Atahualpa made them wait on the sixteenth, taking his time to arrive for the royal audience. He eventually showed up in the late afternoon, carried on a litter and surrounded by many important Inca noblemen. Valverde spoke to the Inca through an interpreter and showed him a breviary. After leafing through it, Atahualpa disdainfully threw the book on the ground. Valverde, supposedly angry at this sacrilege, called on the Spanish to attack.
Instantly the square was packed with horsemen and footmen, slaughtering natives and fighting their way to the royal litter. The Inca soldiers and noblemen were taken completely by surprise.
The Spanish had several military advantages which were unknown in the Andes. The natives had never seen horses before and were unprepared to resist mounted foes. The Spanish armor made them nearly invulnerable to native weapons and steel swords hacked easily through native armor. The cannon and muskets, fired from the rooftops, rained thunder and death down into the square.
The Spanish fought for two hours, massacring thousands of natives, including many important members of the Inca nobility. Horsemen rode down fleeing natives in the fields around Cajamarca. No Spaniard was killed in the attack and Emperor Atahualpa was captured. Once the captive Atahualpa was made to understand his situation, he agreed to a ransom in exchange for his freedom. He offered to fill a large room once with gold and twice over with silver and the Spanish quickly agreed.
Soon great treasures were being brought from all over the Empire, and greedy Spaniards broke them into pieces so that the room would fill more slowly.
Sadly, much of the treasure was in the form of priceless works of art which were melted down. The Spanish caught a lucky break when they captured Atahualpa. First of all, he was in Cajamarca, which is relatively close to the coast: had he been in Cuzco or Quito the Spanish would have had a harder time getting there and the Inca may have struck first at these insolent invaders.
The natives of the Inca Empire believed that their royal family was semi-divine and they would not lift a hand against the Spanish while Atahualpa was their prisoner. The several months that they held Atahualpa allowed the Spanish to send for reinforcements and come to understand the complex politics of the empire.
Once Atahualpa was killed, the Spanish swiftly crowned a puppet Emperor in his place, allowing them to maintain their hold on power. They also marched first on Cuzco and then on Quito, eventually securing the empire. Kennedy was concerned at the advances being made by the communist Viet Cong, but did not want to become involved in a land war in Vietnam.
He hoped that the Did the young Austrian nun named Maria really take to the hills surrounding Salzburg to sing spontaneously of her love of music? On November 16, , a Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his allegedly antigovernment activities linked to a radical intellectual group.
His execution is stayed at the last minute. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. On November 16, , the British author J. Based on the mega-best-selling fantasy novel of His grave robbing, necrophilia and cannibalism gained national attention, and may have provided inspiration for the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and serial killer Buffalo Bill in In a move that stirs up some controversy, as part of "Operation Paperclip," the United States ships 88 German scientists to America to assist the nation in its production of rocket technology.
Most of these men had served under the Nazi regime and critics in the United States Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3, Hessian mercenaries and 5, Redcoats lay siege to Fort Washington at the northern end and highest point of Manhattan Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen The small band of Spaniards was now literally conquistadors conquerors.
The Spanish agreed and slowly the gold and silver began pouring into Cajamarca. Nearly a year later the ransom was complete — about kg of gold and 12,kg of silver had been melted down into gold and silver bullion. Atahualpa, suspecting he was still not going to be released, sent desperate messages to his followers in Quito to come to Cajamarca and rescue him.
The Spaniards, panic-stricken by these messages, sentenced Atahualpa to death. On July 26, , Atahualpa was led out to the center of the Cajamarca plaza to be burned at the stake.
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