The Last Days of the Incas (31 page)

Despite his initial shock, Juan Pizarro soon led his cavalry boldly down into the valley, the snow-covered peaks of the Paucartambo range shining clearly in the distance, then headed toward the town of Calca, which lay on the other side of the Yucay River. It was here, native informants had told him, that Manco Inca was directing the rebellion. Manco had taken careful precautions, however; thus, even before the Spaniards had arrived, native troops had destroyed all bridges over the river. Now hordes of Manco’s warriors stood yelling and taunting the Spaniards from
the opposite bank, waving their axes and clubs and daring them to cross. With little choice other than to proceed, the Spaniards splashed their horses into the river and began to swim against the frigid, snow-and-glacier-fed current. Native warriors soon began swinging their woolen
warak’as
, or slings, and, as the horses struggled across, soon a hail of stone missiles either shot plumes of water into the air or else made metallic clanging sounds as they slammed into the Spaniards’ armor.

Emerging on the opposite side, the Spaniards immediately spurred their mounts toward the sling throwers, who now began running, the Spaniards spearing them with their lances or slicing at them with their swords. The masses of native soldiers, meanwhile—newly conscripted peasants who had only just arrived—quickly retreated up the hillsides, having no doubt been instructed by their commanders that the steep terrain would prevent attacks by the Spaniards. After a series of charges and feints, Juan then suddenly broke off the attack and galloped with his men toward Calca, where they immediately began a door-to-door search for Manco Inca. Frightened native women and children stood outside their homes as the Spaniards searched the dark interiors, the latter no doubt cursing and swearing. Manco, however, had already escaped. Yet in his haste, the young emperor had left behind a hoard of gold and silver, many of his woman servants, or
aqllacuna
, and much of the native army’s supplies.

For the next three days, the Spaniards remained in Calca, debating what to do, while the Inca army maintained its position on the hillsides, taunting the Spaniards continuously with insults and skirmishing with the Spanish sentries at night. Given the warriors’ great numbers, the Spaniards were surprised that the natives didn’t attack. The Inca commanders seemed strangely content to allow the Spaniards to remain virtually unmolested in Calca. Four days after their arrival, however, the Spaniards soon learned why no attack had occurred. A lone Spanish rider from Cuzco arrived in a great hurry and bearing a message from Hernando: Juan’s forces were to return to Cuzco at once with all speed. Massive numbers of native troops had suddenly appeared on the hillsides surrounding the capital. If Juan and his cavalry didn’t return at once, Hernando and his remaining Spaniards would be unable to hold the city.

Juan lost no time gathering up his men and galloping out of town. Some of the Spaniards carried with them various objects of
gold or silver that they had pilfered; most, however, were forced to abandon what they had found. Riding out of the valley and up onto the plateau, the Spaniards noticed that the masses of natives were becoming even denser. Native sling throwers harassed them so much, in fact, that it was all they could do to fight their way back toward the city. As the Spaniards galloped past the fortress of Saqsay-waman and caught their first glimpse of the round, bowl-like valley of Cuzco again, many of them no doubt suddenly swore out loud. There, on the hills around the city, countless native troops had appeared, where before there had been none. So numerous were the natives, in fact, that there were scarcely any unencumbered paths back down into the capital.

The returning conquistadors now made a dash down into the city, rejoining the relieved Spanish citizens they had left behind along with a mere ten horses. Since Spaniards on foot were much less effective at inflicting damage on natives than were cavalrymen, Hernando and the 126 men who had remained in the capital would probably have been overwhelmed if Manco’s troops had attacked. Even now, with a total cavalry force of eighty-six horsemen, however, the odds against them were still enormous. Pedro Pizarro, who had returned with Juan from Calca, recalled:

In the days that followed, the Spaniards watched with growing anxiety as more and more native troops continued to gather, filling in the gaps on the hills around them. Clearly, the Spaniards had been caught off guard by the immense size and scope of the rebellion. Indeed, neither the Spaniards nor their native spies had even been aware that a massive rebellion had been brewing. That Manco Inca wielded enormous and unsuspected powers was evident by the vast numbers
of troops he had assembled—and also by the fact that he had been able to keep the entire mobilization secret.

A headcount revealed that the Spanish force currently trapped in Cuzco was comprised of 196 Spaniards. According to Pedro Pizarro, of the 110 Spanish foot soldiers the “greater part [of the infantry] was thin and scrawny men.” The Spaniards also counted upon a handful of African and
morisca
slaves, a number of native concubines, some five hundred native allies from the Chachapoya and Cañari tribes, and a certain number of
yanaconas
, who often acted as the Spaniards’ spies but whose loyalty they could never be sure of. Amazingly, even despite the Spaniards’ precarious position, some of Manco’s family nevertheless decided to join them—most notably Manco’s cousin Pascac, who in Manco’s eyes now officially became a traitor.

On the hillsides around the city and pitted against the Spanish force were what appeared to be hundreds of thousands of Inca troops—too many to count, really. Even worse, the Spaniards had no idea how many more native troops were on their way. Trapped, isolated, and cut off from the outside world, nearly two hundred Spaniards—almost half of whom ranked as some of the wealthiest men in the New World—were now entirely on their own.

As Manco Inca continued to build his forces, Hernando led several cavalry sorties into the hills surrounding the city, in order to probe the strength of Manco’s forces. Each time, however, the Spaniards were met by a virtual blizzard of stones, flung from slings by an enemy that showed increasing confidence and whose sheer numbers severely hampered the cavalry’s movements. During one of their sorties, Hernando and a group of eight horsemen suddenly found themselves cut off and surrounded, pressed in on all sides by legions of emboldened warriors. As Hernando and the others tried to force a breach in the enemy’s ranks, one of the men, Francisco Mejía, suddenly found himself surrounded by a sea of clubs and grasping hands. Swinging his sword in desperation, Mejía struggled to remain in his saddle, but “[they] pulled him off his horse with their hands,” wrote one of the survivors, “and a stone’s throw away from the Spaniards they cut off his head and also the head of his horse, which was white and very beautiful.” Despite the natives now holding Mejía’s head aloft, the rest of the Spaniards somehow managed to force an opening in the warriors’ ranks and galloped back down to the city.

If Hernando Pizarro and his men were going
to survive, they would have to rely upon their cavalry and also upon their roughly five hundred native allies, who, like the Spaniards, were now also trapped in the siege. To increase their mobility and to allow different forces to fend off attacks from different directions, Hernando decided to divide the cavalry into three groups. He appointed three captains to lead them: Gabriel de Rojas—a skillful horseman who had only recently arrived in Peru; Hernán Ponce de León—Hernando de Soto’s partner, who had ridden with Soto in the vanguard down from Cajamarca; and Gonzalo Pizarro, who had stolen Manco’s wife. Hernando himself, as lieutenant governor of the city, remained in overall charge, while designating his brother Juan as his second-in-command.

The military structure of the Inca forces arrayed against them was more complex than that of the Spaniards, mainly due to the greater number of troops. At the top of the Inca military pyramid stood Manco Inca, head of state, son of the sun god, and overall military commander. Alongside him stood Villac Umu, high priest and co-commander of the empire’s military forces. In charge of the actual siege armies around Cuzco was General Inquill, who was aided by his lieutenant, Paucar Huaman. Various other commanders led their individual legions, each of which was ordered to occupy a specific location around Cuzco in order to strengthen what had now become a classic military encirclement. Recalled Titu Cusi:

As overall military strategist, Manco Inca continued to remain in Calca, the same town that Juan Pizarro had recently seized and then been forced to abandon. From Calca, Manco could send and receive
messages and could also continue to coordinate what was now a national mobilization. As native legions continued to arrive on the outskirts of Cuzco, however, another Inca general—Quizo Yupanqui—was currently leading a second army toward Lima. Manco’s orders to Quizo were to prevent Francisco Pizarro from sending relief forces to Cuzco by pinning down Pizarro and his troops in Lima. In addition, Manco had sent messages by runners throughout the empire ordering that any Spaniards caught traveling outside the cities were to be exterminated and their weapons seized.

As Manco busied himself with coordinating the logistics of war, Villac Umu urged the young emperor to attack Cuzco immediately and not to wait for any more native troops to arrive. Manco, however, did not want to attack until every last possible contingent had been assembled into place. Manco had, after all, fought with Spanish troops against General Quisquis’s army; thus he was well aware of the devastating effect the Spaniards’ weaponry and especially their cavalry had. Following the classic Inca military principle of attacking one’s enemies whenever possible with overwhelming force, Manco was determined to make his assault on the capital so overwhelming that neither the Spaniards’ horses nor their obviously superior weapons would be able to save them. Once the Spanish forces in Cuzco had been wiped out, Manco would be in control of central Peru. He could then attack and smash Pizarro’s forces in Lima, an objective that would break the back-bone of the Spanish military occupation of Peru.

While the Spaniards’ numbers remained fixed, as the weeks continued Manco gradually assembled a force of between 100,000 and 200,000 warriors—a stupendous feat of logistical organization. Soldiers in the Inca Empire were, after all, only temporary warriors—they were normally farmers or herders who were conscripted for martial duties as needed. For the most part, the warriors were married men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty and were conscripted from their native provinces in units of ten, one hundred, and one thousand. Younger unmarried men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five served not as warriors but as messengers or porters. Called
awka kamayuq
, warriors from each province spoke their local language and were led by their own chiefs. The chiefs in turn operated under the command of the Inca military commanders. While
runasimi
was the lingua franca of the native commanders, the warriors from different regions could no more speak with one another than could
an alliance of French, German, and Polish divisions. Thus the vast assemblage around Cuzco, like the Inca Empire itself, was a heterogeneous and polyglot affair.

Besides their standard cotton or alpaca tunics, native soldiers often wore helmets made of plaited cane or wood and wore thickly quilted cotton armor. Inca storehouses throughout the empire had remained well stocked with weaponry, uniforms, and the other accoutrements of war, despite the chaos of recent years. Pedro Pizarro recalled that many of the storehouses within the vast fortress of Saqsaywaman, overlooking Cuzco, for example, had been filled to the ceiling with native war materials when he had first arrived:

Native artisans had created the vast supply of weapons as part of their yearly labor tax. And although most uniforms were standardized, soldiers from the different provinces wore additional finery in order for their commanders to be able to distinguish between the different agglomerations of troops. Wrote Father Bernabé Cobo:

Depending on their specific battle formation, each native group carried weapons appropriate to their overall military function. Formations of jungle archers, sling throwers, or javelin hurlers, for example—each capable of striking the enemy from a distance—normally marched in front of the phalanxes of club-and-axe-wielding Inca shock troops, who marched behind.