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.”