The Conquistadors (42 page)

This is one of the dirtiest double-crosses of the conquest. Hernando did not leave for Spain, and the uneasy agreement, arranged on November 13, 1537, lasted only long enough for Pizarro to gather his forces. He left the conduct of the campaign to his brothers, and on April 26, 1538, at the battle of Las Salinas, Almagro was defeated. This bloody battle, in which a hundred and fifty Spaniards died, lasted a short two hours. Almagro himself was captured alive. He was tried on July 8 and subsequently executed. Zárate says Hernando Pizarro ‘caused his throat to be cut', but there is reason to believe that the means of death was the same as that used for the murder of Atahualpa – the garrotte. In any case, it was a nice reward for fighting his partner's battles for him over a period of almost five years. For this nasty expression of his long enmity of Almagro, Hernando Pizarro was ultimately arrested when he paid a second visit to Spain. He was imprisoned in the fortress of Medina del Campo, and it was twenty years before he was finally released.

The home government was now actively interesting itself in Peru. Every report coming in from this outpost of empire indicated that conditions there were chaotic. The chief sufferers, as in all Spain's colonial territories, were the wretched Indians. The Inca Manco was still in revolt, moving from one hidden and impenetrable fortress city to another. One of his hide-outs was undoubtedly Machu Picchu, and anyone who has visited the remains of this ‘lost' city will readily appreciate how impossible it was for the Spaniards to deal with a leader who had now learned the lesson of guerilla tactics. Typical of the period is the story of Pizarro's attempted meeting with Manco. The Inca had again suggested the Yucay valley, and Pizarro, before going with a strong bodyguard to the meeting place, had sent an African slave to Manco with the customary gifts. This man had been taken by Manco's warriors and murdered. On hearing of this, Pizarro had one of the Inca's wives, a young and very beautiful girl, bound naked to a tree in front of his assembled army, beaten half to death and then shot full of arrows. As Manco was believed to be extremely fond of the girl it was hardly the most sensible way to bring about a settlement.

However, during the next two years, Pizarro did manage to tighten his grip on the country. Two expeditions, in particular, stand out: Pedro de Valdivia's march into Chile and Gonzalo Pizarro's two-year expedition in the north. This latter included a piece of original exploration that is almost incredible, and emphasizes once again the quite extraordinary fearlessness of the Spaniards in their driving urge to explore new territory. Having discovered the Napo river, one of the headwater tributaries of the Amazon, Gonzalo built a small brigantine and sent one of his captains, Francisco de Orellana, ahead by this means, to forage for food, whilst the main body continued to fight their way along the river bank. But Orellana ‘found the current of such force, that in short time he came to the meeting of the two great Rivers, without finding any kind of sustenance: and also considering what way he had made in three days, he found that in a whole year it was not possible to return that way again …'He not only reached the mouth of the Amazon, but took his forest-made vessel out to sea, sailing north to the island of Cubagua in the Caribbean – an almost unbelievable feat. Gonzalo was furious. His men were starving and he was in bad country, amongst a people so primitive that they ‘used the forepart of their privy members, to be tied with a string of cotton wool betwixt their legs, and made fast at their girdling: and the women had certain rags to cover their secrets, but no other kind of clothing'. It took the main body of the expedition over a year to struggle back to Quito, where they arrived in June 1542 – ‘almost naked, for long since with the great waters of rain, and otherwise, their clothes were rotted from their bodies, so that now each of them had but only two small deerskins, which covered their foreparts, and also their hinder parts: some had left old rotten breeches, and shoes made of raw deerskins: their swords wanted scabbards and were spoiled with rust: they came all on foot, their arms and legs were scratched with shrubs and briars, their features seemed like unto dead men, so that scarcely their friends and old acquaintance knew them …' Eighty of them had perished, and of the four thousand Indian auxiliaries that had accompanied them more than half were dead.

This extraordinary expedition is perhaps the highlight of Pizarro's administration in Peru, for it shows the Spaniards at their best – brave, fearless and possessed of remarkable fortitude in adversity. But whilst Gonzalo's Spaniards were staggering up out of the streaming forests of the Amazon, the fortunes of the Pizarro family were reaching their inevitable climax. Almagro's men – the men who had marched into Chile and had got so little for their hardships – were becoming increasingly restless. The focal point for their disaffection was Almagro's son, whom Pizarro had stripped of the lands and Indians he had inherited from his father. There was news of a royal commission headed by a judge being sent out to examine the situation in Peru, but it did not arrive until August 1541, two years after Almagro's death. Pride was all that was left to the adherents of the Young Almagro as they walked the streets of Lima, ragged, consumed with hatred for Pizarro and plotting murder.

Sunday, June 26, 1541, was the day appointed. Like the plot against Cortés two decades earlier, everything seems to have gone wrong for the conspirators. Their plot was disclosed to Pizarro, but there had been so many others that he took little notice of it. He told his judge, Velázquez, and decided not to attend mass; that was all; and though Velázquez made no effort to arrest the conspirators, they guessed that their plan was discovered when Pizarro failed to attend the church service.

They were too embittered, however, to be turned from their purpose. About mid-day they entered the Governor's palace. Pizarro was at dinner with a number of his captains, the bishop elect of Quito, the judge Velázquez and his half-brother Martín de Alcántara. They were unarmed and most of them escaped into the garden. Pizarro called to one of his officers to bar the door. Instead, the man tried to parley with the assassins. He was cut down, and Alcántara, who was helping Pizarro into his armour, went with two pages to defend the entrance to the inner room. Pizarro flung aside his unfastened cuirass, seized his sword, and wrapping a cloak round his left arm, went to their assistance. But they were already wounded. Alcantara collapsed. The assassins then turned on Pizarro,

who fought so long with them that with very weariness, his sword fell out of his hands, and then they slew him with a prick of a rapier through his throat: and when he was fallen to the ground, and his wind failing him, he cried unto God for mercy, and when he had so done, he made a cross on the ground and kissed it, and then incontinent yielded up the ghost.

It is very doubtful whether he was given time to thus make his peace with God since other accounts suggest that the assassins immediately closed in for the kill, plunging their swords into the body of the man they hated.

It was a fitting end to the least well equipped of all the great conquerors of history. In the name of Christ, he destroyed a fruitful empire, bringing nothing but disaster, contributing nothing. He represents the dark side of man – Man the Destroyer. And yet we cannot help having a sneaking admiration for him – his blind determination, his courage and endurance, his incredible luck. The odds he faced were fantastic – in the numbers of his opponents, in the climate and terrain, above all in the unknown seas which his three expeditions penetrated. Despite his base qualities, Francisco Pizarro remains a perversely heroic figure.

PART FOUR
The Aftermath

Though Peru and Chile were the furthest reaches of the Spanish colonial empire, much of the interior of South America still remained to be subdued and pacified. Nevertheless, with the assassination of Pizarro in 1541, the age of the conquistadors was drawing to its end. The period of discovery and conquest had been relatively short. In half a century a whole new world, vast in size and covering two continents, had been opened up. But most of the men whose qualities had made such extraordinary achievements possible were not of the stuff of empire-builders. Even the role of explorer had been purely incidental. Their business was fighting; and success did not break them of the habit – most of them died violent deaths in the power struggles that followed upon each new conquest. Consolidation of the empire they gained devolved upon others.

In Peru, the death of Pizarro created a power vacuum that was filled first by the Young Almagro and then by Gonzalo Pizarro. Both these men set themselves up as warlords, not only in defiance of orders from Spain, but in armed opposition to the crown's representatives. Almagro's youth and lack of experience was against him, and he was inhibited in his conflict with Vaca de Castro, who had officially been designated governor in the event of Pizarro's death, by his inherent loyalty to the crown. When it came to the crunch he was faced with one of the most terrible of the old-type conquistadors – Francisco de Carbajal. Carbajal was old and fat. He ‘had a jest for everything – for the misfortunes of others, and for his own. He looked on life as a farce – though he too often made it a tragedy'. He is credited with a fantastic number of executions, but men followed him recklessly, and it was this that turned the tide of battle on the plains of Chupas. Young Almagro was defeated and executed, and under Vaca de Castro's firm administration the country had peace for a time.

The authorities at home, however, did not know this, for communications with Peru were very slow. The reports they had were all of civil wars, murder, and the reckless destruction of Indian life and property. To deal with the situation they appointed Blasco Núñez Vela as viceroy, and sent him out with a Royal Audience of four judges to administer a new and moderate code of laws, the result of Las
Casas' pleadings. But by the time the viceroy reached Lima, Gonzalo Pizarro had abandoned his exploitation of the silver mines at Potosí and had moved to Cuzco as the acknowledged leader of all the dissident conquistadors. Supported by Carbajal, he advanced on Lima. The coup d'état that followed was utterly bloodless, the four judges of the Audiência appointing Gonzalo governor-general and rescinding the New Laws until they could receive further instructions from Spain.

Every boat from the Indies was now carrying to Spain rumours of the disaffection in Peru; and in 1545 the Emperor appointed a new viceroy, Pedro de la Gasca. But it was July before Gasca reached the Isthmus of Panama and by then Núñez had been defeated, his head lopped from his body on the field of battle. Gonzalo Pizarro was lord of Peru, Ecuador and Chile, with a first-class colonial army committed by self-interest to his support, and a fleet under Hinojosa commanding the whole western littoral of South America. Gasca played the only card he possessed – the personal authority of the Emperor. Time and his quiet confidence did the rest. His political methods were devious and, as Prescott says, he possessed ‘a moral power stronger than his (Gonzalo's) steel-clad battalions'. Letters dispatched to Lima offered pardon, but no guarantee that Gonzalo would be confirmed in his acknowledged position as governor-general. The terms were rejected, but when Aldana reached Panama with the reply, he was persuaded by Gasca to a loyal acceptance of the Emperor's authority. His example was followed by the admiral, Hinojosa, who handed over the fleet and, with his officers, took an oath of allegiance to the crown in exchange for a free pardon. The way to Lima was now open, but Gasca, whose Inquisition experience had made him an adept in psychological warfare, allowed time for conciliation, and the power of his royal authority, to undermine Gonzalo's position. His agents were with the fleet which sailed to Callao, the port of Lima, in February 1547, and as Gonzalo's men began to defect Carbajal was moved to repeat in jest the words of a popular ditty – ‘The wind blows the hairs of my head, mother; two at a time it blows them away.'

When Gasca landed at Tumbes, on June 13, Gonzalo retreated to Arequipa in the south. Appalled by the steady build-up of Gasca's forces, he decided to negotiate on the basis that he would abandon Peru in exchange for Chile. He marched to Lake Titicaca and sent his proposals to Diego Centeno, an old comrade-in-arms, who was holding the passes for Gasca. But Centeno replied that he served the king, and advised unconditional surrender. Gonzalo had no alternative then but to fight, and on October 26 the two forces met at Huarina, an Indian town on the south-eastern shore of Lake Titicaca. Centeno had about a thousand men, Gonzalo less than half that number, and the battle was fought at the breathtaking height of over 13,000 feet. Fortunately for Gonzalo, Centeno was ill with pleurisy and could not direct the battle himself. Even so, Gonzalo and the cavalry were routed, and it was Carbajal, old and indomitable and quite immovable, who won the day for the insurgents with his infantry.

It was almost six months before Gasca had recovered sufficiently to resume his
march on Cuzco. By then his force had increased to nearly two thousand. Gonzalo's failure to react with the necessary speed lost him control of the Apurimac and Gasca's army crossed the gorge by balsa raft. On April 8, 1548, the two forces met at Xaquixaguana. Gonzalo was supported by a large number of Indians, but they were hardly effective, and the issue was really decided before the battle by the defection, in full view of both armies, first of Cepeda, who commanded part of the infantry, and then by Garcilaso de la Vega, the father of the writer. Their example was followed at once by a detachment of arquebusiers. The rot, once started, proved contagious, and Gonzalo's forces melted away. He himself was captured. So was Carbajal, who was unhorsed crossing a stream. Only the intervention of Centeno saved him from a rabble of soldiers, but Carbajal affected not to know him, and when Centeno told him his name, the old warhorse is supposed to have replied: ‘I crave your pardon; it is so long since I have seen anything but your arse that I have forgotten your face.' The old man was then eighty-four. He was sentenced to be drawn and quartered – it was his remains that Garcilaso the writer says he played with as a child. Gonzalo was beheaded.