Pizarro Murdered in Lima: Conquistadors Turn on Each Other

Twenty conquistadors burst through the doors of the governor’s palace in Lima and stabbed Francisco Pizarro to death in his own dining room. On June 26, 1541, supporters of Diego Almagro the Younger, the mestizo son of Pizarro’s former partner, stormed the palace in a desperate bid to seize control of Peru. Pizarro, then approximately 65 years old, fought back with a sword, killing at least one attacker before being overwhelmed and slashed across the throat. The murder was the culmination of a civil war among the Spanish conquerors of the Inca Empire. Pizarro and Diego Almagro the Elder had been partners in the conquest of Peru, but their alliance disintegrated over the division of territory and treasure. The two men fought an open war in 1538, ending when Pizarro’s forces captured and executed Almagro the Elder after the Battle of Las Salinas. Almagro’s supporters, stripped of their encomiendas and reduced to poverty, coalesced around his teenage son. Pizarro had received warnings about the conspiracy but dismissed them, reportedly saying he was too old and too powerful to worry about a band of desperate men. The attackers, numbering about twenty, crossed Lima’s central plaza after Sunday mass, shouting "Death to the tyrant!" Most of Pizarro’s household fled at the first sounds of fighting. Only a handful of servants and his half-brother Martín de Alcántara, who was killed in the attack, stood with the aging conquistador. Almagro the Younger briefly seized power in Peru but was himself defeated and executed by royalist forces under Cristóbal Vaca de Castro within a year. The cycle of conquest, betrayal, and civil war among the conquistadors continued for another decade until the Spanish Crown imposed direct royal authority. Pizarro’s mummified remains were eventually discovered in Lima’s cathedral in 1977, identified by DNA analysis, and placed in a glass coffin where they are displayed today.