Orgóñez, as soon as he was quite close, ordered the crossbow men to shoot many arrows … so that the Indians, seeing the damage that was being done to them, might decide that it would be best to abandon the fort. To some extent the Indians proved themselves to be brave and determined, defending the area and the fort and launching many darts and stones against the Christians. But the Spaniards wore them out so much that they were compelled to abandon that place, and to save their lives they hurried to use their last resort, which was to flee. The Spaniards wreaked great havoc among them, leaving many of them dead and wounded.
The Spaniards rode after the fleeing Indians with twelve-foot lances, spearing as many as they could. As Manco’s warriors and Orgóñez’s men fought in the town’s streets, a group of bedraggled Spaniards suddenly emerged from one of the buildings and began calling out to their compatriots: it was Rui Díaz and the Spanish prisoners who had been captured nearly a year earlier; the latter were practically the only survivors of the various relief forces that General Quizo had exterminated in the Andes.
The next morning, at dawn, Orgóñez and his troops crossed the bridge over the Urubamba River at Chuquichaca, then rode up into the Vilcabamba Valley until they arrived before Vitcos, Manco’s new capital. The town sat on a hilltop from which its inhabitants could look over the deep valleys to the east and west and view a series of sacred, eighteen-thousand-to-twenty-thousand-foot peaks to the south. As the Spaniards charged up the hill, pandemonium broke out as native men, women, and children tried to flee. Instead of slaughtering the inhabitants, however, many of the Spaniards dismounted and, with swords drawn, ran into the thatched stone palaces with their trapezoidal doorways; they soon emerged clutching golden vessels, plates, and idols, piles of richly woven cumpi cloth—so fine that it felt like silk—along with jewels and other treasures.
As horses whirled about, Spaniards shouted, and terrified native women screamed, Manco Inca was meanwhile fleeing further up the valley and into the mountains. The Inca emperor had escaped with only his principal wife, Cura Ocllo (the same coya that Gonzalo Pizarro had stolen but who had somehow managed to escape and rejoin Manco during his rebellion); the two had been in such a hurry, in fact, that they had left their royal litters behind. Instead, twenty of the fastest runners from the Lucana tribe had carried Manco and his wife in relays in their arms, never stopping. Orgóñez, discovering that Manco had fled, quickly sent four of his fastest horsemen after him, then followed a bit later with twenty more cavalry. Despite riding throughout the night, however, Orgóñez found no trace of the renegade emperor. Manco Inca—the rebel ruler of the Incas—had disappeared.
The illusion of security that Vitcos had once seemed to have offered Manco, however, had cost the young emperor dearly. During the looting of the city, Orgóñez had discovered a five-year-old boy, dressed in fine clothing. The boy turned out to be Manco’s son, Titu Cusi, and Orgóñez had him seized. In addition to a fortune in gold, silver, fine cloth, and jewels, the Spaniards soon discovered a treasure almost equally as valuable: a large stash of bloodied Spanish clothing and armor. Inca warriors had apparently stripped the clothing from the bodies of the more than 140 dead Spaniards that had been killed in various parts of Peru during the previous year. Imported from distant Spain, the armor and clothes were literally worth a fortune to the isolated Spaniards in Peru. Almagro later distributed the dead men’s possessions among his followers, many of whom had worn the same, ragged clothing for years.
As Orgóñez and his troops began marching triumphantly back to Cuzco, they took with them their spoils of gold and silver, Manco’s son, a vast herd of llamas, a large number of the province’s inhabitants, and even the recovered mummies of Manco’s ancestors—whom the Incas continued to revere as gods. Remembered Titu Cusi:
They herded before them all of the native men and women they could seize, and the [mummified] bodies of my ancestors, whose names were Huayna Kawri, Viracocha Inca, Pachacuti Inca, Topa [Tupac] Inca Yupanqui, and Huayna Capac … [along] with many jewels and riches … more than 50,000 llamas and alpacas, and these were the best ones chosen from those that were here … and they took me and many of my father’s other concubines.
Except for the failure to capture Manco Inca, Orgóñez’s expedition had been an unqualified success. All the Spaniards in Cuzco, including Almagro and the new puppet king, Paullu Inca, were delighted with its results. The back of the Incas’ insurrection had surely been broken, for now Manco—no matter where he had escaped to—barely had any subjects left to rule, let alone to renew his war with. Cuzco, now the unofficial capital of Almagro’s Kingdom of New Toledo, was at last secure.
Or was it? Although Almagro was in physical control of the city, with more than eight hundred Spaniards now at his disposal, the Inca capital still suffered from an undefined legal status. The uncertainty was due to the fact that no one had been able to determine whether Cuzco lay within the kingdom granted to Pizarro or the kingdom granted to Almagro. Pizarro, mean-while—still in Lima yet aware now that Almagro had seized Cuzco and had imprisoned his two brothers—decided that the best course of action would be to try to negotiate with his former partner. Given Almagro’s obvious military strength, he had little choice. Pizarro therefore dispatched an old acquaintance—an elderly lawyer by the name of Gaspar de Espinoza—who now traveled to Cuzco with instructions to negotiate with Almagro in order to try to win the release of Pizarro’s two brothers.
In Cuzco, however, Almagro immediately began arguing with Espinoza that not only should Cuzco rightfully be his but that the northern boundary of his own governorship should be extended northward to a point just south of Lima. He had, after all, just saved Cuzco and the Spaniards within it from Manco’s siege, Almagro said. If he had not returned to Peru then this whole region would still be under the renegade emperor’s control.
Despite Almagro’s seeming intransigence, Espinoza nevertheless hoped that if he could just negotiate a temporary agreement on a boundary between the two kingdoms—any boundary—then at some later date the king’s officials could complete their measurements and determine the final boundaries. The main problem, as Espinoza saw it, was whether the two Pizarro brothers would seek revenge if released; if they did, then the current conflict could devolve into an all-out civil war. After listening patiently to Almagro, Espinoza next visited the makeshift Spanish prison located within the temple of the sun. There the aged lawyer found Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro and, after warmly greeting the two brothers, he turned to Hernando and began to speak, hoping to shed clarity on the present conflict by placing it in a wider perspective:
As I have experience in these parts of the Indies, [I know that] whenever Governors quarrel over differences they lose their property and not only find themselves deprived of what they claim, but most suffer great misfortunes and long periods in prison and even die in them, which is the saddest thing of all. Thus I can promise you that if Governor [Pizarro] does not come to a peaceful agreement with Governor Almagro, without resorting to war … then neither will ever be free from great hardships and troubles. For when His Majesty learns of these conflicts, he will be forced to find a solution for this kingdom, which is his, and will send peaceful men to restore order in it, removing those who had previously held office…. Once the … [king’s officials] … set foot in a province or in a new kingdom, those who were first to govern will never govern again…. I say this because, for my part, now that I have agreed to be a mediator in these negotiations, I wish to arrange a settlement between the Governors so that from now on there will always be peace and conciliation between them, for the success of these negotiations requires nothing less. And I say this, because you [Espinoza said, looking directly at Hernando Pizarro] do not look like the kind of man who, finding himself imprisoned and longing for liberty, is quick to agree to anything, yet who afterwards will remember what he has suffered and … will want to avenge his past wrongs … [or] who will start the kind of war that the more prudent men who do not wa
nt to follow him … will nevertheless be unable to stop. Therefore, you should act like someone who desires peace, and not like someone who [only] wants to be freed in order to begin a war.
Hernando Pizarro, his natural arrogance tempered somewhat by his imprisonment, listened to Espinoza carefully and ultimately agreed in principle to negotiate. Elsewhere in the city, however, Almagro’s captains—and especially Rodrigo Orgóñez—continued to urge Almagro to execute both Hernando and Gonzalo, insisting that neither of them could be trusted. If the two Pizarro brothers were released, Orgóñez argued, then they would surely return and try to recapture Cuzco. For months, however, the negotiations between Espinoza and Almagro stretched on, during which time Pizarro continued to receive new troops and to build his military force in Lima. During this period, Gonzalo Pizarro somehow managed to escape from prison; the latter made his way to Lima where he rejoined his brother Francisco, whom he had not seen in nearly two years.
The lawyer Espinoza, meanwhile, did his best to persuade Almagro not to precipitate open civil war, which would not only sever Almagro’s connections with Francisco Pizarro but would also jeopardize his relationship with the king:
If all the men who have ever been in this world, and even those who are in it now … would give their attention solely to serving God and to guiding their affairs by the light of reason, and would remain satisfied with what is actually theirs and belongs to them, then there would not have been so many wars and so many great battles. But as the human mind has a tendency to always want to command and to dominate, in order to achieve this ambition, not only have many great lords and kings perished, but their souls have also been in danger of being lost. For when it comes to who is to rule, a father will disown his son and a son will cause the death of his father. And those who suffer the most are the miserable countries, which end up wasted and consumed and with most of their people dead, and the buildings in their cities being left in ruins, which is very painful to see…. These wars commence for trifling reasons, but afterwards they grow to such an extent that, even though those who were the cause of them wish to end them, they cannot do so. The wars that are to be feared the most and are the cruelest are the civil wars. Rome was never threatened as much by its [foreign] enemies such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal as it was by its own citizens. Nor did any of the wars that the Romans waged during [their] seven hundred years … [ever place it in greater danger] than it faced during the civil wars of Sylla and Marius, and of Pompey the Great, and of Julius Caesar. But without … such momentous events, many cities in Spain are ruined and are nearly uninhabited because their citizens … [are divided into factions], the one against the other.
So now if, in your old age and after having served His Majesty for such a long time, the two of you become the authors of a civil war—what do you think you will gain from it? Because after many deaths on both sides you will be murderers, and then a judge will arrive, by royal order, who will decide your fates. Fly from the thought that it will ever be said that, during your time, there was a war of Spaniards against Spaniards. You have the means to prevent this in your hands, which is to secure an agreement with Governor [Pizarro]. Don’t be deceived by the remarks of immature young men. Nor insist on believing that all of your happiness depends upon being given the district of Mala [below Lima]. Be patient so that [with the pending arrival of] the Bishop of Panama, [and] once the boundaries of the governorships have been determined, each one [of you] will understand what is his and will know the favor His Majesty grants him.
Almagro, now sixty-three years old, was moved by the learned man, whose grasp of history greatly impressed the illiterate old conquistador. Almagro knew nothing of Rome or Caesar or Pompey or of ancient civil wars, but he did understand the old lawyer’s argument—and was much influenced by it. After years in the saddle and a lifetime of hardship and scrabbling, he had been feeling his age of late and recently had been suffering from a variety of ailments. Realizing that he had had no specific authority to seize Cuzco, nor to have attacked Pizarro’s relief force, Almagro began to worry that if he now killed Hernando Pizarro, as some of his captains insisted, he would jeopardize any favor he might still retain with the king. Besides, executing Hernando meant declaring war on his ex-partner; civil war would then be unavoidable.
Eventually, Almagro ordered that Hernando Pizarro be set free, as long as the latter promised he would uphold the peace. Rodrigo Orgóñez—the man who had smoked Hernando out of his Inca palace and who was still angry over Hernando’s numerous personal insults—is said to have been mortified by the news. “Raising his head, he [Orgóñez] grabbed his beard with his left hand and made as if to cut his throat with his right one; shouting out ‘What a shame, Orgóñez—that because of your friendship with Almagro your throat will be cut!’” Sure enough, within two months further negotiations between Pizarro and Almagro collapsed, war was declared, and Espinoza’s long-feared civil war was launched. Orgóñez had been right: the Pizarros were the last people on earth to either forget or forgive.
On Saturday, April 26, 1538, at dawn on the day of St. Lazarus, whom Christ had returned from the dead, amid a swampy area called Las Salinas some two miles west of Cuzco, two European armies faced each other, preparing to do battle. Francisco Pizarro, now sixty years old, had remained in Lima and had placed his thirty-eight-year-old brother, Hernando, in charge of recapturing the Incas’ former capital. With the various reinforcements of men and supplies that had arrived in Lima, which had even included a ship sent from Mexico by Cortés, Hernando now commanded a force of more than eight hundred Spaniards and several thousand native auxiliaries.
At least two hundred of Hernando’s troops were mounted cavalry, fully armored and wielding lances and swords. These Hernando had divided equally and had positioned on either of his two flanks. Five hundred armored foot soldiers stood in the middle, bearing shields and swords, with the ensigns in the center holding aloft the imperial banners of the various kingdoms of Spain. In the front rows stood a hundred harquebus men, their three-foot guns fully primed and ready to be fired. The guns were currently the vogue in European warfare, as their lead projectiles could penetrate the thickest of armor, thus obviating the need for hand-to-hand combat.
On the other side of the plain, Almagro’s forces—five hundred men compared to Hernando’s more than eight hundred—waited tensely. These were comprised of some 240, cavalry, roughly 260, foot soldiers, six cannon, and six thousand native warriors bearing mace clubs and slings. The native warriors had been supplied by the newly crowned emperor, Paullu Inca, who, like Manco, now wore the scarlet emperor’s fringe and rode in his own royal litter. Almagro had instructed Paullu to position his warriors around the edges of the plain with orders to kill any Spaniard who tried to flee the battle—no matter which side they belonged to. Paullu dutifully transmitted the order to his captains.
Too sick to ride a horse, Almagro had turned his army over to his second-in-command, the marshal Rodrigo Orgóñez, who had hoped in vain to prevent that which was about to unfold. Wrote Cieza de León:
Governor [Almagro] had come out from Cuzco in [an Inca] litter with his army. And before arriving at Las Salinas he reached a plain where … he said to his captains that they would now see how the negotiations had ended up and how he had been rejected and that he would not be coming to do battle if things hadn’t broken down [in such a manner], since war was a disservice to both God and His Majesty…. But that they could now see how Hernando Pizarro and his brother, despite so many promises and negotiations, had come looking for them, while those who followed their banners did so because they believed that all the land would be divided up among them. Once they discovered that they had been deceived, [however] they would never dare to start a war again. “Since justice is on your side, fight fiercely so that victory will be yours and so that they will be punished severely.”
Hernando, meanwhile, took time to address his own men, many of whom were newly arrived in Peru and who ironically found themselves
about to fight not the native insurgency they had been summoned for, but instead their very own countrymen. Nevertheless, the Spaniards on both sides realized that if they were victorious on this day then they would surely be rewarded with lands and spoils. The Kingdom of Peru—each of the assembled combatants understood—was still very much up for grabs.
When he was a few miles away, Hernando Pizarro [halted and], before his captains and his men, made a speech justifying his cause. He said that Almagro had incited the war while he [Hernando] had been in Cuzco striving for justice in the name of the King and that Almagro had imprisoned him and had treated him brutally, as everyone knew. But that, more as a point of honor than because of past injuries, he wanted to punish those who followed Almagro and [who shared in] his blunders, because they had helped him commit his past mistakes. And that now, by order of the Governor [Francisco Pizarro], they had come to regain the city of Cuzco, and to free it from Almagro’s oppressive rule…. When the war was over, there would be many provinces and discoveries to divide among them, which would be awarded to them and not to any others.
As the two forces readied themselves, Governor Almagro had a seat prepared for himself on a nearby hill, where he could watch the battle unfold. On the adjacent hills, a crowd of native onlookers stood in anticipation of a spectacle they had never before seen: two armies of the bearded invaders, seemingly about to attack each other, in what the natives could only surmise was the foreigners’ version of an Inca-style civil war. According to Cieza de León:
The Last Days of the Incas Page 34