The Last Days of the Incas (32 page)

As native troops from around the empire continued
to arrive and reinforce the Incas’ siege around the city, the individual formations on the hillsides grew to such an extent that soon the troops were camping right up against the houses on the city’s outskirts. Day and night, the warriors now kept up a deafening roar, shouting taunts and insults in their various languages. The sound barrage was the equivalent of a modern psyops campaign and had the same intended purpose: to keep the Spaniards off balance, unnerved, and afraid. “There was so much shouting and din of voices that all of us were astonished,” Pedro Pizarro said. In addition, the natives were continually mocking them, lifting their tunics up and “baring their legs at them to show how much they despised them,” as Titu Cusi described it. Baring the leg was a grave Inca insult. Far from believing the Spaniards to be gods from across the seas, the native warriors now clearly showed the Spaniards their utter disdain and contempt.

Manco Inca, in the meantime—receiving constant updates of the situation at his headquarters in Calca—was determined not to overlook any aspect of the pending military assault. The young emperor was well aware that the religious aspects of the impending struggle were as important to victory as were the simply mechanical preparations of troops, weapons, food, and supplies. Without the favor of their gods, the disproportionate number of their troops versus those of their enemy really didn’t matter. Manco thus presided over a variety of feasts, fasts, and sacrifices—all in an effort to ensure divine intervention on their behalf.

It is likely that Manco even visited the famed oracle, named Apurímac (“great speaker”), located not far from Cuzco on the banks of the Apurímac River. Inside the temple stood a wooden figure wearing a golden belt and with golden breasts, dressed in finely woven woman’s clothes and splattered with the blood of numerous offerings. A temple priestess named Sarpay served as both the guardian and the idol’s interpreter. It was she who would have instructed Manco in the kinds of sacrifices he had to make. Presumably, the oracle of Apurímac informed the young emperor that the omens for the pending battle were good.

As the time of the final assault drew near, Manco
now presided over the solemn Itu ceremony. For two days, the emperor and his troops fasted and refrained from all sex; priests, meanwhile, cut the throats of sacrificial llamas while ritual processions of boys—elegantly dressed in red tunics of delicate
qompi
cloth and wearing feathered crowns—paraded about. As priests scattered sacred coca leaves on the ground, the fasting period concluded with an enormous feast and with the consumption of vast quantities of
chicha.

Finally, on what the Spaniards called Saturday, May 6, 1536, during the Catholic feast day of St. John-ante-Portam-Latinam, and with hundreds of thousands of native warriors shouting loudly, Manco Inca launched his allout attack. As natives blew on single-note conch shells and clay trumpets, legions of javelin hurlers, sling throwers, and jungle archers suddenly began to unleash a violent barrage of stones, javelins, and arrows upon the city below. A giant “whoosh” sounded through the air and then turned into a crackling noise as the first missiles began to slam onto the stone flagging and walls. Those Spaniards caught outside on the streets ran for cover. Legions of native warriors, or shock troops, meanwhile, began to move slowly in unison down the hillsides, penetrating into the city and heading toward the capital’s central square.

Manco’s native infantry marched in close formation, carrying an assortment of three-foot-long clubs, battle-axes, and shields and all the while keeping up a deafening roar. Native military officers traveled with them, carried aloft in resplendent litters as sunlight glinted off the warriors’ chest and back plates of copper, silver, or gold. Most of the natives wore wicker helmets, many of which were adorned with exotic plumes of scarlet, yellow, green, and cobalt blue bird feathers. Similar native legions had carved out and conquered the Incas’ 2,500-mile-long empire. Now their descendants—having temporarily lost control of the very valley from which the Inca juggernaut had exploded—marched with the obvious determination of crushing the invaders who had so disturbed the equilibrium of their land. Manco and his generals’ strategy was a simple one: first, they would force the Spaniards toward the center of the city, shrinking the area that the Spaniards currently occupied; then they would overwhelm and crush them with their vastly superior forces.

With natives from every direction now
entering the city, the conquistadors suddenly found themselves caught in the center of a rapidly tightening noose. Every one of them realized that if they couldn’t find a way to stop Manco’s onslaught, they would soon be squashed together and bludgeoned to death with clubs. The barrage of arrows and missiles had already forced the Spaniards into hiding. On the hillside just above the city, meanwhile, native troops seized and occupied the fortress of Saqsaywaman, along with its supply rooms of weapons. From here, Villac Umu and many of his commanders would oversee the battle and would send messages to Manco Inca in Calca, some two hours away by
chaski
runner. Other Inca forces soon captured the strategic enclosure of Cora Cora, which abutted the northern corner of the city’s main square. Recalled Pedro Pizarro:

Under a withering hail of stones and other projectiles, the Spaniards who had been caught elsewhere in the city retreated to the main square, which was lined with the Inca palaces the Spaniards had seized and occupied some two years earlier. If the Incas’ strategy was to encircle, squeeze, and then crush their adversaries, the Spaniards’ strategy was to hold on to, if at all possible, two massive stone buildings—Suntur Huasi and Hatun Cancha. The enclosures faced each other on the eastern side of the square and had high, gabled roofs of thatch that were supported by wooden beams. In desperation, the Spaniards converted them into bunkers, relying upon the roofs and walls to protect them from the relentless hail of stones.

Taking charge of one of the buildings, Hernando Pizarro placed the other under the command of
Hernán Ponce de León. So fierce was the native bombardment directed at them that the frightened Spaniards were now unable even to venture out from either building. Within the dim interiors, many now kneeled and prayed while, outside, rocks continued to thud fiercely against the streets, walls, and roofs. “There were so many slingshot stones coming in through the entryways of the doors,” remembered one survivor, “that it seemed like a dense hail at a time when the heavens are hailing furiously.” Forced now to relinquish control of the city, save for this small portion of the main square, Pedro Pizarro recounted that:

Before Hernando Pizarro could even decide between the twin options of being trapped in the two buildings and being clubbed like so many guinea pigs or else trying to make a run for it and somehow breaking through the encircling hordes, a new and even more frightening problem suddenly reared its head: the roofs of many of the houses in the city had now abruptly begun to burst into flames. The incredulous Spaniards, running to the door-ways and peering from their buildings, looked out to see a virtual holocaust of fire rising from building after building. Before they even understood how it had happened, the Spaniards were trapped in a city that was rapidly being incinerated.

Manco Inca and his war council, it turned out—faced with the Incas’ deadliest foe since the creation of their empire—had come up with an ingenious war plan: not only had they decided to surround their enemies, to unleash a vicious barrage of stones, and, under the barrage’s cover, to gradually move in and crush their enemy—but they had also decided simultaneously to set fire to the city, hoping to smoke
the Spaniards out of their hiding places or else to burn them to death. Manco’s warriors had presumably lit a number of large fires on the city’s outskirts and had then laid sling stones upon them, waiting patiently until the stones had turned the color of rubies. Removing them from the fires, the warriors wrapped the glowing stones in flammable cotton, loaded them into slings, then whirled them about, allowing centrifugal force to fire the stones at the city.

As the combination of superheated stone and the sudden blast of oxygen ignited the surrounding cotton midair, tiny versions of the Molotov cocktail began to rain down upon the rooftops of the city, setting the dry thatch of the houses on fire. Lending support to the sling throwers, jungle archers—no doubt decorated with face and body paint—let loose volley after volley of fire-tipped arrows into the city. Thus, within a relatively short time, a major conflagration now threatened to burn every last Spaniard alive.

It wasn’t long, in fact, before tendrils of smoke began to curl downward from the ceiling of Hatun Cancha, where the Spaniards were trapped. As those inside gazed up in horror, all realized that their own rooftop had now caught on fire. Wrote one of the survivors:

Wrote Cristóbal de Molina: “There was so much smoke that the Spaniards almost choked to death. They suffered greatly because … the smoke and heat … were so intense.”

Various sources now describe what happened next. According to some Spaniards, while the rest of Cuzco burned, the flames on the roof of Hatun Cancha somehow mysteriously went out. Later some of those present swore that the Virgin Mary herself had miraculously appeared, with flowing robe and hair, and extinguished the flames. Titu Cusi, however, who no doubt would have heard this story directly from his father, left a more prosaic version: the Spaniards owed their temporary reprieve to African slaves they had stationed on the roof. Despite being fired at with arrows by Amazonian warriors and despite the unceasing hail of sling stones,
the Africans had been able to put out the fire.

With much of the city burning and realizing that if they stayed within the two buildings that they might soon be roasted to death, Hernando Pizarro decided that he and his men had no other choice but to leave the relative safety of the buildings and counterattack.

“It seemed to them that it would be better to go out than to perish there,” wrote Cieza de León, “and as dense and continuous as the hail of rocks was they suddenly came out together with their Indian friends and they went charging into their enemies in the lower streets, destroying their entrenchment.” The mestizo chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega added:

As flaming roofs began to collapse and crash throughout the city, native warriors were now able to run along the tops of the newly exposed walls, thus gaining the advantage of height over the Spaniards and also allowing the natives to protect themselves from cavalry charges. Other warriors fought on foot in the narrow alleyways, swinging their battle-axes and mace clubs and slinging stones at the Spanish foot soldiers, at the Spaniards’ native allies and slaves, and at the metal-clad demons on horses. “The Indians were supporting one another so well,” wrote one eyewitness, “that they charged through the streets with the greatest determination and fought hand-to-hand with the Spaniards.”

All day, as smoke poured from the city, the battle raged fiercely; only with the greatest difficulty, in fact, were the Spaniards able to prevent the tiny portion of Cuzco that they presently held from being overrun. Lords of vast Indian estates—indeed of much of the Inca Empire only a month earlier—the Spaniards now saw their future prospects collapse as abruptly as the flaming roofs throughout the city. For all the Spaniards,
however—rich and poor alike—the only thing that now mattered was preserving their lives.

As the seemingly endless day drew to a close, however, the Spaniards were granted a slight reprieve: the Incas were primarily day fighters and were reluctant to fight at night. Thus, as the sun god, Inti, finally began to sink behind the hills, the natives gradually ceased their attack. Manco’s warriors seemed content to consolidate their advance into the city by building barricades across the streets and alleys they had captured. As the exhausted Spaniards watched the barricades rise, it was clear to all that Manco’s noose around them was gradually cinching tight. That night, recalled Titu Cusi,