The Conquest of the Incas (1970)

John Hemming

London: Papermac; ISBN: 0-333-51794-6; Pages: 624, index, bibliography, notes.

This book is considered the best account of the spectacular conquest of Peru by 170 Spaniards led by Francisco Pizarro in the 1530s. Hemming relies on traditional eyewitness accounts left by the conquistadors themselves (understandably biased), several excellent histories written soon after the events by scrupulous mestizos, and on painstaking recent archival research. The result is an unrivaled narrative history of the conquest from 1532 with Pizarro's invasion of Peru and the capture of Atahualpa in Cajamarca to roughly 1630 with the death of Manco Inca's great granddaughter Ana Maria Lorenza de Loyola.

Hemming uses the various accounts, always at pain to point out who the author was (and thus establish their particular angle on events), to depict the duping of Atahualpa, and the following defeat of his army commanders, the subjugation of the Inca nobility, the imposition of Christianity, and the surrender of the Indians to Spanish rule. But the narrative is not just dry chronology. It is imbued with pathos, especially when Hemming describes the attempts to resist the invaders, especially Manco Inca's two rebellions and the native independent enclave of Vilcabamba which survived for decades until destroyed by the reformist Viceroy Toledo. For this labor of love which demolishes the claim that the empire went down without a struggle, Hemming was awarded the Peruvian Orden de Merito.

Instead of offering a straight political narrative, Hemming also indulges in frequent (and quite welcome) digressions on almost every topic of relevance, including the native religion, customs, economic organization, and politics between the mother country and the conquered provinces. He even offers an entire chapter on the search for the legendary lost city of Vilcabamba (demolishing Bingham's identification of it with Machu Picchu), the residence of the last Inca.

There are several astounding (at least for me) aspects of the conquest. First, the ease with which the Inca Empire fell. I never really got a satisfactory answer from any of the Peruvians I asked during my trip there. The empire was vast by any standard, it included modern Ecuador, Peru, along with parts of Chile and Bolivia, stretching for thousands of miles along the Pacific coast. A rugged mountainous country subdued by one tribe and its excellent system of roads, forts, and cities. At its peak, the empire held about seven million inhabitants, tightly organized under the Inca aristocracy that exercised paternalistic socialist control. All this without the knowledge of the wheel or the arc or the possession of the horse.

Imagine now fewer than 180 battered Spaniards making their way into the heart of the empire intent on conquering it. Not just that, but imagine them ending smack in the middle of a victorious army led by Quitan Inca Atahualpa who has just defeated his brother from Cuzco Huascar and is on his triumphant way of assuming the control of the entire empire. Further, imagine that this army of about 80,000 effectives is in full battle order. No wonder many Spaniards peed themselves in fear when they saw the mighty host. And what happens next? The frightened Spaniards launch a surprise attack on Atahualpa during his careless visit to Cajamarca, kill seven thousand Indians, and capture the Inca, thus throwing the empire in leaderless confusion.

It is difficult not to admire the Spaniards for regardless of their cruel avarice and sometimes wanton destruction, they were gallant soldiers who repeatedly charged superior (in numbers) forces and won by sheer will, surprise, and initiative. Hemming offers four basic explanations for this unbelievable success of the Europeans: (i) the civil war had torn the empire and Pizarro's luck was to happen to penetrate it at the right time when it was at its weakest; (ii) the superior Spanish armaments and fighting techniques made them nearly invincible; (iii) the Incas were themselves conquerors and many Indians welcomed the Spaniards and helped them; and (iv) many of the Inca nobility cowardly accepted Spanish rule, aped the Europeans, and ingratiated themselves for favors.

There is something to the first claim but one must not forget that the empire was not exactly at its weakest because Atahualpa had just succeeded in eliminating his opposition, had the control of the professional army, and fell into the obvious trap at Cajamarca entirely due to his own stupidity and arrogance, having underestimated the strangers he was planning to have killed.

The second claim is much more persuasive because of the Spaniard's armor which no native weapon could penetrate, and their exclusive possession of horses and superb steel swords, the former giving them mobility in march and battle, and the second giving them ability to slash through the primitive armor of the locals. Still, it is puzzling that the Incas failed to use the advantages of terrain until much later (e.g. Manco Inca's successful annihilation of several Spanish forces) and even then only sporadically. It is also astonishing that the Incas never thought of good ways of dealing with mounted warriors. This was not impossible, as the Araucanians in Chile later demonstrated when they successfully resisted Spanish invasion by the skillful use of the pike. While true that a fully-clad armored mounted Spaniard was nearly invincible given the native weapons, there are tactics to unhorse him, especially given the enormous advantage in numbers.

The third explanation is most convincing and it is the one nobody really mentioned in Peru even though they did pontificate on the first two endlessly. But this was the cold truth: the Spaniards were assisted by tons of disgruntled locals who avenged the deaths of their tribesmen at the hands of the Incas (in some places the territories had been conquered less than fifty years before the Conquest), helped navigate the treacherous mountains, warned about disposition of Inca forces, participated as auxiliaries, gave food and clothing, and generally made the Conquest much easier than it would have been otherwise. For all their alleged socialism, the Incas were tyrants and an overwhelming number of the population was happy to see them go at first. Later, when the Indians realized that they had simply traded a local despot for a foreign one, it was too late for resistance and many fell into apathy. The occasional rebellions were quickly quashed, the catastrophic population decline (down to less than 2 million) and the influx of fresh Europeans conspiring to deprive them of success.

The fourth explanation, although not emphasized, can be easily inferred from the narrative. It is not only the pathetic and despicable figures of Paullu Inca and Carlos Inca, but the many citizens of Cuzco and other major cities who willingly (and almost gleefully) collaborated with the invaders to secure wealth and status for themselves. Without the frequent betrayals of the native cause, the Spaniards might have had a much harder time establishing their tenuous grip on Peru.

The other surprising revelation (to me) was the fervor with which many Spaniards worked to ensure the well-being of the Indians, trying everything from government reforms, petitions to the King of Spain, and organizing opposition to the right of conquest in general. The moral rectitude of these worthy individuals, most of them coming from the clergy, is refreshing amidst the sordid and bloody stories of greed. While it is not surprising that they could not achieve all that much, it is absolutely astounding that they achieved what they did. I would never have believed that a theoretical debate on the right to conquer new territories would actually cause a King to suspend all conquests until the issue is resolved. Or that the King would issue laws (the New Laws) that were so much in favor of the Indians that they caused rebellions by the conquistadors The force of law, usually assumed to take a back seat to economic matters, was something unique to the Spanish empire, and the Indians of North America had the grave misfortune of coming under the boot of Northern Europeans much less interested in the finer points of governance than they were interested in booty.

A splendid book with exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) detail and a wealth of erudite opinions, Hemming's masterpiece will not be supplanted soon, at least for the general reader.

October 10, 2003