The Last Days of the Incas
Kim MacQuarrie · 2007 · 522 pages
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About this book
In 1532, the fifty-four year old Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Despite being out-numbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. They captured and imprisoned Atahualpa. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.^ But the Incas did not submit willingly. A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba. Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six year long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistan
Appears in these reading paths
The Inca Empire: essential books on the Andes' greatest civilization
The Spanish conquest of the Americas: essential books on the conquistadors
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