Shortly before sunset the van of the royal procession reached _Caxamalca_, and as the leading files entered the great square, where not a Spaniard was to be seen, the Dominican, Valverde, afterwards bishop of _Cuzco_, came forward with a bible and a crucifix, and attempted to explain to the astonished Peruvian the intricate doctrine of the Trinity; ranging, as we are told, from the creation of man to the representative of the Prince of the Apostles. To what must have sounded to him, hearing it as he did for the first time under these strange circumstances, as incomprehensible, the _Inca_ replied with disdain that his god, pointing to the sinking sun, lived in the heavens above them, upon which he threw the bible to the ground. This indignity to the sacred volume scandalized Valverde, who, picking it up and hastening to Pizarro, urged him no longer to delay in giving the appointed signal. Thereupon the chief waved his scarf; the signal-gun was fired; and the Spaniards, springing like tigers from their lair, rushed upon their prey. Some thousands of unarmed Peruvians had entered with the _Inca_, but they were utterly powerless against the butchers who assailed them. The gates of the town had been closed on their entry; but by mere force of numbers they burst through the frail walls, and thus many of them escaped. A fierce struggle, however, raged round the golden litter of the _Inca_, whose person it was Pizarro’s object to secure alive, and in effecting which he himself received the only wound of which the Spaniards could boast on that shameful day, the glory of which undoubtedly rests with the Peruvians. Some thousands of them fell--all or most unarmed--through their devotion to their monarch, whom as a captive Pizarro was enabled to entertain at the feast to which he had invited him.
Some thoughtless persons have instituted a parallel, founded on numbers alone, between the attack on the Peruvians by Pizarro’s band and the defence of Thermopylæ against the Persians by the immortal three hundred. A more insulting comparison was never imagined. Leonidas and his band devoted themselves to the defence of their country, of freedom and civilization, and were sure to meet death from an overwhelming armed force. The Spaniards, on the other hand, can claim no more sympathy or respect than can a band of modern Greek brigands, who are alike entitled with them to the praise belonging to enterprise, temperance, patient endurance of severe hardship, and the most constant observance of religious duties. As to personal danger, the Spaniards engaged in the slaughter of the unarmed Peruvians attending the capture of the _Inca_ incurred no more risk than does the butcher amongst so many sheep.