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Francisco Pizarro (c. 1476 - 1541)

By Michael Johns

Francisco Pizarro was one of the most famous of the Spanish conquistadors, known best for his early 16th century campaigns against the Inca Empire and in the country of Peru. Pizarro was born in the 1470s as an illegitimate son of a poor family, and he grew up illiterate. He had three half-brothers, all younger and less famous conquistadors: Hernando, born in the 1500s; Gonzalo, born in 1510; and Juan, born in 1511. Of the four Pizarro brothers, only Hernando was born in wedlock – the others were all raised poor and illegitimate.

One of the most successful conquistadors, Francisco Pizarro crossed the Atlantic twice in order to secure license from the king to launch his campaign in Peru.

Francisco Pizarro made his first expeditions to the New World as a participant in other conquistadors’ failed journeys and colonial efforts. After years of loyal service to Pedro Arias Dávila, a colonial governor of Castilla de Oro in modern-day Colombia and Panama, Pizarro was eventually appointed mayor of then-young Panama City in 1519, where he served for four years before beginning his own expeditions deeper in South America.[1]

His first expedition through northwestern South America in 1524 ended in a strategic retreat due to the poor conditions of the journey and the preponderance of native resistance to their travels. Although this failure apparently hurt Pizarro’s reputation with Dávila – who had his own designs to conquer territories to the north – a new governor, Pedro de los Ríos, arrived in 1526 and approved a second expedition. Although Pizarro’s detachment in his second expedition was larger than his first, he judged that native resistance was again too significant to continue further and instead appealed to Ríos for reinforcements. The governor had since learned of the danger of Pizarro’s expeditions; he refused and immediately ordered that Pizarro and his men be retrieved from the frontier. Only thirteen men stayed with Francisco Pizarro to continue the journey – a group now known as The Famous Thirteen. Upon arrival to Peru, this cohort finally encountered a friendly and hospitable native population with relatively great wealth. Encouraged, Pizarro and his men returned to Panama to levy the resources for a third and final expedition.[2]

Francisco Pizarro.png

Francisco Pizarro.

Pizarro's death.png

However, the governor refused to allow Pizarro to embark for the south again. Determined to complete the conquest of Peru, Pizarro traveled to Spain to directly appeal to King Charles I and Queen Isabel, who authorized the expedition. Pizarro returned to Panama with his half-brother Hernando; his other half-brothers and his cousin joined them soon after. The detachment, even larger than that of the second expedition, arrived to Peru in 1531, and after a series of battles completed the conquest by 1533.[3] After some internal struggles with other conquistadors on how to interpret the Crown’s order to divide Peru into two separate governorates, the Pizarro brothers executed their colleague Diego Almagro and Francisco Pizarro took over as governor. This episode was ultimately his undoing: a cohort of armed supporters of Almagro’s son assassinated Pizarro in 1541. Although Pizarro killed two of his twenty assailants and injured a third, he was ultimately stabbed to death, and died painting a cross on the floor in his own blood, weeping for Jesus Christ.[4]

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Pizarro, murdered by his rivals in his palace in Peru. He died painting a cross on the floor in his own blood.

Francisco Pizarro was the Platonic ideal of a 16th century conquistador. He was one of the most successful and famous of any, in no small part because he successfully convinced the Spanish Crown to approve his most well-known achievement, the conquest of Peru. Although there are many lesser-told stories in this exhibit of black conquistadors, or women conquistadors, or other exceptional cases, Francisco Pizarro is illuminating in just how orthodox his journeys were. As he accepted the surrender of the Incan ruler Atahualpa, Pizarro declared: “Do not take it as an insult that you have been defeated and taken prisoner, for with the Christians who come with me, though so few in number, I have conquered greater kingdoms than yours, and have defeated other more powerful lords than you, imposing upon them the dominion of the Emperor…”[5]

The Capture of the Inca.png

The Capture of the Inca.

Pizarro styled himself, as all good conquistadors did, as a servant of God and of the Spanish Crown; he constantly invoked these motives as he traveled through Central and South America. But in Spain, he was not of noble blood or some other high repute; he was born illegitimate and poor in Spain and had no military training or experience to speak of. Despite these facts, he successfully led one of the most ambitious colonial campaigns of the era. Pizarro was certainly more fortunate and successful than most, but his travels reveal a great deal about the lifestyle and difficulties of conquistadors in this period, arriving to the New World not as hardened soldiers but as enterprising mercenaries.

Like most other enterprising mercenaries, Pizarro struggled with his bureaucratic authorities. Even though he had some degree of power as mayor of Panama City, and ultimately benefitted from his direct appeal to the Crown, he struggled for years to convince his governors and other Spanish authorities to provide the resources necessary to furnish his three expeditions. In this sense, Pizarro’s frustrations are a window into the experience of most conquistadors: constantly making the case to their superiors for opportunities for conquest, overstating the probability of success and petitioning for resources to meet identified challenges. Pizarro’s governors, familiar with the exaggerations of other conquistadors, were no doubt suspicious of his actual ability to take Peru. His successful conquest is therefore an exceptional one.

And although Pizarro lived to see his success, like many other conquistadors he ultimately did not return home to Spain. Pizarro met a violent end in his own Peruvian palace, murdered by members of his own expedition. He is unlike most of his peers in that he actually lived to see his own palace; however, even for a famous and successful conqueror like Pizarro, the basic realities of his role and status in the Spanish Empire – that of an enterprising mercenary – limited his political and military options. His personal desire to explore and conquer new lands was, as it was for most conquistadors, an effort to amass personal wealth and glory that he ultimately enjoyed for only a short period of time before his assassination. This is in fact one of the most exceptional parts of Pizarro’s life; most men like him died in battle before they experienced any lasting success.

 

[1] Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas, 23.

[2] Prescott, The History of the Conquest of Peru, 94-104, 126-128.

[3] Prescott, The History of the Conquest of Peru, 132-137, 216, 254-256.

[4] Burkholder and Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 59.

[5] Xeres, Narrative of the Conquest of Peru, 44–57.

​References

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  • Burkholder, Mark A., and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America. Tenth edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

  • Hemming, John. The Conquest of the Incas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.

  • Prescott, William Hickling. History of the Conquest of Peru. New York: The Heritage Press, 1957.

  • Xeres, Francisco. “Narrative of the Conquest of Peru (1547).” Bloomsbury. http://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/primary-source-57-narrative-of-the-conquest-of-peru.pdf

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