The ruins of Saqsaywaman (or Sacsayhuamán or in tourist parlance SexyWoman), the Inca’s formidable fortress on the mountain to the north of Cusco, are one of this cities most visited sites. Yet most people arrive with no real understanding of its role in the fight to gain and maintain control of the Inca empire.
So, I’m going to take this opportunity to review a bit of Cusco’s history after the conquest using Kim MacQuarrie’s The Last Days of the Incas, which I highly recommend as being both informative and readable. This chronology reads like a soap-opera, but it was deadly, serious business.
1533 Pizarro captures Cuzco and installs Manco Inca as new Inca emperor.
1536 Manco Inca rebels and surrounds Cuzco; Juan Pizarro is killed.
1537 Almagro seizes Cuzco from Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro. Manco escapes to Vilcabamba, the new Inca capital.
1538 Hernando Pizarro defeats Almagro in battle; Almagro is executed.
1541 Francisco Pizarro is murdered by Almagro supporters.
1544 Manco Inca is murdered. Gonzalo Pizarro, the last brother living in Peru, rebels against the king of Spain.
1548 Gonzalo’s army is defeated; he is executed.
1559 King Charles dies; Philip II becomes king.
1560 Titu Cusi becomes emperor and resumes guerrilla war against the Spaniards.
1572 Tupac Amaru, the final Inca emperor, is captured and executed in Cuzco.
Synopsis (short): The Pizarros lived by the sword and died by the sword.
Synopsis (long): Francisco Pizarro and Almagro started out as partners, but Almagro ended up with the short straw when it came to riches and titles. For five years after the conquest, Cuzco lay at the center of a three-way tug-of-war between the Pizarros, Almagro, and the Inca. It was besieged and burned. Ten years later, the last Pizarro brother was eliminated from the scene, but the strife, even among the Spanish, continued. Meanwhile, succeeding Inca emperors were sometimes puppets of the Spanish and sometimes organizers of rebellion.
The Siege of Cusco: On May 6, 1536, after months of building up his forces surrounding Cusco, Manco Inca began his attempt to retake Cusco by deluging the city with a hail of stones, arrows, and fire. Somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Inca warriors surrounded the city in which 196 Spaniards (86 cavalry and 110 infantry) and about 500 native allies prayed for their lives. Well, at least the Spaniards prayed. After almost being burned alive in their thatched-roofed hide-outs, the Spaniards fought back in the narrow streets where their horses had limited maneuverability and Manco’s troops could be waiting to ambush from rooftops.
This street is wide compared to many in the heart of the city. Some are impassable to vehicles; others require pedestrians to hop up on a narrow curb and stand with their back to the wall.
After several days of intense fighting (just days, not nights), the Spaniards knew they had to make a bold move and try to take Saqsaywaman or they would eventually die, from hunger or thirst if not battle wounds. Sometime around May 13, the youngest Pizarro–Juan–led about fifty horsemen (almost 2/3 of their force) in an audacious attempt to take the citadel. With the aide of their native foot soldiers, who cleared road obstructions and filled in pits designed to lame the horses, the horsemen fought their way up and out of the city. They then circled back to face the “three, thousand-foot-long, staggered walls of gray, gargantuan-sized stones, the largest of which weighed more than 360 tons and rose more than twenty-eight feet in height.”
From the bottom of the first wall to the top of the third is a vertical distance of at least 60'. (MacQuarrie, p. 220)
Many of the stones have been carted away and re-used in new building projects, so Juan and his fellow soldiers faced an even greater obstacle.
Inside the walls were about 30,000 of Manco’s warriors plus additional fortifications, including three towers labelled 1, 2, and 3 in the following diagram.
The fortress faced a plain on its north side; the slopes to the east, west and south were too steep for an assault.
The Spaniards mounted several unsuccessful frontal attacks before rethinking the situation and deciding to concentrate on the main gate. This time they managed to breach the wicker barrier and start up the stairway to the first terrace before they were counterattacked and forced to withdraw. As daylight disappeared, they tried again, made it a little further, but were again forced to retreat. Juan was among those injured in the latter assaults. He was carried back to Cusco, and Gonzalo took over command. (Juan died two weeks later.)
The next day Manco’s troops took the battle outside the fortress walls, and the fighting didn’t cease until nightfall when the Indians returned to the safety of their fortress. Then, under the cover of darkness, the exhausted Spaniards somehow found the energy to carry ladders (presumably constructed by their auxiliaries) across the plain and set them against the outermost wall. They gained the first terrace before the fortress’ defenders realized they were under attack. With narrow terraces being hard to defend in hand-to-hand combat when the other side has swords and you don’t, Manco’s troops eventually retreated to the towers. The fighting continued all night. However, the defenders’ supply of stones and arrows was running out. With no weapons left to hurl at the sword-wielding Spaniards, they were slaughtered in place or forced to leap to their deaths from the towers or walls.
Saqsaywaman was now in the hands of the Spaniards, but both the fortress and the ruined city were still besieged by Manco’s troops who continued their daily harrassments. The siege would continue for another nine months until March 1537.
