Battle of Cajamarca

Late afternoon, 16 November 1532

Atahualpa entered Cajamarca's plaza late in the afternoon of 16 November 1532 in a litter, accompanied by a ceremonial retinue. Hernando Pizarro's account says he left his armed men behind after Spanish assurances that he could come unarmed.

Francisco Pizarro had divided his 168 mounted and foot soldiers among the buildings bordering the plaza, where they waited armed and out of sight.

An exchange, then the attack

The Dominican Vicente de Valverde approached Atahualpa with Christian and Spanish claims to authority. After their exchange the Spaniards attacked with cavalry, cannon and steel weapons, killing or wounding many members of the retinue and seizing Atahualpa alive.

Spanish and Indigenous accounts differ over Valverde's precise words, over whether the object handed to Atahualpa was a Bible, a breviary or another Christian book, and over whether he threw it or merely dropped it.

What the plaza was, and was not

This was not 168 Spaniards defeating Atahualpa's field army. The immediate victims were the ruler's crowded, largely unprepared ceremonial retinue inside the plaza; his principal armed force remained outside Cajamarca.

Francisco de Xerez reported more than 2,000 Inca dead excluding the wounded — an eyewitness-era estimate rather than a verifiable body count.

The only commonly reported Spanish wound in the plaza was to Francisco Pizarro's hand, inflicted by another Spaniard as he tried to keep Atahualpa alive.