The Last Days of the Incas (39 page)

A general atmosphere of fear and anxiety now gripped the city’s inhabitants, given the rumors about the approach of hostile enemy armies, the relatively small number of defenders, and the knowledge that roughly half of the city’s Spanish forces had already been wiped out. A giant native rebellion, meanwhile, was rumored to be gathering in the nearby Andes like some catastrophic storm that was slowly headed their way. Spanish-occupied Jauja, Lima’s inhabitants knew, no longer existed; its
encomenderos
had been wiped out. Cuzco had possibly suffered the same fate. In addition, nothing had been heard from Diego de Almagro, whose five hundred men had left to explore the Kingdom of New Toledo, as his new realm was called, over a year earlier. They, too, might have been exterminated, for all anyone knew. Nor had any ships with relief forces arrived in response to Pizarro’s desperate pleas abroad. Thus far, in fact, Pizarro had not received a single reply.

Finally, late in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, as the omnipresent mist, or
garúa
, clung to Los Reyes like a cold damp cloth, the news that everyone had been dreading now arrived in the form of a lone Spaniard galloping across the plain.

Almost immediately, more unwelcome news followed.

The rumors of an impending attack, the city’s inhabitants realized, had indeed been true. Unbeknownst to Lima’s defenders, General Quizo had just spent months gathering his forces and raising additional levies of warriors from along the western flanks of the Andes. By now Quizo had plenty of practical experience in combating Spanish troops, both foot soldiers and cavalry. By using the Andes’s rugged topography to his advantage, and by collecting accurate intelligence on the disposition and movements of enemy forces, he had been able to destroy previously invincible Spanish cavalry detachments of up to eighty men, with negligible losses of his own. Still, Manco’s veteran general clearly knew his own limitations: thus far, neither he nor any other Inca commander had discovered an effective defense against Spanish cavalry on flat ground, no matter how great the numerical superiority of their own forces might be. Quizo’s ultimate commander, however—Manco Inca—had yet to learn this lesson.

Months earlier, after hearing the welcome news of his general’s unbroken string of victories, Manco had sent Quizo one of his own sisters, “who was very beautiful,” to be the general’s wife. Manco had also sent Quizo numerous gifts, including high-status royal litters that lent the general even more authority and prestige. In effect, Manco had just promoted his most successful general and was now tied to him through matrimony. The gifts, however, were delivered along with firm instructions: Quizo
was to attack Pizarro’s coastal city “and destroy it, not leaving a single house standing, and to kill as many Spaniards as he could find.” Pizarro himself was to be taken alive, if possible, and was to be brought to Manco as a prisoner. Any natives found helping the Spaniards were to be summarily executed. Once having sacked and destroyed the city, Quizo was to return with his army to Cuzco, where he and Manco would complete the extermination of the remaining Spaniards in Peru.

General Quizo fully realized that the strength and speed of the Spaniards’ horses could only be neutralized by steep topography. Horses, it turned out—even more so than men—simply were no good at running up steep hills. As long as his men controlled the heights, Quizo had the advantage. In the case of the Spanish city on the coast, however, which Quizo’s scouts had no doubt built small clay models of for him to study, the general quickly saw that his troops would be forced to abandon the protection of the hills and would have to attack the Spaniards on flat terrain. There, they could certainly expect to be attacked by Pizarro’s cavalry. As the Inca general studied the clay models and examined the protuberances representing the hills around the city, he undoubtedly realized that Manco’s order to attack Pizarro’s coastal city was going to be the most difficult challenge of his life.

Meanwhile, Pedro de Lerma, who had found Quizo’s advance forces massing some seven miles from the city, decided to attack. Despite suffering numerous casualties, however, Quizo’s warriors continued to advance, new ones immediately taking the place of those who had been slain. Quizo’s troops eventually killed one Spaniard, wounded a number of others, and then with one well-placed sling stone broke most of the teeth in Captain Lerma’s mouth, leaving the captain’s face a bloody mess. Lerma broke off the engagement soon afterward and retreated with his troops to Lima.

After a careful examination of the terrain, General Quizo decided to attack Pizarro’s city from three sides—north, east, and south. He would then use his overwhelming numbers to overrun the city, similar to Manco’s strategy in Cuzco. Dividing his army into three divisions, Quizo ordered a division of Tarama, Atabillo, Huánuco, and Huayla tribes to attack from the north, a second division of Huancas, Angares, Yauyos, and Chauircos to attack from the south, while he himself would lead the third division and would attack directly from the east. Quizo’s forces, like so many Roman
legions, now began to take up their positions, making themselves visible to the city’s defenders for the first time as they began emerging from the gray mist. “The Governor, seeing such a multitude of warriors,” wrote one Spanish survivor, “had no doubt whatsoever that our side was completely lost.” Finally, with his legions now waiting for his signal and watching them hoist their cloth banners aloft, General Quizo gave the command to attack.

Quizo’s three forces now began a pincer-like movement toward the city, advancing across the plain to the sound of the Incas’ traditional martial music of conch shells, clay trumpets, and drums. From above, the divisions looked like a three-sided clamp that was slowly tightening to crush the city. Pizarro, meanwhile, had stationed his eighty cavalry within the city, hidden from sight. When Quizo’s divisions finally began arriving at the city’s outskirts and the rest of the attacking troops were now well exposed on the plain, Pizarro gave his own signal to attack.

A group of harquebusiers now suddenly appeared, firing their weapons, their heavy barrels issuing clouds of smoke and their lead balls ripping into Quizo’s attackers. Next the cavalry charged. With lances and swords drawn and shouting hoarsely, the Spaniards galloped rapidly toward the attackers’ front lines, smashing into them, then began slashing downward with their swords and thrusting repeatedly with their spears. The Spaniards’ native auxiliaries, meanwhile, far more numerous than the conquistadors, also charged out, counterattacking the Inca troops with stone and bronze-tipped clubs. Fierce fighting broke out, although as usual the warriors’ clubs and sling stones were no match for armored Spaniards with their thousand-pound horses and their carefully honed, slicing blades of steel. Although Quizo’s troops had succeeded in reaching the outskirts of the city, it was there that the Inca attack stalled, as the Spanish foot soldiers, cavalry, and native auxiliaries fought fiercely to prevent Los Reyes from being overrun.

All afternoon the battle raged, with the Spaniards’ armored cavalry exacting a deadly and unequal toll on Quizo’s troops. Finally, the Inca general ordered his forces to retreat to the hills ringing the city, knowing that the steep escarpments there would protect them from further cavalry attacks. Quizo and his own division retired to the tall, brown, sugarloaf-like hill now called Cerro San Cristóbal, which still rises up over Lima from across the Rimac River. Quizo’s other divisions, meanwhile, seized the hills
to the north, south, and west, thus practically encircling the city.

For the next five days Manco’s finest general laid siege to Pizarro’s City of the Kings, with the Spaniards having to fight fiercely each day to prevent the city from being overrun. By the sixth day, however, General Quizo had reached a turning point. Manco had not ordered his veteran general to lay siege to the city, but to take and destroy it, and to put the Spaniards there to death. The constant, unequal attrition, however, was undoubtedly beginning to demoralize the general’s troops. Well aware that Manco’s warriors still surrounded Cuzco but had been stalemated there for more than three months, Quizo no doubt felt pressure to finish the job here on the coast and to return and assist his emperor in the battle for the Inca capital. Each day, however, Quizo witnessed from his hilltop position the Spanish cavalry wreak havoc among his attacking warriors, inflicting severe losses. The only chance he had of breaching Pizarro’s defenses, Quizo concluded, was to launch one final and overwhelming blow upon the city—but this time he himself would lead the charge.

Calling for an assembly of his captains, Quizo waited patiently for them to arrive. From the heights of Cerro San Cristóbal, the general could look out over the city and could see the Inca roads stretching north, east, and south while to the west lay the dull, metallic blue ocean enveloped in fog. To the east rose the Andes, but only their flanks were now visible due to the constant mist. Gradually, Quizo’s captains arrived on their litters, resplendent in their cotton or alpaca tunics, their colorful mantles, and their various ornaments of gold, silver, and copper. Once they had assembled, Manco’s general stood and gestured down at the Spanish settlement, announcing gravely that he was “determined to enter the city and take it by force or to die in the attempt. ‘I intend to enter the town today and kill all the Spaniards who are in it,’” Quizo said, the golden plugs in his earlobes glinting as he turned. “‘Those who accompany me must go with the understanding that if I die, all will die, and if I flee, then all will flee.’ The native captains and leaders all agreed to go with him.”

Having learned no doubt from his spies that the Spaniards had their own women in the city, Quizo now promised his captains that he would distribute the women to them as gifts, so that the two races could mate and “produce a strong generation of warriors.” The general also reminded his
captains that if they were successful, then the hated invaders’ last toehold on their sacred coast would be smashed, and that Tawantinsuyu, land of the four quarters, would soon be free of the false
viracochas
from across the sea. Later that afternoon, after the captains had returned to their troops and on the sixth day of the siege, General Quizo launched his final assault on Pizarro’s City of the Kings. Wrote one chronicler:

One of the differences between Inca and Spanish methods of warfare was that the Inca general and his field commanders often led the charge. The typically polyglot amalgamation of native troops, apparently, was accustomed to being led and inspired. As long as they could see their commanders riding on their litters beside or ahead of them, the natives fought with determination. If their commanders went down under enemy maces or sling fire, however, then their attack often would falter. The Achilles’ heel of Inca warfare, therefore, was the placement of the command center of their assaults often at the very apex of their attacks. Spanish commanders, by contrast, normally directed their battles from a position at the rear. Except in the capture of Atahualpa, for example, Pizarro had always sent others—Diego de Almagro, Hernando de Soto, and other captains—to lead the advance. If something should have happened to them, then Pizarro still would have remained in full control of the invasion. According to one chronicler,

Night began to fall on a battlefield littered with native bodies and with the bloodied and torn litters of the fallen Inca commanders. The next morning, when the Spaniards awakened they found that the entire native army had disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Crushed psychologically by the loss of their general and of so many of their leaders, Quizo’s troops had retreated to the Andes. Once again, armored Spanish cavalry—given plenty of room to maneuver—had proven to be the decisive factor. That, coupled with Quizo’s fatal strategy of placing himself and his commanders in the vanguard, had stopped the Inca assault on Pizarro’s coastal city quite literally dead in its tracks.