Great Bastards of History

by Juré Fiorillo

  LIFE FOR THE LOWER RUNGS OF THE SPANISH NOBILITY BEFORE COLUMBUS was almost as harsh as it was for the peasants. Captain Gonzalo Pizarro Rodríguez de Aguilar’s estates in and around the town of Trujillo gave him a roof over his head, but were insufficient to provide him with the kind of income a nobleman desired. Like the younger sons of impoverished noblemen throughout history, the choices for Gonzalo were mainly two: the army or the church. Gonzalo Pizarro chose the army.

  A life in the church wouldn’t have suited his appetites. When not serving in the army, fighting in places such as Grenada and Navarre, Captain Pizarro was something of a local Lothario. Francisco, born in 1475, was the first fruit of his seed, but certainly not the last. Of his four male children, only one, Hernando, was legitimate. Francisco’s mother was most likely a convent servant named Francisca González, whose peasant parents were responsible for looking after the nun’s clothes. Although the nuns may have remained off limits to the soldiers, their servants apparently were not. It’s unlikely the coupling that produced the future conquistador was one of great or enduring love. Once she’d had the baby, Francisca was married off to a man of her own class known to history only as Martin.

  Pizarro and former colleague Diego de Almagro swearing peace before a priest. The truce didn’t last, and Almagro was captured, humiliated, and executed by the Pizarros. Library of Congress

  Francisco Pizarro’s childhood was harsh. He was shuttled between his parents’ houses and felt like an outcast. Because he was a bastard, his father made no effort to educate him. Pizarro remained illiterate, something that would cost him dearly in his conflict with the Almagrists in Peru.

  BECAUSE PIZARRO WAS A BASTARD, HIS FATHER MADE NO EFFORT TO EDUCATE HIM. PIZARRO REMAINED ILLITERATE, SOMETHING THAT WOULD COST HIM DEARLY IN HIS CONFLICT WITH THE ALMAGRISTS IN PERU.

  The area around Trujillo is famous for its pork products, and according to one account of Pizarro’s childhood, in lieu of receiving an education, he was sent to be a swineherd. Francisco’s closest brother, Hernando, wasn’t born until more than twenty years later, but there was little consideration before then that Francisco might take over the family’s estates. Impoverished and at the bottom rung of the aristocracy, hidalgos possessed little more than titles and valued them with a pride well beyond utility. Captain Gonzalo Pizarro had no intention of sullying the family seat by willing his title to his bastard son.

  If it weren’t for the opportunities of the New World, Francisco may have remained an insignificant character, perhaps a minor footnote to a European battle. The New World offered the opportunity for honor, riches, treachery, and outrageous cruelty in addition to social respectability.

  A NEW WORLD FOR OLD WOUNDS

  Francisco first traveled to the New World in 1502, ten years after its discovery by Christopher Columbus. He was one of 2,500 colonists who sailed on a fleet of thirty ships with the newly appointed governor of Hispaniola, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres. There was no point in his remaining in Spain. By this time, his father had married and a legitimate heir, Hernando, had been born. Considering that many of the colonists were the legitimate sons of impoverished noblemen, Francisco’s place in the pecking order was not auspicious. Although the details are unclear, it’s likely the young swineherd was dispatched to Hispaniola to help his uncle, Juan, who had migrated there to establish his own fortune some years before.

  Francisco didn’t remain long with his uncle, who seems to have maintained little avuncular affection for his nephew. When Juan died without legitimate issue of his own, he left his estate to his brother, Gonzalo, without mentioning Francisco. Like his father, Francisco found his true facility was as a soldier. Uneducated and easy to rage, he found a surrogate family in the structures of the military. Francisco’s childhood had accustomed him to hardship and also inured him to the suffering of others.

  They were useful skills for a conquistador, and Francisco climbed the ranks. By 1509, he was a lieutenant under Alonso de Ojeda in Santo Domingo. When Ojeda led an expedition to the Urabá peninsula near the junction of contemporary Panama and Colombia, he trusted Pizarro to hold the fort with a detachment of starving men while he returned to Hispaniola for supplies. However, Pizarro’s leap to prominence in the pages of history didn’t really begin until he set out for the Panama isthmus with Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 on the expedition that discovered the Pacific Ocean. By this time, Francisco’s stock had risen considerably. In the list of conquistadors for this expedition, he came directly after Balboa (not that he could have read this), suggesting he was the expedition’s second-in-command. Balboa clearly placed great faith in his underling, and Francisco was with him when he waded into the Pacific Ocean.

  Balboa’s faith in Pizarro and the friendship he bore him were not rewarded. Balboa was an extravagant character, a maverick whose charms and brilliance earned him great riches and the admiration of his soldiers, but incited the envy of his superiors. One of these was Pedrarias, the nickname for Pedro Arias de Ávila, a Castilian who had married a close friend of the queen. He had been sent to Panama to replace Balboa as its governor. Perhaps because of his shuttlecock childhood, Pizarro had an acute sense of which superior figure to attach himself to. For him, love and friendship were luxuries he could ill afford. He measured life in terms of power and gold.

  PERHAPS BECAUSE OF HIS SHUTTLECOCK CHILDHOOD, PIZARRO HAD AN ACUTE SENSE OF WHICH SUPERIOR FIGURE TO ATTACH HIMSELF TO. FOR HIM, LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP WERE LUXURIES HE COULD ILL AFFORD. HE MEASURED LIFE IN TERMS OF POWER AND GOLD.

  Pedrarias, who was nearly seventy when dispatched to the New World, was jealous of Balboa’s charisma and stamina. From the moment Pedrarias arrived in Panama there was an uneasy rivalry between Balboa, a natural talent, and Pedrarias, the governor’s royal imprimatur. The tension was eased when Pedrarias married his daughter off to Balboa. Balboa accepted the marriage as a political necessity but aroused his father-in-law’s ire by continuing to live with his native mistress.

  When they didn’t get their way, the Spaniards often set their dogs on South America’s natives. This engraving shows this tactic at work in Balboa’s expedition to Panama, of which Pizarro was second in command.

  Rising tensions were alleviated when Balboa, after much waiting, received permission from Pedrarias to continue exploring to the south of Panama. But Pedrarias worried that Balboa would establish his own colony and usurp him. Returning in 1518 to his town of Acla on the northeast coast of Panama from an adventure along the Pacific Coast of Central America, Balboa received warm letters from Pedrarias asking him to meet him as soon as possible.

  About halfway to the meeting, Balboa encountered his fellow conquistador and former right-hand man, Francisco Pizarro. His initial joy soon turned to rage and indignation when Pizarro told him that he had come on the orders of Pedrarias to arrest him on charges of treason. Balboa, outraged by the treachery of Pizarro as well as the trumped-up charges leveled against him, insisted upon returning to Spain for his trial. Pedrarias set up a show trial, and Balboa was found guilty and decapitated on January 12, 1519.

  Francisco profited handsomely from his treachery. Pedrarias rewarded his Judas by appointing him as adjutant to Captain Luis Carillo, a young conquistador with excellent financial and social connections. By this time, Francisco was in his forties and valuable as an experienced hard nut, whose moral sensibilities had adapted to the Darwinian conditions of the New World, just as they had to the equally harsh circumstances of his childhood. Pizarro joined Carillo in the assault on the Carib Indians.

  Pizarro’s contemporary, historian González Fernando de Oviedo, described the conquistador as “valiant in his person … but uncouth.” He remarked of this expedition that “Luis Carillo and Pizarro, and those who went with them, brought back many Indians and slaves, and very good gold, and they also used their cruelties on the Indians, for this evil habit was frequently deployed, and Pizarro knew it by heart, having used it for years before.” His cruelties included burning the lo
cals alive until they revealed where they had hidden their stashes of gold and other valuables. Sometimes he fed them to his dogs.

  From these expeditions, Pizarro grew rich. He formed an alliance with another illiterate bastard conquistador who had a sharp business sense, Diego de Almagro. It was an alliance of many facets that included owning gold mines, supplying ships, and trading with Spain, while the two men also gained valuable concessions on the Isla Taboga, otherwise known as the Island of Flowers, off Panama, where they set the local Indians to work on the land.

  When Pedrarias founded Panama City in August 1519, Francisco was given a seat on the municipal council, even though he was absent at the time. The bastard and former swineherd had clearly arrived, and a middle age of relative ease and luxury unimaginable back in the days of Trujillo was there for the taking. The cost had been high. He had killed hundreds of people and double-crossed one of his best friends. Despite the new social standing, he was known as a brave fighter, but not as a man of honor.

  TOWARD THE INCA

  Francisco’s newfound fortunes only left him hungry for more. His appetite was as insatiable as that of the pigs he had herded as a child. It was further exacerbated by the success of his second cousin, Hernán Cortés, who had become unimaginably rich from the conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico. Before Balboa’s untimely demise, he had brought back to Panama rumors of a fabulously wealthy civilization to the south.

  In 1522, Pascal Andagoya was sent on a mission in search of a tribe near a river known as Biru in the vicinity of the Bay of San Miguel in Panama. When Andagoya became too ill to carry out the mission, Pizarro and Almagro used their leverage with Pedrarias to take over. That same year, Pizarro’s father died, from a wound received fighting in Navarre, leaving him nothing, although Pizarro at this point was richer than his father had ever been. He was almost fifty years old, never married, and with no acknowledged children of his own. He had traveled to the other side of the world and made a success of himself, but his success could not erase his childhood.

  In 1524, Pizarro and Almagro sailed with eighty men and four horses south, only for Almagro to lose an eye in a skirmish and the expedition to founder in mosquito-ridden mangroves. Less determined men would have abandoned the project entirely, but despite difficulties in raising more money, in November, 1526, they set out again with two ships and twice as many men. At one point the expedition split up. Almagro returned to Panama for provisions, Pizarro camped on an uninhabited island off the mangrove coast of Colombia, while his pilot, Bartolomé Ruiz, sailed farther down the coast. Ruiz crossed the equator, then encountered a balsa wood cargo raft under sail, whose items to trade included gold, silver, and jewels.

  Meanwhile, Pizarro and his men were not getting on. Camped on their island, they were dying two or three a day from disease. The starving survivors were reduced to eating snakes and shellfish. Only fear of Pizarro and a lack of any idea how to get themselves out of their predicament prevented a mutiny. Some of Pizarro’s men had, however, managed to sneak a message on board Ruiz’s ship asking to be rescued from their leader and the grip of his obsession. When Ruiz returned to Panama, Pedrarias ordered that those who wanted out be allowed to return.

  This woodcut shows Pizarro drawing his famous line in the sand off the coast of Colombia, entreating his men to join him in his arduous expedition to Peru. © North Wind / North Wind Picture Archives—All rights reserved.

  When Ruiz’s boat returned to the island, he carried this news to his boss. Pizarro’s response was legendary. He unsheathed his sword and used its point to draw a line in the sand and said, “Comrades and friends, on that side lies the part that stands for death, hardship, hunger, nakedness, and abandonment. This side here represents comfort. Here you return to Panama to be poor. There you may go on to Peru to be rich. You choose which best suits you as brave Spaniards.” Pizarro implored his men to stay for the adventure, arguing that any hardships they had been exposed to, he had been exposed to, too. He was ruthless and avaricious, but his bastard origins had taught him some humility, and he knew how to talk to his soldiers on their level.

  Most of his men were eager to escape the dangers of being under the command of such a monomaniacal leader. Only thirteen chose to stay, and with their leader, they were dropped off on another island while Ruiz returned to Panama with the rest. Pizarro and his thirteen men stayed there in a tropical torpor for another seven months until a ship piloted by Ruiz and funded by Almagro came and picked them up. This time he succeeded. They sailed down the mangrove coasts of contemporary Colombia and Ecuador, past the Peruvian desert, to the northern Inca town of Tumbes. The first encounter between the two civilizations took place with both sides impressed by the other’s rationality, though the Peruvians in retrospect would have done better to slay the Spaniards on the spot.

  RETURN TO SPAIN

  When Pizarro returned to Panama from Tumbes, he decided to sail to Spain to get a Royal License to explore and conquer Peru. He was helped in achieving this goal by the presence of his second cousin, Hernán Cortés, who smoothed the way for the gruff and uncouth soldier to gain an audience with the king. Having been made rich by Cortés, Charles V was impressed by the prospect of getting even richer and granted the license.

  The Royal License was not the only reason for Francisco’s return to Spain. His hometown of Trujillo also featured prominently in his plans. It was a sweet feeling to return as a rich man, a conquistador of power and influence. Like many of his fellow wealthy conquistadors, Francisco had been sending money back to Spain, which he had used to buy land and erect buildings that displayed this newfound prestige. Yet the main reason he returned was not to rub it in the face of the family that had rejected him, but to enlist his half-brothers and fellow townsmen for the conquest that was to follow.

  All of his half-brothers, including his father’s legitimate heir, Hernando, decided to join their much older half-brother in the conquest of Peru. Francisco had outwitted his origins and become the effective head of his family.

  THE BULLY’S BULLION

  In 1530, Pizarro and his half-brothers, Hernando, Juan, Gonzalo, and Martín, sailed from Seville with a small detachment of soldiers mainly drawn from his childhood neighbors. They sailed to Panama, where the final contingent set sail for Peru on December 27. There were 180 men, including 38 gentlemen, 90 men of moderate rank, and 20 of the lower classes. Only a third of them could read.

  After slow progress down the coast, Pizarro and his men arrived in Tumbes in April 1532, where they found the conditions almost ideal for conquest. Since their last visit, the great Inca, Wayna Capac, had died from the smallpox that had preceded European invasion, as had many of his subjects. Pizarro’s heart leapt when he heard that the power vacuum caused by his death had resulted in civil war between two of his sons, Huáscar and Atahuallpa. Based on his cousin’s experience with the Aztecs, it was the perfect opportunity to divide and rule.

  Atahuallpa, pictured here, was engaged in civil war with his brother, Huáscar, when Pizarro arrived in Tumbes. Pizarro quickly exploited the situation to his benefit.

  As Pizarro traveled toward the army of Atahuallpa, he collected allies from tribes that had resented the rule of the Inca. He pushed his army over the Andes with pitiless discipline and arrived at Cajamarca in the northern highlands of Peru, where Atahuallpa was camped with his army of 30,000. Vastly outnumbered, Pizarro pursued his campaign by skullduggery. When Atahuallpa told the Spaniards that he would meet them in one of the large halls of the deserted town the armies were camped outside, Pizarro hid some of his men in the colonnades of the hall while the others waited for the Inca. When Atahuallpa was carried into the hall on his magnificent gold throne, Pizarro sent a message via one of his priests, Friar Vincente de Valverde, to tell Atahuallpa that he was an ambassador from a great king across the seas who desired friendship with the Inca. Atahuallpa replied that he didn’t doubt this, but that being a great ruler in his own country he was under no obligation to conclude a pa
ct of friendship.

  The priest called for the natives to renounce all forms of God other than the Christian God whom the Spanish king worshipped. Hearing this, Atahuallpa asked the priest for the authority on which this was based and was shown a copy of the Bible. He demanded the priest hand him the Bible so that “it could speak to him.” He put the Bible to his ear, then mockingly threw it to the ground. On the pretext of this insult to their God, the Spanish hidden in the colonnades began to fire their guns, causing havoc among the Incas. Up to 10,000 Indians were killed that day and another 5,000 were taken captive. Among them was Atahuallpa, who was later executed by Pizarro, even after he delivered the famous roomful of gold for which he had bartered his freedom. Most of his queens and many other women were raped by the same men who had acted on the insult against the Bible. Of course, if Pizarro had been in the equivalent position as Atahuallpa, he might have done the same, because the bastard couldn’t read.

  BLOOD IS THICKER THAN BUSINESS

  Having dispatched Atahuallpa to his maker, Pizarro marched on to Cuzco in southern Peru, the capital of the Inca empire, which the Spanish took uncontested. Manco Cápac, son of Wayna and half-brother of Atahuallpa, was appointed Inca (leader) by the Spanish. At Cajamarca, Atahuallpa had given some of his queens to the Spanish conquistador. Francisco was given an eighteen-year-old beauty, Quispe Cusi, one of Wayna’s many children, to take as a wife. At the age of fifty-six, Francisco found himself with a wife, and soon after, a family. Having had no proper family in his youth, Francisco was now surrounded by his half-brothers, his wife, and his children. Increasingly his thoughts became dynastic.