The Pizarros relished and abused their domination of the Inca princesses but also upgraded their middling family by breeding with Inca royalty, not to speak of getting their hands on their property. Many of these girls were very young. The Spaniards used a sickening Cape Test to see if they were old enough for intercourse: if, struck from behind by a cape, they fell over, they were too young; if they remained standing, they were ready. It was a fiesta of rape for the Spaniards, though some of the Inca women were proud to attract the omnipotent strangers. Pizarro, who never married, came to love Atahualpa’s sister Quispe Sisa (Inés), who gave birth to their daughter, Francesca. She was legitimized by Charles and became the greatest heiress of the New World. But Pizarro could not resist taking another of Atahualpa’s sisters, Azarpay, whom he also installed in his palace, much to Inés’s fury.
Pizarro returned to the coast to found a City of Kings (Lima), but his brothers Gonzalo, Juan and Hernando, back from Spain, humiliated the young Inca, Manco, who had consolidated power by killing any family contenders. Now these brothers raped his princesses and extorted more gold. Gonzalo seized Manco’s
Manco made his headquarters in the sacred citadel of Sacsayhuamán, looming over Cuzco, but took time to gather his forces. Besieged in Cuzco, the Pizarro brothers just held out. Francisco’s expeditions were beaten back. Juan Pizarro was killed attacking Sacsayhuamán. The brothers were rescued only by their rival Diego de Almagro, who retook Cuzco but then clashed with and imprisoned the Pizarros. Francisco Pizarro hit back, capturing and garrotting Almagro – an act that would rebound on him. Manco, now deploying the arquebuses and swords that had given the Spanish their advantage, retreated to found a new kingdom in the jungles of Vilcabamba.
Francisco Pizarro took vengeance, burning many of the Incas alive. When he captured Manco’s queen, Cura Ocllo, already raped by his brother, he and his secretary gang-raped her and then had her stripped, tortured, shot full of arrows and floated in a bucket downriver to Manco, who ‘wept and made great mourning for he loved her much’.*
Now that the Manco revolt was over, Pizarro sent more gold back to Charles to ‘aid His Majesty in the war against the Turks’.
‘Send me the most unusual gold and silver work,’ ordered the emperor. ‘You can coin the rest.’ His conquistadors were on his mind. In 1535, Charles appointed a viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, to manage the bumptious Cortés. Mendoza boasted of the way he continued the conquest, killing the locals ‘by firing at them with artillery until they were cut to pieces, setting the dogs on them or giving them to African slaves to kill – to punish those who are most guilty and make the rest more fearful’. When he had served in the conquest of Granada, he added, ‘we used to beat and stone many Muslims’; the rest ‘were treated as slaves and divided up’. Mendoza’s arrogance made Cortés seethe.
In 1540, the marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca returned to Spain, rich but embittered and keen to be recognized. Charles avoided him until Cortés pushed past the outriders and jumped on to his carriage. ‘Who are you?’ asked the alarmed kaiser.
‘I’m a man,’ answered Cortés, ‘who gave you more provinces than your ancestors left you cities.’ Charles let him and his son Martín,
‘Confess in hell,’ cried the Lad, smashing an urn into his face as his hitmen stabbed Pizarro another twenty times and then beheaded him. But this was not quite the end of the Pizarros nor of the Incas.*
