The Last Days of the Incas (45 page)
In Cuzco, however, Almagro immediately began arguing with Espinoza that not only should Cuzco rightfully be his but that the northern boundary of his own governorship should be extended northward to a point just south of Lima. He had, after all, just saved Cuzco and the Spaniards within it from Manco’s siege, Almagro said. If he had not returned to Peru then this whole region would still be under the renegade emperor’s control.
Despite Almagro’s seeming intransigence, Espinoza nevertheless hoped that if he could just negotiate a temporary agreement on a boundary between the two kingdoms—
any
boundary—then at some later date the king’s officials could complete their measurements and determine the final boundaries. The main problem, as Espinoza saw it, was whether the two Pizarro brothers would seek revenge if released; if they did, then the current conflict could devolve into an all-out civil war. After listening patiently to Almagro, Espinoza next visited the makeshift Spanish prison located within the temple of the sun. There the aged lawyer found Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro and, after warmly greeting the two brothers, he turned to Hernando and began to speak, hoping to shed clarity on the present conflict by placing it in a wider perspective:
As I have experience in these parts
of the Indies, [I know that] whenever Governors quarrel over differences they lose their property and not only find themselves deprived of what they claim, but most suffer great misfortunes and long periods in prison and even die in them, which is the saddest thing of all. Thus I can promise you that if Governor [Pizarro] does not come to a peaceful agreement with Governor Almagro, without resorting to war … then neither will ever be free from great hardships and troubles. For when His Majesty learns of these conflicts, he will be forced to find a solution for this kingdom, which is his, and will send peaceful men to restore order in it, removing those who had previously held office…. Once the … [king’s officials] … set foot in a province or in a new kingdom, those who were first to govern will never govern again…. I say this because, for my part, now that I have agreed to be a mediator in these negotiations, I wish to arrange a settlement between the Governors so that from now on there will always be peace and conciliation between them, for the success of these negotiations requires nothing less. And I say this, because you [Espinoza said, looking directly at Hernando Pizarro] do not look like the kind of man who, finding himself imprisoned and longing for liberty, is quick to agree to anything, yet who afterwards will remember what he has suffered and … will want to avenge his past wrongs … [or] who will start the kind of war that the more prudent men who do not want to follow him … will nevertheless be unable to stop. Therefore, you should act like someone who desires peace, and not like someone who [only] wants to be freed in order to begin a war.
Hernando Pizarro, his natural arrogance tempered somewhat by his imprisonment, listened to Espinoza carefully and ultimately agreed in principle to negotiate. Elsewhere in the city, however, Almagro’s captains—and especially Rodrigo Orgóñez—continued to urge Almagro to execute both Hernando and Gonzalo, insisting that neither of them could be trusted. If the two Pizarro brothers were released, Orgóñez argued, then they would surely return and try to recapture Cuzco. For months, however, the negotiations between Espinoza and Almagro stretched on, during which time Pizarro continued to receive new troops and to build his military force in Lima. During this period, Gonzalo Pizarro somehow managed to escape from prison; the latter made his way to Lima where he rejoined
his brother Francisco, whom he had not seen in nearly two years.
The lawyer Espinoza, meanwhile, did his best to persuade Almagro not to precipitate open civil war, which would not only sever Almagro’s connections with Francisco Pizarro but would also jeopardize his relationship with the king:
If all the men who have ever been in this world, and even those who are in it now … would give their attention solely to serving God and to guiding their affairs by the light of reason, and would remain satisfied with what is actually theirs and belongs to them, then there would not have been so many wars and so many great battles. But as the human mind has a tendency to always want to command and to dominate, in order to achieve this ambition, not only have many great lords and kings perished, but their souls have also been in danger of being lost. For when it comes to who is to rule, a father will disown his son and a son will cause the death of his father. And those who suffer the most are the miserable countries, which end up wasted and consumed and with most of their people dead, and the buildings in their cities being left in ruins, which is very painful to see…. These wars commence for trifling reasons, but afterwards they grow to such an extent that, even though those who were the cause of them wish to end them, they cannot do so. The wars that are to be feared the most and are the cruelest are the civil wars. Rome was never threatened as much by its [foreign] enemies such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal as it was by its own citizens. Nor did any of the wars that the Romans waged during [their] seven hundred years … [ever place it in greater danger] than it faced during the civil wars of Sylla and Marius, and of Pompey the Great, and of Julius Caesar. But without … such momentous events, many cities in Spain are ruined and are nearly uninhabited because their citizens … [are divided into factions], the one against the other.
So now if, in your old age and after having served His Majesty for such a long time, the two of you become the authors of a civil war—what do you think you will gain from it? Because after many deaths on both sides you will be murderers, and then a judge will arrive, by royal order, who will decide your fates. Fly from the thought that it will ever be said that, during your time, there was a war of Spaniards
against Spaniards. You have the means to prevent this in your hands, which is to secure an agreement with Governor [Pizarro]. Don’t be deceived by the remarks of immature young men. Nor insist on believing that all of your happiness depends upon being given the district of Mala [below Lima]. Be patient so that [with the pending arrival of] the Bishop of Panama, [and] once the boundaries of the governorships have been determined, each one [of you] will understand what is his and will know the favor His Majesty grants him.
Almagro, now sixty-three years old, was moved by the learned man, whose grasp of history greatly impressed the illiterate old conquistador. Almagro knew nothing of Rome or Caesar or Pompey or of ancient civil wars, but he
did
understand the old lawyer’s argument—and was much influenced by it. After years in the saddle and a lifetime of hardship and scrabbling, he had been feeling his age of late and recently had been suffering from a variety of ailments. Realizing that he had had no specific authority to seize Cuzco, nor to have attacked Pizarro’s relief force, Almagro began to worry that if he now killed Hernando Pizarro, as some of his captains insisted, he would jeopardize any favor he might still retain with the king. Besides, executing Hernando meant declaring war on his ex-partner; civil war would then be unavoidable.
Eventually, Almagro ordered that Hernando Pizarro be set free, as long as the latter promised he would uphold the peace. Rodrigo Orgóñez—the man who had smoked Hernando out of his Inca palace and who was still angry over Hernando’s numerous personal insults—is said to have been mortified by the news. “Raising his head, he [Orgóñez] grabbed his beard with his left hand and made as if to cut his throat with his right one; shouting out ‘What a shame, Orgóñez—that because of your friendship with Almagro your throat will be cut!’” Sure enough, within two months further negotiations between Pizarro and Almagro collapsed, war was declared, and Espinoza’s long-feared civil war was launched. Orgóñez had been right: the Pizarros were the last people on earth to either forget or forgive.
On Saturday, April 26, 1538, at dawn on the day of St. Lazarus, whom Christ had returned from the dead, amid a swampy area called Las Salinas some two miles west of Cuzco, two European armies faced each other, preparing to do battle. Francisco Pizarro, now sixty years old, had
remained in Lima and had placed his thirty-eight-year-old brother, Hernando, in charge of recapturing the Incas’ former capital. With the various reinforcements of men and supplies that had arrived in Lima, which had even included a ship sent from Mexico by Cortés, Hernando now commanded a force of more than eight hundred Spaniards and several thousand native auxiliaries.
At least two hundred of Hernando’s troops were mounted cavalry, fully armored and wielding lances and swords. These Hernando had divided equally and had positioned on either of his two flanks. Five hundred armored foot soldiers stood in the middle, bearing shields and swords, with the ensigns in the center holding aloft the imperial banners of the various kingdoms of Spain. In the front rows stood a hundred harquebus men, their three-foot guns fully primed and ready to be fired. The guns were currently the vogue in European warfare, as their lead projectiles could penetrate the thickest of armor, thus obviating the need for hand-to-hand combat.
On the other side of the plain, Almagro’s forces—five hundred men compared to Hernando’s more than eight hundred—waited tensely. These were comprised of some 240, cavalry, roughly 260, foot soldiers, six cannon, and six thousand native warriors bearing mace clubs and slings. The native warriors had been supplied by the newly crowned emperor, Paullu Inca, who, like Manco, now wore the scarlet emperor’s fringe and rode in his own royal litter. Almagro had instructed Paullu to position his warriors around the edges of the plain with orders to kill any Spaniard who tried to flee the battle—no matter which side they belonged to. Paullu dutifully transmitted the order to his captains.
Too sick to ride a horse, Almagro had turned his army over to his second-in-command, the marshal Rodrigo Orgóñez, who had hoped in vain to prevent that which was about to unfold. Wrote Cieza de León:
Governor [Almagro] had come out from Cuzco in [an Inca] litter with his army. And before arriving at Las Salinas he reached a plain where … he said to his captains that they would now see how the negotiations had ended up and how he had been rejected and that he would not be coming to do battle if things hadn’t broken down [in such a manner], since war was a disservice to both God and His
Majesty…. But that they could now see how Hernando Pizarro and his brother, despite so many promises and negotiations, had come looking for them, while those who followed their banners did so because they believed that all the land would be divided up among them. Once they discovered that they had been deceived, [however] they would never dare to start a war again. “Since justice is on your side, fight fiercely so that victory will be yours and so that they will be punished severely.”
Hernando, meanwhile, took time to address his own men, many of whom were newly arrived in Peru and who ironically found themselves about to fight not the native insurgency they had been summoned for, but instead their very own countrymen. Nevertheless, the Spaniards on both sides realized that if they were victorious on this day then they would surely be rewarded with lands and spoils. The Kingdom of Peru—each of the assembled combatants understood—was still very much up for grabs.
When he was a few miles away, Hernando Pizarro [halted and], before his captains and his men, made a speech justifying his cause. He said that Almagro had incited the war while he [Hernando] had been in Cuzco striving for justice in the name of the King and that Almagro had imprisoned him and had treated him brutally, as everyone knew. But that, more as a point of honor than because of past injuries, he wanted to punish those who followed Almagro and [who shared in] his blunders, because they had helped him commit his past mistakes. And that now, by order of the Governor [Francisco Pizarro], they had come to regain the city of Cuzco, and to free it from Almagro’s oppressive rule…. When the war was over, there would be many provinces and discoveries to divide among them, which would be awarded to them and not to any others.
As the two forces readied themselves, Governor Almagro had a seat prepared for himself on a nearby hill, where he could watch the battle unfold. On the adjacent hills, a crowd of native onlookers stood in anticipation of a spectacle they had never before seen: two armies of the bearded invaders, seemingly about to attack each other, in what the natives could only surmise was the foreigners’ version of an Inca-style civil war. According to
Cieza de León:
As news of the battle that was about to be fought between the “men of Chile” and those [supporting Pizarro] … spread far and wide, natives from many towns came to attend, overjoyed that such a day had arrived and believing that some satisfaction might be had for the injuries they had suffered from the Spaniards. They stood on the slopes and hills, hoping that neither [Spanish] captain would be victorious but that all would die and would be killed with their own weapons…. The wives of the Indian chiefs and the Spaniards’ servant girls [concubines] [also] came out of the city and went to see those who were going to fight in the battle.
According to some, Marshal Orgóñez now rode before his troops, encouraging them, and “boasted a good deal.” A veteran of the Italian Wars, Orgóñez was certain that Hernando would not attack, even though he wielded superior numbers, as Hernando had to know the kind of carnage that his troops would suffer. Instead, Orgóñez told his men—walking his horse before them briskly with his sword drawn and a curved morion helmet on his head—Hernando’s troops would surely break away at the last moment and would attempt to race around their flanks, hoping to reach Cuzco and seize it, thus avoiding open combat.
On the cold silent plains beyond Cuzco, with the ownership of Peru hanging in the balance and with Manco’s spies watching from the hillsides, those Spaniards who had them closed their visors, the cavalrymen lifted their lances, and the rest unsheathed their swords. All now looked to their commander as, with their banners stirring in the breeze, they waited for the signal to attack. Hernando Pizarro, his horse snorting, presumably looked down his lines, then directly at Orgóñez across the plain from him. Not taking his eyes from him, he then raised his sword on high, held it aloft for a moment, then quickly brought it down.