The Fall of the Golden Empire (Novel) (Volume 1) "Bloody Sunset" by Zhang Baotong
After the baptism, it was time to hang the Inca King Atahualpa. At this time, he expressed the hope that his body could be transported to Quito, the place where he was born, and buried with his maternal ancestors. Then he said to Pizarro, "Sir Marquis, please have mercy on my children. They are too young to be left alone."
The reason why he made this request to Pizarro was because he knew that his children would be safest only if they were under his protection. Pizarro also felt sad and uncomfortable at this time. When Atahualpa entrusted him with such a big thing, he nodded quickly and said, "Don't worry, your child is my child."
After listening to these words, the Inca King nodded happily, his expression regained the once shaken calmness, and he calmly accepted the arrangement of fate. All the Spaniards around him were praying for his soul to be saved. Immediately, the execution began. Several soldiers tied a rope around Atahualpa's neck and tied a wooden stick to the back of the rope. Then, a soldier began to turn the wooden stick hard. As the wooden stick turned, the rope became tighter and tighter. Soon, the victim was hung on the gallows and suffocated to death.
In this way, this brutal butcher who could raze an entire town to the ground for a trivial matter and slaughter a thousand people for one person's fault was the only usurper and the most brutal in the history of the Inca Empire. The most unlucky Inca king just left the stage of history. He divided the Inca Empire, he destroyed the ruling system on which the empire relied for survival, he even almost killed the Inca royal family, and then gave everything to the Spaniards, but the Spaniards used a method to punish the hateful criminals method of execution.
The body of the executed Inca king was placed next to the wooden stake in Plaza de Armas all night. When the loud bugle echoed again over this town in the Andes, it was already early morning the next day. . Several Indians, under the guard of soldiers, carried Atahualpa's body to the Church of San Francisco. At that time, the Inca king put on a set of noble and gorgeous clothes and lay flat in the coffin. There were many flowers placed around the coffin. Although his expression looked a little painful, it was still peaceful.
When the church bell rang at ten o'clock in the morning, the solemn funeral officially began under the auspices of Father Vicente de Valverde. Pizarro and all the Spanish officers and soldiers came to attend the funeral. Not long after the ceremony began, while the Spanish officers and soldiers were listening to the bishop's eulogy for the deceased with piety and sadness, a howl of grief suddenly sounded outside the church, which immediately suppressed the bishop's voice.
Before anyone could figure out what was going on, the church door was burst open, and a group of Indian women broke into the church crying and howling. They came to the church corridor where the coffin of Atahualpa's body was parked, and surrounded the coffin. There was loud crying all around. They cried and shouted, "This is not the funeral of King Inca. We want to accompany King Inca to the kingdom of heaven with an Inca-style funeral." "We want to die with King Inca and go with him to visit his father of the sun." ." In fact, whenever the Inca King passed away, many concubines and slaves would die with him and be buried with him, because they thought that this way they could be with their king again in the kingdom of heaven.
Church funerals have always been considered a very sacred and solemn ceremony by the Spaniards. They were shocked and annoyed when a group of concubines of the Inca king made such a scene. Immediately some soldiers stood up and shouted at the women, "This is a holy place for Christ, don't mess around." "Leave quickly, or we will kick you out." However, the women continued to cry loudly. Expressing anger and protest against Spain. Because they were the ones who killed their king and husband.
The bishop, Father Vicente de Valverde, hurried over and said to the group of weeping women, "Atahuallpa has been baptized by Christ, so he is already a Christian. He must be a Christian." The Christian God hates the practice of burial." After saying that, he asked the soldiers to drive them out of the church.
However, after these women were driven out of the church, some of them immediately returned to their residences, hanged themselves, and followed their king to the paradise of the sun god.
Before Atahualpa died, he proposed to the law enforcers that his body should be sent to Quito, where he was born and raised, and buried with his maternal ancestors. However, the Spaniards did not consider his last wish and instead Immediately after the funeral, his body was taken to the cemetery next to the San Francisco Monastery, where several Spanish soldiers who had died of illness were already buried. Next to the cross made of white stone, a grave had already been dug, and the coffin of the Inca King was placed in the grave. The funeral was presided over by de Valverde, and Pizarro and some officers and soldiers also came to the cemetery. During the final prayer, Pizarro kept his head down and couldn't help but shed tears when the soldiers began to fill the grave. cried. When the grave was filled, a stone tablet was erected over his grave, with the inscription: Tomb of Juan de Atahualpa. His epitaph reads: Once an Inca king, finally a Christian.
However, after the Spaniards left Cajamarca, his body was secretly exhumed and moved to Quito, where he was buried with their mother. Later, when the Spaniards captured Quito, they dug up his tomb in order to get treasure from it. However, there was neither treasure nor body inside.
There are mixed opinions about the Inca king's later life. It is said that roosters and hens were brought to the Inca Kingdom by the Spaniards. When the Inca people saw the hen for the first time, they called it Atahualpa, because the hen was compared to the Inca people as timid as a mouse. Later, when they heard the rooster crow, in order to make this tyrant who killed all the royal family members infamy forever, people imitated the rooster's crow and shouted "Atahuallpa!" He lived and killed his eldest brother Huascar, the legal heir to the throne, and also used unprecedented and unheard-of torture and brutal methods to exterminate the entire royal family, not even sparing women and children. Satisfied, and frantically venting his cruelty and bestiality to the closest servants in the palace, the story of the tyrant was told to the children so that it could be passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, as soon as the Indian children heard the rooster crow, they immediately followed it. "Atahuallpa!"
However, the Indians in Quito are completely different from the Indians in Cusco. They regard Atahualpa as a great and highly respected figure. In order to love their locally born king and prevent his name from being Forget that every time the rooster crows, they also shout, "Atahuallpa!" But their explanation is that the rooster crows his name to immortalize him.
His children were also treated coldly. He has a son and two daughters. The son’s name was Don Francisco. He was so named because his father, Atahualpa, left them to be raised by Francisco Pizarro before his death. However, Don Francisco died when he was still in school. When he died, not only did people applaud him happily, but they also said that he was the son of that insidious, treacherous and violent man, and he deserved to die. They even said that his father was a heartless man. He was not the son of the Inca King Huayna Capac at all. It was his mother who betrayed the Inca King and slept with a Quito Indian. If he were an Inka, he wouldn't be able to commit those inhumane crimes, he wouldn't even be able to think of them. Because the teachings of the Inca ancestors have always been to prevent people from harming others, not even their enemies, let alone their own relatives. So, they scolded his father together, because it was his father who destroyed the kingdom and destroyed the royal family. When Don Francisco was alive, he also felt that the Inca royal family and Indians in general hated him, so he did not interact with them, and did not even leave his house. The same goes for his two sisters, because as soon as they leave the house, they will hear people calling them sinister, tyrannical, and despicable villains. One of the girls named Kaya was the baby daughter of Queen Anna Maya. Her later life and fate were also very bad. Her mother had not been heard from again since she fled with the Spaniard.
(Please pay attention to Zhang Baotong's signed work "Poetic Emotions", which includes short prose, life essays and short stories. Today's release is "The Realistic Sadness of Chinese Wine Culture (Part 2)")
