Франсиско Писарро: Завоеватель Перу

16th century Spanish conquistador who conquered Peru

Francisco Pizarro, Marquess of the Atabillos (/p//ɪ/'/z//ɑr//oʊ/; fɾanˈθisko piˈθaro; c. 16 March 1478 – 26 June 1541) was a Spanish conquistador, best known for his expeditions that led to the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Born in Trujillo, Spain to a poor family, Pizarro chose to pursue fortune and adventure in the New World. He went to the Gulf of Urabá, and accompanied Vasco Núñez de Balboa in his crossing of the Isthmus of Panama, where they became the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas. He served as mayor of the newly founded Panama City for a few years and undertook two failed expeditions to Peru. In 1529, Pizarro obtained permission from the Spanish crown to lead a campaign to conquer Peru and went on his third, and successful, expedition. When local people who lived along the coast resisted this invasion, Pizarro moved inland and founded the first Spanish settlement in Peru, San Miguel de Piura. After a series of manoeuvres, Pizarro captured the Incan emperor Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca in November 1532. A ransom for the emperor's release was demanded and Atahualpa filled a room with gold, but Pizarro charged him with various crimes and executed him in July 1533. The same year, Pizarro entered the Inca capital of Cuzco and completed his conquest of Peru. In January 1535, he founded the city of Lima. Pizarro eventually fell victim to political power struggles and was assassinated in 1541.

Francisco Pizarro was born in Trujillo, Cáceres, Spain (then in the Crown of Castile) in modern day Extremadura, Spain. He was the illegitimate son of infantry colonel Gonzalo Pizarro (1446–1522) and Francisca González, a woman of poor means. His date of birth is uncertain, but it is believed to be sometime in the 1470s, probably 1475. Little attention was paid to his education and he grew up illiterate. His father served in Navarre and in the Italian campaigns under Córdoba. His mother married late in life and had a son Francisco Martín de Alcántara, who was at the conquest of Peru with his half brother from its inception. Through his father, Francisco was a second cousin, once removed, of Hernán Cortés.

On 10 November 1509, Pizarro sailed from Spain to the New World with Alonso de Ojeda on an expedition to Urabá. Pizarro became a participant in Ojeda's failed colony, commanding the remnants until he abandoned it with the survivors. He sailed to Cartagena and joined the fleet of Martín Fernández de Enciso and, in 1513, accompanied Balboa in his crossing of the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific. The following year, Pedro Arias Dávila became the newly appointed governor of Castilla de Oro and succeeded Balboa. During the next five years, Pizarro became a close associate of Dávila and the governor assigned him a repartimiento of natives and cattle.

The first attempt to explore western South America was undertaken in 1522 by Pascual de Andagoya. The native South Americans he encountered told him about a gold rich territory called Virú, which was on a river called Pirú (later evolving to Perú). Diego de Almagro was left behind because he was to recruit men, gather additional supplies and join Pizarro later. The Governor of Panama, Pedro Arias Dávila, at first approved in principle the exploration of South America. Pizarro's first expedition, however, turned out to be a failure as his conquistadores, sailing down the Pacific coast, reached no farther than Colombia before succumbing to bad weather, lack of food and skirmishes with hostile natives, one of which caused Almagro to lose an eye by arrow shot. The place names the Spanish bestowed along their route, including Puerto Deseado (desired port), Puerto del Hambre (port of hunger) and Punta Quemado or Puebla Quemado (burned port), confirmed their difficulties. Fearing subsequent hostile encounters like the one the expedition endured at the Battle of Punta Quemada, Pizarro ended his first expedition and returned to Panama. a license document that authorized Pizarro to proceed with the conquest of Peru. Pizarro was officially named the Governor, Captain general, Adelantado and Alguacil Mayor, of New Castile for the distance of 200 leagues along the newly discovered coast and invested with all authority and prerogatives, leaving his associates in secondary positions (a fact that later incensed Almagro and would lead to eventual discord). One of the grant conditions was that within six months, Pizarro should raise a sufficiently equipped force of 250 men, of whom 100 might be drawn from the colonies. When the expedition left the following year, it numbered three ships, 180 men and 27 horses. with gold and two with silver, Atahualpa was convicted of 12 charges, including killing his brother and plotting against Pizarro and his forces. He was executed by garrote on 29 August 1533. Francisco Pizarro and de Soto were opposed to Atahualpa's execution, but Francisco consented to the trial due to the "great agitation among the soldiers", particularly by Almagro. De Soto was on a reconnaissance mission the day of the trial and execution and upon his return expressed his dismay, stating, "he should have been taken to Castile and judged by the emperor." King Charles later wrote to Pizarro: "We have been displeased by the death of Atahualpa, since he was a monarch and particularly as it was done in the name of justice." Pizarro advanced with his army of 500 Spaniards toward Cuzco, accompanied by Chalcuchimac, one of the leading Inca generals of the north and a supporter of Atahualpa, who was subsequently burned at the stake. Manco Inca Yupanqui joined Pizarro after the death of Túpac Huallpa.

In Lima, on 26 June 1541 "a group of 20 heavily armed supporters of Diego de Almagro II "el mozo" stormed Pizarro's palace, assassinating him and then forcing the terrified city council to appoint young Almagro as the new governor of Peru". "Most of Pizarro's guests fled, but a few fought the intruders, numbered variously between seven and 25. While Pizarro struggled to buckle on his breastplate, his defenders, including his half brother Martín de Alcántara, were killed". Pizarro's remains were briefly interred in the cathedral courtyard; at some later time, his head and body were separated and buried in separate boxes underneath the floor of the cathedral. In 1892, in preparation for the anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the Americas, a body believed to be that of Pizarro was exhumed and put on display in a glass coffin. However, in 1977, men working on the cathedral's foundation discovered a lead box in a sealed niche, which bore the inscription: "Here is the head of Marquess Don Francisco Pizarro who discovered and conquered the kingdoms of Peru and presented them to the crown of Castile." A team of forensic scientists from the United States, led by William R. Maples, was invited to examine the two bodies and they soon determined that the body which had been honored in the glass case for nearly a century had been incorrectly identified. The skull within the lead box not only bore the marks of multiple sword blows, but the features bore a remarkable resemblance to portraits made of the man in life.

By his marriage to N de Trujillo, Pizarro had a son also named Francisco, who married his relative Inés Pizarro, without issue. After Pizarro's death, Inés Yupanqui, whom he took as a mistress, favourite sister of Atahualpa, who had been given to Francisco in marriage by her brother, married a Spanish cavalier named Ampuero and left for Spain, taking her daughter who would later be legitimized by imperial decree. Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui eventually married her uncle Hernando Pizarro in Spain, on 10 October 1537; the third son of Pizarro who was never legitimized, Francisco, by Dona Angelina, a wife of Atahualpa that he had taken as a mistress, died shortly after reaching Spain. After his invasion, Pizarro destroyed the Inca state and while ruling the area for almost a decade, initiated the decline of local cultures. The Incas' polytheistic religion was replaced by Christianity and much of the local population was reduced to serfdom under the Spanish elite. The cities of the Inca Empire were transformed into Spanish Catholic cities. Pizarro is also reviled for ordering Atahualpa's death despite the ransom payment (which Pizarro kept, after paying the Spanish king his due). Some Peruvians, particularly those of indigenous descent, may regard him negatively, although until relatively recently Pizarro had been portrayed positively, for instance in textbooks, for introducing Catholicism and creating a privileged class of mainly Spanish descent.

In the early 1930s, sculptor Ramsay MacDonald created three copies of an anonymous European foot soldier resembling a conquistador with a helmet, wielding a sword and riding a horse. The first copy was offered to Mexico to represent Cortés, though it was rejected. The statue was taken to Lima in 1934 and re purposed to represent Pizarro. One other copy of the statue resides in Wisconsin. The mounted statue of Pizarro in the Plaza Mayor in Trujillo, Spain, was created by American sculptor Charles Rumsey. It was presented to the city by his widow in 1926. The statue long stood an adjacent square to Peru's Government Palace. In 2003, after years of requests for the statue to be removed, the mayor of Lima, Luis Castañeda Lossio, approved the transfer of the statue to another location. Since 2004, however, Pizarro's statue has been in a park surrounded by the recently restored 17th century walls in the Rímac District. The statue faces the Rímac River and the Government Palace.

After returning from Peru extremely wealthy, the Pizarro family erected a plateresque style palace on the corner of the Plaza Mayor in Trujillo. Francisca Pizarro Yupanqui and her uncle/husband Hernando Pizarro ordered the building of the palace; it features busts of them and others. It instantly became a recognizable symbol of the plaza. The opulent palace is structured in four stands, giving it the significance of the coat of arms of the Pizarro family, which is situated at one of its corner balconies displaying its iconographic content. The building's decor includes plateresque ornaments and balustrades.

Pizarro is the title and subject of a dramatic tragedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, presented in 1799. Sheridan based his work on the German tragedy by August von Kotzebue, Die Spanier in Peru. Pizarro is the main protagonist of the theatre play The Royal Hunt of the Sun and a film of the same name. Rather than an accurate depiction of historical events, its subject is Pizarro's spirituality and personal relationship with Atahualpa. The film mostly stays true to the dialogue based character of the play and a chamber setting while providing respected actors of the time (1969). Francisco Pizarro is depicted as a major supporting character in The Mysterious Cities of Gold, where he is obsessed with locating one of the seven lost cities of gold. In the English version of the series, the character of Pizarro is voiced by Maurice Podbrey. Pizarro is also the protagonist in the historical novel The Gold of Caxamalca by Jakob Wassermann. Pizarro is a character in "Surya kandle Sona" (The golden tears of the sun), a novella in Bengali, penned by Premendra Mitra. Pizarro is depicted as a scheming fortune hunter who conquered Peru by dint of treachery and the ruthless application of the Machiavellian policy of putting expediency above morality. The protagonist of the story is Ghanaram (an ancestor of Ghanashyam Das, a teller of tall tales) who wages a heroic struggle against the Spanish conquistadors to emancipate Peru from the fetters of slavery but ultimately fails to fulfil his mission. (Source:"Ghanada Samagra,volume 3,Ananda Publishers)
Randall Garrett, known mainly as a science fiction writer, wrote the novelette Despoilers of the Golden Empire, whose language leads readers to believe they are reading a story about a space invasion in the far future, while in fact it describes Pizarro's conquest of the Incas. As noted by Garrett, every word of the story is historically accurate, but it was written in a deliberately misleading way.

"Francisco Pizarro response to a petition by Pedro del Barco", 14 April 1539. From the Collections at the Library of Congress