The conquest was not a single battle
The popular version of this story ends at Cajamarca in November 1532, when Francisco Pizarro’s small band seized the Inca ruler Atahualpa. That moment was decisive, but the Spanish conquest of the Andes was not finished that day. Cuzco fell in 1533, major Inca uprisings followed in the 1530s, and a rebel Inca state in the forests held out until 1572. Historians generally describe the conquest as a process lasting decades, made possible by the Spanish force and also by conditions inside the empire.
An empire already in trouble
By the 1520s the Inca state had expanded to its greatest extent. The ruler Huayna Capac spent much of his reign in the north, and he died around 1527, according to most accounts, during an epidemic. The disease is often identified as smallpox, which had spread south from regions already reached by the Spanish, but the evidence is thin and scholars remain cautious about the exact cause and the death toll. What seems clear is that disease struck Andean populations before the main Spanish force arrived, and that it killed many people, including members of the elite.
Huayna Capac’s death opened a succession crisis. His son Huascar held Cuzco, while another son, Atahualpa, commanded much of the army in the north. A civil war followed, and by around 1532 Atahualpa’s generals had defeated Huascar’s forces and taken Huascar prisoner. Atahualpa was travelling south at Cajamarca when the Spanish reached the highlands. The empire was therefore exhausted and divided, though the Inca state still had a large army and effective administration.
The march to Cajamarca
Pizarro had made earlier voyages along the Pacific coast, and he obtained royal permission to conquer the lands he had seen. In 1532 he landed again on the coast of what is now Peru with about 160 to 170 men, a modest number of horses and a few firearms, though sources give slightly different counts. He founded a base at San Miguel de Piura, then led his group inland into the mountains, hearing of civil war from local informants and using it to his advantage. The Spanish also had interpreters and, as events unfolded, the help of native groups who resented Inca rule.
Cajamarca, 16 November 1532
The Spanish reached Cajamarca in mid-November. Atahualpa arrived at the town’s plaza the next day with a large retinue of attendants and troops, many of them not heavily armed. After an exchange involving the Dominican friar Vicente de Valverde, who presented a religious demand that the Inca accept Christianity and the Spanish king, the Spanish attacked. Cavalry, steel weapons and firearms, together with a surprise attack in a confined space, led to the deaths of a very large number of Inca attendants, usually put in the thousands, and Atahualpa was captured. Spanish accounts are our main sources here, and they were written by participants and later chroniclers with their own interests, so details vary.
The ransom and the execution
Atahualpa offered to fill a room once with gold and twice with silver in exchange for his freedom. Over the following months, gold and silver objects, many of them fine works of Inca and earlier craftsmanship, arrived from across the empire and were melted into ingots. While in captivity, Atahualpa arranged for Huascar to be killed. After a trial on charges that included treason, Atahualpa was executed in July 1533, reportedly by garrote after he accepted baptism.
Pizarro’s group then moved on Cuzco, where they arrived in November 1533 with the aid of Indigenous allies, and installed Manco Inca, a half-brother of Huascar, as a puppet ruler. The Spanish also founded the city of Lima in 1535, which became their administrative centre.
Why the Spanish succeeded
The causes are best understood together rather than singled out. Spanish steel, horses and firearms gave them tactical advantages in some settings. Civil war and recent epidemics had weakened the empire. Many subject peoples, such as the Cañari and groups on the coast, had reasons to ally with the newcomers against Cuzco. And the Inca system, which depended on a central ruler, was vulnerable to the capture of the Sapa Inca. Because the state depended on a labour system and a ruler-centred hierarchy, the loss of its head was hard to absorb for the Inca imperial society as a whole. The conquest also took place within a rivalry among the Spanish themselves, as Pizarro and his partner Diego de Almagro later fought each other, and Pizarro was killed in 1541.
Historians often compare this campaign with the earlier events of Cortes and Tenochtitlan in Mexico, where disease and Indigenous allies also played large roles against the Triple Alliance empire. The Spanish conquest of Yucatan, by contrast, took many decades. The differences matter too: the Inca state depended heavily on its central ruler, and the Andean conquest unfolded through a different sequence of events and a much longer period of resistance.
Long resistance
In 1536 Manco Inca, discovering he had no real power, rebelled and laid siege to Cuzco, nearly retaking the city. He eventually withdrew into the forested mountains at Vilcabamba and ruled a smaller Inca state from there. His successors negotiated at times with the Spanish and fought at others. The Vilcabamba resistance ended in 1572, when the Spanish viceroy Francisco de Toledo sent an expedition that captured Tupac Amaru, the last ruler of the rebel state. He was executed in Cuzco.
Andean peoples did not disappear after 1572. Quechua and Aymara communities endured and rebuilt their lives under colonial rule, and their descendants today number in the millions. The old Tawantinsuyu empire ended, but many of its languages, farming methods and customs continued.