The Last Days of the Incas

by KIM MACQUARRIE

  Coriatao, Cuillas, Taipi and many other [commanders] entered the city from the [northern] Carmenca side, and sealed one side with their men. Huaman-Quilcana and Curi-Huallpa and many others entered on the [western] Condesuyo [Cuntisuyu] side from the direction of Cachicachi … and closed a great gap of over half a league [two miles]. All were excellently equipped [and] in full battle array. Llicllic and many other commanders entered on the [southern] Collasuyo [Collasuyu] side with a great number of men, the largest group that took part in the siege. Anta-Aclla, Ronpa Yupanqui and many others entered on the [eastern] Anti-suyo side to complete the encirclement of the Spaniards.

  As overall military strategist, Manco Inca continued to remain in Calca, the same town that Juan Pizarro had recently seized and then been forced to abandon. From Calca, Manco could send and receive messages and could also continue to coordinate what was now a national mobilization. As native legions continued to arrive on the outskirts of Cuzco, however, another Inca general—Quizo Yupanqui—was currently leading a second army toward Lima. Manco’s orders to Quizo were to prevent Francisco Pizarro from sending relief forces to Cuzco by pinning down Pizarro and his troops in Lima. In addition, Manco had sent messages by runners throughout the empire ordering that any Spaniards caught traveling outside the cities were to be exterminated and their weapons seized.

  As Manco busied himself with coordinating the logistics of war, Villac Umu urged the young emperor to attack Cuzco immediately and not to wait for any more native troops to arrive. Manco, however, did not want to attack until every last possible contingent had been assembled into place. Manco had, after all, fought with Spanish troops against General Quisquis’s army; thus he was well aware of the devastating effect the Spaniards’ weaponry and especially their cavalry had. Following the classic Inca military principle of attacking one’s enemies whenever possible with overwhelming force, Manco was determined to make his assault on the capital so overwhelming that neither the Spaniards’ horses nor their obviously superior weapons would be able to save them. Once the Spanish forces in Cuzco had been wiped out, Manco would be in control of central Peru. He could then attack and smash Pizarro’s forces in Lima, an objective that would break the back-bone of the Spanish military occupation of Peru.

  While the Spaniards’ numbers remained fixed, as the weeks continued Manco gradually assembled a force of between 100,000 and 200,000 warriors—a stupendous feat of logistical organization. Soldiers in the Inca Empire were, after all, only temporary warriors—they were normally farmers or herders who were conscripted for martial duties as needed. For the most part, the warriors were married men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty and were conscripted from their native provinces in units of ten, one hundred, and one thousand. Younger unmarried men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five served not as warriors but as messengers or porters. Called awka kamayuq, warriors from each province spoke their local language and were led by their own chiefs. The chiefs in turn operated under the command of the Inca military commanders. While runasimi was the lingua franca of the native commanders, the warriors from different regions could no more speak with one another than could an alliance of French, German, and Polish divisions. Thus the vast assemblage around Cuzco, like the Inca Empire itself, was a heterogeneous and polyglot affair.

  Besides their standard cotton or alpaca tunics, native soldiers often wore helmets made of plaited cane or wood and wore thickly quilted cotton armor. Inca storehouses throughout the empire had remained well stocked with weaponry, uniforms, and the other accoutrements of war, despite the chaos of recent years. Pedro Pizarro recalled that many of the storehouses within the vast fortress of Saqsaywaman, overlooking Cuzco, for example, had been filled to the ceiling with native war materials when he had first arrived:

  All these rooms were occupied by and filled with arms, lances, arrows, darts, clubs, bucklers [small shields], and large oblong shields under which a hundred Indians could go, as though under a mantle, in order to capture forts. There were many morión [helmets] of certain canes very well woven together and so strong that no stone nor blow could penetrate them and harm the head which wore the morión.

  Native artisans had created the vast supply of weapons as part of their yearly labor tax. And although most uniforms were standardized, soldiers from the different provinces wore additional finery in order for their commanders to be able to distinguish between the different agglomerations of troops. Wrote Father Bernabé Cobo:

  Over this defensive gear they would usually wear their most attractive and rich adornments and jewels; this included wearing fine plumes of many colors on their heads and large gold and silver plates on their chests and backs; however, the plates worn by the poorer soldiers were copper.

  Depending on their specific battle formation, each native group carried weapons appropriate to their overall military function. Formations of jungle archers, sling throwers, or javelin hurlers, for example—each capable of striking the enemy from a distance—normally marched in front of the phalanxes of club-and-axe-wielding Inca shock troops, who marched behind.

  Their principal weapon … [is] a sling … with which they can hurl a big stone that will kill a horse and sometimes even its rider…. In truth, its effect is almost equal to that of an harquebus. I have seen a stone hurled from a sling break an old sword in two pieces, which was held in a man’s hand some thirty yards away.

  As native troops from around the empire continued to arrive and reinforce the Incas’ siege around the city, the individual formations on the hillsides grew to such an extent that soon the troops were camping right up against the houses on the city’s outskirts. Day and night, the warriors now kept up a deafening roar, shouting taunts and insults in their various languages. The sound barrage was the equivalent of a modern psyops campaign and had the same intended purpose: to keep the Spaniards off balance, unnerved, and afraid. “There was so much shouting and din of voices that all of us were astonished,” Pedro Pizarro said. In addition, the natives were continually mocking them, lifting their tunics up and “baring their legs at them to show how much they despised them,” as Titu Cusi described it. Baring the leg was a grave Inca insult. Far from believing the Spaniards to be gods from across the seas, the native warriors now clearly showed the Spaniards their utter disdain and contempt.

  Manco Inca, in the meantime—receiving constant updates of the situation at his headquarters in Calca—was determined not to overlook any aspect of the pending military assault. The young emperor was well aware that the religious aspects of the impending struggle were as important to victory as were the simply mechanical preparations of troops, weapons, food, and supplies. Without the favor of their gods, the disproportionate number of their troops versus those of their enemy really didn’t matter. Manco thus presided over a variety of feasts, fasts, and sacrifices—all in an effort to ensure divine intervention on their behalf.

  It is likely that Manco even visited the famed oracle, named Apurímac (“great speaker”), located not far from Cuzco on the banks of the Apurímac River. Inside the temple stood a wooden figure wearing a golden belt and with golden breasts, dressed in finely woven woman’s clothes and splattered with the blood of numerous offerings. A temple priestess named Sarpay served as both the guardian and the idol’s interpreter. It was she who would have instructed Manco in the kinds of sacrifices he had to make. Presumably, the oracle of Apurímac informed the young emperor that the omens for the pending battle were good.

  As the time of the final assault drew near, Manco now presided over the solemn Itu ceremony. For two days, the emperor and his troops fasted and refrained from all sex; priests, meanwhile, cut the throats of sacrificial llamas while ritual processions of boys—elegantly dressed in red tunics of delicate qompi cloth and wearing feathered crowns—paraded about. As priests scattered sacred coca leaves on the ground, the fasting period concluded with an enormous feast and with the consumption of vast quantities of chicha.

  Finally, on what the Spaniard
s called Saturday, May 6, 1536, during the Catholic feast day of St. John-ante-Portam-Latinam, and with hundreds of thousands of native warriors shouting loudly, Manco Inca launched his allout attack. As natives blew on single-note conch shells and clay trumpets, legions of javelin hurlers, sling throwers, and jungle archers suddenly began to unleash a violent barrage of stones, javelins, and arrows upon the city below. A giant “whoosh” sounded through the air and then turned into a crackling noise as the first missiles began to slam onto the stone flagging and walls. Those Spaniards caught outside on the streets ran for cover. Legions of native warriors, or shock troops, meanwhile, began to move slowly in unison down the hillsides, penetrating into the city and heading toward the capital’s central square.

  Manco’s native infantry marched in close formation, carrying an assortment of three-foot-long clubs, battle-axes, and shields and all the while keeping up a deafening roar. Native military officers traveled with them, carried aloft in resplendent litters as sunlight glinted off the warriors’ chest and back plates of copper, silver, or gold. Most of the natives wore wicker helmets, many of which were adorned with exotic plumes of scarlet, yellow, green, and cobalt blue bird feathers. Similar native legions had carved out and conquered the Incas’ 2,500-mile-long empire. Now their descendants—having temporarily lost control of the very valley from which the Inca juggernaut had exploded—marched with the obvious determination of crushing the invaders who had so disturbed the equilibrium of their land. Manco and his generals’ strategy was a simple one: first, they would force the Spaniards toward the center of the city, shrinking the area that the Spaniards currently occupied; then they would overwhelm and crush them with their vastly superior forces.

  With natives from every direction now entering the city, the conquistadors suddenly found themselves caught in the center of a rapidly tightening noose. Every one of them realized that if they couldn’t find a way to stop Manco’s onslaught, they would soon be squashed together and bludgeoned to death with clubs. The barrage of arrows and missiles had already forced the Spaniards into hiding. On the hillside just above the city, meanwhile, native troops seized and occupied the fortress of Saqsaywaman, along with its supply rooms of weapons. From here, Villac Umu and many of his commanders would oversee the battle and would send messages to Manco Inca in Calca, some two hours away by chaski runner. Other Inca forces soon captured the strategic enclosure of Cora Cora, which abutted the northern corner of the city’s main square. Recalled Pedro Pizarro:

  This [city of] Cuzco adjoins a hill on the side where the fortress [of Saqsaywaman] is, and on this side the Indians came down to some houses near the plaza that belonged to Gonzalo Pizarro and to his brother, Juan Pizarro, and from here they did us much harm, for with slings they hurled stones onto the plaza without our being able to prevent it…. This place … is steep and is between a narrow lane that the Indians had seized and thus it was not possible to go up it without all those who entered it being killed…. There was [also] incredible noise on account of the loud cries and howling that they made and the [conch shell] horns and gourds that they sounded, so that it seemed as if the very earth trembled.

  Under a withering hail of stones and other projectiles, the Spaniards who had been caught elsewhere in the city retreated to the main square, which was lined with the Inca palaces the Spaniards had seized and occupied some two years earlier. If the Incas’ strategy was to encircle, squeeze, and then crush their adversaries, the Spaniards’ strategy was to hold on to, if at all possible, two massive stone buildings—Suntur Huasi and Hatun Cancha. The enclosures faced each other on the eastern side of the square and had high, gabled roofs of thatch that were supported by wooden beams. In desperation, the Spaniards converted them into bunkers, relying upon the roofs and walls to protect them from the relentless hail of stones.

  Taking charge of one of the buildings, Hernando Pizarro placed the other under the command of Hernán Ponce de León. So fierce was the native bombardment directed at them that the frightened Spaniards were now unable even to venture out from either building. Within the dim interiors, many now kneeled and prayed while, outside, rocks continued to thud fiercely against the streets, walls, and roofs. “There were so many slingshot stones coming in through the entryways of the doors,” remembered one survivor, “that it seemed like a dense hail at a time when the heavens are hailing furiously.” Forced now to relinquish control of the city, save for this small portion of the main square, Pedro Pizarro recounted that:

  Hernando Pizarro and his captains assembled many times to discuss what should be done. Some said that we ought to desert the town and flee [while] others said that we should hole up in [the great hall of] Hatun Cancha, which was a great enclosure where we might all be, and which … had but one doorway and a very high wall of stone masonry…. [Yet] none of this advice was any good, for had we left Cuzco they would have killed us all in the many bad passes … that there are, and had we taken refuge in the enclosure, they would have imprisoned us with adobe bricks and stones due to the great number of [native] troops that there were.

  Before Hernando Pizarro could even decide between the twin options of being trapped in the two buildings and being clubbed like so many guinea pigs or else trying to make a run for it and somehow breaking through the encircling hordes, a new and even more frightening problem suddenly reared its head: the roofs of many of the houses in the city had now abruptly begun to burst into flames. The incredulous Spaniards, running to the door-ways and peering from their buildings, looked out to see a virtual holocaust of fire rising from building after building. Before they even understood how it had happened, the Spaniards were trapped in a city that was rapidly being incinerated.

  Manco Inca and his war council, it turned out—faced with the Incas’ deadliest foe since the creation of their empire—had come up with an ingenious war plan: not only had they decided to surround their enemies, to unleash a vicious barrage of stones, and, under the barrage’s cover, to gradually move in and crush their enemy—but they had also decided simultaneously to set fire to the city, hoping to smoke the Spaniards out of their hiding places or else to burn them to death. Manco’s warriors had presumably lit a number of large fires on the city’s outskirts and had then laid sling stones upon them, waiting patiently until the stones had turned the color of rubies. Removing them from the fires, the warriors wrapped the glowing stones in flammable cotton, loaded them into slings, then whirled them about, allowing centrifugal force to fire the stones at the city.

  As the combination of superheated stone and the sudden blast of oxygen ignited the surrounding cotton midair, tiny versions of the Molotov cocktail began to rain down upon the rooftops of the city, setting the dry thatch of the houses on fire. Lending support to the sling throwers, jungle archers—no doubt decorated with face and body paint—let loose volley after volley of fire-tipped arrows into the city. Thus, within a relatively short time, a major conflagration now threatened to burn every last Spaniard alive.

  It wasn’t long, in fact, before tendrils of smoke began to curl downward from the ceiling of Hatun Cancha, where the Spaniards were trapped. As those inside gazed up in horror, all realized that their own rooftop had now caught on fire. Wrote one of the survivors:

  There happened to be a very strong wind that day, and, as the roofs of the houses were made of thatch, it seemed at one point as if the entire city were one great sheet of flame. The Indians were shouting so loudly and the smoke was so thick that the men could neither hear nor see one another.

  Wrote Cristóbal de Molina: “There was so much smoke that the Spaniards almost choked to death. They suffered greatly because … the smoke and heat … were so intense.”

  Various sources now describe what happened next. According to some Spaniards, while the rest of Cuzco burned, the flames on the roof of Hatun Cancha somehow mysteriously went out. Later some of those present swore that the Virgin Mary herself had miraculously appeared, with flowing robe and hair, and extinguished the flames. Titu C
usi, however, who no doubt would have heard this story directly from his father, left a more prosaic version: the Spaniards owed their temporary reprieve to African slaves they had stationed on the roof. Despite being fired at with arrows by Amazonian warriors and despite the unceasing hail of sling stones, the Africans had been able to put out the fire.

  With much of the city burning and realizing that if they stayed within the two buildings that they might soon be roasted to death, Hernando Pizarro decided that he and his men had no other choice but to leave the relative safety of the buildings and counterattack.

  “It seemed to them that it would be better to go out than to perish there,” wrote Cieza de León, “and as dense and continuous as the hail of rocks was they suddenly came out together with their Indian friends and they went charging into their enemies in the lower streets, destroying their entrenchment.” The mestizo chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega added:

  When these [native warriors] saw the Spaniards all gathered together, they fell on them with great ferocity, hoping to overrun them … [during the first assault]. The cavalry attacked them and held them up valiantly, and both sides fought with great courage … Arrows and stones shot from slings rained on the Spaniards in a remarkable way; but the horses and lances [and armor] were sufficient to cope with them and they made no … [attack] without leaving at least 150 or 200 Indians dead on the ground.