The Last Days of the Incas (46 page)

A hundred harquebus men now pulled their triggers, which brought a smoldering wick in contact with a line of powder leading directly to their barrels. The guns exploded, hurling clouds of bluish gray smoke out onto the plain and projecting lethal lead balls like invisible
rockets toward Orgóñez’s men. Hernando’s crossbowmen, meanwhile, also fired their weapons, launching a volley of metal-tipped arrows at the enemy troops. Behind them, Hernando’s army now began advancing across the plain, obeying their orders to carry out a frontal attack.

Orgóñez, stunned that Hernando was attacking instead of attempting to avoid a battle as he had predicted, watched as great clumps of his footmen and many horses and cavalrymen around him suddenly went down, as if their legs had been cut out from under them, some clutching at steel shafts protruding from their armor, others looking down in wonder at small but deadly holes that had miraculously appeared, the lead balls having pierced their armor, expanding, then splattering and ripping up soft organs and flesh.

Both armies now smashed into each other, the footmen with swords or pikes, the cavalry with their lances, shouting hoarsely “Santiago!” or “Long live the King!” and then joining together, the sounds of metal clanging, men shouting, horses neighing, then more harquebus explosions, which always startled the natives, and finally the screams of those mortally or gravely wounded filling the air. Decimated by Hernando’s fierce harquebus attack and sorely outnumbered, Orgóñez’s troops at first struggled to hold their ground. Then, under the full onslaught of their enemies’ larger numbers, they slowly began to fall back. Almagro’s field commander nevertheless continued to fight fiercely from his horse, attempting to rally his troops by driving his sword under an open visor into one man’s mouth, then slashing at another. Spurring his mount forward and shouting for his men to press forward and not to retreat, Orgóñez swiveled and charged just as a
volley of harquebus bullets suddenly ripped his horse out from under him, throwing the marshal to the ground.

Regaining his feet, Orgóñez continued to fight, although this time on foot with his sword. Soon, however, six of Hernando’s men closed in, attacking the marshal simultaneously. As the men stabbed him repeatedly, Orgóñez finally fell. With shouts of triumph, several of the men now ran their swords completely through the marshal’s body until their sword points impaled the stiff soil below. The illiterate son of Jewish cobblers who had stolen a noble pedigree and who had hoped one day to rule his own native kingdom lived just long enough to see his worst prediction come true. Soon, one of the soldiers who had felled him pulled the marshal’s beard back and cut his throat, sawing further until he decapitated him. Shoving a sword into the base of Orgóñez’s neck, the soldier now lifted the bloodied, bearded head on high for all of the Pizarros’ enemies to see. Almagro’s troops now broke and began to flee, intent only on saving their lives.

At some point during the melee, Paullu Inca—whose troops had been battling on behalf of Almagro—abruptly switched sides. Paullu had previously drawn the conclusion—perhaps in Chile or perhaps after his return to Cuzco—that the Spaniards were ultimately going to win the battle for Tawantinsuyu against his fellow Incas. It was one thing to side with a group of victorious Spaniards, however; it was quite another to side with a losing one. In the middle of the battle, therefore, as it became obvious that Almagro’s men were outnumbered and were going to lose, Paullu suddenly ordered his warriors to begin clubbing Almagro’s men to death, instead of Hernando’s.

Realizing that the battle was lost and abandoned now by even his own native litter-bearers, Diego de Almagro desperately caught hold of a stray mule and began riding it back toward Cuzco, kicking the animal’s sides in order to hurry it along. Undoubtedly, the lawyer Espinoza’s warning must have come back to haunt him: “Whenever Governors quarrel over differences they lose their property,” the aged lawyer had said, “and not only find themselves deprived of what they claim, but most suffer great misfortunes and long periods of prison—and even die.”

Almagro now rode directly to Saqsaywaman, the hilltop fortress that Juan Pizarro had died trying to seize some two years earlier, hoping to avoid being either captured or killed. Climbing up inside one of its three
towers, the aged conquistador drew his sword and prepared to make a final stand. Meanwhile, as remnants of Almagro’s defeated forces fled back to Cuzco, attempting to recover some of their property and then to escape, Hernando’s men chased after them, many of them taking advantage of the present chaos in order to settle old scores. One of those killed was Rui Díaz, who until recently had been a prisoner of Manco Inca and whom Orgóñez had “liberated” just in time for Díaz to fight on Almagro’s losing side. Now, just as Almagro’s men had stripped Pizarro’s supporters of their wealth upon their seizure of Cuzco, Hernando’s men began to do the same.

The Battle of Las Salinas, as it became known, had resulted in a complete rout: 120 of Almagro’s men had been killed while on Hernando’s side only nine Spaniards had been lost. Amidst the looting, the killing, and the confusion, with wounded from both sides being carried back into the city, a detachment of cavalry now rode out to Saqsaywaman in search of Almagro. With no food or water and realizing that cannons could reduce the Inca tower he had taken refuge in to rubble, Almagro finally decided to give himself up. Soldiers now escorted the short, swarthy governor back down into the city and directly to the Incas’ curved temple of the sun. There they placed him in the very same chamber where he himself had imprisoned Hernando Pizarro. As a cold rain began to fall outside, washing maroon-colored bloodstains from the streets and from the distant plain of Las Salinas, the former capital of the Inca Empire once again fell under the control of the Pizarros.

A few days later, Hernando Pizarro went to visit the defeated Almagro—a man he had always competed with for power and had long despised. Despondent now and worried about his fate, Almagro asked Hernando if his old partner, Francisco Pizarro, planned to come to Cuzco, so that the two of them might settle their differences.
Hernando—knowing full well that Almagro’s fate now lay in his hands—was uncharacteristically kind to the old conquistador; he assured him that his elder brother would more than likely visit and that, even if he were for some reason detained, Almagro could visit the marquis himself in the City of the Kings. Having reassured Almagro, Hernando left. Outside, however, he quietly instructed his notaries to begin judicial proceedings against his brother’s former partner—a necessary first step before Almagro could be executed.

For the next few weeks, Hernando reassured Almagro that his brother was sure to visit and he also made sure that his prisoner was well treated. Almagro—believing that the relationship between him and his former partner could somehow be repaired and that Hernando was not nearly as vengeful as he had feared—waited impatiently for the elder Pizarro to arrive. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, the old governor waited in his frigid cell and at night no doubt dreamed—dreamed of his childhood, of the mother who had peered at him from between a partially opened door and had handed him a piece of bread before closing it again, dreamed of how his uncle had once chained him inside a cage. Almagro may even have dreamed of being waited upon as the governor of a suddenly bountiful New Toledo, living a life of luxury in Cuzco, his capital. Two and a half months after the Battle of Las Salinas, however, whatever dreams Almagro may have had collapsed as quickly as one of the mirages he must have glimpsed amidst the endless northern desert of Chile. Recounted one chronicler:

Hernando, as disdainful as ever, despised Almagro even more for what appeared to him to be abject groveling. “Stop behaving so despicably,” the heavily built man said, turning to leave, “rather die as bravely as you have lived. You are not acting like a knight.” Almagro looked after him, then no doubt hung his head, as the door closed firmly behind.

On July 8, 1538, during the month the Incas offered sacrifices to the
huaca
Tocori, the spirit that watches over the irrigation waters of the valley of Cuzco, Don Diego de Almagro gave his last confession to a priest, then dictated his will to a notary who had been brought into his cell. The veteran of hundreds of battles and the executioner of countless natives now set about distributing all the worldly goods he had accumulated since arriving in the New World. In his will, Almagro declared that he possessed hundreds of thousands of castellanos “in gold and silver, gems and pearls, ships and herds.” To his only son, eighteen-year-old Diego de Almagro, Jr., whom Almagro had fathered with his Panamanian mistress and who had accompanied him to Chile, Almagro left 13,500 castellanos; to his daughter, Doña Isabella, he left 1,000 castellanos, and asked that she become a nun. “He made a great many other bequests … to his servants and to monasteries,” wrote one eyewitness. Almagro finished by donating the rest of his property to King Charles, perhaps hoping that in so doing his death might one day be avenged.

The mayor of Cuzco, Antonio de Toraco, now entered Almagro’s cell, accompanied by the town crier and the executioner. Still hoping to save his life, Almagro fixed his one bloodshot eye upon the men, trying to use guilt to dissuade them from obeying Hernando’s order.

The three men no doubt looked at one another uncomfortably. Then the mayor spoke: there was nothing they could do, he said. It had been ordered that he should die and die he must. The three were simply carrying out orders. Almagro vehemently demanded, however, to speak with Hernando Pizarro one last time, watching with a certain horrified fascination as the executioner prepared the garrote in his presence. This time the mayor agreed, leaving and then returning a short while later with Hernando. Five people now crowded into Almagro’s small cell.

Hernando, believing perhaps that with the depositions he had collected against Almagro he would not be held accountable for the governor’s death, abruptly told the men to carry out his orders. With Almagro shouting after him, Hernando left the condemned man’s cell, heading in the direction of the main square and the Amaru Cancha palace, part of its roof burned yet still his home. As Hernando walked along the square, no doubt looking up briefly at the head of his former enemy, Marshal Orgóñez, caked in dried blood and covered with flies, back in the temple of the sun the executioner was fixing the garrote around Almagro’s neck—the same kind of execution that Almagro had once urged his fellow Spaniards to inflict upon the emperor Atahualpa. Almagro—unable to believe that after having helped to conquer the largest native empire ever to have been discovered in the New World this was how his life was to end—“began to cry out, ‘You tyrants! You’re stealing the King’s land and are killing me for no reason!’”

In the street outside, the muffled shouts were heard
for a time and then suddenly ceased. Not long afterward, the town crier emerged from Almagro’s prison and, hurrying, was followed by a priest in a long black robe. Both headed up the street lined with cut Inca stones and toward the main square, leaving the rounded contours of the sun temple behind. As they walked, the crier composed in his head the news that he would soon shout out onto Cuzco’s streets for one and all to hear: that Don Diego de Almagro—governor of the Kingdom of New Toledo and native of Extremadura—was dead.