Diego de Almagro - Conquest of Peru

Conquest of Peru

By 1524 an association of conquest regarding South America was formalized among Almagro, Pizarro and Luque. By the beginning of August 1524, they had received the requisite permission to discover and conquer lands further south.

Almagro would remain in Panama to recruit men and gather supplies for the expeditions led by Pizarro. After several expeditions to South America, Pizarro secured his stay in Peru and explored the territory held by the Incas. He succeeded in defeating the Incan army under Emperor Atahualpa during the Battle of Cajamarca in 1532. After Peru fell to the Spanish, both Pizarro and Almagro initially worked together in the founding of new cities to consolidate their dominions. As such, Pizarro dispatched Almagro to the Inca Empire's northern city of Quito to claim it as part of their jurisdiction. Their fellow conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar, who had gone forth without Pizarro's approval, had already reached Quito and witnessed the destruction of the city by Inca general Rumiñahui. The Inca warrior had ordered the city to be burned and its gold to be buried at an undisclosed location where the Spanish could never find it. The arrival and intromission of Pedro de Alvarado from Mexico in search of Inca gold further complicated the situation for Almagro and Belalcázar. Alvarado's presence, however, did not last long as he left South America in exchange for monetary compensation from Pizarro.

In an attempt to honor Pizarro before leaving, Almagro refounded the native city of Quito as "San Francisco de Quito" in August 1534. Four months later would come the foundation of the Peruvian city of Trujillo, which Almagro named as "Villa Trujillo" in honor of Francisco Pizarro's birthplace, Trujillo in Extremadura, Spain. These events were the height of the Pizarro-Almagro friendship, which historians describe as one of the last events in which their friendship soon faded and entered a period of turmoil for the control of the Incan capital of Cuzco.

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