The Battle of Cajamarca — 16 November 1532

The Battle of Cajamarca took place on the afternoon and evening of 16 November 1532 in the highland town of Cajamarca in the northern Peruvian Andes, at an altitude of about 2,750 meters. The battle was a brief but exceptionally one-sided engagement in which a Spanish force of about 168 men and 62 horses defeated an Inca force of perhaps 4,000 to 5,000 retainers, killed several thousand of them, and captured the Sapa Inca Atahualpa, the ruler of the northern Inca state. The outcome of the battle was decisive in the longer history of the Inca Empire, since it removed the only effective political authority in the northern half of the empire and opened the road to the Inca capital of Cusco. The battle is one of the most studied encounters in the literature on European overseas expansion, both for the extraordinary disproportion of the forces involved and for the rapidity with which the Spanish force was able to seize and hold the Inca ruler.

Background

The Inca state on the eve of the battle

The Inca Empire, known to its subjects as Tawantinsuyu, was the largest polity in the pre-Columbian Americas. At its maximum extent, under the Sapa Inca Huayna Capac (r. 1493–1527), the empire stretched from modern southern Colombia to central Chile, and from the eastern slopes of the Andes into the Amazon basin. The population of the empire in 1520 has been estimated at between ten and twelve million, and the political core lay in the highland basin of Cusco, the imperial capital. The empire was administered through a highly organized road system and a decimal system of local administration, in which groups of ten, fifty, one hundred, five hundred, and ten thousand households were overseen by officials appointed from Cusco. The economic basis of the state was a system of labor extraction, in which a portion of the labor of every household was owed to the state in the form of the mit’a.

By 1532 the empire had been in crisis for several years. The Sapa Inca Huayna Capac had died in about 1527 from smallpox, the first introduced to South America from the Caribbean, and the death of the designated heir, Ninan Cuyochi, had set off a civil war of succession between Huayna Capac’s sons Huáscar and Atahualpa. The war had ended in 1532 with the defeat of Huáscar at the battle of Quipaipán, near Cusco, and with the installation of Atahualpa as Sapa Inca at a court that he had established at Tomebamba (modern Cuenca, Ecuador) and later at Cajamarca in the northern Peruvian highlands.

The Spanish forces and the choice of Cajamarca

The Spanish force that marched to Cajamarca in September 1532 had been raised by Francisco Pizarro in Panamá and had set out in early 1531. The force comprised perhaps 168 men in total, with about 62 cavalry among them, and a small number of arquebusiers. The force was equipped with steel swords, plate armor, a few light cannon, and the horses that gave it a decisive military advantage. The Spanish had been informed by indigenous intermediaries of the civil war between Huáscar and Atahualpa and of the epidemic of smallpox that had killed Huayna Capac, and they had been able to make alliances with the Cañari of southern Ecuador and the Chachapoya of the cloud forest, both of whom had been incorporated into the Inca empire only recently and resentfully.

The choice of Cajamarca as the site of the encounter was made by Pizarro for two reasons. First, Cajamarca was the city at which Atahualpa had established his court, and Pizarro was able to invite Atahualpa to a personal meeting on the pretext of a friendly parley. Second, Cajamarca offered a confined space — a main square of perhaps 100 by 200 meters — in which a small Spanish force could use its horses and steel weapons to good effect against an enemy that had not been prepared for them. The Spanish arrived in Cajamarca on 15 November 1532 and spent the night arranging the ambush in the buildings of the main square.

The battle

The seizure of the square

On the morning of 16 November 1532, Pizarro divided his force into three parties: one under his own command, one under his brother Hernando Pizarro, and one under Sebastián de Benalcázar. The infantry were placed in the buildings around the main square, with the cavalry in reserve. The Spanish chaplain, Father Vicente de Valverde, advanced toward the Inca carrying a breviary and a crucifix, and through the interpreter Felipillo read aloud the Requerimiento, the standard Spanish document requiring non-Christians to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and the Spanish king. The text, drafted in 1513, was designed to provide a legal pretext for conquest. The symbolic gesture of handing him the breviary was understood, and Atahualpa rejected it. The Inca held the book up to his ear, listened to it, and threw it down on the ground, saying that he would not become a Christian. A scuffle broke out, and Pizarro, who had been watching for a signal, gave the order to attack.

The Spanish infantry, armed with steel swords, pikes, and a few arquebuses, charged the Inca retainers in the square. The Inca, who had entered the town unarmed and in litters, were unable to resist. The cavalry, which had been held back, charged out of a side street and rode down the Inca retainers in the square. The Spanish accounts, which include the eyewitness Relación of Francisco de Xerez, report that the Spanish killed several thousand Inca in the square and in the immediate pursuit, and that Atahualpa himself was seized by a small group of Spanish soldiers and held prisoner in a house in the town.

The death toll and the capture of the Sapa Inca

The Spanish accounts of the death toll at Cajamarca are inconsistent and almost certainly exaggerated. Xerez, the secretary of Pizarro, claimed that the Spanish killed 7,000 Inca in the battle; Pedro Sancho, in his Relación of the conquest, gave the same figure. Other Spanish accounts, such as those of the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, claimed that the Spanish killed as many as 10,000 Inca. Modern historians, including R. Tom Zuidema and William H. Prescott, have argued that the actual death toll was much lower, perhaps 1,000 to 2,000, and that the Spanish accounts were inflated to enhance the reputation of the conquistadors. The most reliable recent estimates, including those of the historians John Hemming and James Lockhart, place the death toll at between 1,000 and 2,000 Inca, with perhaps 5,000 wounded.

The capture of Atahualpa was the decisive outcome of the battle. The Inca, who had been carried into the square in a sedan chair surrounded by a small retinue of attendants, was seized by a group of Spanish soldiers led by a man named Miguel Estete. Estete, who had served on the second Pizarro expedition that first made contact with the Inca at Tumbes in 1527, recognized Atahualpa and prevented the other soldiers from killing him. The Sapa Inca was held prisoner in a large house in the town, and Pizarro, who had been wounded in the fighting, was brought to him to confirm the capture. Atahualpa, who had been the victor in the civil war of 1529–1532, was now the prisoner of a small band of Spanish adventurers, and the political authority of the northern Inca state was effectively destroyed.

Aftermath

The collapse of the Inca state

The capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca in November 1532 left the Inca state without a leader. The army that had encamped outside the city, under the generals Quisquis and Chalcuchima, withdrew to its base at Quito, and the political authority of the northern state was paralyzed. The Spanish, who now had the Sapa Inca in their hands, were able to use him as a bargaining chip with the Inca nobility and as a source of information about the structure of the empire. Atahualpa, who was a shrewd and able politician, used his position to negotiate the ransom of his person and to delay the Spanish advance on Cusco. He was, however, eventually tried and executed by the Spanish on 26 July 1533, on charges that included polygamy, the murder of his brother Huáscar, and the practice of incest.

The execution of Atahualpa was followed by the Spanish advance on Cusco and the conquest of the Inca capital in November 1533. The Spanish installed a younger son of Huayna Capac, Manco Inca Yupanqui, as a puppet Sapa Inca, and the royal capital of Tawantinsuyu was formally transferred to the new order. The Spanish were deeply impressed by the city’s goldwork, the Coricancha, the Sacsayhuamán citadel, and the elaborate architecture of the Inca, and they began almost at once to strip the temples and palaces of their gold. The first sack of Cusco is estimated to have yielded more gold than the ransom of Atahualpa.

The significance of the battle

The Battle of Cajamarca is a striking example of the asymmetry of early modern European military technology. The Spanish were outnumbered by perhaps twenty or thirty to one, but their horses, their steel weapons, and their armor gave them a decisive advantage in a confined space against an enemy that had no indigenous tradition of cavalry warfare. The battle is also significant for the political consequences of the capture of the Sapa Inca. The Inca state, which depended on the personal authority of the Sapa Inca for its legitimacy and its administrative coherence, was unable to function once the Sapa Inca was in Spanish hands. The civil war had already weakened the state, and the epidemic of smallpox had reduced the population, and the capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca completed the collapse.

The encounter is also significant for the role of indigenous auxiliaries in the Spanish victory. The Spanish force at Cajamarca included a number of Cañari and Chachapoya warriors, and the auxiliary force that the Spanish raised in the months after the battle was many times larger than the Spanish force itself. The conquest of Peru, in other words, was a joint undertaking of the Spanish and of the indigenous peoples of the Andes, and the question of why the Spanish were able to conquer such a large empire cannot be answered without taking the role of indigenous allies into account.