Inca Elegy (Novel) "The Fall of the Inca Empire" (Volume 2) by Zhang Baotong
After the patrol went far away, the Spaniards came to the edge of the plain. There were piles of bonfires three or four hundred meters away from them. Bonfires as numerous as stars lit up the entire plain like daylight. Quito soldiers sleeping in circles sat around the campfire. Perhaps they have the habit and awareness of not fighting at night, so they are almost completely unprepared for enemy sneak attacks and attacks at night.
Benalcazar led the soldiers to attack. They rode quietly into the plains. The plain is covered with weeds, so the horses' hooves make almost no sound when walking on the grass. Other soldiers on foot followed the cavalry column. The entire team formed a long queue and headed straight towards the camp of the Quito soldiers. The people in Quito, who were already sleeping deeply, seemed not to realize that the disaster was approaching them step by step.
When the cavalry team walked more than a hundred meters away from the nearest bonfire, they were discovered by the Quito patrol. As a result, the horn suddenly broke through the silence before dawn. The sleeping Quito soldiers immediately stood up from the campfire, picking up the short axes and spears beside them and looking around nervously.
First a horn sounded, and then many horns began to sound. In just a few seconds, the sound of beeping horns rang out over the plains. As the trumpet sounded, the Quito soldiers quickly began to line up and assemble. However, before the Quito people could react, the Spaniards had already launched an attack. The cavalry took the lead, rushed into the enemy's formation, slashed and killed with their swords, and were invincible. The infantry from behind came and killed them so much that the Quito soldiers could not resist and fled in all directions.
The soldiers of the Inca Empire were slaves organized by a coercive force. Under the coercive and orderly organization and rule of the empire, they would be a powerful force. But once they lost this organization and rule, they could only It's a piece of loose sand. Therefore, in the case of a sudden night attack, the Quito people who were killed by the Spanish and fled in all directions could not organize an effective resistance. Although the horns commanding the assembly were blown louder and louder, the soldiers had not yet seen the Spanish When people come to kill them, they just run away, and how can they assemble a team?
Luminawi, who had just come out of the big tent, immediately ordered the guards to go down the slope to supervise the battle. However, before the soldiers supervising the battle could go down the slope, they saw a group of cavalry coming towards them with long swords. Seeing this scene, Ruminawi knew that his defeat was certain, so he asked the deputy commander Tumaiwalaka to take command and supervise the battle, while he escaped through the path behind the high slope under the protection of nearly a thousand guards.
Tumaiwalaka commanded nearly a thousand Liwa soldiers to go down to the high slope to supervise the battle. In order to prevent the defeat and escape, the supervising soldiers immediately cut down several soldiers who were retreating, and forced the fleeing soldiers to turn around again. Come and fight the oncoming Spanish cavalry. However, a column of dozens of cavalry came towards them with swords, killing the Quito soldiers in panic and causing them to be completely defeated. After the soldiers were killed and could not escape, the Liwa soldiers supervising the battle directly faced the attacking Spanish cavalry.
At first, these Liwa soldiers armed with short swords and hatchets tried to fight to the death with the oncoming cavalry. However, as soon as they fought, a large piece was cut down by the long sword of the Spanish cavalry. Seeing this situation, these ferocious and barbaric Liwa soldiers also dropped their weapons one after another and began to escape from the Spanish cavalry and run for their lives. Tumaiwalaka saw that the soldiers supervising the battle were fleeing in all directions, and the Spaniards on horseback and wielding swords were heading straight towards him, so he took dozens of guards around him and fled towards the back of the slope. .
Originally, the Quito people had been defeated by the Spanish raid and were in chaos. Now that there was no commander, the entire mountain pass plain became a slaughterhouse of pursuit. The Spanish soldiers seemed to be in uninhabited territory, chasing the Quitoans who were fleeing with their heads in their hands. When the Quito soldiers woke up from their sleep and saw the Spanish coming, they quickly fled from the plains illuminated by bonfires and fled towards the dark mountains. After escaping, corpses were left beside the bonfire on the plain.
Soldiers from the Spanish and Indian auxiliary forces, carrying long swords or holding spears, were cleaning the battlefield around piles of bonfires or searching for surviving Quitos. After the cavalry reached the high slope, they saw only an exquisite and gorgeous sedan, and all the people had already fled. Benalcazar was riding a horse on a high slope, looking at some torches slowly moving on the mountain path in the distance to the north, and then looking at the dark and boundless mountains before dawn, so he had no choice but to let the cavalry Stop the pursuit.
After daybreak, Benalcasal led his troops into the city of Riobamba. But Ruminawi and the fleeing soldiers did not stop here at all and fled directly to Quito. Therefore, the Spaniards did not stop in the city and rushed towards Quito.
On the morning of the third day, the Spaniards finally arrived in Quito. However, it is not as prosperous and beautiful as they imagined. Because the city before them was filled with smoke and fire. In particular, the palace hall was surrounded by a sea of fire. The raging fire almost turned half the sky red, and the thick smoke drifted away in the wind. The entire city seemed to be filled with thick fog, and there was no one or another person a few steps away. Moreover, the fire grew stronger and stronger with the wind, and could not be stopped or extinguished at all. Therefore, the Spaniards could only watch from a distance as the houses were reduced to ashes in the fire, but there was nothing they could do.
The fire burned for three days and three nights before it was slowly extinguished. Spain searched and searched everywhere in the city strewn with ashes and rubble, but found nothing. Fortunately, the ancient tower of the palace is still well preserved, because the entire ancient tower was built with huge stones and was not burned by the fire. They entered the ancient tower, which was empty. A stone platform with the mummy of the Inca king was overturned to the ground, and the mummy had been broken into pieces and scattered on the ground. Someone quickly recognized it as Atahualpa's mummy. The Inca king, who converted to Christianity against his will in order to save his body so that he could still live a luxurious life like a king after death, ended up being shattered to pieces.
After occupying an empty city that had been burned, Benalcasal still asked the soldiers to plant the flag of the King of Spain on the ancient tower of the palace, and named the city San Francisco de Quito in his honor. His chief and general Francisco Pizarro. Then, he stationed his troops in a compound of princes and nobles near the outskirts of the city, and then led the soldiers to search for gold while clearing away the remnants of Ruminawi. However, the gold had long been taken away or hidden by the princes, nobles and citizens, and Luminawi also fled with the remaining defeated soldiers to hide in the mountains and old forests far away from the city of Quito. This greatly frustrated and disappointed Captain Benalcasal. However, at this moment, someone came to report that his superior officer, General Almagro, had arrived in Riobamba and asked him to come and see him immediately.
At this time, Almagro was on the plain battlefield in Riobamba where a life-and-death battle had just ended, and met the Spanish expeditionary force that had come through a narrow escape in the mountain snowfields. So why did Almagro, who was thousands of kilometers away from the capital city of Cusco, travel all the way to Riobamba and meet Alvarado's troops?
It turned out that after Alvarado led his troops to land from Galax Bay, someone reported the news to Marquis Pizarro in Cusco. The future governor was so shocked that another expeditionary force invaded his territory that even an Indian army of tens of thousands suddenly surrounded them would not have shocked him so much. Because he knew that this newly landed Spanish army was not only equal in number to them, but also slightly superior in terms of horses and weapons. Therefore, he immediately ordered Almagro to lead a cavalry detachment to rush to San Miguel day and night to join the more than 140 troops previously led by Benalcasal, and then go to fight or drive away the army. The Spanish army suddenly invaded here.
Almagro traveled day and night from Cusco on a dusty journey. But there were stragglers and small groups of Kiskis troops all along the route. Although Quiskis was killed by his men, his soldiers scattered in groups along the entire route and continued to harass and attack the passing Spanish troops.
Almagro was almost a small battle for three days and a big battle for five days. Because we had to rush and didn't dare to stop on the way, we fought and walked, walking and beating, covering a distance of one or two thousand kilometers four or five times. It took a week to arrive in San Miguel. However, the people in San Miguel said that Benalcasal did not bring his troops back here, but led them to attack Quito.
Almagro was very angry. He suspected that Benalcazar had so boldly disobeyed military orders and led his troops to attack Quito without authorization. He must have had very personal goals and selfish desires. So, in a rage, he led his troops to continue on the road towards Quito overnight, so as to catch up with the troops led by Benalcasal as soon as possible, and to severely punish Benalcasal for seriously disobeying military orders. Disposal.
Since the road to Quito was relatively flat, Almagro asked the troops to move forward in a rapid march, so it took only two weeks to reach Riobamba. At this time, he had heard that the Spanish expeditionary force had just come down from the snow-capped mountain plateau and was resting not far from Riobamba. So, he decided to wait here for the arrival of the army.
Benalcasal led his troops to Riobamba quickly from Quito, and met with his boss Almagro in a tall prince's mansion.
