The Last Days of the Incas (53 page)

Not surprisingly, perhaps, within little more than a year after Pizarro’s murder, at least fifteen of the roughly twenty
Almagristas
who had murdered the marquis were dead. Two of his assailants had been killed during the attack itself. A dozen others were hanged, quartered, or otherwise killed during or just after the Battle of Chupas. One of the few of Pizarro’s assassins to survive was a man named Diego Méndez, a half-brother of Rodrigo Orgóñez, Diego de Almagro’s former second-in-command. It was Orgóñez who had almost captured Manco Inca at Vitcos in 1537 and had helped Almagro seize Cuzco from Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro. A year later, Hernando had defeated and executed Orgóñez outside Cuzco and had displayed the latter’s head on the gallows on the main square. It shouldn’t have been surprising then that, a little over three years later, Diego Méndez would have been among Pizarro’s assassins, bent upon avenging his brother’s death.

After the
Almagristas’
latest defeat at the Battle of Chupas, both Diego Méndez and Diego de Almagro the Younger had fled to Cuzco, hoping to escape capture by the royalist forces fighting on behalf of the king. The younger Almagro was nevertheless soon apprehended and was quickly executed, roughly four years after the execution of his father. Diego Méndez, meanwhile, was also captured and charged with having been one of Pizarro’s murderers. Méndez, however, somehow managed to escape; he soon fled to the only place where he felt Spanish jurisprudence
would be unable to reach him—to Manco Inca’s rebel kingdom of Vilcabamba.

Having lived with his followers in Vilcabamba for the last five years, Manco Inca was by now twenty-seven years old. And, despite the Spaniards’ successful counterinsurgency campaign against his forces in the Andes, Manco nevertheless continued to train his warriors in insurgency techniques and to stage guerrilla raids on the Spaniards whenever feasible. When Diego Méndez unexpectedly arrived at the outskirts of his small kingdom, therefore, and asked for refuge, Manco’s generals not surprisingly wanted to execute him. Manco, however—no doubt having been informed that Méndez was one of those responsible for Francisco Pizarro’s murder—instead welcomed the Spanish refugee and offered him sanctuary. The emperor did likewise with six other
Almagristas
who had fled from the highlands and who now sought safety within the Incas’ hidden kingdom.

Manco
did
take some precautions regarding his potentially dangerous guests, however; instead of inviting the Spaniards to live in his capital of Vilcabamba, he housed them in Vitcos, about thirty miles away. As Titu Cusi later remembered:

In return, the renegade Spaniards instructed Manco and his warriors in the finer arts of European warfare, teaching them how to load and fire their captured harquebuses correctly, how to use Spanish weaponry, and how to ride, shoe, and otherwise make use of captured Spanish horses. Pizarro’s assassin, Diego Méndez, meanwhile, gradually became Manco’s confidant, no doubt informing the emperor about the current conflicts in Spanish Peru, about life and politics in Spain and Europe, and so on. In short, the seven Spanish renegades became advisers to the Incas on all things Spanish, helping Manco to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of his enemies so that he might better be able to defeat them. For their part—exiled in an Inca kingdom that for all practical purposes was nowhere
near Spanish Peru—the renegades patiently bided their time. The
Almagristas
spent their days resting, playing games of quoits, and no doubt hoping that one day they would be able to emerge from their self-imposed exile to rejoin Spanish society.

It took almost two years before political changes in Peru afforded the Spanish refugees just such an opportunity. In the power vacuum left by the murder of Pizarro, King Charles had sent his first viceroy—Don Blasco Núñez Vela—to take over control of the country. A new viceroy was precisely what Pizarro’s assassins had hoped for. But more than likely only one of them—Diego Méndez—had lived to see this happen. Now, deep in the jungles of the Antisuyu, Méndez and his companions decided that the time was finally ripe for their next move. Manco’s guests had realized that they were finally in a position to offer something of extreme value to the new viceroy—the death of Manco Inca. Manco’s unconquered kingdom, after all, still threatened Spanish control of Peru; it also continued to serve as a lightning rod for native defiance against the Spaniards. Both the viceroy and the king were therefore quite anxious to put an end to it.

If Méndez and his men could somehow manage to assassinate the rebel emperor, Méndez believed, he had no doubt that that would end the Inca rebellion. Méndez and his co-conspirators could then surely win pardons for themselves and would be able to reintegrate themselves into Spanish Peru. In fact, if they played their cards right, they might even be rewarded with
encomiendas
by the grateful new viceroy. The seven renegades made a decision: just as Méndez had helped to assassinate Francisco Pizarro, now he and his fellow exiles would likewise assassinate Manco Inca. They would then escape to Cuzco and would announce Manco’s death there as a fait accompli.

In order for Méndez and his coconspirators to carry out their plan, however, they would have to wait until Manco made one of his frequent visits to Vitcos from his nearby capital. When an unsuspecting Manco finally arrived with his now fourteen-year-old son, Titu Cusi, the seven renegades quietly prepared their weapons, readied their horses, and waited.
^*
One of Manco’s favorite pastimes was playing horseshoe quoits, a game in which
each participant tried to throw a horseshoe so that it touched or encircled a stake driven into the ground. In the hilltop city with sweeping views over the countryside, Manco’s son watched as his father began playing quoits with his Spanish guests, having played numerous games with them before. Suddenly, however, just as Manco was about to make a throw, Diego Méndez pulled out a hidden knife and impaled the emperor brutally from behind. Manco’s son later recalled:

After repeatedly stabbing their host, Méndez and the other renegades now raced to their horses, leapt upon them, and galloped away. Women screamed while others gathered around the stricken emperor, now covered in blood. Soon, however, Manco’s captains sent runners in the direction the Spaniards had gone, in order to alert the countryside as to what had happened and to the fact that those who had attacked their emperor were now trying to escape.

All afternoon the assassins rode in the direction of Cuzco, putting as much distance between themselves and Vitcos as possible. As darkness fell they continued their flight, alternately riding and leading their horses by their reins. In their haste, however, the Spaniards had made a critical error in taking the wrong fork in the trail. By the time daybreak arrived, the fugitives realized that they would probably have to retrace their steps. Exhausted, they decided to rest for a while inside a thatched-roofed building before continuing.

While the Spaniards were sleeping, squadrons of Antis forest archers and native warriors discovered the building and quietly surrounded it. Soon, they set its roof on fire. As flames began to rise up and smoke began to pour out of the door, one by one, Manco’s assassins
began
to emerge, some desperately running out with their clothes on fire while others attempted to climb up onto their horses and escape. The jungle archers, however, immediately unleashed volleys of arrows at the escaping Spaniards while other natives surrounded their horses and pulled the riders off, spearing and clubbing the men savagely with their
chonta
-wood clubs. “They killed all of them very cruelly and some were even burned,” recalled Titu Cusi. Within a short time, native warriors had killed all seven of Manco’s assailants, including Pizarro’s assassin, Diego Méndez.

MAY BY PAUL PUGLIESE

The news that Manco’s attackers had been captured and killed was quickly sent to Vitcos and was relayed to Manco, who was conscious but lay dying from his wounds. Manco had already designated a successor—his nine-year-old son, Sayri-Tupac Inca. Although native healers no doubt desperately tried to save him, three days after the Spaniards’ attack, in the hilltop city of Vitcos high above the western rim of the Amazon, the now twenty-nine-year-old Inca emperor died. The ruler whom Francisco Pizarro had crowned a decade earlier had in the end outlived Pizarro by a mere three years, leaving behind his wives and his three small sons. Manco also left behind a tiny rebel kingdom whose stunned inhabitants now fell into mourning over the loss of their leader. The emperor who had had the force of character and skill to organize the greatest native rebellion ever against Europeans in the New World had ultimately made a single fatal error: Manco had chosen to trust the Spaniards not once but
twice
—and in the process had lost both his empire and his life.

With Manco Inca and three of the five Pizarro brothers now dead—Francisco, Juan, and Francisco Martín—and with Hernando Pizarro currently in prison in Spain, only one surviving member of the Pizarro family remained in Peru, thirty-two-year-old Gonzalo. The youngest of the Pizarro brothers, Gonzalo had been only twenty when he and his brothers had helped to seize Manco’s older brother Atahualpa in Cajamarca, twenty-three when he had stolen Manco Inca’s wife, and twenty-seven when he had led the expedition that had sacked Vilcabamba.

Strikingly handsome, fabulously wealthy, and an excellent horseman, Gonzalo was also vindictive, impetuous, and possessed of the conviction that other people were either good friends or bitter enemies.
Since the death of his three brothers and the imprisonment of the fourth, Gonzalo’s tendency to see the world in terms of black and white had no doubt become even more pronounced. Faced now with the unpleasant prospect of having to live under the rule of the king’s new viceroy—a man who had taken no part whatsoever in the conquest and who thus had risked nothing—Gonzalo predictably followed the dictates of his own character: with one impulsive decision, Gonzalo now placed the viceroy at the top of his list of enemies and then declared himself the new governor of Peru.

Gonzalo’s seizure of power was both an act of impulsiveness and an act of treason. It would soon plunge Peru once again into an all-out civil war. “Is it possible,” asked the frustrated viceroy, upon learning of Gonzalo’s insurrection, “that the great Emperor our Lord [King Charles], who is feared in all the provinces of Europe, and to whom the Turk, Master of all the East, dare not show himself hostile, should be disobeyed here by a bastard who refuses to comply with his laws?” It was more than possible—indeed it was already a fact. The illiterate, illegitimate Gonzalo Pizarro not only refused to comply with the king’s laws; he also repudiated the king’s choice of viceroy. Like his elder brother Francisco, however, Gonzalo may have been uneducated but instinctively understood both power and politics. It seemed obvious to him that the king had been attempting through his new viceroy to take over the kingdom that he and his brothers had risked their lives to conquer—and he was determined to prevent that from happening. “Spain’s desires … [are] well understood despite her dissimulation,” Gonzalo wrote caustically to his fellow military commanders who had decided to side with him. “She … [wishes] to enjoy what we … sweated for, and with clean hands benefit from what we … [have given] our blood to obtain. But now that they have revealed their intentions, I promise to show them … that we are men who can defend our own.”

To an emissary the viceroy had sent to parley with him, Gonzalo revealed an even deeper motivation: his own unequivocal lust for power. “See here, I am to be Governor because we would trust no one else, not even my brother Hernando Pizarro…. I don’t care a jot for my brother Hernando or my nephews and nieces or the eight thousand pesos I have in Spain…. I must die governing! … I give this as my reply and there is nothing more to be said about it.”

Like a split in a glacier that slowly cracks apart and eventually
leaves a gaping chasm, Spanish Peru now became fractured between those who supported the rebel Gonzalo Pizarro and those who supported the king. Almost overnight, Peru became an exceedingly dangerous place for a Spaniard to be living in. Furious with all those who chose either to oppose him or else to remain neutral, Gonzalo began executing any Spaniard who refused to lend him his support. This was despite the fact that many of these men were wealthy
encomenderos
who had fought alongside the Pizarros ever since the capture of Atahualpa. An unsentimental Gonzalo eventually executed some 340 of his fellow compatriots, a number representing more Spaniards than the Incas had managed to kill during all the years of their insurrection.

Despite his impetuous decision, Gonzalo’s seizure of absolute power initially went extremely well; he soon gave chase to the king’s viceroy, then eventually captured, executed, and decapitated him, placing the viceroy’s head on an iron pike for good measure. The crown, however, soon sent another representative to Peru, Pedro de la Gasca, who gradually raised a new army and then proceeded to march in search of the man whom the king now considered a traitor.

On April 9, 1548, on a high, cold, and windswept plain a few miles west of Cuzco called Jaquijahuana, Gonzalo and about 1,500 of his heavily armed followers squared off for battle with a similarly sized royalist force. The striking, black-bearded Pizarro, who had yet to lose a battle against either natives or Spaniards during his sixteen years in Peru, was “very gallant on his powerful chestnut horse, and wore a coat of mail and a rich breast guard with a surtunic of crushed velvet and a golden casque on his head with a gold chin guard,” wrote the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega. The proud owner of various gold and silver mines, of vast
encomiendas
, and the final standard-bearer of the Pizarro family’s name, Gonzalo had staked everything on the outcome of this, his most important battle.