A Spanish encomendero being carried in a litter previously reserved for the Inca elite.
Had Pizarro been a man of lesser ambition, then his future in Spain no doubt would have been circumscribed by the limitations of his family and birth. His normal destiny would have been to perform agricultural work where, occasionally from the fields, the tall, lean man with the thickly callused hands, the thin black beard, and peasant shoes would have looked up in dull envy at the elegantly clothed people riding nearby in carriages or on horseback—people whose pedigrees, accomplishments, and inheritances had rendered unto them not only noble titles and vast estates, but also complete freedom from manual labor. Pizarro was ambitious, however, meaning that his own vision of himself and his future did not coincide with the expectations his fellow townsmen had of him. That ambition—coupled with the social stigma of his illegitimacy and perhaps with a subconscious desire as a boy to have grown up in his father’s more prestigious house rather than in his mother’s home—was undoubtedly the motor that propelled him both across an ocean and a continent. It was also no doubt the driving motivation that ultimately led Pizarro to conquer the largest native empire in the New World.
Unlike his fellow Trujilleño, Rodrigo Orgóñez, who after achieving wealth in Peru had written letters to a local nobleman pleading for him to legitimize his name, Pizarro had in a sense created his own legitimacy through conquest. Orgóñez’s craving for a pedigree stemmed from his desire to petition the king to become a Knight of the Order of Santiago—one of Spain’s most prestigious titles and one that required legitimate birth on the part of the petitioner. Because of Pizarro’s conquest of the wealthy Inca Empire, however, King Charles had overlooked Pizarro’s illegitimacy and had made him a knight. Nevertheless, in the sixteenth-century kingdoms of Spain, a well-positioned “gentleman” normally had a full paragraph of titles and descriptive modifiers that preceded his written name. Any inquisitive person had only to scan the paragraph to know precisely where that person fit into society, and the virtues or lack thereof of his pedigree.
By 1541, however, Francisco Pizarro had obtained all the status and prestige that he had ever dreamed of: he was Knight of the Order of Santiago, Governor, Military Commander, and Marquis of His Majesty’s Kingdom of New Castile. As governor—a post equivalent to that of a viceroy, or deputy king—Pizarro was in the enviable position of having been personally appointed by the king to represent Spanish power in Peru and to govern the millions of new vassals that the king had acquired by virtue of Pizarro’s own sword. If any of Pizarro’s enemies were to question his plebeian origins, Pizarro could easily say—as the illegitimate Voltaire would later reply to the inquiries of an insolent French nobleman nearly two centuries later—“I am beginning my name—and you are finishing yours.”
Despite his titles, his immense wealth, and his power, however, Pizarro’s early peasant years nevertheless had left an indelible stamp upon the veteran conquistador’s tastes. Although many of the wealthy encomenderos to whom he had granted natives had quickly shed their armor and had replaced it with silk stockings, plumed caps, and fine imported European clothes—mimicking the behavior of the nobility in Spain—Pizarro preferred to wear simple clothes with no frills. Wrote the chronicler Agustín de Zárate:
The Marquis … [commonly] wore a high-waisted black cloth coat falling to his ankles, white deerskin shoes, a white hat and a sword with an old-fashioned hilt. And when, on certain festive days, he was persuaded by his servants to wear the sable cloak that the Marquis del Valle [Hernando Cortés] had sent him from New Spain [Mexico], he would take it off after returning from Mass and would … [return to wearing ordinary clothes], normally wearing a towel around his neck so that he could wipe the sweat off his face, for … [when the country was at peace] he spent most of the day at bowls or pelota.*
Not only did Pizarro dress plainly, but in an era when properly bred Spanish noblemen commonly took an interest in horses, hunting, and falconry—the sixteenth-century equivalent of modern-day tennis, golf, and yachting—Pizarro preferred working-class sports and games of chance. Wrote Zárate:
Both captains [Pizarro and Almagro] had great physical endurance and thought nothing of hunger. The Marquis showed this especially in his game playing, for there were few young men who could keep up with him. He was much more inclined to play games of all kinds than the Adelantado [Almagro]. So much so that sometimes he would play bowls all day long without caring who he played with, even if it were a sailor or a mill worker. Nor would he allow anyone to go get the bowl for him or to treat him differently as normally his high rank would require.
Rarely could business make him leave the game, especially when he was losing. Only if there were some fresh Indian disturbances—for he was very quick on such occasions and would put on his armor and with his lance and shield would run through the city, heading straight for wherever the trouble was and without waiting for his men, who would only catch up with him later while running as fast as they could.
The man who as a boy had grown up in the poorer part of town not surprisingly preferred plebeian to aristocratic company, spending his time whenever possible among sailors, millers, muleteers, artisans, and other men who worked with their hands. Pizarro spent hours playing cards and gambling with them as well, although, because of his natural stinginess, it was said, “he collected what he won and left unpaid what he lost.”
Sometimes, while searching for the governor, Pizarro’s contemporaries would find the wealthy marquis in the fields outside Lima, reaping imported European wheat with the natives, “doing what he enjoyed and was his trade.” It was an activity that no respectable marquis or any other nobleman in Spain would ever do. As workmen began installing two grinding mills beside Lima’s Rimac River, important business meetings and papers sometimes had to be transported along with a notary to the site of the mills, “in whose construction he [Pizarro] spent all his leisure time, urging on the workmen who were building them.” Similarly, when the time came for the casting of the first bronze bell of Lima’s cathedral, which Pizarro had dedicated to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, once again the governor could be found not in his residence relaxing but instead at the forge site personally operating the bellows, sweating profusely, and with his clothes and hands dirty.
While Pizarro busied himself with governing the native empire he had spent all his life striving to obtain, his thirty-eight-year-old brother, Hernando, had meanwhile arrived in Spain in order to defend to the king his execution of the governor Diego de Almagro. One of Almagro’s captains, Diego de Alvarado, had arrived before him, however, and had immediately filed charges against Hernando for Almagro’s murder. Hernando nevertheless was no doubt counting upon his ability to leverage the shipment of the king’s Peruvian treasure to his advantage. Much to his surprise, however, and before even being granted a royal audience, Hernando was arrested and thrown into prison. Soon, other supporters of Almagro returned to Spain and testified against Hernando as well, such as the nobleman Don Alonzo Enríquez de Guzmán. Although the latter had fought alongside Hernando during Manco’s nearly year-long siege of Cuzco, the experience had not drawn the two men closer together. In a letter sent to the Royal Council, Enríquez de Guzmán pulled no punches in impugning the large, arrogant man whom he had clearly grown to hate.
Most powerful Lords,
I, Don Alonzo Enríquez de Guzmán, a knight of the Order of Santiago, a gentleman in the royal palace … and citizen of the city of Seville, was appointed executor to the will of Don Diego de Almagro…. And, by virtue of that office… I accuse Hernando Pizarro of criminal acts, who is currently a prisoner in this court….
The Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro, Governor of … the Kingdom of New Toledo, in the Indies of the South Sea and in the provinces of Peru, labored in the service of Your Majesty and conquered and settled many kingdoms and provinces in that land, having converted the natives to the service of our Lord God, and to our holy Catholic faith. While he [Almagro] w
as continuing to work in your royal service in this manner, the aforementioned Hernando Pizarro, moved by envy, hatred, and by an evil disposition … as well as by greed and self-interest, drove Manco Inca—king and lord of that land—to rebel against Your Majesty, whom the Adelantado [Almagro] had subjugated, reduced to submission, and had induced to submit to the service of God and Your Majesty…. King Manco rebelled, and for this reason that kingdom was lost and destroyed and Your Majesty lost more than four million [pesos] in gold from your rents, [royal] fifths, and royal interests. This was also the reason why the natives killed more than six hundred Spaniards [and that myself and] Hernando Pizarro … were besieged in the great city of Cuzco.
Not content with having perpetrated these crimes … Hernando Pizarro … raised an army and … marched against the Governor [Almagro], battling him near the walls of this city of Cuzco, and killing two-hundred-and-twenty-two men…. [Then], forgetting the great favor he had received from the Governor, who had released him when he was his prisoner, [Hernando] ignominiously strangled the Adelantado Don Diego de Almagro, dishonoring him … by saying that he was no Adelantado … but a castrated Moor. And, in order to increase the insult, he ordered that a black man be his executioner saying, “Don’t let this Moor think that I will execute him the way he wanted to execute me, which was to behead me….” He then said, “If … the executioner was about to cut off my head with a knife and the gates of Hell were open and … [the devil himself was there] ready to receive my soul, I would still do what [I am about to do now]….”
[Hernando Pizarro] unjustly executed [Diego de Almagro] without having the power or authority to do so … and for his atrocious and wicked crimes, besides having committed treason, he deserves severe civil, military, and capital penalties, which should be carried out against his person and against his possessions as a punishment and example to others.
The accusations—many of them exaggerated and in some cases wholly made up—nevertheless were based upon an inescapable core of truth: Hernando had killed Diego de Almagro, despite having been set free by Almagro himself. Thus, even though Hernando had access to the finest legal counsel available in Spain, he would nevertheless spend the next twenty-three years of his life in prison, just outside Madrid. By the time he emerged, at the age of sixty in the year 1561, Hernando was a prematurely aged and partially blind old man. No one who later saw the hunched, white-haired, former conquistador walking down the street with the help of a cane would ever have guessed that this was the same arrogant and boastful man who had once ridden more than a thousand miles among the jagged mountains of Peru, had engaged native armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and who had possessed so much wealth, power, and status that he had once believed himself to be virtually untouchable, even by a king. Hernando had clearly overreached and had lost nearly everything in the process. The second eldest of the Pizarro brothers would live another seventeen years, would outlive all four of his brothers, and would eventually die in 1578 at the age of seventy-seven. He would never, however, see any of his brothers nor set foot in Peru again.
While some of Almagro’s supporters had returned to Spain in numbers sufficient to turn the king against Hernando, most of the men of Chile—called Almagristas—were currently eking out a living in Peru. Spaniards who had only recently arrived in Peru could justify their poverty by saying that they had arrived too late to share in the empire’s spoils; those who had supported Almagro, by contrast, could claim no such thing. Most had wasted two years in Chile with Almagro on an expedition that had brought them nothing but hardship and poverty. Later, after the Almagristas had successfully seized Cuzco and had reason to believe that they would soon become wealthy encomenderos themselves, they were abruptly disabused of this notion by their defeat at the Battle of Las Salinas. Even worse, Diego de Almagro—the leader they had risked their lives for in the expectation of future rewards—was now dead. Only Almagro’s son—Diego de Almagro the Younger, whom the elder Almagro had sired with his native mistress from Panama—remained. Yet, although the younger Almagro was nineteen years old, he was “so boyish that he personally wasn’t mature enough to govern people, nor [to command] a troop.”
Clearly, the Almagristas had backed the wrong horse. Unable to hold political office and with no employment or other traditional means of support, Almagro’s several hundred followers found themselves barely able to scrape together a living. Even worse than their current situation, however, was their realization that their poverty was likely to persist. They had, after all, fought against the Pizarros—and the Pizarros were well known for neither forgetting nor forgiving. Spanish Peru was a tiny world, after all; hence, if you had fought against the Pizarros, you might as well have walked about with the mark of Cain on your forehead. “The citizens [of Lima],” wrote Pedro de Cieza de León, “were so indifferent that, even though they saw them dying from hunger, they did not help them with a single thing, nor did they want … to give them any food.”
So bitter were the Almagristas toward the Pizarros that many didn’t even bother taking their hats off when passing the governor on the street—a clear and unmistakable insult. Pizarro, in turn, wearing his plain black coat with his white hat and shoes, behaved as if Almagro’s followers didn’t exist. “Poor devils,” he was sometimes heard to say, and which he always used in a pejorative manner, “They’ve had such bad luck—and now they’re destitute, defeated, and ashamed. Best to leave them alone.” For all Pizarro cared, the men of Chile could rot in hell before he would ever grant them an office or a favor. Of one fact the Almagristas were certain: for as long as Francisco Pizarro governed Peru, they would remain impoverished with no hope of a better future.
In June of 1541, nearly three years after the death of Almagro, a group of Almagristas in Lima made a fateful decision. The only way their fortunes might improve in Peru, they had decided, was if they removed Francisco Pizarro from power—and that unequivocally meant killing him. If Pizarro were dead, then the seemingly inevitable prospect of a lengthy Pizarro dynasty would almost certainly disappear. The king would then be forced to appoint a new governor and surely, under a new governor, the Almagristas reasoned, they would have a better chance of improving their lot.
Approximately twenty in number, the conspirators chose June 26 as the date of their assassination attempt: this would be the date of their liberation from the Pizarros’ unjust tyranny, they devoutly believed, and from all their endless envy and want. Hernando Pizarro had warned Francisco of precisely this danger: “Do not allow [even] ten of … [Almagro’s followers] to gather together at one time,” he had advised, urging his brother to be generous with them so that they wouldn’t cause any trouble in the future. Francisco Pizarro, however, had done precisely the opposite, allowing the Almagristas to gather as they wished and making no effort whatsoever to bridge the great divide that separated the two camps.
Because the Almagristas’ hatred and discontent were difficult to hide, rumors about possible assassination plots had been circulating in Lima for years. Yet Pizarro had typically paid little heed to them, walking about the city confident in both his own authority and in his physical powers to protect himself. Wrote Cieza de León,
The Indians were saying that the Marquis’ final day was approaching and that he would be killed by those from Chile … and some Indian women repeated it to the Spaniards who were their lovers. It is also said that … [the conquistador] Garci Díaz heard it from an Indian girl and warned the Marquis about it. Pizarro laughed and said that no attention should be paid to such Indian gossip.
June 26, the day selected for the assassination, was a Sunday. Pizarro would normally leave his house in the morning and walk across the plaza to attend mass. Of great importance to the Almagristas was the fact that Pizarro would most likely be unarmed at that time. What the plotters didn’t know, however, was that one of their number—a man named Francisco de Herencia—had already divulged the assassination plot the day before, during his confession to a priest.
The priest, in turn, had warned Pizarro. Although Pizarro had dismissed the story as mere “Indian gossip,” he nevertheless decided not to attend mass the next morning and had asked a priest to come to his house instead. Pizarro decided to go ahead, however, with his typical noonday meal, one that would be prepared for him and for a number of previously invited guests.
The morning of June 26 dawned cold and gray as was normal for this time of year. June is the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, and Lima in particular is normally blanketed day and night by a fine drizzle of a fog, called a garua, that can last up to six months. During the shorter winter days, the sun appears more like a moon over the city, a silver disk that is constantly shifting in opacity as it slowly moves through the cool gray mist. All night long the conspirators waited, nervous and impatient for day-light to begin. By the time a dim gray dawn appeared, the would-be assassins had already finished fastening on their steel breastplates and their coats of mail and had also finished sharpening their knives, daggers, and swords. Later, as the single bronze bell that Pizarro had helped to forge began to reverberate above the cathedral, summoning the town’s citizens to gather and consume the blood and flesh of Christ, Almagrista spies suddenly arrived at the house of the assassins and breathlessly informed them that Pizarro had not left his house for mass. The governor was said to be ill, the spies said, thus Pizarro would probably remain in his house for the entire day.
The Last Days of the Incas Page 39