Battle of Cajamarca
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On November 14, 1532, a small force of 168 Spanish soldiers and auxiliaries, led by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, arrived in the valley of Cajamarca, in the Andean highlands of what is now Peru. Arrayed against them on the surrounding hillsides were an estimated 80,000 Inca soldiers. When battle was joined the next morning, the noise and smoke of fire-flashing European weapons, as much as their deadly destructiveness, quickly carried the day for the Spanish.
Atahuallpa, the Inca king, had allowed Pizarro’s expedition to pass unhindered into his realms. The Incas were observing a religious fast and decided that so negligible a group of interlopers could wait. The Incas finally confronted the Spaniards in the main square of Cajamarca, but Atahuallpa left the bulk of his army outside the provincial city.
Pizarro, impatiently questing for riches and battle-tested, relied on the advantages of surprise and shock that the sight of horses, firearms, and iron weaponry and armor had given his compatriots wherever they went in the Americas. With those advantages, he intended to borrow a page from Hernán Cortés, kidnapping Atahuallpa as Cortés had kidnapped the Aztec emperor Montezuma and forced him to relinquish his rule.
Pizarro’s troops stayed calm as Atahuallpa and his bodyguard came out to negotiate. Handed a prayer book and ordered to renounce his gods, the Inca king threw it down. Soon after, Pizarro ordered an attack. His men opened fire on the astonished Incas, killing 7,000. Not a single Spanish soldier was badly hurt.
For all the power of their firearms, the conquistadors prevailed so quickly because the Incas were effectively shocked into submission. The king was a god to his subjects, and the fact that the Spanish had laid hands on him and taken him prisoner shook their worldview to the core. The Incas paid an enormous ransom in gold for the release of Atahuallpa, but Pizarro still had Atahuallpa murdered and replaced the Inca throne with Spanish rule.
Losses: Inca, 7,000; Spanish, none.