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Francisco Pizarro

Spanish Conquistador, Vanguard of the Colonial Conquest That Overthrew the Inca Empire

Those Who Fought the Map Into Being · Generals & Conquerors

Spanish Colonial ConquestThe Fall of the Inca EmpireThe Ambush at Cajamarca

Who they are

Francisco Pizarro (c. 1478–1541) was a Spanish conquistador who led an expedition of little more than a hundred men deep into the Andes of South America, at a moment when the Inca Empire, its power drained by the civil war between the last emperor Atahualpa and his brother over the throne, was empty of strength; in 1532 he set an ambush at Cajamarca and, with a wildly disproportionate force, captured Atahualpa, and though he collected a huge ransom of gold and silver paid by the Inca, still had him executed, then marched to take the Inca capital Cusco, wholly destroying this most vast native empire of South America. The bad faith and cruel methods of the Spaniards in this conquest were thereafter long one of the most controversial classic cases, and the one that best embodies the nature of colonial atrocity, in judging the history of European colonial expansion.

Primary sourcesContemporary Spanish conquistador accounts (such as the memoirs of Pedro Pizarro)Ordered documents of Inca oral history

Key stories

The Ambush at Cajamarca

In 1532 Pizarro, with only a little over a hundred Spanish soldiers, set an ambush in the square of Cajamarca, inviting the Inca emperor Atahualpa to come with his retinue for a "conference," and, taking him wholly off guard, suddenly struck, capturing Atahualpa and slaughtering a great body of the accompanying Inca nobility and guard at very small cost through the technological advantage of firearms, horses, and steel armor — this ambush of the few over the many was thereafter long a classic case in the study of how technological advantage and deceit in colonial conquest overturned the traditional balance of military power.

The Ransom and the Betrayal

After his capture Atahualpa, to save his life, offered a room of gold and two rooms of silver as ransom, and the gold and silver from across the Inca Empire was carried in an endless stream to Cajamarca to fill this unprecedented ransom demand, yet Pizarro, having collected it, still executed Atahualpa on a trumped-up charge — this act of bad faith thereafter became the most widely known historical instance of the colonial mode of "violence and deceit hand in hand" in the European colonizers’ treatment of native American civilization.

Relationships

Nemesis

👑Atahualpa　Atahualpa was the last Inca emperor he captured and executed

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The "trap at Cajamarca"Pizarro’s ambush and capture of the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca, the tactic of dismantling a vast empire with a tiny force, is thereafter often cited in military and colonial history as a classic case for analyzing "information asymmetry and the effect of surprise in the clash of civilizations."

Appears in

The Afterglow of the Old World and the Collision of the NewThe Height and Collapse of the Inca Empire

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