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ite, Atahualpa , who had established himself at Quito in what is now Ecuador, and Huascar ,
the legitimate heir to the throne, who was based in Cusco. A bloody civil war broke out, from
which Atahualpa emerged victorious.
Atahualpa retired to Cajamarca in northern Peru to savour his victory. It was here that he
heard of the arrival of strange bearded foreigners on the coast nearby. At the first decisive en-
counter between the two, Pizarro and his 170 followers kidnapped Atahualpa and massacred
thousands of his men, demonstrating their overwhelming military superiority: mounted on
horseback (an animal never previously seen in South America), with steel weapons and ar-
mour ,andbackedbyterrifyingcannons,theSpanishconquistadors werevirtually invincible,
and even small bands proved capable of defeating massive indigenous armies. Atahualpa was
ransomed for a fabulous hoard of gold and silver and then treacherously killed, though not
before sending orders for Huascar to be executed . Huascar's faction in Cusco initially wel-
comed the Spaniards, if not quite as liberators then at least as useful mercenaries who had
defeated their enemy just as all seemed lost. With large areas of the Inca empire only recently
conquered and not yet fully assimilated, the Spaniards also found indigenous allies among
the subject tribes. They occupied Cusco without a fight and installed Manco Inca as a puppet
emperor.
Manco Inca rebels
Following this military success, Diego de Almagro led the first Spanish expedition south
into the Altiplano, reaching as far as present-day Chile. However, in 1537, Spanish abuses
in Cusco and the realization that they were bent on permanent conquest prompted a massive
Inca rebellion led by Manco Inca himself. After a series of bloody battles, the Spanish milit-
ary conquest of the Collasuyo - which they referred to variously as Charcas, the Collao or,
most commonly, Alto Peru - was swiftly completed.
Spanish settlement
The first Spanish city founded in Alto Peru was La Plata (or Chuquisaca, now Sucre), stra-
tegically located in a temperate valley southeast of the Altiplano. A second city, La Paz , was
foundedin1548justeastofLagoTiticaca toreinforcecontrolofthedenselypopulatednorth-
ern Altiplano and to secure the route between the Potosí mines and Lima, the centre of Span-
ish power on the Pacific coast of Peru. Further cities at Cochabamba and Tarija followed
(both in 1574), strategically located in the well-populated, fertile and temperate inter-Andean
valleys, where maize and crops introduced from Europe could be grown to supply food to
Potosí. La Plata was confirmed as the capital ofAlto Peru in 1558,when it was made the seat
of an independent royal court and administration - the Audiencia de Charcas - with judicial
and executive power over the entire region.
Like the Incas, the Spanish were initially only able to establish control over the highlands;
the semi-nomadic peoples of the Amazon lowlands and eastern plains remained unconquered
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