h on his deathbed produced the
usual results.

The armies of Atahualpa, led by two famous soldiers called Quiz-Quiz
and Chalcuchima, had met and defeated the troops of Huascar in a series
of bloody battles. They had taken that unhappy monarch prisoner and,
by a series of terrible massacres instigated by Atahualpa, had striven
with large success to cut off the family of the unfortunate Inca root
and branches. The land had been devastated by the fierceness of the
internecine conflict, towns had been carried by storm, the inhabitants
put to the sword; the ordinary course of events had been interrupted
and agriculture had languished; the empire lay gasping under the paw of
the Peruvian usurper when Pizarro landed upon the shore. The strife
that was to ensue was between two base-born, cruel-hearted soldiers of
fortune, one at the head of a little body of white men, but with all
the prestige of their color and development in warfare, and weapons,
the other, the now undisputed monarch of a vast if prostrate and
exhausted empire, at the head of great armies flushed with victory and
eager for new conquests.

What would the result of the struggle be?

{73}

IV. The Treacherous and Bloody Massacre of Caxamarca.

Having marched some thirty miles south of Tumbezin the pleasant spring
weather, Pizarro, finding what he conceived to be a favorable location
for a permanent colony, encamped his army, laid out and began to build
a city, which he called San Miguel. The Spaniards were great builders
and the city was planned and fortified on an extensive scale and the
more important buildings erected, so that it was not until September
that Pizarro considered his base of supplies had been made secure.

Meanwhile he had been assiduously seeking information on every hand
concerning the internal dissensions in the Peruvian empire, so that he
could undertake his conquest intelligently. On the 24th of September,
1532, the valiant little army was mustered and, after deducting a small
garrison for San Miguel, those appointed for the expedition were found
to include sixty-seven horsemen, three arquebusiers, twenty crossbowmen
and eighty-seven footmen, in all one hundred and seventy-seven.[5]

They were accompanied by two pieces of small artillery called
falconets, each having a bore of two inches and carrying a shot
weighing about a pound and a half, being, with the three arquebusiers,
General De Candia's command. With this insignifica