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The Position of Atahuallpa unique. 545

the first

after his

They then went to supper. Pizarro and Ata- B. XVI. huallpa sat at the same table. Afterwards the Ch. 4. Inca retired to his couch, placed in the chamber of his conqueror, where he remained unbound, being watched over only by the usual guard that attended the Governor. What a contrast to the obsequious multitude that had been wont to throng the precincts of the Inca's dwelling! and with what feelings must the conquered Atahuallpa's monarch have looked round him at the break of feelings on dawn, in the first few moments after waking morning -that point of time when all great calamities captivity. are most keenly apprehended, and when, if he had slept at all, he discerned that his defeat was not a hideous dream, but that he lay there a captive to these few bearded men who surrounded him, and that the vast apparatus of attendance that he was accustomed to was wanting! Pizarro, however, had not been unmindful of aught that might soothe his captive's sufferings; and, on the preceding evening, had offered to Atahuallpa the services of those female attendants of his who had already been captured: it may be hoped the monarch found amongst Female them those, or at least the one much-loved, who attendants could console (rare art in man or woman!) without for him. reproaching.

provided

The position of Atahuallpa was almost unique. It is not merely that he was at the same time a conqueror and a captive. That conjuncture Unique of circumstances had happened several times position before in the world's history; but then the con- allpa. queror had usually been made captive by some

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of Atahu

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B. XVI. detachment, or at least by some ally, of the other Ch. 4. side; whereas, Atahuallpa, victorious on his own

ground, suddenly found himself a slave to some power, which, so far as its connexion with Peruvian affairs was concerned, might have descended from the clouds. His previous success must have deepened the dismay he felt at his present reverse, and must have added greatly to the height of hope from which he had suddenly and precipitately fallen.

Whatever may have been the poignancy of the Inca's feelings, his dignity forbade any expresResignation of the Inca, sion of it. He spoke with resignation, and even with cheerfulness, of his defeat. He said it was the way of war, to conquer and to be conquered; and, with a wise stoicism, he sought to comfort those chiefs and favourites who were admitted to see him, and whose lamentations, not restrained by regal dignity, were loud and fervid.

The historian may well imitate the reserve of the principal sufferer, and forbear to moralize more than he did upon an unparalleled instance of the mutability of fortune, which was no less rapid than complete-as rapid, indeed, as the skilful shifting of a scene. The battle, if battle it can be called, in which perhaps hardly any weapons were crossed, except by accident, lasted little more than half an hour, for the sun had already set when the action commenced. It was rightly said that the shades of night would prove the best defence for the Indians. The Spaniards remarked that the horses, which the evening before had scarcely

The Conquest assisted by the Horse. 547

been able to move, on account of the cold which B. XVI. they had suffered in their journey over the Ch. 4. mountains, galloped about on this day as if they had nothing the matter with them. All that the fiercest beasts of the forest have done is absolutely inappreciable, when compared with the evil of which that good-natured animal, the horse, has been the efficient instrument, since he was first tamed to the use of man. Atahuallpa afterwards mentioned that he had been told how the horses were unsaddled at night, which was another reason for his entertaining less fear of the Spaniards, and listening more to the mistaken notions of Mayzabilica.

Saddled or not saddled, however, in the wars between the Spaniards and the Indians, the horse did not play a subordinate part; the horse made the essential difference between the armies; and if, in the great square of Madrid, there had been raised some huge emblem in stone to commemorate the Spanish Conquest of the New World, an equine, not an equestrian, figure would appropriately have crowned the work. The arms and the armour might have remained the same on both sides. The ineffectual clubs and darts and lances might still have been arrayed against the sharp Biscayan sword and deadly arquebuss; the cotton doublet of Cusco against the steel corslet of Milan; but, without the horse, the victory would ultimately Importance have been on the side of overpowering numbers. in the The Spaniards might have hewn into the Peru- conquest vian squadrons, making clear lanes of prostrate World. bodies. Those squadrons would have closed

of the horse

of the New

Ch. 4.

548 Importance of the Horse in the Conquest.

B. XVI. together again, and by mere weight would have compressed to death the little band of heroic Spaniards. In truth, had the horse been created in America, the conquest of the New World would not improbably have been reserved for that peculiar epoch of development in the European mind when, as at present, mechanical power has in some degree superseded the horse, that power being naturally measured by the units contained in it of the animal force which it represents and displaces.

AGREEMENT

CHAPTER V.

FOR ATAHUALLPA'S RANSOM

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FER-
NANDO PIZARRO'S JOURNEY TO THE TEMPLE OF

PACHACAMAC-MESSENGERS SENT TO CUSCO-
ARRIVAL OF ALMAGRO AT THE CAMP OF CAS-
SAMARCA.

ARLY the next morning after the capture of B. XVI. Atahuallpa, the Governor (from henceforth Ch. 5. we may well call Pizarro the Governor, and on his furrowed forehead might have been placed the potent diadem of the Incas) sent out thirty horsemen to scour the plain, and to ransack the Inca's The Inca's camp. At mid-day they returned, bringing with ransacked. them ornaments and utensils of gold and silver, emeralds, men, women, and provisions. The gold in that excursion produced, when melted, about eighty thousand pesos.

There was one thing which the Spaniards noticed in this foray, and reported to Pizarro. They found several Indians lying dead in the camp, who had not been killed by Spaniards (they knew their own marks); and, when Pizarro asked for an explanation of this circumstance from the Inca, he replied, that he had ordered these men to be put to death, because they had shrunk back from the Spanish Captain's horse. This Spanish captain was Fernando de Soto,

camp is

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