
city and laid a noose around the precarious Spanish position.
At the end of the day they had to cease the attack, barricade the streets they had taken,
and rest.
From his command center nearby in Calca Manco Inca, no doubt was certain that within days
he would see his men storm the Spanish holdout and bring him victory.
The siege dragged on however.
As months passed new strategies had to be developed.
The Inca tore apart roads and streets in order to neutralize cavalry charges.
They feigned retreats down narrow alleys in order to lure horsemen into traps.
Bolas, a weapon normally reserved for hunting, was introduced in order to tie up charging
horses’ legs.
The battle for Cuzco was brutal and long.
Spaniards on horses charged at Inca soldiers down narrow streets and the entire city was
essentially reduced to ashes.
“In the city,” one eyewitness wrote, “the Indians waged such a fierce attack that the
Spaniards thought themselves a thousand times lost.”
While he besieged Cuzco, Manco had sent his finest general, Quiso, to tie down Francisco
Pizarro, who was currently in Lima.
Quizo was an excellent tactician.
He had realized that attacking cavalry on a level ground was a death sentence.
Inca troops could do nothing against a charge.
Instead he would use the terrain against them.
Only meeting the Spanish on steep hills and mountains.
There he would lure them into a tight pass, block the entrances with his troops and rain
boulders down on the horses.
Quizo managed to wipe out a total of 4 separate Spanish relief forces using these tactics
and sent Spanish weapons and armour back to his Emperor at Cuzco.
Francisco Pizarro started to panic: He had just sent more than a hundred horsemen to
their deaths at the hands of Quizo, and now had 100 Spaniards to defend Lima.
Just months before he had total control over the Inca.
Now Cuzco was besieged, his brother Juan dead there, an army was outside Lima hunting down
Spaniards, and more than a 1/3 of his forces were dead.
Hearing of Quizo’s unprecedented victories, Manco ordered him to proceed to Lima and destroy
the city.
Not to lay siege to it like he was doing back at Cuzco, but to destroy it.
Lima was a Spanish city.
Founded near the coast to facilitate trade and unlike Inca cities it was built on a flat
plain.
Manco’s excitement at Quizo’s victories had blinded him to the fact the Quizo was
using tactics that could not work at Lima.
Ordering him to attack Lima was a grave error.
Quizo assaulted the city and failed to take it.
He attacked again and again and continued to be beaten back.
But his Emperor had ordered him to take it and Quizo knew Manco needed him back at Cuzco,
that he needed this city and Francisco Pizarro gone, nothing else would be sufficient.
On the sixth day of the Siege of Lima, Inca troops again poured down from the hills and
marched along the flat plain towards the city with general Quiso leading the charge, lance
in hand, with his hand-selected vanguard.
As he entered the city a sudden barrage of arquebuses roared and ripped through the front
line.
“Santiago!”
was screamed as a cavalry charge rammed through the vanguard.
As the dust settled and smoke cleared the Inca army soon saw their general laying on
the ground with a Spanish lance in his heart.
The greatest general the Inca had, was dead and his army soon disappeared into the mountains.
Pizarro was now free to go break the Siege of Cuzco.
Breathless Chasquis runner arrived from across the Empire.
They brought unwelcome news to Manco.
Quizo was dead, Pizarro was approaching, Diego de Almagro had returned from Chile, defeated,
but still with a sizeable army, and Spanish reinforcements were arriving from the north.
His fortunes, only so recently extremely promising had now taken a grim turn.
He had lost and he knew it.
The 10-month long siege of Cuzco was a failure.
Manco assembled his chiefs and captains and with a solemn voice he informed his people
that he would cede his treasures, his home, his empire and would retreat to the remote
rainforest region of the Empire called Vilcabamba.
From there he would try and fight another day.
As Manco retreated deep into the rainforest he brought with him the mummies of all the
Sapa Inca’s that had ruled before him including his father Huayna Capac and his great-great
grandfather Pachacuti.
From Vilcabamba, Manco waged an aggressive guerilla style campaign against the Spanish.
His soldiers ambushed supply convoys, raided new towns, stole caches of weapons and horses,
and then vanished back into the rainforest.
His men learned how to ride horses, fire guns, and fashion Spanish weapons.
But population of Spaniards in Peru essentially doubled with each passing year.
It became clear to Manco as he aged that survival was possible but Tawantinsuyu, a land of four
parts together, would never be remade.
His state would continue to survive in the rainforest.
As Almagro died fighting a civil war against the Pizarros.
As Francisco Pizarro was assassinated.
While Hernando Pizarro rotted in a Spanish prison.
As Gonzalo Pizarro was executed on the orders of the king.
The Inca state clung to life for decades until eventually in 1572, 36 years after Manco’s
rebellion his son and the last Inca Emperor Tupac Amaru was captured and executed and
the empire of Pachacuti was erased.
Thank you for taking this journey through the history of the Inca Empire with us.
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