Siege+of+Cusco

= Siege of Cuzco = It was the day of May 6, 1536 that would change Cuzco forever. On that particular day the Inca king Manco Inca Yupanqui planned a revolt in the form of a siege against the Spanish conquistadors. The Spanish had taken the capital of Inca Cuzco and encouraged Manco Inca to become the new emperor after they killed the old one in 1533 because they thought that Manco was on their side. However Manco wasn’t he knew that he was constantly humiliated by the spanish leaders and he saw that he was just getting walked over so he started plotting a revolt. Although Manco needed an army to defeat the spaniards so he started building and at the end Manco’s army consisted of 100,000 to 200,000 men. But the spaniards found out about this so they tried attacking them before it was to late but the army defeated the conquistadors in that battle, but instead of attacking the spaniards he waited to get an even bigger army.

However the spaniards weren’t alone there was only 190 spaniards 80 of which were horsemen and the rest was several thousand indian auxiliaries, so Manco’s army heavily outnumbered the conquistadors. When the fighting began on May 6, 1536 the odds were looking great for Manco they had captured most of Cuzco except for two major buildings that the spaniards defended the many Incan attacks. To take their positions back the spaniards decided to attack the main base Saksaywaman for Manco with 50 horsemen led by Juan Pizarro, but Juan was hit with a stone in the head. This caused Jaun to die a few days later and the attack failed, now it was time for the Incan counterattack. Despite being outnumbered the spaniards resisted seven attacks, and now under new leadership they again attacked Saksaywaman in the night and this time they were successful in their attempt. Even though the Incan commanders it their best the spaniards took over the towers then attacked the rest of the base and the fighting continued back and forth until March 1537 ten months later ending in a Incan loss.

The siege of Cuzco impacted the area drastically because it split the land apart, when the Incans lost it was because Manco gave up and stopped the fighting, and he moved out to Ollantaytambo and then to Vilcabamba. There Manco set up a Neo-Inca state which split the Inca Empire there was a spaniard part in the Inca empire and the Neo-Inca state . Manco could have taken back the city of Cuzco and the Inca empire if he wanted to and kick the spaniardsout with more time but he didn’t he just wanted to stop the fighting. So Manco withdrew from the siege to stop all the bloodshed and fighting that was happening.

By: Kian Kennedy