649. The Fall of the Incas: The Last Emperor (Part 6)

What It Covers

The final collapse of Spanish conquistador unity unfolds across 1537–1572, as Almagro and Pizarro destroy each other through betrayal and execution, Manco Inca wages guerrilla resistance from the Vilcabamba jungle, and the last Inca ruler Tupac Amaru is publicly beheaded in Cusco's main square, ending four decades of indigenous resistance to Spanish colonial rule.

Key Questions Answered

• •Betrayal as military strategy: Hernando Pizarro secured his release from Almagro's captivity by promising to sail directly to Spain, then immediately mustered 700 Spanish soldiers and thousands of indigenous auxiliaries to march on Cusco. Almagro released both Pizarro brothers sequentially, surrendering all leverage before either battle or negotiation. Retaining hostages was the single most effective check on Pizarro power, and Almagro abandoned it twice.
• •Indigenous collaboration determined conquest outcomes: At the Battle of Cochabamba in central Bolivia, Spanish chronicler Alonso de Toro recorded that without Paulo's 5,000 Cusco warriors, the surrounded Spanish force would have been destroyed. Paulo's defection to the Spanish side after Las Salinas was decisive across multiple campaigns. Roughly 500 Spanish landowners controlled former Inca territory primarily because rival indigenous factions supplied the numerical force to pacify it.
• •Terrain selection decided the Battle of Las Salinas (April 6, 1538): Rodrigo Orgonez commanded superior cavalry but chose broken, jagged ground near old Inca salt mines, negating his horses while favoring Hernando's infantry and arquebusiers. The two-hour battle ended Almagro's military power entirely. Commanders choosing engagement sites should match terrain to their dominant arm — cavalry requires open ground, infantry and firearms benefit from confined, irregular terrain.
• •Colonial labor extraction produced demographic collapse: By the 1560s, royal official Fernando de Santillan documented that approximately four in five men in Spanish-ruled Peru were subject to forced labor quotas. The silver mine at Cerro Rico, Potosi, opened in 1545, drafted tens of thousands annually; death estimates range from hundreds of thousands to 8 million over its operational life. Disease, trauma-induced birth rate collapse, and infrastructure destruction compounded direct violence.
• •Guerrilla survival requires intelligence discipline: Manco Inca escaped repeated Spanish pursuit — at Vitcos, across the Urubamba River, and at the jungle fort Chukuluska — by maintaining mobility and blocking roads behind him. He was ultimately killed not by military defeat but by harboring seven Spanish fugitives who concealed daggers in their boots and bread rolls in their sleeves before stabbing him during a game of quoits. Sanctuary extended to enemies without verification is a consistent vulnerability.
• •Colonial rebellion previews independence movements: Gonzalo Pizarro's 1544 uprising against Charles V's New Laws — which banned indigenous slavery — followed the same structural logic as later American independence: colonists declared loyalty to the crown while demanding autonomous control over local labor and land. John Hemming's analysis draws a direct line from Gonzalo's rhetoric to the 1770s tax revolts, with the critical difference being that Gonzalo sought to restore, not abolish, forced servitude.