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Updated: May 29, 2025
De Soto was kindly received at Guancabama. Just as he was about to leave for Caxamarca, an envoy from the Inca reached the city on its way to the Spanish camp. The ambassador was a man of high rank. Several servants accompanied him, laden with presents for Pizarro. He entreated De Soto to return with him to the headquarters of the Spaniards.
Gonzalo was so much convinced by these arguments, that he countermanded the order given to the licentiate Carvajal, and sent off Juan d'Acosta on the expedition to Caxamarca, with a force of two hundred and eighty men.
On arriving at Truxillo, Acosta only ventured to remain one day at that place, being afraid that Diego de Mora might bring a superior force against him from Caxamarca. He learnt likewise, that the royalists squadron had gone to the port of Santa, to which place he accordingly marched.
Two hours after sunset, the sound of the trumpet assembled the Spanish soldiers by torchlight in the great square of Caxamarca. It was the evening of the twenty-ninth of August, 1533. The clanking of chains was heard as the victim, manacled hand and foot, toiled painfully over the stone pavement of the square. He was bound by chains to the stake; the combustible fagots were piled up around him.
It was on the 29th of August, 1533. The trial and deliberations had occupied the whole day. It was two hours after sunset before they were ready to execute him in the great square of Caxamarca. The Spanish soldiers, fully armed, arranged themselves about a huge stake which had been planted in the square.
The estimates of the numbers slain in one half-hour's fighting in the square of Caxamarca vary from two to ten thousand. Whatever the number, it was great and horrible enough. An unparalleled act of treachery had been consummated, and Peru, in the space of thirty minutes had been conquered and Pizarro held it in the hollow of his hand.
What part De Soto took in the outrages just described, cannot now be known. He had unquestionably in good faith, and as an honorable man, invited the Inca to visit Caxamarca, by which invitation he had been enticed into the power of the Spaniards.
Another source of embarrassment arose. Reinforcements to the number of two hundred men had just arrived at Caxamarca, under Almagro. They had been sent forward from Panama, commissioned by the king of Spain to join the enterprise. The whole number of Spanish soldiers, assembled in the heart of the Peruvian empire, now amounted to about five hundred.
When rich veins are struck, the wages of the miners increase, but in most instances they spend them in drinking and debauchery, while the proprietors of the mines are almost equally uncivilised. Fourteen miles from the town of Caxamarca is an isolated mountain called the Cerro de San Fernando de Gualgayoc, traversed by numberless veins of silver. At its summit rise a number of pyramidal pinnacles.
The crowds who lined the highways seemed to understand and appreciate the friendly feelings De Soto manifested in gracefully bowing to them and smiling as he passed along. He soon ascertained, though his guide Filipillo, that the headquarters of the Peruvian camp was at a place now called Caxamarca, among the mountains, about eighty miles northeast of the present seaport of Truxillo.
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