Battle of Cajamarca (1532): The Capture of Atahualpa

The Battle of Cajamarca was the surprise attack on 16 November 1532 in which Francisco Pizarro’s small Spanish force captured Atahualpa, the ruler of the Inca Empire, in the town square of Cajamarca in northern Peru. In about two hours thousands of Atahualpa’s attendants were killed while the Spanish suffered no reported deaths. The capture, the enormous ransom that followed and Atahualpa’s execution in 1533 opened the way for the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.

Background: two forces converge

In 1532 the Inca Empire was emerging from a ruinous civil war. Atahualpa’s armies had just defeated his half-brother Huáscar, and Atahualpa, on his way south to claim the capital Cusco, was resting with his army at the hot springs near Cajamarca, a provincial Inca town in the northern highlands.

Francisco Pizarro had landed on the Peruvian coast earlier that year with fewer than 200 men, under a royal licence to conquer Peru. After founding the settlement of San Miguel de Piura, he marched inland in September 1532. Atahualpa’s envoys met him on the road and exchanged gifts; the Inca ruler appears to have wanted to see the strangers for himself.

The Spaniards climbed into the Andes and arrived at Cajamarca on 15 November 1532. They found the town largely empty and Atahualpa’s army camped on the slopes nearby. Estimates of its size vary widely, from about 40,000 to 80,000 men, figures that come from Spanish witnesses and cannot be checked.

The embassy and the plan

That afternoon Pizarro sent Hernando de Soto and his brother Hernando Pizarro with a small mounted party to Atahualpa’s camp. They invited him to visit Pizarro in Cajamarca the next day. Atahualpa agreed. Spanish accounts describe him as calm and dignified, unimpressed by a display of horsemanship that de Soto staged in front of him.

The Spaniards spent an anxious night. Several eyewitnesses later admitted their fear on seeing the campfires of the Inca army. Pizarro decided on a desperate plan modelled on what Hernán Cortés had done in Mexico: to seize the ruler himself.

Cajamarca’s main square was enclosed on three sides by long buildings with many doorways. Pizarro hid his cavalry and infantry inside them, in three groups, and placed his few small cannon, under the Greek gunner Pedro de Candia, in a building commanding the square.

The ambush, 16 November 1532

Atahualpa delayed his entry until late in the afternoon of Saturday 16 November. He arrived carried on a litter decorated with gold and feathers, surrounded by nobles and several thousand attendants, many of them sweeping the road and singing. Spanish witnesses agreed that most carried no weapons, or only small concealed ones.

Finding the square apparently empty, Atahualpa asked where the strangers were. The Dominican friar Vicente de Valverde came forward with an interpreter and a breviary or Bible and called on him to accept Christianity and the authority of the Spanish king, the formula known as the Requerimiento. Accounts of the exchange differ, but they agree that Atahualpa examined the book and threw it to the ground.

Valverde returned to Pizarro, and Pizarro gave the signal. The cannon fired, trumpets sounded, and horsemen and foot soldiers burst into the square shouting the Spanish war cry “Santiago!”. The crowd panicked. People were trampled or cut down, and so many pushed against one wall that part of it collapsed.

Inca nobles held up Atahualpa’s litter even as the men carrying it were killed. Pizarro fought his way to the litter and seized Atahualpa, receiving a cut on his hand from one of his own men as he shielded the prisoner. Cavalry pursued the fleeing crowd into the countryside until dark.

Spanish eyewitnesses gave figures for the Andean dead ranging from about 2,000 to 7,000, and many more were wounded. The true number is unknown. No Spaniard is reported to have been killed, though some were injured.

The main Inca army outside the town did not intervene. With their ruler captured and no clear order to attack, Atahualpa’s commanders hesitated, a sign of how highly centralised Inca authority was.

The main eyewitness accounts come from the Spanish side: Pizarro’s secretary Francisco de Xerez, who published his report in 1534, his cousin Pedro Pizarro, Miguel de Estete and others. Andean perspectives survive mainly in later sources, such as the account dictated by Manco Inca’s son Titu Cusi Yupanqui in 1570. Details such as the exact words exchanged with Valverde therefore remain uncertain.

The ransom room

Atahualpa soon realised the Spaniards wanted gold and silver. He offered to fill a room, about 22 feet long and 17 feet wide, with gold up to a line as high as he could reach, and to fill a smaller room twice over with silver, within two months. Pizarro accepted, and a notary recorded the promise.

Over the following months llama trains and porters brought treasure from across the empire: plates stripped from temple walls, vessels, statues and ornaments. Three Spaniards travelled to Cusco and supervised the removal of gold sheets from the Coricancha, the great sun temple.

Almost all of it was melted down into ingots in 1533, destroying irreplaceable works of Inca metalwork. According to the figures given by John Hemming, the result was about 13,420 pounds (roughly 6,000 kg) of 22-carat gold and about 26,000 pounds (roughly 12,000 kg) of silver. After the king’s fifth was set aside, the rest was divided among the men of Cajamarca, making ordinary soldiers rich.

The division followed rank and service. Horsemen received about twice the share of foot soldiers, and Francisco Pizarro took the largest single portion. The men who had stayed behind at San Miguel and Almagro’s late-arriving reinforcements received far less, a source of lasting resentment among the conquerors.

During his months of captivity Atahualpa continued to govern through messengers, received nobles and wives, and, according to later chroniclers, learned to play chess. He also appears to have hoped that, once paid, the Spaniards would leave Peru.

The execution of Atahualpa

Atahualpa was not released. While a prisoner he ordered the death of his captive half-brother Huáscar, apparently fearing that the Spanish would make Huáscar ruler instead. Rumours then spread that Atahualpa’s general Rumiñahui was marching on Cajamarca to free him.

In July 1533, while Hernando de Soto was away investigating the rumours, Pizarro and his officers put Atahualpa on trial. He was accused of treason, of killing Huáscar, of idolatry and other charges, and was sentenced to be burned. Because burning would destroy his body, which mattered greatly in Andean belief, Atahualpa accepted baptism, and his sentence was changed to garrotting. He was executed on 26 July 1533, the date most often given, although some sources place it in late August.

De Soto, on his return, reported that there was no rescue army. The execution was criticised by some Spaniards at the time, and Charles V is said to have been displeased by it.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Atahualpa thought the Spaniards were gods. Fact: Some later chroniclers said the Inca took the Spanish for the god Viracocha, but many historians doubt this was widely believed, and Atahualpa’s own conduct suggests he saw them as dangerous but manageable men.
• Myth: The battle was won by firearms. Fact: The Spanish had only a few small cannon and harquebuses. Surprise, panic, horses and steel swords did most of the damage.
• Myth: The Ransom Room in Cajamarca is certainly the original. Fact: It is an authentic Inca building, but its identification as the room filled with gold rests on tradition.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1532, September: Pizarro leaves San Miguel de Piura and marches inland.
• 1532, 15 November: The Spanish arrive at Cajamarca; de Soto and Hernando Pizarro visit Atahualpa.
• 1532, 16 November: The ambush in the square; Atahualpa is captured.
• 1532, late November: Atahualpa offers the ransom of a room of gold and silver.
• 1533, early: Huáscar is killed on Atahualpa’s orders.
• 1533, May-July: The treasure is melted down and divided.
• 1533, 26 July: Atahualpa is executed by garrotting.

Consequences

The capture removed the head of a state in which authority flowed from the ruler, and the Inca response was confused and divided. With Atahualpa dead, Pizarro marched south and entered Cusco in November 1533, as described in the article on the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire.

News of the Cajamarca treasure caused a sensation in Spain and drew a wave of new adventurers to Peru. It also set off quarrels among the conquerors over shares, which later fed the Spanish civil wars in Peru, including the conflict that ended in the assassination of Francisco Pizarro in 1541.

Why it matters

Cajamarca is among the most famous surprise attacks in history. In a single afternoon, a force of fewer than 200 men captured the ruler of an empire of millions, coming soon after the divisions of the Inca Civil War. The episode remains a central case for historians studying why European invaders could overthrow great American states so quickly.