Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: A Visual History

The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire (1532-1572) began when Francisco Pizarro's 168 Spaniards ambushed and captured the emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca on 16 November 1532, at the end of an Inca civil war and a smallpox epidemic. Atahualpa filled a room with gold and silver as ransom and was garrotted anyway in July 1533; the Spaniards took Cusco with native allies in November. Manco Inca's great rebellion of 1536 nearly retook Cusco and Lima; he then founded a Neo-Inca state at Vilcabamba. The conquistadors fought civil wars among themselves (Pizarro was murdered in 1541), and the last Inca, Tupac Amaru, was captured and beheaded in Cusco in 1572.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Andean population

Timeline of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire

1. 1527
   Smallpox kills Huayna Capac; civil war
2. 1532
   Cajamarca16 November.
3. 1533
   Atahualpa executed; Cusco taken
4. 1536
   Manco Inca's siege of Cusco
5. 1541
   Pizarro assassinated
6. 1544
   Manco Inca murdered
7. 1548
   Gonzalo Pizarro executed
8. 1572
   Tupac Amaru executedVilcabamba falls.

Cajamarca

Pizarro reached Peru as Atahualpa had just won the civil war against his brother Huascar. Invited to meet the emperor at Cajamarca, the Spaniards hid in the buildings around the square; when Atahualpa rejected the friar's book, cannon, cavalry and steel fell on his unarmed retinue, killing thousands and seizing him. He offered a room 22 by 17 feet filled once with gold and twice with silver, worth about 6 tonnes of gold; while the ransom came in he had Huascar murdered. Pizarro's men melted the treasure, then tried Atahualpa and garrotted him on 26 July 1533.

Cusco and Manco's revolt

Marching south with allies from peoples who hated Inca rule, the Spaniards entered Cusco in November 1533 and installed Manco Inca as puppet. Abused by the Pizarro brothers, Manco escaped in 1536 and besieged Cusco with perhaps 100,000 men, burning the city; the 190 Spaniards held Sacsayhuaman in desperate fighting, and Lima's siege was broken. Manco withdrew to the jungle refuge of Vilcabamba and was murdered there in 1544 by Spanish fugitives he had sheltered.

Conquistador wars and Vilcabamba

Diego de Almagro, cheated of his share, seized Cusco and was executed by the Pizarros in 1538; his son's followers murdered Francisco Pizarro in Lima in 1541; Gonzalo Pizarro rebelled against the crown's New Laws protecting the Indians and was beheaded in 1548. Meanwhile the Vilcabamba state under Manco's sons Sayri Tupac, Titu Cusi and Tupac Amaru survived by diplomacy and raids until Viceroy Toledo sent an expedition in 1572; Tupac Amaru was captured and beheaded in Cusco's square before a weeping crowd.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Inca Empire (1438 to 1533)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• First Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)

Wars of the same era and region

• Spanish conquest of Mexico (1519 to 1521)
• Spanish conquest of New Granada (1525 to 1540)
• Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II (1780 to 1783)

8 surprising things about the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire

1. Not a single Spaniard died at Cajamarca; the only wound was to Pizarro, cut by one of his own men while protecting Atahualpa.
2. Atahualpa learned to play chess in captivity and reportedly beat his captors.
3. The ransom room's contents, once melted, made each Spanish horseman rich for life; the crown's fifth was 2,600 pounds of gold.
4. Manco Inca's warriors learned to ride captured horses and use captured swords and arquebuses.
5. The last Inca capital Vilcabamba was lost in the jungle until identified in the 1960s; Hiram Bingham thought Machu Picchu was it.
6. Pizarro was illiterate and had been a swineherd; he was over 50 when he set out for Peru.
7. Tupac Amaru's execution inspired the name of the 1780 rebel Tupac Amaru II and later of the rapper Tupac Shakur.
8. The Spanish civil wars in Peru killed more conquistadors than the Incas did.

Sources

• Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire Wikipedia
• Francisco Pizarro Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Pizarro and the Fall of the Inca Empire World History Encyclopedia
• John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (1970) Macmillan

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