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The men were then dismissed to their quarters, and almost immediately afterwards at eight o'clock in the morning the Huascar fired the first shot, which fell right between the two Chilian ships, and then began one of the most memorable sea-fights that have ever been recorded in history.
The Shah, which fought the Huascar in 1877, was a ship of this description; she carried 26 heavy guns, and had a speed of 16 knots. Other vessels were specially designed as rams.
She was a very heavily armed ship, and was nearly, if not quite, as formidable as the Huascar had been, and thus still constituted a standing menace to the unfortified ports of Chili.
By establishing his quarters at Caxamalca, he would be able to support his generals, in case of a reverse, or, at worst, to secure his retreat on Quito, until he was again in condition to renew hostilities. The two commanders, advancing by rapid marches, at length crossed the Apurimac river, and arrived within a short distance of the Peruvian capital. Meanwhile, Huascar had not been idle.
With incredible difficulties still to overcome, Pizarro had in his favor a circumstance of immense importance. The country was at that time distracted by civil war. Two brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa, sons of the last Inca, were engaged in a fratricidal strife for the imperial power, and their armies were turned against each other.
The undaunted crew of the sloop were too fully occupied with the work of fighting the Huascar to take any notice of what was happening in the town behind them, and suddenly a shower of shells began to hurtle over the devoted craft from shoreward. The Peruvians there had dragged down to the beach a battery of field-pieces, with which they now opened a galling fire upon the Esmeralda.
The son of the monarch by his sister, his only legal wife, or Coya the irrevocable Peruvian method of providing for the Inca succession was named Huascar. Huayna on his deathbed, after a glorious reign of forty years, made the fatal mistake of dividing his dominion between Huascar, to whom was given ancient Peru, and Atahualpa, who took Quito to the north.
He came at a moment when Peru was but just emerging from a civil conflict, in which Atahuallpa had routed the rival and more legitimate claimant to the throne of the Incas, Huascar. On his march, Pizarro was met by an envoy from the Inca, inviting him to visit him in his camp, with, as Pizarro guessed, no friendly intent.
Amidst this assembly it was not difficult to distinguish the person of Atahuallpa, though his dress was simpler than that of his attendants. But he wore on his head the crimson borla or fringe, which, surrounding the forehead, hung down as low as the eyebrow. This was the well-known badge of Peruvian sovereignty, and had been assumed by the monarch only since the defeat of his brother Huascar.
He had married his own niece, Francisca Pizarro, illegitimate daughter of the Marquis Francisco, by a daughter of the great Inca, Huayna Capac. The woman was a half-sister of Atahualpa and Huascar. By this questionable means, the family of the Pizarros, with certain dignities, restored for their Peruvian service, was perpetuated in Spain. Hernando died at the age of one hundred and four.
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