The Sun Virgin
Inca--with all the pomp and ceremony of the Kingdom of the Four
Corners of the World. And Yma the Sun Virgin ascended the throne,
Empress of the realm. The royal litters were made ready for the new
rulers and their household to accompany Pizarro on his march to the
South. A royal proclamation was issued by Toparca commanding the
obedience and loyalty of the people.
The little Spanish army of 500 men made a brave show drawn up in a line
with waving banners, shining armor and uplifted spears.
Pizarro made a last attempt to regain the confidence of his ablest
captain.
“Come, come, Hernando de Soto,” he pleaded. “I ask you to lead the van
in our advance in Cuzco. We will yet find countless millions of gold.”
“And I have seen enough here,” was the slow reply, “to learn that gold
unearned can only curse its holders.”
Pizarro frowned and lifted himself in his saddle.
“And I lead my men to wealth beyond the dreams of avarice!”
He lifted his hand in sharp command to his little army. The trumpet
called, the cavalry moved and the historic gala procession marched
southward.
De Soto, joined by Molina and Teresa, turned his horse towards the
coast. And Yma, standing beside Toparca, waved a tender farewell.
Molina’s horse reared, and he saluted her with drawn sword, wheeled,
and rode toward the sun that hovered over the peaks.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ENVOI
Twenty years pass, and, one by one, the men who condemned the Inca to
die meet a fate equally as tragic.
Toparca’s brother leads an army to the siege of Cuzco, burns it to the
ground and kills Juan Pizarro.
Valverde, arrayed in his robes of bishop, on his way to the Court of
Spain, is captured at Tumbez by a band of warriors from the hills and
brutally murdered.
In a struggle with the officers of the Crown Gonzalo Pizarro is
condemned to die as a traitor. When led forth to his execution his love
of fine dress is all that remains of his splendor. Over his doublet he
wears a superb cloak of yellow velvet stiff with gold. A cap of the
same material covers his head. In his magnificent attire, mounted on a
mule, he is led through the crowd by a friar holding a crucifix before
his eyes. He ascends the scaffold and addresses the people:
“Many of you have grown rich on the bounty of my brother and mine. Yet
I have only the clothes in which I die!”
He kneels a moment in prayer, lifts his neck and the executioner severs
his head at a blow.
The feud between Almagro and Hernando Pizarro at length flames into a
war in which Spaniard slays Spaniard. Almagro wins the first campaign,
captures and imprisons his enemy. In a moment of impulsive generosity
he releases him under a solemn parole never to take up arms again. The
moment he is free, Hernando rallies his confederates, savagely attacks
Almagro, defeats and captures him.
The man who signed the agreement with Francisco Pizarro to conquer
Peru, the idol of his soldiers, is now accused of a hundred crimes. And
in a trial that was mockery similar to the one over which he presided
at the death of the Inca, he is found guilty of treason and condemned
to be burned alive.
To the priest who announces the sentence Almagro cries:
“It is impossible that Hernando Pizarro can do me this wrong! I beg to
see my judge.”
Pizarro, recalling with grim humor the hour of his own humiliation when
his brother had forced him at Caxamalca to apologize to the little
one-eyed man, hastens to answer the summons, eager to witness his
enemy’s anguish.
The doomed prisoner ignores the smile of scorn with which he is
regarded and begs for his life in piteous moans:
“Surely you can not forget the proud rôle that I have played as the
partner of your brother, the great conqueror? We quarreled, yes. My
hot temper was generally at fault. But we always shook hands and were
friends again. Together we faced the scorn of the world. Together we
faced death, side by side. And together won eternal fame. You can not
thus murder me. I am a prisoner of war, as I held you but a few days
ago. I was generous. I appeal to your heart....” He grips his judge and
sobs in a moment of despair. The folded arms, ugly silence and cruel
smile of his enemy at last are more than he can bear.
The little man suddenly draws himself erect.
“I warn you, Hernando Pizarro, of the vengeance of the Emperor of
Spain!”
A stern hand commands silence.
“Your doom is fixed. Prepare to meet it.”
He does. He makes a will leaving his fortune to Charles V with a humble
prayer for vengeance.
A group of cavaliers plead in vain for mercy. The only boon Pizarro
grants is that he shall be strangled in the jail instead of being
burned alive in the Square. The priest and garroter slip quietly into
the prison and the conqueror’s single eye stares at the twisted wire
in the hand of his executioner. The condemned man starts at a sudden
touch of cold iron and sees by the glare of a torch in the square at
Caxamalca the trembling figure of the Inca. He lifts a hand to shut out
the vision and grips the gnarled fist of that which finds his neck. A
sharp twist of the big wrist and the light of the world fades.
When Hernando Pizarro reaches Spain on his second trip, loaded with
treasure for himself and his Emperor, Charles receives him with sharp
questions. His entry into the city of Valladolid, arranged with
magnificent ceremony, had failed to impress the monarch. Nor can his
rich gifts to the Crown lay the ghost of Almagro. In spite of his
powerful friends, the emperor orders him thrown into the dungeon of the
fortress of Medina del Campo where he languishes in chains for twenty
years to the last days of his miserable life.
A brief tumultuous seven years of viceregal power and Francisco Pizarro
sees the end. Denounced as tyrant and traitor by Almagro’s son, a
conspiracy is formed to assassinate him in his palace at Lima, the new
capital which he is building.
Rada, the leader, pushes boldly into the courtyard and shouts the death
sentence.
The conqueror is dining with a party of cavaliers, who leap to their
feet at the cry of the assaulting party, flee into the upper rooms of
the house and leave their host to his fate. Many of them escape by the
balcony overlooking the garden. Chaves, who attempts to defend Pizarro
is run through and his body tumbles down the stairway.
“Death to the tyrant!” Rada shouts.
Four kinsmen remain to fight and a savage struggle ensues. Two of the
conspirators are killed and all of the defenders are wounded. As one of
his kinsmen falls Pizarro himself, having buckled on his armor, reaches
the front and attacks the invaders with fierce courage, in spite of his
sixty-four years.
“What, ho, traitors!” he cries. “You have come to murder me in my own
house!”
Two men fall under his swift sword. Astounded at his amazing
strength, the conspirators halt for a moment and then steadily close
in. The passage is narrow and the fight lasts for several minutes.
The conqueror kills another of his enemies, and the sword of Rada is
plunged through his body.
Pizarro sinks crying:
“_Jesu!_”
Tracing the sign of the cross in his own blood, he kisses it and dies,
while the ghost of an Incan mother broods in sorrowful triumph over the
scene.
Gold mad adventurers continue to press southward on the heels of the
Pizarros and plant the seeds of death in Spain’s far-flung empire.
Hernando de Soto establishes a colony of pioneers in Florida, discovers
the Mississippi river, opens a continent to settlement and helps to lay
in peaceful industry the foundation of a mighty nation of the North.
In Peru, a nation, whose temples once blazed with gold, lies in ashes
and ruin. The jungle has devoured the great highways. The trees that
once shaded them across blistering sands are dead. The aqueducts are
broken and dry. Fields that waved harvests of grain and corn are barren
wastes. The hanging gardens of a thousand hills stretch upward in the
baking sun, a desolation of crumbling stone walls. The fruit trees that
clothed valley and mountain in flaming glory have withered.
The storehouses are empty. Their roofs are gone. Their walls are
broken, and wild beasts whelp and stable in their great bins. Couriers
no longer speed from end to end of the empire. There are no roads.
There are no resthouses. The vast flocks of pensive llamas that once
grazed in the rich valleys have disappeared, slain in wanton folly.
Where happy villages flourished with food, shelter and clothes for
millions, now stretches a desert steaming under the fierce heat of the
tropic skies.
A brief span of twenty years! And a people who once laughed and danced
without a thought of to-morrow hide in caves and curse the sight of a
white man.
Two hundred years must pass before the Spanish settlers wake from
Pizarro’s dream of unearned gold and regal tyranny to build on the
ruins of the old empire the great free republics of the South.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Clear typos and wrong punctuation were corrected.
- Text between _underscores_ represents italics.
- A table of contents was created for this edition.
- An acute accent was added to “Leguía.”