Although the Incas fought a deadly, thirty-six-year-long guerrilla war, the Spanish ultimately captured the last Inca emperor and vanquished the native resistance. There, he established a hidden capital, called Vilcabamba. Eventually, however, Pizarro and his men forced the emperor to abandon the Andes and flee to the Amazon.

A young Inca emperor, the brother of Atahualpa, soon led a massive rebellion against the Spaniards, inflicting heavy casualties and nearly wiping out the conquerors. Peru was now a Spanish colony, and the conquistadors were wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.īut the Incas did not submit willingly. The following year, the Spaniards seized the Inca capital of Cuzco, completing their conquest of the largest native empire the New World has ever known. Although the Inca emperor paid an enormous ransom in gold, the Spaniards executed him anyway. Despite being outnumbered by more than two hundred to one, the Spaniards prevailed-due largely to their horses, their steel armor and swords, and their tactic of surprise. Pizarro and his men soon clashed with Atahualpa and a huge force of Inca warriors at the Battle of Cajamarca. Unbeknownst to the Spaniards, the Inca rulers of Peru had just fought a bloody civil war in which the emperor Atahualpa had defeated his brother Huascar. In 1532, the fifty-four-year-old Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro led a force of 167 men, including his four brothers, to the shores of Peru.

The last days of the incas