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Updated: June 9, 2025
The Invasion of Peru. The Kingdom of Peru. Its Metropolis. The Desperate Condition of Pizarro. Arrival of De Soto. Character of the Spaniards. Exploring tour of De Soto. The Colony at San Miguel. The General Advance. Second Exploration of De Soto. Infamous Conduct of the Pizarros.
Scarcely had the Spaniards left the building, when the whole roof fell in with a tremendous crash.13 Almagro was now master of Cuzco. He ordered the Pizarros, with fifteen or twenty of the principal cavaliers, to be secured and placed in confinement.
Hernando had especially cautioned him to be careful on this account; but the impetuous valor of the Pizarros was not to be restrained by considerations of any personal safety, and Juan was in the front rank of the storming party. They had cut their way through to the fort and were battling for entrance when a stone hurled from the tower struck Juan in the head, knocking him senseless.
There were Greeks with Austrian names; Armenians, speaking Italian as their native tongue; Italians of astonishing military skill, whose services were no longer required by their offended country; French Pizarros with a romantic outlook, even in misery, intent to find new El Dorados; Englishmen, who had cheated at cards and had left the Horse Guards for ever behind; Egyptian intriguers, who had been banished for being less successful than greater intriguers; but also a band of good gallant men of every nation.
With the sovereign as his prisoner, and elated by his great victory, he felt that there was no resistance that he had to fear. It seems that Attahuallapa had penetration enough to discern that De Soto was a very different man in character from the Pizarros. He soon became quite cordial and unreserved in his intercourse with him.
If he had been able to obtain them or if he had sailed away without them, he might have been the conqueror of Peru; in which case that unhappy country would have been spared the hideous excesses and the frightful internal brawls and revolutions which afterward almost ruined it under the long rule of the ferocious Pizarros.
After the execution of Almagro, his followers, to the number of several hundred, remained scattered through the country; but, however scattered, still united by a common sentiment of indignation against the Pizarros, the murderers, as they regarded them, of their leader.
He was hotly pursued by Orgonez over hill and valley, till, deserted by his followers, and with only one of his wives to bear him company, the royal fugitive took shelter in the remote fastnesses of the Andes.22 Before leaving the capital, Orgonez again urged his commander to strike off the heads of the Pizarros, and then march at once upon Lima.
Such a mixed state of affairs was not so shocking in those days as it would be at present. I do not find that anybody cast any stones at the Pizarros on account of these irregularities in their birth.
Almagro, assisted by treachery on the part of some of the Spaniards who hated the Pizarros, made himself master of the city, and, breaking his plighted word, seized Hernando and Gonzalo. Meanwhile Francisco, the Marquis, had despatched a certain captain named Alvarado with a force to relieve Cuzco.
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